Whispers of Summer
From a Window The bedroom — my office — window is open, despite the downpour. At this side of the building it mostly flies beyond the eaves, lashing into the orange grove and obscuring all but the nearest hill. Such…
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The Owl and the Pussycat
And other nonsense I, like so many others, have done the vast amount of my recent nature observation from the windows of our home. Here, in the west of Alentejo, even on the fourth floor, sometimes nature also tries to…
Summer Reading
Running out of ‘Free Book’ titles here… This morning, as I draft this, it is raining, for the first time in weeks.* Everything is cool and crisp, the air fresh and clear. It is a joy to feel rain like…
Free Books!
And a note on my birthday Hello, I did say there would be more newsletters this month, didn’t I? This newsletter is primarily for two things, a bit of personal news, and a bit of marketing — a shiny, all-free,…
Light and Dark
But mostly light My local world is bounded by windmills. Round hilltop towers, now shorn of their sails, some falling back to nature, others repurposed into circular homes. Many of the taller hilltops near this village are capped with a…
Stories of Life
Also featuring stories of drafts and edits Outside the window, the world warms, stories of life everywhere. Swirls of storks climb invisible spirals. Beneath, strata of swallows manoeuvre, twist, brake and snatch, manoeuvre, twist, brake and snatch. Lower still, plummeting…