Exhausted of Devon

I have spent the last few weeks driving up and down the A361 and the M5 motorway. I even covered a significant stretch of the A38 yesterday. I have attended meetings and courses, given lectures and attended yet more meetings until I am so tired that I can't sleep. I have just returned from the course I am running, not the one I'm attending (that was on Saturday)and tomorrow I'm headed for yet another meeting. It is all getting to be such a blur that I have to carry the notes for all of the different concerns with me, just in case!

On Saturday I was in Exeter, yesterday I was at Buckfast, tonight I was in Ilfracombe and tomorrow I go to Plymouth. If this is retirement I think I'll look for a job!

A Tory policy Labour won't steal

I'm breaking my own "no politics" rule but only because I find this piece so amusing. Having had all their best policies hi-jacked by the Labour party in recent weeks, the Tories have come up with one that Gordon Brown couldn't possibly covet: taking away the right of Scottish MPs (including Mr Brown) to vote on issues relating to England.

The idea of keeping the Scots in check makes a popular headline, and it certainly made me smile, but I don't think anyone will take it seriously. There are 72 Scottish MPs in Westminster who would not look favourably on this suggestion and what about the many apparently English representatives with names like Cameron?

While the West Lothian Question is occupying our MPs and journalists, Alex Salmond gets the best line: “There are some people who say the English are not ready to govern themselves, but I think they are.”

A truly great man

The guest on this morning's Desert Island Discs was Joel Joffe, a man who really merits the title "humanitarian." He has devoted his life to human rights issues as a lawyer, a business man and within charitable organisations such as Oxfam and International Alert. His curriculum vitae is impressive but his humility even more so. I found the interview, his choice of music and his observations on life both moving and inspiring.

Joel Joffe is perhaps best known for his work as a young defence lawyer in the troubled times in South Africa in the 1960s when he represented the group of ANC members, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki in the infamous Rivonia trial. His achievement there was to save his clients from the death penalty, although this morning we heard him give all the credit to Nelson Mandela.

It isn't possible to listen to this programme online although it will be repeated on Radio 4 on Friday morning. You can see Baron Joffe's choice of music here. I'll post a version of Nkosi Sikelel’ Iafrika separately, my attempt to include it here failed.

New National Anthem of South Africa

Click a Day update

Thank you to everyone who clicked on the logo on the side bar. I see that the site has met 99% of its target with 5 days still to go. The advertising sponsors of the Breast Cancer site will donate 150 free mammograms to underprivileged women. Next time I'm tempted to grumble about the state of the National Health Service, I'll try to remember how lucky we are to have healthcare available to all in this country.

Busy blogger

I was thinking of pumpkins after yesterday's post and remembered some odd lines from "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo" by Edward Lear (well they would be odd, wouldn't they?)

On the coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Two old chairs, and half a candle, -
One old jug without a handle, -
These were all his worldly goods.

Real life has started to impinge on my blogging time. I'm studying and teaching at present with a lot of reading and preparation for both. Then there's the knitting and sewing for the March Baby, not to mention all the Christmas cooking. The puddings are made and the fruit for several special cakes is soaking in brandy. I'm hoping that a slice of boozy cake will help people overlook the shortage of presents this year: my first Christmas-on-a-pension!

My daily 30-minute indulgence at the moment is watching Barefoot Contessa on the UKTV Food channel. No, not the Sophia Loren film, it's an American cookery programme featuring Ina Garten. She appears to be a great deal wealthier than our Nigella but a lot less pretentious. She conveys the real cook's purpose and satisfaction in producing food to delight friends and family, not to impress them.

On a show devoted to Christmas preparations, Ina Garten said that the rule among her friends is that gifts must be something to use in a day e.g. something to eat or drink or tickets for a show. Having seen some of her friends houses and lifestyles, I can see it would be difficult to think of anything they don't already have but it strikes me as a really good idea. The charity shops might miss their influx of "unwanted presents" in January but think of all the shelf and cupboard space we would save if we didn't have to house "STUFF". It might be fun to stretch the imagination instead of the bank balance. I wonder if there's enough time left for me to start making ......

Pumpkin time

Pumpkins and squashes add such interesting colours and shapes to the garden and market stalls. (I have to confess that I no longer grow them since my garden became 'low-maintenance; this lot arrived in my Riverford organic veg box yesterday.) There seem to be more varieties each year and such a lot of recipes to try.

Although we all recited "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin eater" as children, I don't think we ever saw a real pumpkin in my small Lancashire town; our Jack O'Lanterns were made from large turnips. It wasn't until I moved to Hampshire in the late 60s that I saw pumpkins in the shops and a Canadian friend introduced me to pumpkin pie. I also discovered that Lancashire turnips are Hampshire swedes; you certainly couldn't make a Hampshire turnip into a Jack O'Lantern!

Nowadays everyone in the UK grows all manner of pumpkins and squashes, not just for Halloween but for cooking, competitions, wonderful Harvest Festival displays and simply for the pleasure of looking at them. I've discovered a wonderful website devoted entirely to pumpkins, with everything from how to make a pumpkin into a stunning sculpture to recipes for jams and muffins; it is called Bumpkin Pumpkins and I recommend a visit.

The poetry of names

I think I discovered the beauty of language while listening to the radio as a child. In particular I remember the shipping forecast, although I didn't understand what it was about. That solemn, dignified voice:

"The general synopsis at 0100. Low Denmark Strait 974 expected 180 miles west of Iceland 980 by 0100 tomorrow. Ridge of high pressure lying southern Sweden to Shannon slow moving with little change."



Then the magical list of names:

Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties,

Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight

Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight

Portland, Plymouth, Biscay, Fitzroy, Trafalgar

Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea

Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides

Bailey, Fair Isle, Faroes, South East Iceland



I used to recite them like my times tables and skipping rhymes. Now, I can conjure up a map to see their reality and that is not nearly so magical as listening to the names.

We have lots of lovely village names around here. Yesterday we had lunch at The Globe Inn in Sampford Peverell and I'm about to book our traditional post-Christmas rendezvous with friends at the Five Bells Inn in Clyst Hydon.

Some of the fascinating names I encountered when visiting village schools include Newton St Petrock, Buckland Filleigh, Peters Marland, Sheepwash, Sampford Courtenay, Nymet Rowland, Morchard Bishop, Wembworthy, East Worlington (I never found North, South or West!), Washford Pyne, Cheriton Fitzpaine, Newton St Cyres and Holcombe Burnell. Studying a road map of North Devon can be as inspiring as reading a book of poetry.

Tell me your collection of interesting place names and perhaps I can get our family poet to weave them into something special.

Sunday walk to Baggy Point

Our daughter is visiting for a few days and selected Baggy Point for our Sunday morning walk. The weather was perfect, crisp and sunny, and we set off up the hill with Tanith and the MM kindly walking backwards so that I could take this picture!

They were rather scornful of the amount of equipment these climbers were using on what they regard as the easiest climb around here. It's my guess that Health and Safety regulations have been imposed since our children learned to climb on this novice slab.

Here is the view from the top of Baggy across to the more difficult climbs, where ropes are definitely needed.

We took the top path down the hill; the Bristol Channel on our right and farmland on our left.

At the bottom of the hill is Polly's tea garden, a most welcome resting place after our walk.

(Doesn't the grandfather-to-be look proud!)

A click a day

My friend Crinny has alerted me to this:

The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on 'donating a mammogram' for free (pink window in the middle). This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising.

As a privileged survivor of breast cancer, I would like everyone to have access to the life-saving treatment that I had, so I've added the Breast Cancer site logo to my sidebar. There are only 5 days left for the site to attract enough visitors for their sponsors to donate 150 free mammograms. They have reached 99% of the target, please help them to make it and CLICK now.

Blogging dangerously!

I have been so outraged by the recent attacks (by women!) against books and blogs describing domestic activities such as baking, knitting and needlework that I have decided to devote this post to a mixture of the lot! Yes, I'm contributing to what Liz Hunt of The Telegraph calls 'pinny-porn', "the insidious creep of the New Testament of Domesticity which is fast bringing women's simmering discontent to the boil."

I'm not a naturally gifted needle-woman but I was introduced to quilting a few years ago, as a way to pass the time in hospital waiting rooms. It worked well. My quilts are far from perfect but I enjoy doing them and the family appear to like receiving them. The joyfully awaited grandchild will have no choice in the matter: quilt#1 has been completed and #2 is under construction thanks to erp, who kindly sent me the template and instructions for her "literary quilt". I've started on the blocks and for the sashing I'll use the brown fabric. All the fabrics are from the new Anna Griffin 'Evelyn' range.

Of course, when I'm not sewing I am busy baking. Here is a recipe for Jane Austen lovers, one that might have come from the kitchen of Mrs Bennet herself:
Surly Curd Tart
1 pastry flan
2 pints milk
1 tsp. Epsom Salts
grated rind of 1 lemon
2oz currants (optional)
1oz butter
4 oz caster sugar
2 eggs
pinch nutmeg

Have to hand one 8 inch uncooked pastry flan case.
Make 8oz curd by heating, without allowing to boil, 2 pints of milk with 1 teaspoon of Epsom Salts. It will look slightly curdled. Strain through a fine sieve. The contents of the sieve will be curd.
Mix the curd with the fruit and lemon rind.
Beat the sugar and butter together.
Beat the eggs separately and stir into the butter and sugar. Gently stir in the curd and then fill the pastry flan case with the mixture.
Bake in a warm oven for 20 minutes until set and slightly browned. Sprinkle with the nutmeg and serve.

This little teatime treat can easily be prepared while your bread dough is rising, of course! Then off you go to meet your friends for a leisurely lunch, where you can swap recipes and knitting patters while the real women are busy keeping the world of commerce, politics and industry in order.

61 meets 60

Today I met the delightful D of 60goingon16. We had lunch at the Fisherman's Cot, pictured in an earlier post. We have been developing a friendship via our blogs, finding lots of amazing coincidences in our lives and likings so we decided to risk disappointment and meet face to face. There wasn't any disappointment, we seemed to pick up where the blogs leave off and had been chatting away for an hour before we remembered to order lunch!

It was really good to meet you, D. I look forward to the next time. In the meantime, here's the recipe for that special onion tart (lots of cream and butter so not an everyday kind of tart!).

Living Simply

The theme for our summer camp this year was taken from the Cafod LiveSimply campaign. A team of volunteer helpers lived on campus for a week with 47 youngsters, playing, praying and having fun while living out the principles of the three Ss of the campaign: living Simply, Sustainably and in Solidarity with the poor.


All the activities were planned with these principles in mind. The leaders ensured that all the resources they used were recycled or fairly traded goods. The food was, as far as possible, locally sourced. The tuckshop sold only FairTrade chocolates and locally grown fruit. The youngsters really entered into the spirit of the campaign, ensuring they didn't waste food, water or electricity and compared their lives with those of their peers in other parts of the world.


It was interesting for us to find at the end of the week that this was rated by the youngsters as the best camp ever! They all made pledges to try to live simply when they got home. Here are a few:

Autumn break

Here is my dear little car, home at last from the garage. It may be old and have an incredibly high mileage but I love it. Any resemblance to my Aga is almost purely coincidental.

On Wednesday, we packed up the car and headed for Bath, a treat the dear old lovable MM had planned to make up for the fact that I missed out on a summer holiday this year. We have been to Bath on many occasions but I never tire of doing the Jane Austen tours, visiting the Abbey , the Pump Rooms and the Roman Baths. I managed to re-read Northanger Abbey and Persuasion for the thousandth time, to put me in the right mood for the visit.

I love the architecture and the river. I managed to get this shot of Pulteney Bridge but all my other shots have intrusive modern vehicles or crowds of people in them so I'll settle for this postcard of the Crescent.

We stayed in a hotel in Henrietta Street. The location was ideal, the online description perfect, the reality not to be mentioned, unfortunately. We decided not to sue but we won't be recommending it. Still, having negotiated the STAIRS (no lift) from our top floor room and skipped the inedible breakfast, it was lovely to walk the few yards to Laura Place (temporary home to the Dowager Countess Dalrymple and her daughter, the Honourable Miss Carteret, as all JA readers will know) and then on to Pulteney Bridge.

On all our previous visits to Bath we have attempted to visit the American Museum at Claverton Down but it has always been closed to the public on those particular days. This time I made good use of their website to plan my visit.

The American Museum in Britain is the only museum devoted to American decorative arts. There is a permanent collection of folk art and special exhibitions which change from year to year; the current one being The Dollar Princesses. There are fifteen period rooms to visit, all fitted out with furniture and artifacts shipped from America and rebuilt exactly, including the wall panelling.

This is the eighteenth century Conkey's Tavern, shipped from Massachusetts. Until recent Health and Safety regulations interfered, gingerbread was cooked every day in the little oven by the fire. Now it has to be brought in from the modern kitchen to be served by a buxom lady in costume. It is worth a trip just to taste it.

There are rooms devoted to various groups such as the Shakers and Amish. There are elegant drawing rooms, simple pioneer living rooms, an extravagant New Orleans bedroom and many more. The museum also houses a unique collection of quilts, rugs and Navajo blankets.

We had afternoon tea outside on the terrace, overlooking Claverton Down. The MM had some more of the delicious gingerbread but I wanted to try some snicker doodle, in honour of all my American blogging friends. Jolly good it was too; I'd love to have the recipe.

On Thursday evening, son Andrew and his Anna came over from Bristol and we went for a deliciously different meal at Yak Yeti Yak, the highly acclaimed Nepalese restaurant in Bath. The perfect end to our short stay in the city.

RD attempts to segue ....

.... between the posts on poetry and banning of books with sad endings.

Reading Kipling's 'If' reminded me of a custom we had as children: we used to have autograph books, not for collecting celebrity signatures but for friends and family members to write in. As I recall, the entries were pretty standard because my book looked very similar to those of my sisters and cousins. 'Best friends' would write of their undying devotion, teachers would write something encouraging and uplifting, older siblings would attempt to shock or mystify and aunts and grandparents would write something 'worthy.'

My book was lost long ago but I can remember a few of the entries. Long before textese was invented, we had our clever ways of baffling the adults (or so we thought!):
YYUR, YYUB, ICUR YY4me appeared in all our books along with "Si senor, der dego, forte lores inaro. Desno lores, deis trux, fu lov cowsan ensan dux"

Someone would always write the final stanza of "If" in the boys' books while we girls had to make do with this:
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death and that vast forever
- one grand, sweet song

I have only just discovered that Charles Kingsley was responsible for this annoying piece of drivel. It enraged me when I was nine years old and it still does. There doesn't seem to be anything written for girls to equate with the stirring "You'll be a man, my son!" However, the effect of the soppy Kingsley lines in my autograph book was to stir me into rebellion against the image of the sweet maid forever doing noble things.

Now for the segue into this morning's post ... How far should we censor and control what our children read? Should we shelter them from everything sad, violent or frightening? Should Humpty Dumpty bounce back with a grin? How about a nice little kitten sitting on the tuffet with Miss Muffet instead of that nasty spider? Perhaps the fox should be kind and carry the gingerbread man (oops, person) gently across the river and send him on his way with a cheerful wave. The little match girl should be rescued from poverty by a handsome prince.

What a dull world it would be with all those happy endings. My mother, who was generally considered to be a kind and loving person, used to sing the most terrifying song to us as she tucked us in at night. I can't remember all of the words and googling hasn't come up with anything but it went something like this:
"Hush, there's a Grey Man coming up the stairs. Hush lest the Grey Man catch you unawares. For he's crawling and he's creeping, and his bogey eyes are peeping, just to see if everybody's fast asleep.
Hush, little one, don't let him catch you. Hush little one, don't let him see. Hide head beneath the clothes, count ten upon your toes. For where the Grey Man goes, it's black as night."

I'm sure there were more words and I would love to hear from anyone who can source it for me. Did it terrify us? Did it do permanent harm? Ridiculous! The fact that we all still sleep with the light on is totally unrelated.

Almost caught!

I almost choked on my muesli this morning as I watched the BBC news. There was Bill Turnbull interviewing a child psychologist and an articulate mother about a campaign by The Happy Endings Foundation to have 'bad' books banned from schools and libraries. There was a serious discussion about the value of exposing children to 'real life' situations and the dangers of wrapping the little darlings in cotton wool.

I rushed to find out more about the Happy Endings Foundation and discovered this on the Norwich Evening News website:

A crusading mother-of-three has made it her mission to ensure children grow up hearing of only the good things in life. Norwich woman Clare Hughes is spearheading the eastern arm of a new national campaign to put a stop to children's books that don't have a happy ending.The 42-year-old has been appointed head of the Happy Endings Foundation's East of England Cheering Committee, which urges parents to only let their children read books with happy endings.
The group was set up after its founder, Adrienne Small, read the first book in the series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket to her daughter. She said the books caused her daughter to take a more negative approach to life, which only got worse when she subsequently read all 13 books in the series.
Mrs Hughes, whose children are 13, 12 and nine, said: “I've seen the way my children respond to news that goes on in real life, whether that be the disappearance of a child, like Madeleine McCann, or bombings, and that gives them enough nightmares.“Books should give them a sense of good triumphing over evil and let them be rest assured that the goodies will come out on top.”“It's about encouraging children to read books with positive values. Look at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there are some unpleasant characters, but Charlie wins out in the end. That's the type of book we support.”

The most worrying aspect of the campaign appeared to be this:

As part of the campaign, letters have been sent out to school libraries
asking them to remove Lemony Snicket books from the shelves and HEF are holding a number of activities, such as Bad Book Bonfires, where they are encouraging people on Guy Fawkes's Night to make their bonfires from “bad books”. Other reads on their “bad book” list include Villette by Charlotte Bronte, The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jeah Rhys, The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson and Shockheaded Peter by Heinrich Hoffman.

Fortunately, before my rage led me into further folly, I discovered something the BBC researchers had failed to uncover - the whole thing was a hoax! The small print at the bottom of the Foundation's web page reads:

“Disclaimer: Most characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living, dead, or half dead, is purely coincidental. None of the non-fictitious people, places or things named in this website were harmed during the creation of the site. We’re not sure if the Loch Ness monster is fictitious or non-fictitious, you decide. We would like to state that some of the books recommended on this site are very good reads, particularly Winnie-the-Pooh. However, we would NOT recommend monster hunting at Loch Ness as a happy day out because a) it rains a lot in north Scotland and b) as previously stated, we don’t know if there is actually a monster to hunt. However, if you like logs then Loch Ness is a fine place to go log hunting.”

And, according to another site I found, the project is the work of the advertising agency which handles the Lemony Snicket books. Well, they got a huge amount of free publicity from the BBC and the national newspapers. The last time the nation was fooled so well was by the Swiss spaghetti harvest on 1st April 1957.

Fly fishing

This is the Fisherman's Cot at Bickleigh, where I had planned to have lunch earlier this week. (Perhaps now you will understand why I felt grumpy about missing out!) I love to sit there on a sunny day with a glass of chilled Chardonnay and one of the FC's delicious salads, simply looking at the River Exe. Sometimes we've been lucky enough to see a kingfisher and occasionally we have watched a fly fisherman in his waders, casting and dreaming, lost in a world far from twenty-first century cares. Fly fishing must be the only sport which has tranquility as a major attribute.

I have just finished reading 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen' by Paul Torday. Several people assured me that I would enjoy it and indeed it has rescued the Richard and Judy Summer Collection from being a totally disastrous purchase. It is well-written with proper sentences, good grammar and vocabulary chosen to inform and describe rather than shock. Torday uses what is becoming a cliched convention of telling the story through reported letters, emails, interviews and passages from newspapers and books but, in this case, it works well. It helps the pace of the book and it is an effective way of depicting the different characters, relationships and viewpoints.

I don't belong to a book reading group; if I did, I would love to tackle this book. I can imagine that there would be as many opinions about it as there are characters in the book. There is humour, politics, war, intrigue, spin, pain, hope, love and death. At its heart, I think it is a book about faith and communication; I loved it.

More poetry

Here are the poems that were named in the comments on yesterday's post. I'll gladly add more if you want to recommend any.
From Crinny:
This is Just to Say (by William Carlos Willams, 1962)

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

From 60goingon16:
The Song of Wandering Aengus (by W.B Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Hey Skipper suggests all of Brit's poems. If you want to read more than one, you can see his latest work here. I've enjoyed Brit's writing since he was able to hold a pencil, but then I am his mum! Here is one I particularly like:

Outside Wells Cathedral (by Andrew Graham Nixon, May '07))

Is it a coward’s comfort in the deep
boredom of the bells, summoning the sleep-
walkers of Wells to steep themselves
in England’s other lasting dream?
See them gather on the green,
Dressed up, oak-aged, and carefully staged
in what they imagine to be
a lost Edwardian scene.

Or does it signal a more militant intent?
To toll defiance against the well-meant,
Hell-bent dream of science: the concrete,
white heat, dayglo, and a misplaced faith
in lesser gods to cheat the true God
of the debt we owe by right.
(No shyness of that debt in here: the stones all shout it.
The church is built on bones: make none about it.)
And yet that dream of eternal light
creeps even here, in slow official lines,
in tombs lit by No Smoking signs,
in TV screens, and aisles as clean
as those in Marks and Sparks,
and carpeting in beige. So they ring in rage,
And rage against the dying of the dark.

The dwindling army, uniform in Sunday best,
Forms ranks for reveille on the day of rest –
One lesson the deserters took to heart
at least: Sunday’s a lie in (every day’s a feast).
The Sabbath is a fry-up hangover cure,
Football, shopping mall, hardware store –
Now in the collection box the loyal count the costof a loss of conviction, of going soft,and conceding half is fiction.
In the numbers game, this God’s just lost.

So Edwardian actors toll out for His wake,
Then man the shop and dole out tea and cake
and key fobs to the tourists who still keep
the corpus raised and the substance buried deep.
And the lesser gods, of lunacy and leisure,
Pile on clods and sods, and slag the lot
in a heap of dross and treasure.

Elaine's favourite is:

The Listeners (by Walter de la Mare)

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Here is erp's favourite:

If (By Rudyard Kipling)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to,broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

National Poetry Day

Tomorrow, as I'm sure everyone is aware, is National Poetry Day. Over on Musings from a Muddy Island Juliet has posted some poems about geese and that leads me via a tortuous route to Siegfried Sassoon. Following some of her links to goose-related sites, I stumbled upon an Irish-American society called Wild Geese and I found an article on their website about Sassoon. That reminded me of a visit to King's Theatre in Portsmouth in 1987 to see a wonderful one-man show by Peter Barkworth, called simply Siegfried Sassoon.

I offer no apology, if you didn't know before why my blog is called Random Distractions, you certainly do now!

The show was simple but very powerful. Peter Barkworth portrayed Sassoon's experiences of war, hospital and return to civilian life through extracts from his poetry and prose. The evening ended with one of those rare dramatic experiences where the audience is moved to a tangible silence. This is the poem that affected everyone so deeply:

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on--on--and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away . . . O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

April 1919
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

That is my contribution to National Poetry Day. If you would like to name a favourite, I'll include as many as possible in my next post.

Winnie the Pooh saves the day

We planned to have a lovely day in Exeter today. I had a one-hour appointment but then we were going to visit the new city shopping centre and meander home alongside the River Exe, calling at Bickleigh Mill and then into Tiverton to buy some special goat's cheese. That was before Grandma thought she should have one of her special crises, saved for such occasions; there is never anything more serious than a light bulb needing to be changed but the phone inevitably rings just as we are setting out and the MM feels obliged to answer the call.

So, I went alone, driving a courtesy car from the garage where mine is in for repair. Not having expected to be driving, I hadn't checked the car out properly and I found myself with windscreen wipers on instead of indicators, unable to tune the radio and caught in fog with no idea of where the light switches were; three sets of major roadworks did nothing to make the 67 mile journey any more enjoyable.

I kept my appointment and sat in the carpark eating a sandwich, imagining the lunch we might have been eating in the Fisherman's Cott, if only ...

Driving home, I mysteriously found myself on the outskirts of South Molton, where there just happens to be a wonderful quilting supplies shop! I only wanted some plain white fabric for my next project but look at what was waiting to brighten my day. What more could a grandmother-to-be need than 5 yards of Winnie and friends?