National Poetry Day and five words for Hope

Oh my goodness...the National Poetry Day (Plus One) event here in Montrose last night was a huge success. Lots of people came! You can read a bit about it here and I'm sure there will be more posts about it as time goes by (that was quick...there's another one about it already here). I'm a bit too worn out to write much today...plus we go away tomorrow and I've packing to do.

In the meantime Hope had a 'write about 5 words' meme a while ago (here) and I said I'd do it and now I have (I wrote it up yesterday when I was trying not to worry about how the evening's event would go...). The five words Hope gave me were music, ocean, words, travel and home.

Music
All the clichés...it's saved my life, been my best friend...I suppose I could live without music (just) but I wouldn't be very happy about it. It just makes everything better. Well...nearly everything.

Ocean
I saw the Pacific Ocean once...touched it even. I was in Nicaragua in...maybe 1987 (certainly in the Sandinista era) and I was there with a group of people from university. They had all gone to 'learn about the revolution' ( and I was unofficial interpreter) but I got a bit bored with the official tours and ended up wandering off on my own and staying with a local teacher, going dancing, having more than a few adventures, going hitchhiking. One day a few of us were helping build houses (me, build a house...how ridiculous!) and the two Nicaraguans we were 'helping', Luis and Marlon, suggested a trip to the beach (I think). We ended up getting a taxi (public transport being a bit ropey/non-existent during the Contra war and all) to the Pacific coast. The radio in the cab was playing a Samantha Fox song I seem to remember (that was weird). The place we went to was one of the fancy resorts left over from the Somoza era but there was no-one there...no-one had the money or the time for fancy holidays during this period. We sat on the beach, touched the water...and then (I suppose) we got back in the cab and returned to Managua. It's a bit of a fuzzy memory but I do remember being very excited and thinking 'that's the Pacific Ocean, the PACIFIC OCEAN!'

Words
Now, do I love words more than music or...do I love them the same? I have no idea (but put words together with music and you have songs, of course, which is a pretty amazing business). But I do know I walk around in clouds of words most of the time....like they're fairy dust. I like that they're real (in some ways) and yet (in others) they're not real at all. I find it all fairly magical and I don't really want some boring pseudo-scientist telling me otherwise (I did a linguistics module at uni – what a pile of dullness that was...). So back to magic...pass me the dictionary and pretty soon I'll show you something amazing...

Travel
I've been an adventurous, free-spirited, hit-the-globe traveller and I've been a scaredy-cat stay-at-home and I suppose just now I am somewhere in between the two. I think people can get too obsessed with travelling ('move, move, never look at where you are now...') and people can get too tied up with where they live ('no-one exists but us') so I think somewhere in between the two is probably not a bad place to be. Compromise is an often underrated solution. Does that make me old?

Home
I've been thinking and writing about home loads of late (in Monday poems and beyond). What is home, we ask ourselves again and again, what is home? I'd say home is warmth, comfort and (if you're lucky) people, a little peace and sustenance. Sometimes it really is simple – home is the place where you know you'll get a decent cup of tea. Sounds like I am officially an old person. Hurray!


Now I'm on holiday (and luckily it's a week off Monday poems from TFE too - good timing). ADDED LATER - it was going to be a week off but I've just read a post of his and he's changed his mind and posted another task! Somehow I just find them irresistible. I'll try to manage something quick before we go.
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