My Wall

In my back yard, there's a wall my dad built. It has an alcove where I put my feet up and from here I can forget the tatty house behind me and just enjoy looking into the murky pond water. The pond is a bit pointless really, the fish all died years ago like everything else in this place, nothing ever seems to thrive, except me. But the water homes frogs. I like Frogs, they come every year and spawn. Watching the progress of eggs, to tadpoles, to tadpoles with legs, to mini frogs, to full grown creatures has never bored me.
Well this wall, this place it catches most of sun in summer and it's my quiet place where I have written many things and pondered many situations. It's here that I sat and cried when my dog died, here where I can sit for hours of stillness. This is my 'thinking' wall. I have sat and felt the first drop of rain, and still sat until the sky came hammering down on me. In winter I often lose my inspiration, freezing cold in a damp house is one factor, but to not be able to sit on my wall means thoughts dont get processed properly. I'm not suggesting I need this wall to write, but it helps me concentrate, it helps me put things in perspective.

When I hit blocks I fall into a sort of personal depression, it doesnt show to the outside world but it puts me on edge. For example the last six months I've lost Grace. I know she's somewhere inside me but nothing is flowing out, I don't know where she's going in the story, what's supposed to happen next. I feel like you've left me Grace, I know its my own fault but you need to come back and lead the way. Jim's waiting.

Here is the wall ^                                                                 Over there I'm sat on the edge of the pond
                                       My Gorgeous dog :-)

Here is a passage I wrote last summer while on my wall about the pond.

She sat there, almost completely still for so long that the shy creatures of the garden forgot her presence and began to come out of their hideaways. A female black bird was hopping restlessly on a stone step no more than twenty five feet away and the frogs that had scattered on her abrupt arrival now floated lazily to the surface of the pond croaking and gurgling around the mass of their spawn. The majority of the water surface was obscured by a blanket of tiny green plants that moulded together to form a sheet. Duckweed, it was so thick it gave the impression of one being able to walk across it. Transfixed by the idea Grace slowly put her hand out and moved to touch the pad of her finger tip to the blanket. Alerted once more to her human presence twelve or more frogs tumbled, dived, leapt and sank back beneath the water and into a nearby long stem plant. In their frantic retreat from a potential threat the frogs had disrupted the blanket, their splashes having left huge rippling holes in the weed.

 

    For a moment Grace raised her eyebrows in disapproval as the frogs abandoned their handfuls of eggs offering no protection had she been a hungry predator. Then her attention was caught by the rips and gashes in the weed blanket, she now had a somewhat restricted, but never the less, a view of the depth of the pond. It went three or four feet beneath the ground and Grace could make out a carpet of tiny pebbles on the floor, the water being unusually clear considering the muck that lay on top of it. A shimmer of light and then the flash of green land and a large house made Grace blink two or three times in quick succession.

Don’t be stupid! Grace ordered herself as she peered closer into the pond and saw only green tinted water.