Dear Reader,
The pony and trap photographs are to do with the poem below.
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From 1655 a pint of rum was the usual ration handed to each sailor in the Royal Navy. It was served every day, half at 12 noon and the second half at about 5 or 6 pm, (though the amount decreased in following years). The rum ration was known as 'Pusser's Rum' the name being a corruption of Purser, the person who issued the rum each day.
Legend has it that Pusser's Rum is sometimes referred to as 'Nelson's Blood', because after the great Admiral Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, his body was preserved in a cask of spirits on its way home. But sailors are said to have drilled holes into the sides of the cask letting the liquid drain away. The sailors essentially drank his blood during the long journey.
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From Gilbert White, 1791, in Hampshire
"Rugged, Siberian weather. The narrow lanes are full of snow in some places...The road-waggons are obliged to stop, and the stage-coaches are much embarassed. I was obliged to be much abroad on this day, and scarce ever saw its fellow.'
From James Woodforde, 1790, in Norfolk
'The season so remarkably mild and warm that my brother gathered this morning in my garden some full blown primroses.'
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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 moment 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?
*
With very best wishes, Patricia
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