Dwindling ...

...the number of posts and the number of readers I suspect

and the harvest too

but it was a good year for French beans

and I will definitely grow them again.

Sissinghurst and Great Dixter continue to mellow beautifully

 and there is an exciting new place to visit,

Tillingham, a biodynamic vineyard, 

with rooms and a restaurant in the heart 

of the Sussex countryside.

There was a son in San Francisco

and another newly established in Tokyo.

This butterfly looks a little how I feel.

I'm never good with the shortening days

and this seems to have been a particularly swift descent into Autumn.

Pencil sharpening, new term feelings were not as marked as in previous years

but for this one

a fifth birthday

and an exciting first week at big school are under her belt.

For now, in these troubling times,

I seek solace in scenes like those above,

the writings of Gladys Taber, (thanks Nan)

and seek to adopt the Zen-like attitude

of this ram.

See you, I hope,

before we all fall over the cliff.

If it's Wednesday it must be Milwaukee

Brilliant sign sent by son from Milwaukee airport.

He was surely in urgent need of this facility 
as he hurtled around the USA for his work this last week. 

His thirtieth birthday was spent in transit.

Some recombobulating needed here too as I

  think back to his first emerging in Arrivals.

His Emergency emergence indeed

after spending far too long in transit!

My own birthday was spent in hospital with him 
where time stood still in a private room miraculously provided
by the NHS and filled with early Sweet Peas by my mother.

We brought him home after five days, in a carry cot
strapped onto the back seat of the car.
I remember that they gave me the little tin foil bowl
that they used to 'top and tail' him at bath time.
I clung to that bowl like a talisman until it wore out
and I realised that I would have to replace it with a bowl of my own
and that it would probably be alright.

Reflections on mirrors

There is one kind mirror in my house.

It's in the bathroom

and I got it out of a skip when I was 19

and furnishing digs in Bristol with a mattress on the floor 

and bookshelves made from planks and house bricks.

That means I have been looking in it for 43 years.

I think that might be why it is kind.

I have retained a vestigial memory of how I looked then

and it reflects that image just faintly.

It may help that it is not well lit

and I do not peer too closely.

Here I am in its first bathroom with a Bizzy Lizzy

and a reluctance even then to commit my face to close scrutiny.

A strange thing has just happened.

I looked up 'vestigial memory,' to see if it was a thing,

and came immediately upon the work of an artist

who was at college with me when I took up skip surfing.

Even more strangely he is referencing Anna Freud

who I also met aged 19 and wrote about here in 2010.

The cruellest mirrors are in department store changing rooms.

You are mercilessly exposed to every possible angle

and lit from above.

Nobody should ever be lit from above.

The cruellest one of all was in the basement of Miss Selfridge.

(I was not there willingly.)

Dazed and confused by the shattering music, the flashing lights,

sudden pools of darkness and milling shoppers,

I veered clumsily between racks of clothes

looking for the exit.

A similarly disorientated woman made her way towards me.

There was an impasse. She wasn't going to step aside.

Wretched woman I thought, as I smacked into a mirrored pillar.

Letters from Abroad

When I was a child we never travelled further than Cornwall

(by steam train!).

We had no car and I took my first flight aged 16 when I went on a school cruise.

Nevertheless I was set a holiday project at primary school

entitled Letters From Abroad.

I had to write and illustrate letters from imaginary friends

in six foreign countries.

This was a great trial to me and my mother that summer.

I remember sitting for hours at the dining room table surrounded by

piles of travel brochures brought home from the travel agents,

snipping out pictures of exotic locations

and laboriously writing stilted descriptions of the

wonders to be seen in (amongst other places) the USA and India.

This morning I am having an entertaining exchange

with JofIndia about this,

and am salivating over a picture of his breakfast of 

masala dosa, tuna fish curry, vegetable sambar and hot lime pickle.

I have also just uploaded a picture of grand-daughter 

sitting on the steps to her New York apartment.

Son One has been for a run in a Brooklyn park and met the Mayor of London.

Son Two (also in New York) has attended a Pilates class 

and been for an Indian vegan curry.

Daughter-in-law has unpacked a gazillion suitcases and got everyone 

settled in nicely.

Through this blog and others I enjoy letters from
families at Home and Abroad every morning.

My mother would have loved the internet.

The Backs

Looking back at this lovely view from O's room for the last time.

Walking back from the Senate House

after the degree ceremony.

Lying back on the grass in Nevile's Court.

(Strictly forbidden at any other time.)

The Backs seen from the Wren Library.

And he'll be back next year!

New every morning*

A huge success, but only after many unsuccessful sowings

of Morning Glory.

These were only just rescued from a pot in the nick of time

and planted near a pillar by the front door.

Some hasty strings were tied to the pillar

and they obliged by twisting their way up with all speed.

They are the first thing to greet me as I open the door in the morning.

They have run out of string but continue to climb and scramble

over the porch roof.

I remember a Biology teacher, Miss Smith,

who used to grow Ipomea Heavenly Blue

in a small lean-to greenhouse at school.

She longed for us to show an interest in these beautiful flowers.

I fear our response was lukewarm.

My apology for this Philistinism is far too late.

Lamentations 3: 23

The Play of Light on Domestic Objects

A small part of my portfolio 

in support of my application 

for a prestigious new position.*

The Professorship of PLDO is my dream job.

It will be a challenging and high risk role

but I think that I am ready to make the leap

back into full time employment.

The five years I have spent

blogging away in the foothills 

have not been wasted.

Some turned their hands to 

quilting hot water bottle covers,

others to knitting snoods for financial gain,

but I resisted the lure of monetisation.

Now the world of academia, hitherto closed to me,

has come just in the nick of time,

to claim me as one of their own.

Pictures of Rudyard Kipling's home for Finn*

It was the heartbreaking Locomobile

 that brought us to the house called Bateman's.

We reached her down an enlarged rabbit-hole of a lane.

When they saw the house they said,

'That's her! The only She! 

Make an honest woman of her - quick!

Rudyard Kipling was already world-famous

when he bought Bateman's in 1902.

He wanted to live somewhere
 peaceful and secluded

and decided not to have a telephone!

The work on the garden,
which he designed himself,
was paid for out of the £7,700
he received for the Nobel Prize in 1907.
That's about $300,105 in today's money.

There is a working watermill.

The windows are engraved with verses.
This one reads,

Stop and hearken to me!
I will have no shredded wheat
And crucified flour for my tea.
I will have no wafers of rye;
But out of your golden hoard
I will have some honest meat
To bake a loaf for my board.

The miller is filling the hopper with grain.

The wheels must not turn if there is no grain

running through, because sparks might cause a fire.

There is a bell on a strap which is held down by 

a full hopper of corn.

When the hopper is nearly empty,

the strap is released and the bell rings a warning.

Visitors can try their hand at grinding corn

with a small millstone.

When Kipling was tired of his guests 

he would take them out into the garden

to look at his sundial.

It bears the inscription,

It is later than you think.

He hoped that they would take the hint

and decide to go home.

The front cover of my copy of

Just So Stories

shows How the Elephant Got his Trunk.

*Finn is a young fellow somewhere in the USA
who is studying Rudyard Kipling
with his mother Polly this term.
He has a sister, Annie,
whose hair is long enough for plaits now.
We have never met.