Footfalls echo in the memory

Up early and started a new poem. Quite amazing to have so much new stuff. Only time will tell if it is any good.

Spoke at length to my old friend Al who was after some advice.

Then off to The Sussex Beacon. Decided to walk, which involved two very steep hills so I was quite sweaty when I arrived. Lovely lunchtime meeting with a woman called Juley, about the CD project. But we also started talking about marketing and branding and we might do some work together in that way too. Really took to Juley, and after a salady bite to eat in the canteen, she showed me about the garden and the rooms. The Beacon is beautifully located, and looks out across the downs, and it brought some memories back of visiting Tim there in the mid-nineties. Now the emphasis is completely different, and is about helping people who are managing HIV to lead normal lives. There is a weird healing of hurts that I thought long scabbed over about this.

After the meeting I and found myself on the hill of Bear Road where I crossed over to enter a door in the old flint wall, and discovered The Woodvale Remembrance Garden. It was beautiful with lots of trees and huge beds of roses that smelled absolutely gorgeous. When you looked closely each plant had a little plaque of remembrance to it. Found myself a little bench and listened with my eyes shut to the wind passing through the trees and some birdsong. A lovely moment, or as as T.S. Eliot said,

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.


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