Porridge

Dear Reader

                                                                    Naples

St. Valentine's Day and I expect, and sincerely hope, that lots of roses, satin hearts, and messages of love and devotion are today winging their way throughout the length and breadth of Britain, if not the world itself.  However I don't suppose many roses or letters of love will be presented at the house of an Italian woman I read about last week.  This woman could face up to six years in jail because her husband accused her of not looking after him properly, nor doing enough cooking or cleaning in the home.  Their house was slovenly, he said, and left in a terrible mess.   After reading Elena Ferrante's marvellous books about down-town Naples and the way families there behaved in the 1950s and 60s, and perhaps still do, Italian husbands did not have a high score for romanticism in any quarter.  So perhaps this woman had had enough and decided to down tools, copied her husband, and read the newspaper.   If this strange case ever does actually come to court, I do hope she is acquitted and can find happiness somewhere, and even perhaps love.


                                                                            *

Porridge


The kitchen maid
plunges thin white arms
into the heavy cast-iron pot,
scours the glutinous porridge
from its insides.
She imagines her mistress
out in her carriage
on pleasure calls,
wearing lilac silk,
freshwater pearls around her neck,
her hands, idle white, in her lap.
She weeps.


The housewife scours the saucepan,
eases the porridge from its sides,
brushes the sticky mess into the sink.
She imagines her husband
taking the train, office-bound,
making important telephone calls,
lunching with partners Lucy and George
in that Italian bistro, discussing deals,
drinking white wine, laughing, living.
She weeps.

                                                                            *

Very best wishes,  Patricia

The Brown Bear

Dear Reader,

                                                                        A Unicorn

I have been reading a book about a man who went on an expedition to the Himalayas hoping to see a Snow Leopard, or, even less likely, a Yeti.  But I discovered that the Yeti or Abominable Snowman doesn't exist if truth be known.  No-one has ever really seen one in the Himalaya region of Nepal and Tibet or anywhere else for that matter.  So the Yeti is a legend due to lack of conclusive evidence of its existence, although people have seen large apes and large bears for which it has been mistaken. 
Then there is the unicorn.  Another legendary creature to confuse me.  It is said that when Noah gathered two of every kind of animal, he neglected to gather the unicorns, which is why they don't exist today and, of course, why nobody has seen one.

I find legends very mystifying, particularly the story of King Arthur.  I have never quite worked out whether he was a real flesh-and-blood king or simply an imaginative good read. I have seen the Knights' Round Table at Tintagel but nevertheless...

I myself do, in fact, talk to my teddy bear, Aristotle, and although I know somewhere in my head that he can't hear me or understand what I am saying, a part of me is strangely under the illusion that he can.  Is this perhaps how legends start?

                                                                             *


The Brown Bear

lies on the floor,
the rocking chair still,
the house mute,
the children gone.

Three months of silence,
as boarding school houses my children,
the woman thinks.
How will I endure the emptiness,
the ache of missing them,
not being of comfort?

She sees the bear's blue jersey
is torn, has large holes in it,
like the large holes in her heart.
She picks up the bear,
holds him tight,
pours herself a drink.


                                                                         *

Very best wishes, Patricia

Afternoon Tea

Dear Reader,

Sadly Peter Carter is Britain's last traditional eel catcher since  he can no longer make a living trapping eels. Because there are so few eels left to catch,  the wicker hives and griggs, which are woven from willow, will now be redundant. Peter's family trapped eels for generations, in fact it has traced its eel fishing links back to 1475.  Eels hatch out 3,000 miles away in the Sargosso Sea around Bermuda, then they migrate across the Atlantic to the rivers of Europe, returning to die in the Sargosso Sea about twenty years later.   Apparently in Cambridgeshire, fishermen paid their tithes to the church in eels, supplying such enormous quantities in the 11th century that they helped pay for the construction of Ely cathedral.  Hence, I suppose, the name "Eely".   I have never tried an eel myself but it is said that they are delicious, so let's hope that somehow, with managed breeding and fishing quotas, future generations will be able to enjoy eating these delectable creatures.


                                                                           *

Afternoon Tea

If the woman had had
choice of mother,
she would have chosen
one who liked afternoon tea,
with scones, strawberry jam,
sweet biscuits, and hot Darjeeling.

But the mother of the woman
did not like afternoon tea.
She liked cocktails, excitement,
after dark and its secrets,
stirring things up, mischief,
and life's excesses.

As the woman knew
that choice of mother
was not negotiable,
she chose her friends
with four o'clock in mind.

                                                                         *

Very best wishes,  Patricia

Attic Trunk

Dear Reader,

                                                                                   A Spanish Fan



There has been much discussion about de-cluttering lately, and busy people who are keen to tell us how to live our lives think that we should get rid of most of our things.    We should pop them into large black bags and take them down to the dump, they say.  We would then have a new and wonderful feeling of freedom and our hearts would soar with happiness.  In my opinion, this is not at all the case.  Years ago when I did an Open University course I kept all my essays and notes but threw them away when I moved house.   I am sad about this now, and would love to know what the tutors said about my work and what grades I got.  I do know they weren't much good, but still...   However, I do have a box of precious things, old photographs, a Valentine card or two, my children's first drawings, three pound coins in an envelope, a payment for my first published poem, and a ring belonging to my nanny.   These things are my history, they stitch together my life, and will stay in my cupboard until I am no longer in charge.

Incidentally, we are also, this month, advised to drink little or no alcohol.  So, it seems, we can look forward to sitting in our near empty houses, a drink of water by our sides, waiting to enjoy a long and rather boring life.

                                                                        *

Attic Trunk

Searching through her mother's attic trunk
she recognised a dusty, broken cricket bat,
saw a tiny knotted shawl that must have shrunk
and a youthful photo of Aunt Dora, looking fat.
She found silver shoes wrapped in a crimson gypsy skirt
and a purple box housing a worn-thin wedding ring,
a Spanish fan trimmed with lace and a grandad shirt
embracing faded love letters, tied with ageing string.
From sepia postcards she studied unknown folk,
and pulled out, lovingly, a greasy-tweed cloth cap,
her father's penny whistle, a badger carved from oak,
and brass rubbings, rolled up in a parchment map.
Precious things we keep are candles on our life's tree,
their discovery tells secret stories, provides a key.

                                                                         *


Very best wishes, Patricia

PS.   In case you didn't know I write this blog every Sunday.

A Charlbury Voice

                                                                               The Evenlode River


Dear Reader.

When I read the following extract from Francis Kilvert's diary this week I started to think about progress,, and what it is, if indeed it is anything.

16th January, 1875

'In the Common Field in front of the cottages I found two little figures in the dusk.  One tiny urchin was carefully binding a handkerchief round the face of an urchin even more tiny than himself.  It was Fred and Jerry Savine.  "What are you doing to him?" I asked Fred. 'Please, Sir' said the child solemnly.  'Please, Sir, we'm going to play at blindman's buff'.  The two children were quite alone.  The strip of dusky meadow was like a marshland every footstep trod the water out of the soaked land, but the two little images went solemnly on with their game as if they were in a magnificent playground with a hundred children to play with.  Oh, the wealth of a child's imagination and capacity for enjoyment of trifles.'

I heard a talk on the radio about how "Tiger Mothers" bring up their children, which made me wonder  what progress for happiness have we made for children of today.  The 'Tiger mother' children seem to spend all day occupied with an endless list of activities, and these activities, will apparently, make them perfect or as near perfect as their mothers can arrange.  But are these 'Tiger Mother' children as happy and carefree, or ever  allowed to run a bit wild somewhere, as the two little urchins of yesteryear?  And the question is this:  is being happy and carefree more important than the constant desire to be best, to be perfect.  I do know which I would prefer to be: happy or perfect.  How about you?

                                                                      *

A Charlbury Voice

"Things were different then," the old chap said,
"Some born and died in the same old bed.
Saddlers, glove makers, and the railroad
gave men jobs, and kept them proud.
Yes, men kept guns but shot to eat,
the poorer families had little other meat.
People helped each other through their lives,
with babies safely born to knowing wives.
Walking through the town you talked to everyone,
no privacy, of course, but things got done.

Now I know or speak to few people here,
and fewer people talk to me, or care,
I hear the railway is just a single track,
and a wilderness overtaking round the back.
Once men worked there selling coal,
late with its disuse, forced on the dole.

The, useful things were sold in shops.
The ironmonger sold screws, pins, string and mops,
darning needles, hammers, dusters, candles, brown teapots,
measures, light bulbs, garden hoses, children's cots.

On summer evenings children ran down the southern road,
and played and picnicked by the Evenlode.
In those days we wandered, happy, daring, free -
well, nothing now is as it used to be.
Modern life is twisted, the proper order is unsure,
people not content with little, ever wanting more.

There is danger everywhere, from cars to caravans,
litter in the street, discarded bottles, empty cans.
The evening peace with rooks my music overhead,
silenced; a cacophony of noise instead
from pubs, which need the trade, and so
by popular demand the silence had to go.

Were people more contented then?  It's not for me to say,
and yet I think they seemed so in my day".

                                                                        *

Very best wishes,  Patricia

Invocation to Iona

Dear Reader,

A dear friend of mine,  Margaret Douglas, a Welsh playwright, has introduced me to a Welsh word and its meaning which I find most interesting and hope you do too.  It is "hiraeth" which has no English translation but is often defined as a kind of homesickness, or memory tinged with grief or sadness. A mixture of longing, yearning or wistfulness for a place, person or memory of the past.  It is the language of the soul, the call from the inner self,  half forgotten.  It speaks from the rocks, from the earth, the trees, and in the waves, it is the call of the spiritual home.

I didn't know the word "hiraeth" when I went to Iona many years ago but on a beach where St. Columba had arrived in the year 563 I sat down and wept.  I couldn't understand what it was I was feeling or its intensity and have never felt anything like it again.  But Iona has a very special place
in my heart, so perhaps it was the home I felt I had never had, anywhere.

                                                                        *    

Invocation to Iona


"Iona, sacred island, mother,
I honour you,
who cradle the
bones of Scottish Kings,
who birthed coloured gemstones
to enchant bleached beaches,
who shelter puffins on your rocks.

I wrap myself in your history,
and knot the garments with
machair rope-grass.
In the Port of Coracle
your southern bay,
I hear the wind-blown cormorant's cry,
and draw a breath.
I see Columba's footsteps
in the sand, and weep.
Tears overflow,
I am spirit engulfed.

I ask you, Iona,
is this then, or now,
what is, or what has been?
Does the rolling salt sea-mist
cover the uncounted time between?"


                                                                             *

Very best wishes, Patricia

January Weather

                                                                    Early snowdrops

Dear Reader,

I am really pleased to be writing my blog again, and I do hope you will enjoy some of the poems and musings I will write this year.   Thank you too for reading the blog - it is lovely for me to know that you do.

I hope you had a good and restful Christmas holiday and feel refreshed at the start of the New Year.  But the one creature that didn't have a good Christmas holiday was, I understand, the Tawny Owl.  The mice that he likes eating and other suitable prey have been in short supply this winter which, as you know, was mild and wet, and finding a mate has been difficult for him too.  The number of tawny owls has fallen in the last 25 years and, where hitherto they had been able to find  nesting places, the nesting places have now disappeared.  So let us hope they have a more successful life in 2016, perhaps with a bit of timely help from charitable local councils, like those which did the dormice such a good turn quite recently (see my blog for "Farm Portrait" on 29.11.15).
                                                           


                                                                                     *


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 the Holy Thorn.
Light was glimpsed, here and there,
all life struggled for its moments.
                                                                             *


A Very Happy New Year
and very best wishes,  Patricia