by Helen Ivory | Dec 28, 2015 | 12 days 2015
Holy Theotokos Save Us In the cathedral empty of true feeling, the icons are beautifully silent: blue and green hues, golden halos, the choir in perfect harmonies taking us across time, space, to the beginning days when the naming began, where we...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 27, 2015 | 12 days 2015
The Devil Makes Work The bouncing bomb Superball missed the enemy Action Man, the day after Boxing Day, to snap a scarlet leaf from Mum’s poinsettia. Sap bubbled from the break white as PVA adhesive. Hiding the leaf, I wiped away the evidence,...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 26, 2015 | 12 days 2015
No room at the inn All the animals in the animal basket wanted to go: Stegosaurus, polar bears, Lego dog. We let in a camel and a donkey only on sufferance. They watched from the back, blocked by pandas. The crib was crammed:...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 25, 2015 | 12 days 2015
Christmas Morning – Wharfedale. We had to travel early along deserted lanes, the mist a gauzy cloth on fields and river, light thawing, promising little but a milky drift. Ghost trees harnessed the fell, frost rigged, quicksilvered, cutwork on the...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 24, 2015 | 12 days 2015
Travellers A high price to pay at their journey’s end, they travelled a long way; he on foot, she on a mule and she heavy with child. All doors were closed against them. No welcome anywhere. And the night bitterly cold. There are others travelling now,...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 23, 2015 | 12 days 2015
The Alchemist The house was strange without one. Corners where it could be swelled daily in their emptiness and threatened to topple the festivity. Contrary under her gaze, he determined that a squat bought thing just wouldn’t do, and, shedding...
