Mary Medlicott, Storyteller and Author - Storyworks

Posts Tagged ‘friends’

Storytelling Starters ~ Enough

Saturday, September 25th, 2021

The jobbing gardener in our Pembrokeshire village hasn’t been round as we’d hoped to attend to our small patch of garden or to clear away his plastic sacks which have been lying idle outside since we were last here. But, hey, that’s par for the course. We hadn’t really expected anything different. He doesn’t depend on us for work and according to friends down the road, gardeners and other local workers have been saying yes to jobs that people want done – but not till after Christmas!

Ah! Lockdown! It has left lots of things in its wake, good and bad. Meantime, the birdsong here in Mathri, where we arrived on Wednesday, has been so beautiful I just have to stop quite frequently and make time to listen. Not that time is under pressure in this quiet place. That’s one of the things I love about it. I feel I have time to think, time to do a jigsaw and time to rest (much needed).

Of course there are many other pleasures too. One of the unexpected ones was finding our fridge packed with good things to eat when we arrived. That’s my friend Beryl for you! Quiche, cake: it’s all there waiting, and all Beryl-made, of course. (more…)

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Storytelling Starters ~ Touching base

Saturday, May 7th, 2016

Good news. David is back in Tregaron. Tregaron is a town in West Wales and David is the cuckoo I sponsor, one of the clutch that are being tracked by the BTO (the British Trust for Ornithology). It’s  reassuring that my cuckoo is not only back but busy. Sadly another tracked cuckoo, Vigilamus, also managed to make the 4,500 mile journey back to his previous breeding ground, in his case in Yorkshire, but then almost immediately succumbed to the near-Arctic conditions in that part of the country last week. 

Back to base:P1070361

In getting back to Tregaron this year, David has successfully completed his fourth migration cycle. I think of this with a sense of wonder. It’s one of those stories of nature that are really worth telling: they force you to stop and think about their many implications.

For David will not remain in the UK for long. If all goes well, he will already be back in Africa by the start of August or soon after. There, if he does what he usually does, he’ll spend the winter in the tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Then, next January, he will set out – and cuckoos always fly alone – on his migration back north. It’s a very, very long way, taking him north into West Africa, then across the Sahara desert and over the Mediterranean before heading back through Spain and France to arrive back once more in the UK.

Where is home? (more…)

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Posted in Adults, Nature stories, Personal experience | 1 Comment »