My book on Lockdown

Throughout the first UK lockdown I began to write a book about the strange times and how I was able to embrace the woodland by my school (my favourite place in the entire world) during Coronavirus, it is a sort of diary/description over the months here is a little extract:
(hopefully I can get this published and present my love for nature and why we should protect it)

April 2020:
As I looked down all I could see was a carpet of bluebells nodding in the afternoon breeze. Holly bushes concealed aconites like a treasure chests waiting to be opened, cherry trees coated the woodland floor in a shower of blushing pink petals and I sat within it.

WOW ! Adam, you have so many talents

It is a great idea, and I hope to see more

It's amazing and what a wonderful idea!
I hope you get it published, and like Susanne I would love to see more!

Thank you both, here is a little extract from November 2020:

As I sat on the railway bridge, copper leaves swirled and danced around me as the train rushed beneath me, brimming with confidence as it did so. A lone male blackbird perched in a small buddleia by the tracks, singing his heart out was deafened as the locomotive went by.

Wonderful again!
And now, with schools closed and another national lockdown here, you will be able to write even more!

Yes exactly!

 You're a very special and talented young man Adam!.. but I need dictionnary!

Thank you Alain, does this help?

Alors que je m’asseyait sur le pont ferroviaire, des feuilles de cuivre tourbillonnaient et dansaient autour de moi pendant que le train se précipitait sous moi, débordant de confiance comme il le faisait. Un merle mâle solitaire perché dans une petite buddleia près des voies ferrées, chantant son cœur a été assourdie au fur et à mesure que la locomotive passait.

Very very good help!  You're a sensitiv poet and your French is perfect! just go on now!..

Do you know French Adam! Or did you use a translator?
I don't think I could write that in French!

Lillias, I had help from my family as well as a few words from a translator like swirled for example

Wow- it's still amazing that you can write that!

Strange how text written in French always looks much more romantic

A recent competition came about in school on describing your lockdown, and I had to enter. I simplified some of my highlights of 2020 and put them into a seasonal sort of diary of the wood near my school. I am now hoping I get recognized for this as nature and writing about it is my passion, and my medicine. It was also suggested a piece of music should also symbolize the lockdown so I picked Hunt the Squirrel by Ernest Tomlinson: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This is part of what I submitted:

Spring had come. New and crisp beech leaves unfurled from their patient buds, and carpets of shimmering bluebells glistened in the dappled light. Chiffchaffs with their cheerful onomatopoeic songs, dipped through the bramble thickets to their ever-ravenous broods and song thrushes scurried in open glades satiating themselves on worms and grubs. On the valley slopes, ramsons grew in their thousands with their delicate white flowers and lush green leaves. Down by the river, a kingfisher sat conspicuously in the branches of an old willow, waiting, waiting. Like a bullet of shimmering blue, it plunged its body into the sparkling water, and not long after, it emerged from the ripples, with a writhing stickleback in its bill. Further down the river, in a large sycamore, two herons were laying the foundations for their nest, squawking at one another in a means to say “that doesn’t go there!”


Furthermore, my school sent out a notice mentioning they were looking for new head students, so that got me thinking. I wouldn't go for that position as it is too much pressure and I hate speaking in front of people, so instead I asked if I could be the environmental officer for the school. I got a response saying that they would love me to be on the team, helping to plant trees and meadows on the school site!

Wonderful description of the English countryside

And congratulations to your school, that they got such a perfect environmental officer

Wonderful and so poetic description of your natural surroundings!.. But you made me to wander in my dictionnary! :)

Big congrats for your next promotion at school I am sure you are the right person to do that!

This is a beautiful description, I could picture every line! Definitely a talented writer!
Good luck in the competition and with being the environmental officer!

Your writing is lovely, it has the quality of taking "ordinary" things and places and exhibiting what makes them extraordinary and beautiful without over-reaching the mark or forcing them into exotic comparisons. It reminds me in that way a little of one of my favorite authors, Richard Adams, and the way he portrays the English countryside in Watership Down. I love the progression in that last paragraph, like we are walking in this place you describe ourselves, and we're coming upon these things as they happen. The ending with the herons is delightful, a little splash of humor and anthropomorphization to connect us immediately to the birds' behavior.

It's a wonderful idea for a project and I wish you the best of luck with it!

Jill wrote:

..... and exhibiting what makes them extraordinary and beautiful without over-reaching the mark or forcing them into exotic comparisons. ......

It's a wonderful idea for a project and I wish you the best of luck with it!

I just read about two ladies who are striving to look at the good things.
One thing is, that they say thankyou to everything they get from nature, to their house, their nice chair, a beautyful plate etc...silly , perhaps ?
It touches something in me, though.
They also advice to write down a list of good things from the day, just before you go to bed : 3 - 7 things that you enjoyed today.
That way you should have better dreams, and wake up more positive

That's a really nice way to think about things, I could stand to be more thankful about a lot of things in my life certainly!