Afternoon Tea

                                                                    Wild meadow flowers
 

 

Dear Reader,

Francis and I had a big adventure this week we went to stay in Oxford for three nights  and had a wonderful interesting time.  Over the last two years we had been pretty well nowhere, just managed the local villages and a foray or two to the local pub.  So Oxford was a revelation.  I didn't realize that these days most young women wore very short shorts or mini skirts, and very pretty they looked too.  We did all the things that you do when you go to Oxford for a bit of culture and a bit of fun.  We went to museums and Francis loved the Science Museum, so much so he went three times.  And we went on a river steamer down the Thames towards Abingdon in the bright sunlight, accompanied by ducks and geese.  

We had lunch for two days running in the famous restaurant Browns and were able to sit in the window and could watch the world go by.  Lots of dons, scholars, students and everyday people rushed past and we spent happy hours looking at them.  I had forgotten how many people there are in the world or at least how many there were in Oxford last week.  I had also forgotten, or perhaps I didn't know, that big cities are very expensive.  One cappuccino and a croissant seemed to cost a week's wages.  Still it was all a good change and made me realize that we have to get out more, explore the world a bit, reconnect.

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The photograph is me with my meadow flower garden planted there by Jessica.  Insects and bees seem to like it and I am wondering whether for next year to plant these meadow flowers all over the lawn.

                                                                                  *

From Samuel Pepys, June 28th, 1664, in London

'Put on a half shirt first this summer, it being very hot, and yet so ill-tempered am I grown, that I am afeard I shall catch cold, while all the world is ready to melt away.'

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Afternoon Tea

If the woman had had
choice of mothers,
she would have chosen
one who liked afternoon tea,
with scones, strawberry jam,
sweet biscuits, and hot Darjeeling.

But the mother of the woman
did not like afternoon tea,
She liked cocktails, excitement,
after dark and its secrets,
stirring things up, mischief,
and life's excesses.

As the woman knew
that choice of mother
was not negotiable,
she chose her friends
with four o'clock in mind.

                                                                                     *

 

 

 

Memoir:  'Half a Pair of People' is now out on Amazon.  Look for it in books:    Patricia Huth  and click here and they will send you a copy if you would like one.  Sorry to boast here but I do have thirteen 5 star reviews and most people seem to find it amusing.  Hilarious in fact. As I told you last week I have to do this publicity against my will because I have no publicity agent. 

                                                                          *

With best wishes, Patricia

 

 

 

 

Loss

 Dear reader,

Sarah Knapton, the Science editor of the Daily Telegraph, wrote a piece about the bones of the fallen Waterloo soldiers, which I thought was interesting.  These bones may have been ground down to be used as fertiliser and spread on Britain's crop fields, research suggests.  Almost 50,000 people are believed to have died in the battle - which took place on June 18th, 1815 and marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars - yet virtually no remains have been found.  There were detailed descriptions of mass graves containing up to 13,000 bodies, but the graves were never found because the pits were raided by fertiliser salesmen and the bones removed. One of the main markets for this raw material was the British Isles.   Accounts from the time said Waterloo was besieged with grave robbers and opportunists after the battle.

                                                                                   *

Gosh you never know what you are walking on, do you?

                                                                             

                                                                                   *

From Dorothy Wordsworth, June 20th, 1802, in Westmorland

'We lay upon the sloping turf.  Earth and sky were so lovely that they melted our very hearts.  The sky to the north was of a chastened yet rich yellow, fading into pale blue, and streaked and scattered over with steady islands of purple, melting away into shades of pink.  It made my heart almost feel like a vision to me'.

From William Cowper, June 21st, 1784, in Buckinghamshire

'We have now frosty mornings, and so cold a wind, that even at high noon we have been obliged to break off our walk in the southern side of the garden and seek shelter, I in the greenhouse, and Mrs. Unwin by the fireside.  Haymaking begins here tomorrow'.

 

                                                                                    *                              

Loss

The old woman
totters slowly down the path.
Holding her hand we
go into the field
pick daffodils and buttercups.
Spring is on its way.

Later in her kitchen
she tries to say something, to find words
which seem to flutter away,
escape her, but she manages:
"I don't live
in this house, I live elsewhere."

She lies down on the sofa.
"I like looking at the sky" she murmurs,
and closing her eyes she falls asleep.
I kiss her on her pale, cold cheeks,
and weep........

                                                                         *

 

 

My memoir:  'Half a Pair of People' is now out on Amazon.  Look for it in books:    Patricia Huth  and click here and they will send you a copy if you would like one.  Sorry to boast here but I do have thirteen 5 star reviews and most people seem to find it amusing.  Hilarious in fact. As I told you last week I have to do this publicity against my will because I have no publicity agent. 

 

                                                               *

Very best wishes, Patricia

                                                                             *

Inheritance

                                                                                          Gloucester Old Spot pigs

 

Dear Reader, 

The Gloucester Old Spots can only be dated to the early 20th century.  Whilst there are many paintings of spotted pigs it is not clear what these pigs were and if they were any relation to the Gloucestershire Old Spots of today.  They were known as the Orchard Pig in the Berkley Vale of Gloucestershire based on the fact that they lived quite happily outside amongst the orchards eating the fallen apples.  From being a very small breed some 40 years ago it is now the largest numerically of the pig breeds listed by The Rare Breeds Survival Trust.

The reason I wrote the following poem was because I had visited a farm in the Cotswolds and had spied these pigs.  They really are wonderful and I think beautiful with their brown spots.  My father had many brown spots on his hands and so have I, and they made me think about what we inherit from our parents. Often when I look at my hands I see my father's hands and think about him.  I loved him dearly but he died when I was in my early twenties so I didn't get a chance to find out about his life when he was young. Although I know he fought in the first World War. 

                                                                                    *

From Francis Kilvert, June 15th, 1873 in Wiltshire

'The sun and the golden buttercup meadows had it almost to themselves.....One or  two people were crossing the Common early by the several paths through the golden sea or buttercups which will soon be the silver sea of ox-eyes.  The birds were singing quietly.  The cuckoo's notes tolled clear and sweet as a silver bell.'

From James Woodforde, June 19th, 1799, in Norfolk

'Very cold indeed again to-day, so cold that Mrs. Custance came walking in her spencer with a bosom-friend.'

NOTE. Mrs. Custance, as a lady of fashion, would have worn her gowns low cut, in the bosomy manner so often drawn by Rowlandson: in cold weather she would have needed the fashionable item of clothing known as the 'bosom-friend.

                                                                               *

Inheritance

What was it that made me
think of you, who
are bone-dust now,
with no statue or monument
to bear your witness?
Was it the apple-bruised spots
on the Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs,
their legacy from apple orchards, long ago,
to mark them out?

In the afternoon sunlight
as I bent to touch their skin
I saw that my hands, brown-spotted,
were your hands, identical.
Was this your legacy to me,
something to say you were here?

More precious than possessions,
you passed to me our inheritance
from some ancient eastern shore.
Your browness, your hands, brown spotted,
which marked you.

                                                                                       *

My memoir  'Half a Pair of People' is now out on Amazon.  Look for it in books:    Patricia Huth  and click here and they will send you a copy if you would like one.  Sorry to boast here but I do have eleven 5 star reviews and most people seem to find it amusing.  Hilarious in fact. As I told you last week I have to do this publicity against my will because I have no publicity agent. 

                                                                             *

 

With very best wishes, Patricia

In Her Spare Room

                                                                                        The Wind in the Willows

 

 

Dear Reader,

I watched with interest and emotion all the celebrations for our Queen's Jubilee this week.  I saw so many ordinary English people interviewed in the Mall, and elsewhere, all so articulate about their feelings for Her Majesty.  So enthusiastic were they to express their thanks and love. And I felt proud to be British.  We all spend so much time complaining about everything we perhaps forget what a truly marvelous country we live in.  If this were not the case whey would so many people from all over the world want to come and live here?  And I don't think it is entirely because we have a policy of benefits to all, it is because we are still civilized. In many parts of the world barbarism seems to have taken over and appalling atrocities, man on man, take place. 

The Queen has been a rock to us all over the last seventy years and it will be a sad and very distressing day when we lose her.

                                                                                      

                                                                                  *

Quotes from:    The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame 

'Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half as much worth doing as simply messsing about in boats'.

'All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived, and still, as he lived, he wondered'.

                                                                                  *
 

In Her Spare Room 

I see these books
draw in a breath,
as cherished memories
race in my head.

These are:

 Akenfield                                                            

Portrait of an English Village

Swallows and Amazons

The Speckledy Hen

The Little Flowers of St. Francis

My Friend Flicka

The Wind in the Willows

Tales of Old Inns

 

The owner of this house 

is unknown to me,

but her collection

of treasured books

tells me a little of her,

what makes her who she is,

what makes me who I am.

 

                                                                    *

see, my book 'Half a Pair of People' is now out on Amazon.  Look for it in books:    Patricia Huth  and click here and they will send you a copy if you would like one.  Sorry to boast here but I do have nine 5 star reviews and most people seem to find it amusing.  Hilarious in fact. As I told you last week I have to do this publicity against my will because I have no publicity agent. 

 

                                                                      *

 

 

With very best wishes, Patricia