Sunday 15 November 2015

Small Moments of Warmth

Dear Reader,

                                                                 
                                                                   
                                                                      A Tilly Lamp

We have had in the last few weeks, months, and years, warnings about when and how we should dispose of our food, according to their "sell by" dates.  So I was very interested in the following two tales.  When a man helped his grandmother to move house in 1980, she prepared a delectable lunch from various tins,  and both the tin of Heinz vegetable soup and the tin of Libby's corned beef were  bought before the war.  Another man found in his great aunt's attic a presentation gift of a large slice of the royal wedding cake celebrating the marriage of the Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark, on 10th March, 1863.  Despite having been baked 117 years earlier it was, apparently, delicious.  So I think if it looks right and smells right, eat whatever it is with a merry heart.

*

Small Moments of Warmth


I remember a little warmth,
Joey trotting the family through Norfolk lanes,
the small yellow trap swaying in the sunshine.

I remember picnics on Yarmouth beach
with enough blue sky "to make a sailor's trouser".
We ate cucumber sandwiches.  Penguin biscuits.

I remember dark evenings,
the small warm flame from a Tilly lamp
lighting the kitchen, and sometimes for supper
we had chicken, chocolate mousse.

I remember a warm holiday in France
squeezed into the back of a car,
singing old thirties love songs.

But will these small moments of warmth,
at the end, be enough to heat and split
the heavy stones that circle the human heart,
allow salt tears to trickle through the cracks?

                                                                              *

Very best wishes, Patricia



             

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