Acknowledgement

 Dear Reader,

                                                                                            Irish Holiday 1973

 

When you get old thinking back about your life seems to play a large part of your dreaming by day or night.  I often think about days gone by when I can't sleep which is quite a lot of the time.  This photograph of Eliza, my second daughter, and I, was taken on a holiday we took to southern Ireland with a horse drawn caravan, or two in fact.

It has to be said the horses for the two caravans were not in tip-top condition.  Rosy, one of them, was definitely lame and the other horse was just very old. Each night we had to find somewhere to park the caravan and find a field or a patch of grass for the horses.  This was not easy.  I think the local farmers had got fed up with tourists asking to borrow their fields and most of them were simply not going to do it. 

But looking back it was all great fun.  My then husband played the guitar in the evenings and we made a fire and cooked sausages and bacon for supper.  The children loved it, made games with snails to see which one was the fastest, ran about picking berries, but looking after the horses was the best entertainment, taking it in turns.  In those days there really wasn't much on the roads, perhaps there still isn't it, so we could plod along at a quiet and gentle pace.

Perhaps this was one of my favourite holidays of a life time.  The young family together and all having a good time.  Lots of more expensive holidays since, abroad and in the sun, have not been so memorable for me. 

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From Dorothy Wordsworth, June 5th, 1802, in Westmorland

'A very sweet morning.  William stayed some time in the orchard....It came on to rain, and we could not go to Dove Nest as we had intended ......The roses in the garden are fretted and battered and quite spoiled, the honeysuckle, though in its glory, is sadly teazed.  The peas are beaten down.  The scarlet beans want sticking.  The garden is overrun with weeds.'

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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 out 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.

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With very best wishes, Patricia