Sideburns 2014

                                                                                  Thomas Hardy

                                                                            Thomas Hardy's cottage
 

Will you, dear reader, please excuse a bit of a rant this week.  I bought a book to read called 'Beautiful World, Where are you' by an Irish writer called Sally Rooney.  She seems to be the top author of the times, and this book was well reviewed by almost everyone.  But I found it so completely disappointing.  I have always thought that a novel needs to have a good story, one that you can't wait to get back to whilst washing the dishes. But this book didn't seem to have a good story, in fact almost no story at all.  Just four odd people meandering through the pages talking about themselves and their rather boring lives. But if graphic sex is your thing, then this would be the book for you.  Give me some of Thomas Hardy's work, his clever novels with such interesting characters and wonderful plots, and I won't bother with modern works in future. I know this makes me sound old and boring, not up with the times, but so be it.....

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From Dorothy Wordsworth, 1800, October 2nd in Westmorland

A very rainy morning.   We walked after dinner to observe the torrents....the lichens are now coming out afresh, I carried home a collection in the afternoon.   We had a pleasant conservation about the manners of the rich - avarice, inordinate desires, and effeminacy, unnaturalness, and the unworthy objects of education ... a showery evening.  The moon light lay upon the hills like snow.

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Sideburns

Astonished, I see the sideburns
the slicked up hair,
the ill-fitting suit,
large red hands
jolting it back on the shoulders
with awkward gesture
at a young man's funeral
in the village church.
White lilies fill the air
with their sweet scent
while soft music plays.
I see tears on every cheek,
sad young women, and men too -
there to seek some comfort
from the vicar's words.

I blink and thought
I saw Thomas Hardy standing
in a nearby pew,
back in time from his day.
The ancient poet seemed to be
embodied in the blood and lives
of this congregation
among whom nothing has change over the
years,
not the people, nor the service,
and death is still great sorrow.

But there is tea and beer
at the Bull Inn,
gossip and laughter
tears and memories, as
life's cycle keeps turning,
our beginnings and our endings
the only certainties.

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With best wishes, Patricia