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