Wedding

Our son's wedding day, October 13th,
passed in the happiest of blurs.

For once I didn't have a proper camera with me,

but every moment is clearly etched on my personal memory card

and I will never forget it.

He has the most beautiful wife

and now we have a delightful daughter-in-law.

Useful and beautiful

The Quince Tree,

by Sue.

Back light

A puzzling illumination
stopped me in my tracks.

The sun was not setting in the East.

 

These smoke bush leaves were backlit 

by the light bouncing

from a West facing window.

If I hadn't started a blog, 

these and a thousand other miniscule moments

would have been lost to me.

But more importantly 

I wouldn't have had the pleasure of
 seeing, reading, hearing and learning 
so many other fascinating things,
sent out into the world by bloggers 
for their moment in the sun.

My blog, somewhat to my astonishment,
 is still here four years later.

And if you are too,

then thank you very much

for backlighting these pages,
from the North, South, East or West.

Tootles the taxi and other rhymes

Today is National Poetry Day,

so I bring you some excerpts from Tootles the Taxi

by Joyce B. Clegg

illustrations by John Kenney.

 A trip to the pillar box at the top of our road

was my first solo outing.

It felt as though I had walked miles.

The responsibility of posting that letter weighed heavily.

 The verse that is missing from my edition  goes:

I'm Billy the baker's van,

Painted bright red;

I carry the sugar buns,

Pastry and bread.

I take all the orders

Round to each door,

And all of my customers

Come back for more!

We had just such a van calling at my primary school,

and the baker, clad in a brown overall, carried

an enormous wicker basket full of loaves.

He called me Lucinda which I found

simultaneously flattering and worrying.

The bread at home, two white bloomers,

was delivered by Michael on his bike

from O'Brien's the grocer.
The sugar buns were collected from the corner shop 
at the bottom of the road.
That was my second solo destination
and I had a to buy a pot of strawberry jam.

 We didn't have a car so an inordinate amount of time

was spent waiting for trolley buses.

I have never had such cold feet again.

I remember the high banks of filthy snow at the kerbside

during the winter of 1963.

Our first milkman had to pull his trolley

which was a battery assisted cart.

I asked him to name a new doll and he said,

'Why not call her Mary Ann?' so I did.

 Learning to ride a bike was an all or nothing business.

No training wheels, no helmet, just

a swift push on the bumpy driveway

down a steepish slope and a messy crash

into a rhododendron bush.

Later I used to cycle round the block.

A girl called Pamela West waved from across the street

 and invited me to tea.

I said I would have to go home and ask.

When I got back, she had disappeared 

and I didn't have the nerve to knock at the door

of her large and silent house,

so I went home again.

A trip in a taxi was a rare event

and certainly not a casual jaunt for lone children.

A man called Wallace was sometimes booked 

to take us to the station when we went on our annual holiday.

The luggage had been packed in a huge tin trunk 

and sent ahead of us to one or other seaside hotel,

sometimes Cornwall, often Bournemouth.

This meant dressing in very odd clothes until we left.

Goodness that sounds antediluvian.

In fact we may well have stayed in school uniform

as the boys here and in Just William always seemed to do.

All together now

Sometimes the car radio supplies the perfect soundtrack.

Only last week I had been telling my son,

as we wandered around Leicester Square, 

that this had once been

an enormous roosting spot for starlings.

A murmuration of starlings,

once a common enough sight,

is now a rarity.

Today as I drove away from the supermarket car park

I had a tantalising reminder...

a local flock of starlings whirled, divided

and regrouped as this began to play -

Low ebb

 It was about here that I realised

that I had lost my glasses.

An expletive was uttered.

They are rimless

with translucent greeny browny arms.

 This is the second time I have done this.

 I take them off to use the camera

 and hook them carefully into a buttonhole

 and then perhaps I bend down to roll my trousers up

to cross a puddle

 so that must be when they drop out.

You'd think I'd be wise to this mistake.

Thankfully my husband

has found them both times

on shingle!

He of the laser corrected eye

and a finely honed search technique.

Sweet and sour

The build is going badly.

They left an unfinished roof unprotected

and the rain poured into the sitting room.

The build manager is a cad and a bounder.

The wedding is ever closer.

I have nice new red shoes

and a rose covered umbrella.

My hair looks terrible.

O. and I had a great day out on the town yesterday.

Lunch at Carluccio's, tea at The National Gallery,

free hand and arm massages at Jo Malone, supper at Mildred's.

Someone texted me just before we went into the film* to say

they thought they might have left the iron on

and just thought I ought to know.

I made cucumber pickles today.

Sweet and sour.

* To Rome with Love

Dashing away with the smoothing iron

In this un-retouched photo

you see the truth behind my useful or beautiful facade.

I am indebted to Mise for her exposé

on clothes airing, which has gone global.

Even at this late stage in my domestic career

I am refining my approach to drying, airing and ironing clothes

by collating the advice of her worldwide readers.

I now have damp shirts hanging on hangers 

from the original Edwardian airer, 
which we moved from the kitchen

where it previously hung over the stove.

The boiler, lacking much of its carapace,

wastes most of its useful heat in the downstairs loo

(not shown - I know where to draw the line)

 and is smothered with wet towels.

The fancy iron is held together with parcel tape,

because I dropped it when trying to descale it

at the Belfast sink, also not seen.

It is ready for action if the creases do not drop out.

The sun is not shining, but it might at any minute

as we are experience scattered showers.

The washing line outside the window

is still supporting luxuriant creepers
and so is of no practical use in this process.

I haven't tried drying clothes on lavender bushes,
so might for the sake of completeness,
dash out with a sock or two
in the next sunny spell.

As a final option to consider,
The Other Son came back from Japan
with shirts individually laundered, folded, wrapped
and labelled like this:

Hakuyosha clean living,
for a cleaner, more comfortable living,
Hakuyosha is extending its
'Clean Living' circle
over the world.

Contact details on request.

Comings and goings

Here is the Other Other One,

safely back from Japan.

We took some therapeutic stone hurling time

 down on the beach.

He dashes off again in three days.

dolce fa niente*

'It is sweet to do nothing',

is not the motto I'd choose for the Pre-Raphaelites.

Would it be churlish of me to admit that their industry exhausts me?

Tiles, embroideries, bed hangings and counterpanes, screens, 

huge tapestries, sculptures, painted furniture, book illustrations,

wallpaper and fabric design, poetry, calligraphy,

stained glass, paintings full of shimmering,

glowing, painstaking detail.

Nothing escaped their attentions.

Yes, I've just come back from the Tate exhibition

and feel quite feeble.

How did they do it all?

And have time for affairs?

And die young?

For a more mature appraisal of all things

Pre-Raph do look here.

* William Holman Hunt

Empty

I think it close to miraculous 

that I walked along a beach

as empty as this,

scattered with shells, 

 sculpted by the outflowing tide,

 lit by the daily drama

of a westward slipping sun,

 less than two hours' drive from London.

Empty.

(Pull) The Other One

Here we are with The Other One on a rare day out together.

 Hurling large rocks never loses its appeal.

Improvising a game of clay pebble shooting,

shouting, 'Pull!'

and flinging stones simultaneously to collide in mid air,

is amusing for longer than you would have thought.

Turning back the tide,

well - we know that's not possible.

And anyway, there's a daughter-in-law

on the near horizon now 

and we're looking forward to that.

Skype portrait

The video link wasn't working properly,

but I very much liked this impressionistic image

of our man in Japan, sitting on his  畳 tatami mat

in front of the 障子shoji screen.