Being stared at by sheep

I am reminded of a childish diversion,

(from the days when there were only two television channels)

called 'Staring Out'.

It was quite simple.

You would simply assert,

whenever there was a slack moment,

'I bet I can stare you out.'

It worked best if you happened to be sitting opposite each other,

perhaps at the dinner table,

or on a train journey.

You then widened your eyes,

lowered your head

and stared.

If they blinked,

you shouted,'You blinked, you blinked.'

They would then hotly deny that they had

and the game would end with mutterings.

Holding your eyelids open was cheating.

In the above impromptu contest,

both sheep won.

Clippetty clop

The percussion of distant hooves on firm sand -

exactly like clapped coconut shells.

There's a young woman who knows a thing or two about horses
here.
You might want to go and wish her a happy birthday.

On the sands today

The lug worm collector,

bringing in his catch for the

World Dab Fishing Championships 2012.

Here's how he does it.

Living up to my remit.

Useful. Beautiful.

What do you mean you didn't have time to watch it all?

The rest room

Re. Alice's comment,

I do like the idea of people benignly lounging

in my comments box.

So much more companionable than having lurkers.

How pleasant to picture people

lazing on the chaise longues,

putting their feet up on the battered recliner,

rocking in the swing seat,

dozing in the hammock.

 While you're here, why not

leaf through the diary on the hall table,

browse through the albums in the sitting room

take a sideways look at the books,

(they're alphabetically ordered for your convenience).

Indulge in some nostalgia.

Listen to some music.

Brew some coffee.

Have a slice of cake.

Talk amongst yourselves,

or find a quiet corner

 in the garden.

Take one of our favourite walks,

look at the shadows,

the sunrises and the sunsets.

Or perhaps you just popped your head round the door

and thought you'd come back later.

That's fine.

Leave a card if you have one.

I'm out visiting too.

Play on

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
These arrived in my inbox to lighten my day from
 son two and JofIndia.

Repeats

I have been finding very few opportunities for taking photos.
 The light, or lack of it,
the humdrum nature of recent days' activities,
a certain loss of va va voom
(it's in the Concise Oxford Dictionary),
have all contributed to this sad state of affairs.
Time to visit the archives.
As I scrolled back
I saw that I was feeling much the same as this last year
and the year before that and the year before that.
I derived some comfort from that.
January 21st last year,
yielded this:

a defiantly shrivelled berry
and an incipient bud.
Quite apposite I thought.

This is what I tuned into on Radio 3 

at 5.50 a.m today

when I got too bored with being awake.

What I would give for a full uninterrupted night's sleep

and a spring in my step in the morning.

Etta James

First heard here.

Fair weather or foul

Even though we are officially suffering from a winter drought,

and I should be glad of the rain,

I'd like this weather back please.

I'd also like to have this back:

insured for £500,000, melted down for scrap worth £750,

I rather took it for granted as I ran past it most mornings,

but now that it is gone, it does indeed feel as though,

 'a finger has been chopped off'.

Barbara Hepworth said that she related her large works

to her diagnosis of cancer in 1966.

'It was the same in 1938. If war is imminent, or you're very ill

or something's threatening, you want to put something down

for big work while you can.

I was an absolute fever of ideas, without much hope of fulfillment.'

Some more big work is urgently needed.

We are scattered

but the same sun rises over us all,

(even in Moscow).

доброе утро.

Solo

Orange reverie

The house smells the colour of the kitchen tiles.

I'm making marmalade -

a little later than last year,

but much earlier than the year before that.


Here's some Marmalade
I heard earlier.
Compare and contrast.

Little irises

 The sun is out.

So are my dwarf irises.

We all have walls*

I pass on some rather queenly advice

in an article by this name*,

from Vita Sackville-West to the readers 

of the Observer newspaper in the 1940s and 50s.

Often I hear people say,

'How lucky you are to have these old walls;

(at Sissinghurst)

you can grow anything against them',

and then when I point out that every house 

means at least four walls -north, south, east, and west -

they say, 'I never thought of that.'

Against the north and west sides you can grow

magnolias or camellias;

on the east side, which catches the morning sun,

you can grow practically any of the

hardy shrubs or climbers, from the beautiful

ornamental quinces, commonly, though incorrectly called

japonicas (the right name is chaenomeles),

to the more robust varieties of ceanothus,

powdery blue, or a blue fringing on purple;

on the south side the choice is even larger -

a vine, for instance, will soon cover a wide high space,

and in a reasonable summer will ripen its bunches

of small sweet grapes (I recommend Royal Muscadine,

if you can get it), or, if you want a purely decorative effect,

the fast growing Solanum crispum will reach to the

eaves of the house and will flower in deep mauve

for at least two months in early summer.

*It is the 'at least four walls' that amuses me.
She seems not to be able to conceive of anyone
living in a house that it not detached.

Even today you can hear certain of our TV gardeners earnestly

consoling the viewers that even if they don't have a garden,

they can always grow some herbs on a windowsill.

This, as they stagger up the garden path 

with a wheelbarrow load of basil

ready to make a year's supply of pesto.

Some people's walls are higher than others'.

Expectations fulfilled

FAIRFIELD. St Thomas of Canterbury.

By itself on the Marsh, and mellowed with yellow lichen.

The illustration in Oyler's Churches of the Diocese of Canterbury 

(1912) shows a tottering ruin by the dyke, mostly of timber.

W.D.Caröe rebuilt it from the ground in 1913,

with great care and sensibility.

Some of the old materials were re-used.

The box pews, pulpit and reading desk are painted white

picked out in black.

The oval text boards add character.

So wrote John Piper when he was sent by King Penguin books

to stay for a time in Romney Marsh, Kent.

Long before I knew of the BBC 's intention to film

Great Expectations, I had formulated a plan 

 to visit the churches of the Marsh

which he painted.

All we had to do was collect the key

 hanging by the back door of a nearby farm,

and let ourselves in.

It was great.

Urban river

 This river is in a surprising oasis of rural tranquility

in a less than idyllic urban desert.

We're very glad that they cleaned up the abandoned

supermarket trolleys and burnt out cars,

but the ducks have the right idea, 

you feel safer in pairs.

Wind swept

Strong winds blew in today.

They tore my wardrobe doors open

and a whirlwind plucked at the hangers

and strew my clothes across the floor.

Holey jumpers, ill-advised buys,

shrunken and marked garments,

bad bargains,

the faded, torn and aged

the unworn and the forlorn,

all in a storm

bundled and crammed into

waiting charity bags,

and before there was any chance of

rescuing them,

swept out of the house

never to be seen again.

A few things escaped the maelstrom

and as the winds died down,

looked, even, slightly refreshed;

ready for their moment in the sun.

A gale forced decision was made,

as I once again struggled to find anything to wear

in a wardrobe full of clothes.

I am a reluctant shopper,

with a hard-to-dress lifestyle

in a hard-to-place age group.

This morning I recognised the truth 

of the well meant advice:

that if you haven't worn it for a year

(or in my case more likely ten years)

you aren't going to wear it today or any other day.

It masquerades as a real outfit,

freighted with unhelpful reasons for a reprieve,

such as Wasteful, Will fit one day,

Worn once, Well loved but worn out.

My wardrobe is purged

but there is another cupboard that holds tightly

things I know full well I will never wear again:

my wedding dress, my back to work jacket size 8,

my vintage dresses, my Liberty rose shirt,

my Chinese silk jacket from Art College,

an Indian sari coat,

a velvet evening cloak,

my school Panama hat.

 It would take a hurricane to empty that

and no hurricanes have been forecast.