‘Use words like arrows’, Hilary Mantel said in her final Reith Lecture for 2017.
Now the summer holidays are here I take out my quiver and inspect it. Over the last couple of terms I’ve been living on borrowed arrows with little time to make any more. Battle weary I’ve had to count my arrows carefully, when and where to use them. On this rainy summer morning, I can at last bask in the idea at least that writing stuff can go back up the list of my priorities for the next few weeks.
Yesterday I saw red crocosmia in the park and it looked like a series of little flames running along a thin wire, each one flaring out in turn until the final tip glowed bright. At the junction there were a few tall stems of Rose Bay Willow Herb, also known as Fireweed. Once again each flower head was a mini conflagration, this time in dark pink. At the bottom of the spike the fire had caught hold as each fluorescence was well advanced. At the tip the buds had yet to break.
I liked what Hilary Mantel said about battles and how difficult it is to make them convincing on the stage with just a handful of actors and the clatter of armour. As I mostly write from life, I’ve not written about any real battles, having not taken part in any.
Silences are a different matter. I’ve taken part in loads of those. Even so they are difficult to write about. I shoot an arrow into the silence. I hear the twang of the bow string and the thrum as it vibrates. The arrow has left the bow and arches, silently into the air. It carves an arrow sized tunnel through the ether, fitting exactly to the size of the arrow head, shaft and fletch. I put my hand to my head to see where the arrow will land. I am surprised that it travels so far. I bound off after it, into the future to see where it has made its mark.

In our life and our believing
The love of God