Emma Alpha Plus

                                                                                     Grand daughter Emma

 Dear Reader,  

       Having grand children is one of life's great joys and brings such happiness.  I have loved and cherished and looked after mine since they were born and it has always been such a treat.  Grand children are not the same at all as your own children.  Somehow the gap  between us and them is just right, not too near and not too far, but grand parents are family and allowed to praise when necessary or punish if necessary too. And in my fifty's when they were little I really enjoyed playing with them, going to the swings, getting up at six in the morning so as not to wake Geoffrey, and going to the playground where we ate crisps and chocolate bars. I loved the afternoons when they were with me.  We liked watching ' Maisy the Mouse', and in particular watching 'The Sound of Music.' I couldn't possibly remember how many times we watched it, singing the songs along with Maria and the children.  My granddaughter Emma has got a beautiful voice and I still ask her to sing to me when she visits.

                                                                                 *

From Jane Austen in Kent 1796   September 18th

'What dreadful hot weather we have! - It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance'.

From Richard Hayes, 1766 in Hampshire   September 21st

'A robin sang all his note during Divine Service in the body of the church'.

                                                                                   *

Emma Alpha Plus 

Emma
the little one
frightened to be left
at night
shared my bed
snuggled up with me
listened to nursery rhymes
on an old tape recorder

we went to the swings
sat on a bench
ate crisps

she grew and we went to
the Wildlife Park
stared at the monkeys

we watched Maisy Mouse
over and over again
and in her teens
The Sound of Music

she worked hard at school
had problems with her
heart over beating and never
complained

she went to college
got a distinction
will go to Brighton to study
in September next year

she is helpful, enthusiastic
puts her all into everything
is engaging and funny

she is alpha plus

I loved her and looked after her
and now she looks after me

                                                                                  *

With very best wishes, Patricia

P.S. Emma now works in the film world for Warner Bros.

 

 

                               

Word-dancing

 Dear Reader,

I made an interesting discovery in my secret cupboard this week.  It is the manuscript of a book I wrote over forty years ago and it is called 'Half a Pair of People'.  It is about the single life I suddenly had to live after leaving my marriage of twenty years.  Many things struck me as I read, one of them was how cheap everything was then. To go to a Singles Club the ticket would cost me £1.69p, and my first wages as a secretary in an Oxford College, for a full 38 hours week, was about £60 and no luncheon vouchers either. But the puzzling thing is how much I have forgotten of my life at that time.   Lots of names of people I can't remember came up whom I seem to have spent lots of time with and places I went to.  I now have no recollection of them. Some of it is quite funny and I do hope that somehow I will be able to publish it.  

Always looking for jobs, I once  took a job as a receptionist in an Oxford hotel but when I arrived the owner said I had to do the cooking.  As I am not a good or enthusiastic cook this pronouncement took me back.   But what I had to do was have a pan of boiling water always on the hob and a pan of boiling fat and simply pop frozen duck or chicken into the appropriate pan. Frozen vegetables went into the boiling water.  In addition I had to wear a brown nylon uniform and had taken a wig with me so that my hair didn't smell of kitchen fumes.  I have never forgotten that night, but looking back it now seems rather funny.

                                                                                     *

September 11th, 1826 from William Cobbett in Wiltshire

"Between Somerford and Oaksey  I saw, on the side of the road, more goldfinches than I had ever seen together; I think fifty times as many as I had ever seen at one time in my life.  The favourite food of the goldfinch is the seed of the thistle.  This seed is just now dead ripe.  the thistles are all cut and carried away from the fields by the harvest; but they grow alongside the roads; and, in this place, in great quantities.  so that the goldfinches were got here in flocks, and as they continued to fly along before me for nearly half a mile, and still sticking to the road and the banks, I do believe I had, at least, a flock of ten thousand flying before me."

                                                                                      *

Word-dancing

The woman discovers the double act
of word-dancing at dinner,
recognizes with excitement
mutual friends from books,from poetry,
from words explored, but only
known thus far in solitude.

Together they dance through imagined lands
sharing knowledge,
throwing words back and forth
in light ethereal movements,
cerebral binding and bonding,
now the foxtrot, now the waltz.

For her these pleasures
are found at lunch parties, at dinner,
in libraries, on courses.
But where can the young word-dance?
Her grandson lunches on the run,
dines with Eastenders,
goes clubbing on solitary trips
too noisy, frightening, for word-dancing,
for cerebral binding and bonding,
now the foxtrot, now the waltz.

                                                                                   *

With very best wishes, Patricia

Rooks

                                                                                Cornish cottage gardens
 

 

Dear Reader,

 

A judge sentencing a neo-Nazi sympathizer this week has spared him jail as long as he spends time reading the classics.  If he reads Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare he can avoid prison.  But he will have to return to court to be tested by the judge on his reading, his progress.

But Michael Deacon in the Telegraph thinks this could be a bad decision and gave some examples.  If, for instance, this Nazi sympathizer reads Dickens's Oliver Twist he might encounter Fagin, a nakedly anti-Semitic stereotype. And if he reads Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice he will encounter another, in the form of Shylock.  He might also discover the Evelyn Waugh admired Mussolini, Ezra Pound supported Hitler, and W B Yeats approved of eugenics ("Sooner or later we must limit the families of the unintelligent classes").

There were many more examples but you have probably got the idea now.  I wrote about human behaviour in my blog a few weeks ago and would just reiterate that people are very complex and can be good and bad, kind and cruel, or anything else, in the same personality.  Indeed I am often surprised at what I think about something myself.  Alexander Pope, 1688, poet and satirist, wrote: 'know then thyself, presume not God to scan.....the proper study of mankind is Man.' I would suggest that knowing yourself is not easy, knowing someone else even more difficult.

                                                                                    *

 From S.T.Coleridge, 1800 in Grasmere, Westmorland

'The beards of thistle and dandelions flying above the lonely mountains like life, and I saw them thro' the trees skimming the lake like swallows.'

                                                                                    *

 

Rooks

I was fourteen
when I first heard
the call of the rooks
caw-cawing
their eerie cries.

From a Cornish cottage garden
I walked down through
dark woods to the beach,
a remote place,
just dunes, sand, the sea
and me, a confused, angry teenager,
with the rooks caw-cawing in my ears
disturbing my thoughts.

Even now, in later years,
whenever I hear whispers from the wind,
or sea lapping over large grey stones
ever forward, ever backward,
glimpse a faraway horizon
and see twilight descending
darkening the sky,
the rooks in large black groups
flying high towards
their evening bed
cawing, cawing, cawing
my heart misses a beat
and an unexplained sadness
overcomes me.

                                                                                        *

With very best wishes, Patricia

Truth Modern

                                                                                 Horatio and Hortensia

Dear Reader,

Do you remember this picture of me taken last year when we had come back from Lyme Regis with Horatio the mouse.  I thought you would like to know that he now has a lady friend called Hortensia. Above is a photograph of the two of them.  They are very happy here and are glad to live in the Cotswolds, especially as the know that very posh people live in this area such as the Beckhams, and I am told by a reliable source, that the Duke of Sussex has a house nearby.  Not that he will be here often of course but the mice hope to see him on some of their walks.  I rather hope to as well.  I think I could give him a good piece of advice, viz: less said soonest mended. 

                                                                                    

                                                                            *

 

I read somewhere this week that audiences at a production of 'Romeo and Juliet' were given a handout saying they must not be taken in or upset by the deaths of the two actors, that they are in fact still alive, so not to worry.  Can one really imagine someone thinking that the actors die in the play?  So do they have to get new actors for the next productions and so on  ..... What next? I ask again, and again, and again....

                                                                                     *

Truth Modern

Through a kaleidoscope's
shifting bright colours,
set close to the eye,
the viewer's truth is reflected,
assuring the mind of it veracity,
acknowledging its fantasies
as realities,
seeing truth
not as it is, but as we would
like it to be,
spinning words,
detaching truth from its moorings,
setting it loose in murky waters
Illusions of truth
sandwiched between lies
is the authentic truth
of our times.

                                                                                 *

With very best wishes, Patricia

Memories of a six year old

                                                                  Photographs to do with the poem.
 

 

Dear reader,

I haven't been feeling at my best lately, something to do with lockdown probably, and the poetry muse seems to have left me.  No new ideas for poems and this left me very sad.  I asked my friend Sue Johnson, herself a well-known poet, if she could give me a tip to reignite the imaginative force.  Try starting with the sentence: "I remember" she said,  and the poem published today is the result,  and I hope many more will come out of this work. If you are interested in writing poetry this formula seems to be very helpful, just write down what you remember of your early years and lots of interesting things will come up.

                                                                                    *

The absurdity this week is about deck chairs. It is said that deck chairs could pose a danger to those who want to sit in the sun on a beach in Yorkshire.  So the council has banned them. The reason for this ban is that people could pick them up and start a fight, endangering life.  Whenever I have seen people in deck chairs or have been in one myself, far from wanting a fight, I and they have wanted a little peace and quiet and to enjoy the sunshine.  Gosh! what next? It is difficult to imagine.

                                                                                      *

Memories of a six year old

A pale blue dress with pretty lace collar.
Threading conkers with green string.
Mrs. Mason making sponge cakes.
Eating the filling with a wooden spoon.

Silver dance slippers with gold bows.
Daddy's girlfriend pulling my hair.
Mr. Holt forgetting to pick
me up from school, again.

Yellow lino in the nursery.
Listening to Uncle Remus on
the radio at teatime when
Nanny made me eat the crusts.

I remember stroking a black-nosed
cow called Bushka,
my friend Catherine and I
playing hopscotch.

Having impetigo and not being able
to breathe in the winter.
Going down to the drawing room
filled with grown ups

where I was teased
I cried and Nanny took me back to
the nursery and gave me a chocolate bear.
I remember making a raffeta mat

which took me ages.  My mother put it in a drawer.
Once I remember her getting drunk,
stumbling upstairs,
falling in the bathroom.

I remember Daddy giving me
ten shillings and then
asking for it back the next day.
Grizzie came to stay with her guinea pigs.

I remember my sister writing
a ghostly story about the ancient
manor house, hearing footsteps
on the path at midnight.

                                                                                 *

My mother was largely absent
from all these memories.
Nanny lived with us
she was 'my mother'.

She wrote to me at boarding school.
She was knitting a woolly hat
for my wedding day but she
died three weeks before it took place.

Nanny was my childhood security,
safety and friend and I loved her
absolutely with all my small heart.
And still do.

                                                                                       *

With very best wishes, Patricia

Acknowledgement

Dear Reader, 

I have put on the blog this week the poem 'Acknowledgement'.  It was the first poem I had published and was sent the princely sum of £3 as payment.  I have kept these three coins in a box ever since and they are very precious to me giving me encouragement to write more poems.  This was twenty years ago and this poem holds a special place in my heart.

It is obviously very difficult for grand children to understand who is who, and who is divorced and re-married in the family, or perhaps just stayed single.  Emma has been to see my ex-husband and was confused with the relation I had had with him.   When she asked me whether I knew him, something hit me hard and tears flowed.  When we got home I wrote the poem. 

                                                                              *

Church pews are being ripped out of churches and replaced with padded seating.  Obviously if pews are stripped out of a church it can be used as a multi-purpose function space for a variety of events.  But, for me, there is something magical about a pew.  They have hassocks for the knees, sometimes embroidered by past members, a token of care and affection that the church has attracted over centuries.  Pews, according to Clive Aslet, arrived in the late Middle Ages, and seating was introduced in East Anglia and the West Country around 1300 as a sign of affluence.

Lets keep the pews, they are a central part of worship and without them they alienate those of us whom churches should express permanence and tradition. 

                                                                                *

Acknowledgement

We walked along the woodland path
my grandchild and I
noting nature things,
pointing out early primroses, aconites, wild violets.

We crossed the stream, and headed up the hill,
"Look a rabbit", my grandchild said.
Together we saw one magpie, then two.
We shared a chocolate bar, drank from the stream
cupping our hands.

Kneeling in the rich earth I said,
"we are part of this
you and I, dear granddaughter,
part of this earth is us".

She nodded.

"Do you know Grandpa, Granny?" she said.
"He said nature is part of us, or ought to be".
She chattered on and
God forgive me, I didn't hear.

Do I know Grandpa? Yes. A bit.
We lived together for twenty years,
I do know of his love for wild things,
for nature, and of his quick eye,
and how he loved me once
and how I loved him.

Yes, dear granddaughter,
I do know Grandpa.

                                                                            *

With very best wishes, Patricia

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Not one of us

                                                                                        Boarding School

                                                                                    Dancing to Greensleeves

 Dear Reader,

There is an interesting article in the Sunday Telegraph today by Janet Daly, an American journalist who lives in London and has done so for many years.  What is the article about?  Well it is about the weather.  Why, she wonders, do all of us English people, born and bred, complain about it so much?  She was brought up in New York city and said the heat and humidity were unbearable from July to September. She also points to other American cities and counties that are difficult to live in during the summer months and not too good in the winter either.  

Why then do we complain about our gentle climate with all its diversity? We can see the lovely green rolling hills, green because of the rain, not brown and scorched from the sun.  We can watch the sky turn from blue to grey and back again and sit on the beach with a gentle breeze to cool us. Christmas sometimes brings snow and frost and makes being in our houses a cosy alternative to being outside. Or we can take a brisk walk and then warm ourselves with spicy wine once indoors.  What's not to like, as they say.

I love our weather, it suits me well.  But when we had a heat wave two weeks ago I had to stay indoors with the curtains drawn and all the fans on, all day.  I don't think I would survive in an European country with its extreme heat and very much hope there are no more heat waves this year, or any other year, at home.

                                                                               * 

From Gerald Manley Hopkins, August 7th, 1872 in the Isle

'We went mackerel fishing.  Letting down the line baited with a piece of mackerel skin- tin or any glimmering thing will do - we drew up nine.  A few feet down they look like blue silver as they rise.'

From John Ruskin, August 13th, 1872, in Berkshire

'Entirely calm and clear morning.  The mist from the river at rest among the trees, with rosy light on it folds of blue; and  I, for the first time these ten years, happy.'

                                                                                  *

 Not one of us

A small figure at school in
a hot, strange land.  The
children left her alone,
she didn't speak their language
or know their games or rules.
She was not one of them.

Winter now and an English
boarding school, where the rules
were known, but not to her.
She was clumsy, wore spectacles,
couldn't tie her tie, dropped the netball,
couldn't master dance steps gracefully
to the music of 'Greensleeves',
was not an asset, wouldn't do.
She was not one of them.

She simply asked,
why do the safely-grounded
hear the beat of a terrified heart
and seek to silence it?  Is the beat
too loud, something not understood,
something to frighten?
Are things better when the group
destroys the alien in its midst?

She never knew,
she was not one of them.

                                                                                    *

With very best wishes, Patricia