You don’t have to be an environmentalist to love the breeze

…But it helps. At the moment the breeze is not as I would like it. It’s cold for August, and walking through Brighton the levels of pollution have been bashing my lungs, and probably those of many others, too. On the allotment the breeze is exquisite when the wind is warmer – you get fabulous wafts of lavender, purple buddleia (yes, you can smell the purple) sweet peas and Verbena. In the wonderful world of mindfulness I dream of the floaty journeys of bees and butterflies, drawn by the most wonderful array of perfumes imaginable, and on our allotment these charming visitors get everything pure and unsprayed. It’s the breeze that carries the delicious scents, plus the seeds and the invisible particles of dust that could be anything. It’s the breeze that cools us down if one has been doing too much weeding (removing the germinated seeds) and it’s the breeze that moves so many poets and songwriters, to create everything from ‘Blow the Wind Southerly’ to ‘Ride Like the Wind’.

The gentle wind is a wafty force of potential that drifts into our subconscious in a dreamy and inexplicable way. The breeze is in us and around us if you give credit to the nature of breathing. Perhaps this is why the songs about the breeze connect at the deepest level. Recently I came to appreciate the voice of Nina Simone, a sort of hooty warbling that had never done it for me… but I had to reconsider… when I heard her amazing rendition of ‘Wild is the Wind’. It is fabulous, but still (in my view) not as great as Shirley Horn’s version, which is a double entitled ‘Come A Little Closer/Wild is the Wind.’ This is breath-taking art. Also George Michael’s version of this wonderful song is definitely worth trying out… give them a try… and let me know what you think. And I say it again… you don’t have to be an environmentalist or Green to love the breeze — the pure, unpolluted breeze of nature… but it most certainly helps. Keep wafting!

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