December Stillness

December stillness, teach me through your trees

That loom along the west, one with the land,

The veiled evangel of your mysteries.

While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down

Deepens, and dusk imbues me, where I stand,

With grave diminishings of green and brown,

Speak roofless Nature, your instinctive words;

And let me learn your secret from the sky,

Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birds

In lone remote migration beating by.

December stillness, crossed by twilight roads,

Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.

by Siegfried Sassoon

These trees do run along our western boundary 

and were granted an

exaggerated majesty by dusk, 

not apparent by day.

How to make a pomander

When there are several more pressing things to do

why not make a pomander?

Mother tells you how.

It was rather therapeutic.  

Use a skewer to make the holes otherwise you get clove thumb.

Winter Light

The shortening days

 bring out 

my inner 

Scandinavian.

River walk, rooks, Finnish rye bread,
reading Tove Jansson.

Thinking big

It all started with a visit to a local derelict church 
when our younger son was three.

Someone in a hard hat, opened up the organ and played a few wheezy notes.

That was the beginning of an obsession with the pipe organ.

But first, he was told, you must learn to play the piano.

His feet didn't reach the pedals.

Then the school offered him lessons 

on the double bass.

He disappeared behind it.

He took up the saxophone

and started singing lessons.

His voice broke early and he settled as a bass.

We began to see a pattern.

This weekend he brought home the latest oversized instrument,

(ideal for the closet megalomaniac as one teacher said)

a baritone saxophone.

Making mincemeat

The observant among you will have noticed

that I took this picture in the bathroom.

Because at this time of year

you have to go where the light is

even if you feel a bit silly balancing mincemeat

along the edge of the bath.

Today

I took the train to Brighton

 to keep my badges company,

at the Six Christmas Open House.

Had to keep an open mind about some of the exhibits,

Yes. It's a partially incinerated wooden pallet.

Yes. It's a bath.

Took a walk on the front.

Paused with this gull.

Thought about gullibility. 

Liked this lonely helter-skelter.

Popped into the Museum

and played my favourite game

What would I

borrow?

Settled on this day bed with screens

designed by Armand-Albert Rateau.

Did I buy anything in the shops?

Yes.

A sought after 1947 King Penguin book

from their eclectic list.

Wildflowers of the Chalk

by John Gilmour.

A present from Brighton.

Kitty Cotton's Diary

During 1955 Coats Cotton took half 

of the inside back page of Girl magazine,

for an 'advertiser's announcement'. 

They created a character called  Kitty Cotton 

who wrote about life at school in a blue ruled diary.

 She describes her teachers: 

Miss Trill, Miss Pumpkin, Miss Moosey, Miss Tinny, Miss Harty, Mamselle,

 lessons: 

chemistry, singing, maths, hockey, French, poetry, sewing (of course)

 and friends: 

Maribel Wiggins, Brenda, Tilly Tomkins, Mop, Olivia Pushcat, Fuffs .

The writing is looped and blotchy,

the spelling is dretful and full of crossings out.

There's a lot of trouble and strife:

 people are furious, sarky, ratty, jellous, foul, snooty, cross, silly, 

idiortic, stark staring mad,

but also prone to the giggles and full of cream buns and scrummy cake.

She is often nonplussed by the work that is set,

gets ticked off for not understanding decimals 

and in one rather poignant piece is told that her poem is all wrong 

and that she must try to be more sensitive to natural beauty.

'Still don't know what she means.'

In a separate box, readers are invited to enter the 

Coats Couplet competition 

on the theme of sewing with Coats threads.

Every fortnight a guinea was paid to the winning writer and the couplet illustrated.

That's nearly £20 in modern currency.

I've made some of the illustrations into badges for posterity because the comics are falling apart. 
They cost 5s 9d in old money.

Christmas Shopping

One of the minor arts of life, thought Mrs Miniver at the end of a long day's Christmas shopping, was the conservation of energy in the matter of swing doors.

I decided to do most of my Christmas shopping online this year.

With patience and careful timing it was very seldom necessary 

to use your strength on them.

I settled myself in front of the computer with a cup of tea.

You could nearly always follow close behind some masterful person who had already done the pushing;

Amazon was my first port of call.

and if you were too late for that and the door had begun to swing towards you,

The phone rang.

then it was well worth pausing for a second

I returned fifteen minutes later.

until it swung away again and needed only gentle encouragement.

I consulted my list,

This seemed obvious enough;

but it was not very helpful.

but there was an astounding number of people

I had not got further than question marks beside most of the names

who seemed to glory in taking the line of most resistance,

and those names did not include some lovely teachers

whose presents were the most pressing

hurling themselves against an approaching door 

since term ends in less than two weeks time.

and reversing its direction by brute force,

I put in a bulk order for Schott's Almanac

as though there were virtue in the act.

because it's not chocolate,

it's not a scented candle,

 and it's not a mug.

Placing herself neatly in the wake of a bull-necked woman in tweeds,
she slipped out of the shop.

On the shelf...

one Prinknash jug

two photos of the boys,

three part glazed flasks

four very old Fortnum and Mason honey pots,

eight 'wooden roses' from the cedar in the front garden.

and hanging above, 

a 1950s Ivon Hitchens print in its original frame.

I had a heart stopping moment in a charity shop 

when I thought I had found an original, high up in a dark corner.

It bears a label which reads,

by appointment Ryman  & Co.,Ltd.

Fine Art Dealers

23 High Street, Oxford.

Established 1819.

I've never been able to identify my print:

but it's probably one of his woodland scenes.

For a blog with Shelf Appeal

do go and look at Jane Audas's site.

It's cool.

I met her when she was curating the  

National Trust Erno Goldfinger exhibition 

and she kindly agreed to give some of our old Abbatt toys an outing 

in the reconstructed nursery there.

Parking

leafing,

and lining,

arriving,

beady eyeing,

leaving,

wavering,

icing,

chilling,

hoarding.