Welcome to WordsWork with Anne McClure

Photo by Valentina Ivanova on Unsplash

I have news for you: our Autumn is the time to gather up the golden bounty of our lives.

To make preserves from the succulent energy of childhood, the exuberant tang of youth, the sturdy growth of adulthood and the fruitful maturity of middle age.

To pare away what is spoiled. To meld the memories of sweet joys with those of bitter heartaches so there is balance in our remembering.  

To see, in the heaped basket of experiences, what may be missing - there isn’t time to grow new apple trees - there is time to see what spice could enhance fruit already ripe.

To consider what our store cupboard needs for the winter ahead. Let’s put in bright jellies for joyfulness. Healing cordials for illness.  Jewels of jams for times with loved ones. Infusions in bottles of many colours and flavours – for celebrations, for challenges, for toasts to absent friends, which one day will be raised for us. 

Yes, this is the time to process our years of foraging and growing.  The time to harvest and to preserve.

This is my news.

This poem wrote itself easily on the Autumn Equinox, September 23^rd. It also ties in with the full Harvest Moon on September 29^th. A time of balance and plenty, of gratitude and preparation. The images came from a fabulous foraging month with lots of preserve making and gin infusing happening in the McClure kitchen. I’m not sure I need that much rowan jelly, hawthorn ketchup, bramble whisky and sloe gin but hey!

Getting to where I could write it wasn’t so pain free.

I’m a wee woman, originally from rural Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who is risk averse and catastrophizes at the drop of a hat. So the fact that I’ve jumped out of planes, worked in some of the most remote and difficult places on the planet, been part of the team that changed how the British public pay tax and spent a lot of the last four years scything wildflower meadows and rewilding peat bogs surprises no-one more than me.

I’ve been a tax collector, addiction counsellor, employee assistance provider, manager, charity country director, international humanitarian worker, human resources adviser and conservation volunteer. I even made my CV sound as if I’d planned all that.  

Now I’m closer to the door with the peeling paint marked Exit than the grand marble Entrance.  For much of this year I have not been comfortable with that.

Now I’m thinking maybe the best is yet to come?  I’m having an extraordinary life, brim-full of exciting, terrifying and pleasantly ordinary times.  The quality of my mettle (pun intended) has been refined in fierce fires.  Maybe it’s time to share some of those experiences? I don’t have to resemble the Western stereotype of a woman old enough to have a bus pass.  Growing older may mean becoming elder; stronger and wiser rather than diminished.

Traditionally, in many cultures, one of the vital roles older women held was Storyteller. So I’m going to tell you all sorts of stories: to weave words to make you laugh, echo how you feel, encourage you and that might even have a modicum of good sense.       

I hope you enjoy.

Next time we’ll be in 2004 and I’ll share a Travelling Tale from Sierra Leone.           

Photo Nicolas Mesifet on Unsplash

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