Looking West

Mise has put up her quarterly post.

Rejoice!

Ni jyu*

This time last year he was small and

far away,

this year he was big and near.

Happy Birthday O.

* 20

In the Pink

From pretty far east to

Mise at Pretty Far West.

Thank you so much.

If you don't already know and love

her funny, clever, quirkily irreverent blog,

go there. You'll be glad you did.

P.S I would have waited until I'd slipped down the page

 a little further

but I was taught to write my thank you letters 

on the same day that I received the gift.

Brought to Life

Leafing through my albums I found this old magazine cover

featuring the Queen's visit to Ireland in July 1953.

By the miracle that is the www

I was able to watch 'shy little Catherine Irwin' presenting her bouquet

here at 01.27.41.


If you happen to be more curious about Philip Harben's
summer menus, you can find him here and here.

The Queen visits the Republic of Ireland

I hope someone offers her a glass of draught Guinness

and a verse or two of Danny Boy.

The lyrics (not immediately discernible in this rendition)

were written by Englishman Frederic Weatherly,

and it was sung he said, 

'all over the world by Sinn Feiners and Ulsterman alike'

and had 'nothing of the rebel song about it, 
and no note of bloodshed.'

Treasure Hunting

I am devouring anything I can find on the shelves

by Molly Keane.

At the moment it is Treasure Hunt.

My Virago Modern Classic edition has an introduction 

by Dirk Bogarde who says,

'If you are presently holding your very first copy of a novel 

by Molly Keane, then you are indeed blessed.

You are, of course, unaware at this moment that

 you are standing on the threshold of untold delights and splendours, 

quite apart from all the glorious fun that waits you.'

An emergency exit from real life,

via glorious literary fun is exactly what is required at present.

Here is a barking mad Anglo-Irish household trying,

ineffectually,to come to terms with the reality of their 

impoverished existence.

They are having difficulty finding any acceptable ways to economise,

but agree reluctantly to take in rich English paying guests.

I have just come across this wonderful portrait.

'Delightedly, Consuelo paused in the doorway.

For all her size and height she seemed as light as air. 

She wore a dark cyclamen coloured jersey, big and soft,

her tiny bird's head was tied in a man's purple silk handkerchief.

She looked as rich and sweet as a very well-grown bed of violets -

Princess of Wales - grown on lots of leaf mould and old manure.

She carried a basket and a walking stick 

and radiated aristocratic country activity.

As she advanced into her drawing room, wet hazel thickets,

the district nurse, the music of hounds,

your own grapes and peaches with the bloom warm on their skins,

wood fires, subscriptions to the Church and

The Times Library came with her, intangible and undeniable.'

Every day I wonder what will advance into the drawing room with you.

 Blue and white china?

A lively menagerie?

Quinces?

Monsoon rains?

Knitting needles?

A new wood floor?

Birds at a feeder?

A Barbie Doll leg?

A dictionary and thesaurus?

An embroidery hoop?

Old photographs?

A Maori poem?

A loch?

Kanji?

Bunting?

Babies?
Granny squares?
Oak leaves?
Thrifted finds?

When first I heard

this

I was staying in a house on the shore of Lough Hyne

in Skibbereen, West Cork.

I was 19 years old and a guest 

of the parents of one of my college friends.

The reason I have remembered exactly where I was

is because of the curious circumstances in which it 
impressed itself on me.

This was a holiday like no other I had experienced.

The house was all faded Georgian grandeur.

(Many of Molly Keane's books will convey 
the atmosphere of that place.)

We spent hours fishing on the Lough,

 pulling in lines full of pollack and mackerel,

and when we gutted the pollack we found that they were magically 

stuffed with mackerel.

In the evenings we dined on potatoes, cabbage and grilled mackerel,

or cabbage, potatoes and grilled pollack,

in a cold and cavernous kitchen.

One evening we expected a special guest.

I knew she was important because the table was laid in the

pink dining room and a fire was lit. 

Her name was Anna Freud,

the sixth child of Sigmund Freud.

This is exactly how I remember her. 
She must have been nearly 80 years old.

There was an atmosphere of nearly reverential solemnity

and I was suitably awestruck, but utterly ignorant of her work.

Luckily I merited only a cursory glance and 
was not called upon to perform.

Why she was there, I have no idea, but nothing was ordinary;

everything was charmed.

And so one night as I slept, in a lumpy bed piled with ancient eiderdowns,

some beautiful music percolated my dreams

and when I awoke, it was still playing.

These trickling notes poured through the bedroom

and I thought I had never heard anything so beautiful.

In the morning I asked if anyone else had heard it

and my friend's mother said that she played music

because of her insomnia and that 
Schubert's Impromptu in E flat major

was what I had heard.

I chose this recording because it's muffled quality 
most nearly matched

the sound I heard, through the walls, that night.