Enter The Aviary
The Aviary, as one might expect, is filled with flights of fancy leading us into the realms of fantasy.
Bird song prompts more poeticals than prose, poetry being more lyrical.
And ahead of a new location for my static caravan, came a new name for it: Wild Poplars. My mother – part tree as well as gazelle – thought if I were a tree I would be a wild black poplar. I wasn’t aware then that its symbolism isn’t entirely positive and associated with grieving. But mum – an elegant silver birch of a tree – crowned me with this honour shortly before leaving Bromyard. Neither of us aware my new home would be sited at the end of a line of ‘trembling trees’ as poplars are known. Wild Poplars became the static’s new name.
And, too the name of my next creative endeavour: Wild Poplars Radio. I saw it as a blog site - today it would probably be considered a podcast site - to act as home to all my non-tea related poeticals, recorded as audio tracks. The name didn’t last but the idea and the audio tracks did. Track by track my poeticals found their voice.
Still in heron-like mode, I dabbled throughout 2015 writing ‘Tao and Tea’ and poeticals prompted by my Biodanza weekends – lurching in and out of the financial red. Towards the Autumn I received an out of the blue (although it should be called out of the pink) call from the first wholesale direct buyer of ‘Distinguished Leaves’: Patrick Duffy. Patrick’s flagship tearooms was in one of my – and apparently the country’s* – favourite villages: Tisbury in Wiltshire.
The pink and white themed tearooms was named ‘Beatons’ with a nod to Cecil Beaton who’d lived in the surrounding area. Prints of his work adorned the walls.
Patrick had booked me for a performance of tea poeticals when the book first came out, ordering a massive fifty copies. He seemed undismayed when our audience numbered two (one of them his landlord and the other his kitchen washer upper). In chatting after the underwhelming event, he’d learnt I was a fan of offline marketing and had helped companies in the City when they were listing on The London Stock Exchange or Aim Market.
Getting a little bogged down on identifying and articulating his brand, he'd remembered our conversation and was wondering if I could help?
My heron yellow eyes glowed amber as I spied an opportunity. Without considering how I could travel to Tisbury and back, we met in London and I negotiated an ‘old days corporate consultancy sized fee’. Delighted with the strategic session we enjoyed at The Chesterfield Hotel where I’d once performed tea poems from table-to-table, Patrick offered me more work on the marketing side and also the title ‘House Poet’.
Beatons was my primary source of income for the next three years, largely funding my dance training. The work warranted leasing a VW Polo – which proved a mistake but at least gave me transport. But Beatons, Biodanza and Berkshire made Bromyard bottom of my ‘B’ list.
My ‘A’ was The Aviary. Its first location was a spit away from my newly located static. It wasn’t an actual cage but the bird feeder which I transported from home to home, and would give rise to an interesting discussion with TSM who I would shortly meet.
We have flown in a circle and arrived back to the circumstances of which you are thoroughly appraised, taking me to The Farm aka The Circus Ground. Ironically, although my ties with Bromyard loosened, for a while Chris and I discovered that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’. We got formally engaged although seldom spoke of its outcome – marriage. I wonder now if exchanging rings ('though mine to him was a diamond earring) was a way to strengthen the longer thread between us?
*Tisbury regularly appears in the top three of the Sunday Times’s list of best villages to live in England.
#poplars #moving #synchronicty #trees