Silent, Their Men walk by

 

Dear Friend,

I know you have read my blogs over the last few months in which I told you I was feeling ill. So today I have decided  to send you a rant I wrote about why this was so.  I am sending it to the OLDIE magazine and hope they might publish it under RANTS.  Its worth a try.

High Blood pressure.

 

I am 86 and was perfectly happy until April this year.   Then it was discovered that I had high blood pressure.  And the fun began. I needed to get a reading of, sometimes, 240/89, down to 130 /75 approximately every day.  If I couldn’t achieve this figure I would probably have a heart attack. So it was medications for me.  All in all over the four months of horror I tried four different pills and had various distressing and depressing results.  These pills made me very ill, and very tired.  

 

Here is a list of the side effects which made my life a misery:

Burning sensation in the hands, palpitations, chronic constipation, disturbing thoughts, tingling everywhere, tiredness, inability to sleep,

swelling of the ankles and legs, hearing ear syndrome, which meant I heard music in my ears all day, headaches and almost anything else you can think of. The absolute worst one was Ramipril.   This one gave me a hacking cough, as well as everything else, especially at night.  With only one and a half lungs in my chest, this was not good. 

 

But the joy was, of course, that in spite of these horrific side effects, taking the pills meant that I might not get  heart attack for years, so the doctor kindly told me.  So here is the dilemma:

 

Either you take the beastly pills and feel languid and lifeless all the time , without let up, but maybe halt the heart attack, or you decide to not take anything, enjoy your last years on earth and wait for your fate with equanimity.  

                                                                                      *

From Dorothy Wordsworth   August 31st   1800 in Westmorland

‘A great deal of corn is cut in the vale, and the whole prospect, though not indeed with a general autumnal yellow, yet softened down into a mellowness of colouring, which seems to impart softness to the forms of hills and mountains.  At 11 o’clock Coleridge came, when I was walking in the still clear moonshine in the green.  He came over Helvellyn.  William was gone to bed, and John also, worn out with his ride round Coniston.  We sate and chatted till past three.  Coleridge read us a part  of Christabel.’

                                                                              *

Silent, Their Men Stnd by

as universal woman talks,

with women

who are not friends,

or neighbours,

or women they know or love,

just women.

Their bonding thread

is laughter, touch, glance, cry,

instant understanding.

While silent, mystified, their men stand by.

                                                                          *

With much love from Patricia

Inheritance

 

Dear Friend,

I was/am very upset upon hearing that Jason Arday, the Cambridge Professor, had taken his life. He had been so hounded by the press and social media that he couldn’t stand it, obviously,  any longer.   If you didn’t already know, Jason was black. 

What he had done was to invent qualifications for himself in order to become an academic of the highest order.  He invented himself and probably believed his own inventions.

My point here is :   that don’t we all invent ourselves to an extent?  WE tell stories and add bits here and there to enrich them, we boast of things we haven’t really done, and we know celebities well when we have never met them.  We might feel in ourselves that we are a triffle dull and that exaggerating ourselves makes us more interesting.

In Jason’s case he probably just wanted to be a professor with such intesnsity that the truth of him became a fantasy, he simply invented himself to be the man he so wanted to be.  Was this such a terrible crime that he was made to take his own life?  Surely not or many of us coud be implicated in this way for an understanable crime.  

Cambridge University has many questions to answer.  I hope they are made to.

                                                                                                

                                                                                                *

From Dorothy Wordsworth     August 31st   1800 in Westmorland

‘A great deal of corn is cut in the vale,  and the whole prospect, though not tinged with a general autumnal yellow, yet softened down into a mellowness of colouring, which seems to impart softness to the forms of hills, and mountains.  At 11o’clock Coleridge came, when I was walking in the still clear moonshine in the garden. He came over Helvellyn.   William was gone to bed, and John also, worn out with his ride round Coniston.   We sate and chatted till half past three.  Coleridge read us a part of Christabel.’

                                                                                                  *

 

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 Gloucester Old Spot 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 that 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.

 

 

                                                                                      *

With best wishes and love to you all

Patricia

Every so often blog

 Dear Reader,

 

Dear Friend,

I have been asked many times over the years whether I am ‘religious.'  Probably you have been too.  This, for me, is a difficult question to answer. I am not quite sure what being ‘religious” means.  So am I a Christian?  Yes, I believe and love Jesus Christ who I maintain is my friend, but is that being religious?  I don’t think so.

For over thirty years Geoffrey and I went to church every Sunday.  It was, in a way, our tradition. It was what we did.  I enjoyed the services, loved the church sitting right in the middle of Oxford, and some of the old hymns are heart warming. But what of the church’s 

teaching, what of the Bible?  Is it, as John Betjamen asks in his poem, a true story? 

I suppose we all individually have to make up our minds which bits we want to take as our religion, which bits are true for us.  So, having jusr written this piece, I suppose I am religious, on a chosen spiritual path of my own making, and this works very well for me.

                                                                     *

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 its folds of blue, and I, for the first time these ten years, happy’.

From Gilbert White   August 15th  1783  in Hampshire

‘The last gathering of wood-strawberries.  Bullfinches and red-breasts eat the berries of the honeysuckles’.

                                                                     *

Chapel

 

Away with the cherubs

the angels, the painted ceilings

the high arches

the high ceilings

nudes male and female

the artifacts

the gold crosses

and ornate statues of the 

Virgin Mary.

 

Give me a chapel with

whitewashed bricks

wooden pews

oak door with studs

daisies on the altar 

in a china jug

a bust of St. Columba

and quiet peace

in God's house.

 

With best wishes to you all

 

Patricia 

 

My Blog

 Dear Readers,

 

I have had several requests to be able to read my small blog which I decided to write after stopping the Sunday edition that I wrote for eleven years.

 

If you would like to be on my list just send me an email :  

 

patricia.huthellis@googlemail.com

 

and I will send you, by email, the current blog. 

 

I felt rather sad when I had made the decision to write no more and decided therefore to just write a small blog every so often for friends and family.  Please join me if you would like to.

With very best wishes, Patricia 

The Mind Cupboard

 Dear Reader,

 

I thought I would just put your favourite poem on the blog as a last gesture.

 

The Mind Cupboard

 

My mind cupboard overflows
with unwanted debris.
It needs a spring clean.

I will brush away the cobwebs
of cheerless thoughts.
Scrub out the stains of childhood.

I will replace the brass hooks
corroded with salt tears,
empty all the screams
hoarded through the years.

I will replace the accumulated ashes
from the worn self-paper,
with virgin tissue.

I will chase and catch the wasps,
relieve them of their stings.
I will refill this cupboard
with love, and learnt, brighter things. 

 

Very best wishes, Patricia 

My Retirement

 Dear Reader,

 

I have been writing my blog for eleven years now and thoroughly enjoyed myself.  But the time has come when I find it all a bit of strain and so I am not going to write it any more.

 

Thank you all for reading it and I wish you every happiness in the years to come,

 

With very best wishes, Patricia 

Truth Modern

Red Admiral

 

Dear Reader, 

 

I saw a Red Admiral butterfly in the garden last week, well I saw it from a window in the kitchen.  Because it is so hot outside and I get ocular migraines if I go out in the sun, I haven't been outside more than once this last week.  I expect if you are young and sprightly and reading this you will wonder what the fuss is all about from heat we are having.  But I assure you for elderly people such as myself the extreme heat can be dangerous as well as being unpleasant.

Gosh I look forward to a day of rain, or several.  A gentle breeze and light rain would be perfect, perhaps we will get some next week. I certainly hope so.

                                                                                * 

I feel very upset about the murder of Ann Widdecombe last week.   Not particularly because she was well known but that such a thing should happen in the Devon countryside.  There she was, getting on with her life, and someone breaks into her house and murders her.  

What is England coming to?  When I lived in the  New Forest fifty years ago we didn't even have a key to the back door and possibly not even to the front door either.  We walked through the forest, the children and I, never fearful of who we might meet. But I wouldn't do it today. 

Ah well, the world has certainly changed,

                                                                                       *

 

 

From Gilbert White   July 15th    1786  in Hampshire

'Made jellies and jams of red currants.  Gathered broad beans ....The cat gets upon the roof of the house, and catches young bats as they come forth from behind the sheet of lead at the bottom of the chimney.' 

           

From Francis Kilvert    July 16th   1863 in Wiltshire

'As I walked along the field path I stopped to listen to the rustle and solemn night whisper of the wheat, so different to its voice by day.'

                                                                           *

Truth Modern

 

 

Through a kaleidoscope’s

shifting, bright colours,

set close to the eye,

the viewer’s truth is reflected,

assuring the mind of its 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.

 

                                                                           *

Wit best wishes, Patricia