Lightening the January blues

I always find January trying - especially with the dark mornings, no daylight to speak of for walking my dog until nearly 8.00am - half way through the morning for an early riser! But two things cheered me considerably this morning as I came back from our constitutional on Crickley Hill - the scent from the bowl of hyacinths in my study (a Christmas Eve gift from my cousin's widow) and the appearance of a profusion of buds on the tree just outside my window. Hints of better days to come!

Early last year I met some writers from Dean Writer's Circle who were visiting us at Writers in the Brewery in Cirencester. One of them, Toni Wilde, told me of an anthology of women's poems they had in preparation and promised to let me know when the project came to fruition. Yesterday morning the end product arrived in the post - a beautifully produced book entitled "Seven Ages of Woman", compiled by Toni Wilde and Heather Randall, published by Blue Funk and sold in aid of Macmillan Cancer Care. I sat down yesterday evening with a glass of wine and read it from cover to cover. The minutiae of women's lives, the major milestones, the dizzying highs and the depressing lows, it's all there. So many wonderful poems - humorous, movingly sad, all thought-provoking and deserving of much closer attention, with local Forest of Dean poets cheek by jowl with Carol Ann Duffy and Lady Mary Wilson. It's a book I know I shall really enjoy returning to many times.

(Seven Ages of Woman is now available from The Forest Bookshop, St John’s Street, Coleford, Glos; Chepstow Bookshop, Chepstow, Mon; Taurus Crafts, Aylburton, Glos; and Brockweir Community Shop, Brockweir, Glos. Price £6-50; all proceeds to go to Macmillan Cancer Care)