I return to blogging wondering if there's anyone out there ( I think writers are probably familiar with this feeling). I return after a wonderful week spent in Llydaw and afterwards a knackered router ( to match my dicky back!). I return after over a week spent pestering Aol via Delhi, Dublin and Ballymegabyte. I return, above all, after my amazing wife installed it all. I would,no doubt, have re-routed the router through our toaster and ended up frazzling the hard drive! I return after a week trekking down to Merthyr library to sort my e-mails: great idea, beats books any day.
   I am now officially an ex-teacher, claiming redundancy pay-off and pension. My nineyear-old asks me most days what I've been doing. She 'bagsied ' the internet soon as it was back working, saying I had the rest of my life to use it anyway. When I reply 'writing' she gazes at me, puzzled and asks - 'Will you make any money?' I seriously wonder if we've gone wrong somewhere. She has now abandoned her ambition to be a fireman (as in Sam Tan ) and wants to be a doctor, as in Casualty, Holby City, and soon-to-be Crash. She is already well-qualified, having followed avidly the crash,bash,slash, dash, mash and hash of those popular series.She will be surrounded in hospital by glamourous colleagues, plenty of disturbed patients and a few stock, Shakespearian (see Bottom or the Porter) working-class 'mechanicals'.
   As ever, writing doesn't go where you plan. At least I haven't had writer's block as Swansea artist and author Alan Perry did throughout his bursary. Having fully intended to resume the novel I started over a year ago for teenagers, I perversely had another idea, for a long narrative poem ( aimed at Years 6,7 and 8 I think). It just took off from the rooftops
and hasn't stopped travelling since.
   However, the poem below is one of several I wrote after Brittany ; this about my young daughter. It's in 'open field' style which I sometimes use, with phrases spread out and space vitally important and with one poem being one sentence -

                                    A Bonfire in Brittany
      It is the beginning and end
                                              this bonfire
                          a Saint's day
                                  a turn in the weather

       she watches it rise
                                  mesmerized
                                                    eyes aglow

                        its waves of fire
                           its spitting sparks

                     she shields her roasting face

         in it she imagines
                                  a cave          a hut

                   she dances to the crackle
                          of hedge-cuttings and twigs

                           in later light
                                            she's a giant shadow
                                                with stilted legs

                     and afterwards
                                            like everyone else
                                                                       she is smoke
                          through layers of clothing
                              as if her skin were ashen

                                    her hair the colour of hay
                                       smelling of a stubbled field
                                          after the harvesting

                 when the bonfire settles
                                                    to a hive of light
                     she lies on the grass
                                                  as stars press
                                                                      honeyed fi