You can begin to make it better

Running away

First to Greenwich Park where we took in a photographic exhibition

at The National Maritime Museum -

The Great British Seaside.

I have never known the lime blossom to be more

blissful and poignant.

There was a whole avenue of it to drink in.

That along with privet blossom is the scent of childhood summers.

And then today when the kerfuffle and cacophony reached its apogee

with the arrival of more scaffolding and men with nail guns,

we went to Igtham Mote.

But even that was too noisy for comfort so we set off

(at midday) on one of the estate trails.

Unfortunately we timed our arrival back home with the work still in full swing,

and the music on the roof had increased in volume with our absence.

Someone had brought along their own playlist.
Bobby Darin was an improvement on talk radio but

my first choice for the scaffolders would have been

I think it was the first pop song I ever heard.

Advanced blokeish

My blokeish was severely tested this morning

 with the onset of the World Cup.

Thankfully I'd had time to acquire a few holding phrases

about the sacking of the Spanish manager

and I knew that Russia were playing Saudi Arabia today.
I also remembered to ask about the burnt out starter motor on his van.

Our roofer assured me that he would be home by 4 
to watch the opening game

but he was so voluble that I lost the drift after that 

and had to excuse myself with a parting shot about Robbie Williams.

Weak I know, but as I am also trying to learn some Japanese

for grand daughter's pre-school teacher this afternoon

my vocab is getting a little muddled.

The song of the moment on the roof is just the first line of 

Everybody Loves Somebody. On repeat.

O-skare Sama deshta

Insufficient fuss?*

 I failed to note that the blog turned ten sometime in October.

I think my 3 year old guest photographer

had something to do with that.

I spend quite a bit of time at the computer,

but these days I find I am searching for

entertaining songs and clips from her present
and my past,
 to suit her very catholic tastes.

Enjoy!

And this of course.
She knows all the words.

* Barbara Skelton, socialite, noted in her diary June 26th 1952,

'My Birthday today. Insufficient fuss made.'

Sea-change

The first time I saw this beach it was high tide

on a cold windy day.

I was unimpressed.

There was grey shingle and grey sea

backed by a high sea wall.

 I would have given it nul points

in a Best Beach Guide book.

How glad then I am to have been able to revisit,

year round, in all weathers,

at high and low tide this amazing stretch of coastline.

It has a wreck visible at low tide, an ancient submerged forest, 

dinosaur footprints, a cliff, a small cove with huge rock slabs to sit on,

lagoons for seabirds, ancient groynes, yellow horned poppies 
and sea cabbages, shells, sea glass and interesting pebbles.

If you glance inland across to Hog Hill

you'll see a windmill

and this is what sometimes goes on in there:

It is not a soft sand bucket and spade beach, 

but you can shift along the coast

to Camber Sands if that is your thing.

This was grand daughter's first visit.

There is so much for her to enjoy here in future,

but this time, from the comfort of a sling
strapped to her dad and well wrapped up she heard 
the sea and the wind and the bird calls

and it must have made a good impression.

I think she gave it dix points.

Just a Song at Twilight (The Remains of the Day)

Not quite twilight but a mystical quality about the light
which puts me in mind of a song.

I was taught to sing this as a party piece when very young.

 I would be brought forward for visitors, to stand pigeon-toed

and squirming to warble the melancholy chorus which for

some reason I thought was all about traffic lights.

It came in useful many years later when the demand for a 'turn'

was sprung on me at a supper party.

Kazuo Ishiguro was one of the transfixed guests on that occasion.

I must go down to

the sea again.

Clop along*

Given the way the day ended

with more vicious rain and a computer seriously on the blink

(neither sending nor receiving email 

and imperiously demanding login keychain passwords

if I so much as look at it)

it is hard to believe that this

is how it started.

Fortunate then that I had the foresight

to purchase these

so that I can go to my happy place.

*It's definitely 'clop along' not a typo.

That voice

or this one

this one,

or this one.

Whichever way - I've been singing it all day.

None of the judges turned round for Bob, but

plenty of other people have jumped into the ring
since his performance on Saturday.

Living in the present

Our bodies and minds are restless,

forever searching for something better to do.

Our days, too, can be encumbered with a thousand irritations, 
worries, regrets for what has happened, 

and fears for what may occur.

Filled with trivial duties, unexpected memories

and thoughts about what we have to do,

they become a battleground strewn with

the debris of our thoughts and intuitions.

To escape this exhaustion, the thing to do is

to sit, wait and be still.

Fidelity to the moment is a deliberate,

focussed attention on the here and now -

wherever and whatever it is.

Forget the future (you cannot live there);

ignore the past (it is over);

concentrate on the only reality,

the one in whose presence you are now privileged to exist.

What is to be known is here.

All that exists is now,

in all its mysterious presence.

Timeless Simplicity  by John Lane.

Also mentioned in the book,
and I was reminded of this by a comment that 
being in the present while cleaning the bath 
would be hard to cope with,
was Stanley Spencer's experience of sublime happiness while
carrying out menial tasks during the war.
Now the exhibition
Stanley Spencer: Heaven in a Hell of War,
sixteen large scale canvas panels
from the Sandham Memorial Chapel
has come to London's Somerset House.

For one day only -

this garden.

And for one night only -
son and daughter-in-law singing together
in Bach's Magnificat.

Wild Side

Perfect Day was our song,

but in view of the weather this morning -

Lou Reed 1942 - 2013

Et lux perpetua

We're going to another performance of Mozart's Requiem tonight.

It's a new hobby. Requiem collecting.

My little menagerie

What did I do when the sun made a brief appearance?

Why naturally I arranged my lead animals

on the side of the bath

and took some pictures of them.

R.I.P January.

We are going to hear Mozart's Requiem tonight.

I already have tuba mirum on the brain.