Goodbye my love

 Dear Reader,

 A friend of mine has asked me to cast an eye on badgers.  So this is what I have found, a quick look.

The earliest traces of badgers in Britain have been dated back to three quarters to half a million years ago.   which means badgers once existed with wolves, brown bears, arctic foxes and wolverines, all of which once roamed in Britain.

Badgers are a wood's ruling clan, often occupying the same set for generations and laying a network of well-trodden paths through the undergrowth.  They are playful, houseproud and expert foragers.

Male and female cubs become sexually mature at around 11/15 months of age and may mate before the end of the first year in areas where food supplies are plentiful.  Badgers can live in the wild for as long as15 years.  However most badgers die young and the average life span is just three years. 

Badgers carry an illness Bovine TB which can infect and cause illness in cattle, badgers, deer, pigs, goats and other animals.   Although most cattle are infected with Bovine TB by other cattle, badgers are also known to transmit the disease to cattle.

A British badger may consume over 200 worms during a night when feeding conditions are good.

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From Jane Austen  January 25th 1801 in Hampshire

'How do you like this cold weather?  I hope you have all been earnestly praying for it as a salutary relief from the dreadfully mild and unhealthy season preceding it, fancying yourself half putrefied from the want of it, and that you now all draw into the fire, complain that you never felt such bitterness of cold before, that you are half starved, quite frozen, and wish the mild weather back again with all your hearts.'

From John Clare   January 25th  1825 in Northants

' A fine day.  The bees were busily flying as if seeking flowers, the sky was hung with light flying clouds and the season appeared as if the beginning of April.'

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I am putting on "Goodbye my love" again to day since some of  you will not have seen it in the week.

Goodbye my love

 

They walked along the beach

holding hands,

talking of their tomorrows,

pictured children, picnics, sandcastles,

love was in the air

in their hearts.

 

She started in the hospital,

he went to war in France,

they wrote whenever they could

how they missed each other,

how they were counting days

until their leave came up.

 

Then the telegram came,

the soldier had been killed

in battle,

but a brave death,

or so they said.

 

Goodbye my love

goodbye, my love

my everything,

the woman wept,

despairing

of mankind's stupidity.

 

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With very best wishes, Patricia

 

 

 

 

Goodbye my love

 Dear Reader,

          This poem came to me in the middle of the night.  I thought you might like to read it today and not wait until Sunday.  

Goodbye my love

 

They walked along the beach

holding hands

talking of their tomorrows,

pictured children, picnics, sandcastles,

love was in the air

in their hearts.

 

She started in the hospital,

he went to war in France,

they wrote whenever they could

how they missed each other

how they were counting days

until their leave came up.

 

Then the telegram came,

the soldier had been killed

in battle,

but a brave death

or so they said.

 

Goodbye my love

goodbye, my love

my everything,

the woman wept,

despairing

of mankind's stupidity.

 

                                                                       *

 

With best wishes, Patricia

 

 

 

Goats

Dear Reader, 

Although estimates vary it is generally held that goats were first domesticated approximately 9, 500 - 9,900 years ago.  This occurred in southeastern Anatolia although separate instances of domestication happened in Iran approximately 6,500 years ago and in eastern Turkey 2,500 years ago.

Goats have played an essential role in human societies for thousands of years, providing milk, meat and wool, they are also used for clearing vegetation as pack animals and even as pets.  They were one of the first animals to be tamed by humans.  They are intelligent and emotional and can identify their friends and their offspring by their voice alone.

Goats don't just bleat when in distress.  They glare.  A new study shows that farm goats gaze at humans when dealing with a difficult problem.  Their behaviour hints at a form of communication seen in other domestic animals, suggesting a common behaviour among tamed beasts. 

Goat are the most beneficial animals in the world providing meat, milk, fiber, and fertilizer.

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I am interested to know that goats have difficult problems.  What could they be?

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From Francis Kilvert   January 21st  1872 in Radnorshire

'Sunday.   A cold raw frost fog, dark and dreary ....the Chapel bell tolled out sharp and sudden through the white mist to give notice of the service a quarter of an hour beforehand.  The hedges were hoary with rime and frost and the trees were hailing large pieces of ice down into the road.

Few people in chapel....  I thought the markers in the Bible and Prayers had suddenly become very short, and after service Wilding the Clerk told me the church mice has eaten then off.'

From Richard Hayes   January 22nd 1778 in Kent

'Brother dined with us.  Neck of pork roasted.   He put the blind down a little while.  Sun began to weaken the fire.'

   

 

Goats

 

The goats pick their way up

the steep mountain path

nibbling and bleating, tails wagging

silver bells chiming as they stop

to graze, skip and jump upwards.

 

White mignonettes, freesias, lavender bushes

grow in abundance along the well-worn track,

and small taranaki flowers nestle

in the undergrowth.

Overhead a black kite cries

circles and swoops

and the pungent smell of goats

fills the warm lavender air.

 

I see the shepherd boy

swarthy, brown and handsome

sitting on a stone, playing a flute.

He watches his precious goats

with a sharp and knowing eye.

 

As I pass him I smile. He waves.

I dance a step to his music

and with light heart follow the goats,

on my own journey upwards.

 

                                                                                 *

 

With very best wishes, Patricia

 

 

 

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The "Right" People

Cottages

 Dear reader,

In England from about the 18th century onwards the development of industry led to the development of weavers' cottages and miners' cottages.   Fredrich Engels cites ' cottages' as a poor quality dwelling in his 1845 work: The Condition of the Working Class in England.

A cottage, during England's feudal period was the holding by a cottager of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager has to provide some form of service to the manorial lord.  The cottage would have been built cheaply from locally available materials in the local style, thus in wheat growing areas it would be roofed in thatch and in slate-rich locations, such as Cornwall, slates would be used for roofing.  In stone-rich areas, it would be built in rubble stone, and in other areas, such as Devon, was commonly built from cob.

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The cottage I lived in this market town was built in the 17th century.  Although it was very "quaint" it was something of a nightmare to live in.    It was always very cold because the windows didn't fit and we weren't allowed to change them, (heritage) and the mice loved it.  Now if one thing you may have picked up from reading my blog over the years it is that I can't abide mice.    Also the stairs were a trifle dangerous and as I got older found them difficult too.  Yes it did have roses round the door but where I live now is, in every way, much more pleasurable.

                                                                                    

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From Francis Kilvert  January 12th 1873 in Wiltshire

'When I came out the night was superb.  The sky was cloudless, the moon rode high and full in the deep blue vault and the evening star blazed in the west.  The air was filled with the tolling and chiming of bells from St. Paul and Chippenham old Church.....I walked up and down the drive several times before I could make up my mind to leave the wonderful beauty of the night and go indoors.'

 From James Woodforde  January 14th 1790 in Norfolk

'The season so remarkably mild and warm that my brother gathered this morning in my garden some full blown primroses'.

 

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The ‘Right’ People

 

I nearly didn’t come

to see this house

            on an estate.

 

My cottage in Market Street was old.

Two hundred years old.

It was damp, it was cold

mice pattered about

and the east wind blew

through the small windows.

 

It was dark even in the summer,

but it was smart

in the ‘right’ part of town

and the ‘right ‘ people

asked us for dinner.

 

Now we live in the suburbs

not in the ‘right’ part of town

and not the ‘right’ people

living here.

 

But I found they were my people,

the “right” people for me

everyday people, kind and funny.

 

The house is warm,

no mice patter

no damp creeps up the wall

the car has a place of its own.

 

If I hadn’t come to see it

fearful of an estate

I would have never known

where people like me lived.

 

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With very best wishes, Patricia

 

January Weather

                                                                               Primroses

 

Dear reader,

I am putting up 'January Weather' again this week.  It is one of my favourite poems and I don't think Christmas week was a good place for it.  Everyone was busy and my blog suffered!! Two weeks ago I had 2,000 hits on the blog and last week 3. Only 3.  I can never tell how the blog  is going to work, or whether you readers like the things I write about or not.  Obviously some pieces you like better than others but I have no way of telling which these are going to be.

I was telling my daughter Jessica who has just started to teach dance as a free lance, that constancy is the answer. And she must believe in herself and what she is offering. As many of you know I have been writing this blog now for eight years and I just have to believe in myself and be reliable in putting it out every week.  I left school when I was 15 years old with next to no qualifications.  But over the years I have taught myself, read many books on diverse subjects and happily went to the Open University for four years. 

Try reading 'January Weather' again and I hope you enjoy it, this time, as much as I did writing it.

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From Samuel Pepys   January 16th   1660 in Westminster

'I stayed up till the bell man came by with his bell just under my window as I was writing of this very line, and cried, 'Past one of the clock, and a cold , frosty , windy morning.'

 

From Katherine Mansfield   January 20th   1915 in Buckinghamshire

'A man outside is breaking stones.  The day is utterly quiet. Sometimes a leaf rustles and a strange puff of wind passes the window.   The old man chops, chops, as though it were a heart beating out there.'

 

From Richard Hayes  January 21st   1762 in Kent

'As mild a day as though May. N.B. I saw a spotted butterfly - brown in colour.'

      

January Weather

 

 

 

We know from recorded history,

that in St. Merryn

a hundred years ago,

there blew great winds

and the sea was smoking white.

 

We know it was warm in Kent,

where the thrushes thought spring

had come, and piped away.

And primroses were a yellow carpet

in North Norfolk,

or so the parson wrote.

 

We know of cutting winds in Hampshire,

of icicles and frost, and

in Skiddaw on a mild day,

a brown spotted butterfly was seen.

We know that hungry church

mice ate bible markers, 

hungry people died of cold.

 

And we know that this dark winter month

had days of snow, that wild clouds

gathered in the sky unleashing icy rain,

churning up the plough.

 

And yet, again, we also know

the sun shone in that distant year,

it was warm enough to push through

early snowdrops, and Holy Thorn.

Light was glimpsed, here and there,

all life struggled for its moments.

 

 

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With very best wishes, Patricia