I feel a bit sorry for ‘and’. Always a small letter, lower case. It thinks me. It’s important, after all. Imagine a sentence without an and? We’d be frickin lost.

Moving on. I dilly about of a sunset, lighting candles, wheeching out the old and bringing in the new yet unburned. Oh, that just jolted me, the unburned thing as opposed to unburnt which has a different meaning, or it did in my English language days. I loved those wordish contras, curious as I was about how words work, how they do, or do absolutely not work even as they sound the same or similar. To be honest, this difference is mist now and although I know so well the structure of english language, it has had its time and, most definitely, its rather judgemental control. I love the sway and shift of language, the infused grandeur of new words from other cultures, the way they absorb into mostly young culture, and then, before you know it, the after school kitchen talk with teens scoots us out of a controllingly British dictionary and thus contests the rigid structure of the pages. I do confess to the miss of that structure. It was my catwalk, my scaffolding, lifting me, never into an ‘I’m so smart’ but more into a higher level of conversation and understanding. But and, ‘and’ I love the now of bonkers grammar and too many commas and exclamation marks.

This is so not my point. I seem really good at a wide traverse. Back to candles.

No matter the day, as the sun is tired of shining, I am candling. They are everywhere, lit and loved. The dark falls fast and yet the light is such an offer. We had loads of rain, nothing new there and yet today there was enough time to quirk out there, to don boots, hats, attitude and to just go, go and go. The Nomatters matter. Sprinkled on, puddled, we walked. I lost the back of an earring, it so didn’t matter because what mattered was the conversation between us and the two beautiful blonde labradors, the mud and squelch the fire and the fry in our collective heads and minds, the sputter of candles and the proffer of a matchstick later on. I walked up the track looking for the earring back, a tiny thing, might have sparkled at me. I employed two sets of specatcles for this looking thing, one short look, one long look. To be honest I lost interest quickly, the mud, the dimming light, the chance of a gold sparkle and do I actually care? But I did have fun beyond my initial seeking thing because I met an estate worker planting trees and then a young friend bringing her little girls home from school and (and, again) these two encounters, the exchange of hallos and a few questions on the safe ‘How Are You’ level kicked my boots into a skipperdoo as I walked back home to my candles and my woodburner and the warmth of my blessed life here on this island.

I