Pictures clues

to a fraught day.

The rough with the smooth.

Choppy waters.

Adolescents.

Seeing red.

Will need time for

peaceful reflection

if I am to get any sleep tonight.

Babysitting Bella

Am I going to succumb 

to the siren calls for just one more kitten?

No Sir. I am not.

I am just the babysitter

for the weekend.

Green and gold

Following a morning of heavy rain

and slate skies,

the sun broke through

just as the roofers, somewhat perversely,

departed for the day.

Desperate for  a little natural light

I ventured into the sodden garden
with my cup of Earl Grey Rooibos

and poked around with a hoe.

The twisted willow has split a heavy branch

like the eye of a needle

and this is now resting on the apple tree

casting a gold green light,
like the quinces in my lustreware bowl

ID diatribe

Having failed to be verified
electronically

as a valid bona fide person,

I have spent a large portion of today

assembling documents to prove my legitimacy

from List One, List Two and List Three.

So that would be one from List One

and two from List Three

or two from List Two

and one from List Three,

or a copy of my passport

and my driving licence

and the paper version of above,

but if I am sending photocopies 
they must be authorised and signed

by a person more valid and bona fide than me

but I can send copies of 

utility bills, (not my mobile phone)

and bank statements

or a credit card statement
or a Firearms or Shotgun certificate
(now where did I put that?)

or tax notification, 
or notice of coding or statements

or a Building Society passbook

or a local authority rent book

or recent evidence of a local authority funded benefit scheme,
(and I must choose a password
and two secret answers
and a significant place
and my mother's maiden name
and a significant date,
none of which should be committed to paper)
and then when I have posted these by Recorded Delivery
will I not have furnished some complete stranger
with the comprehensive means to be
a valid bona fide replica of me?


I just wanted to open a savings account.
But now I wish I had put it
under the mattress
where I honestly believe
it would have been safer.

Duck therapy

It is never a bad idea

to go and visit

 the ducks.

You can lose yourself

in the scribbled reflections.

A Walk in the Park

It has been dreadful weather this weekend.

but the skies cleared briefly today

and we got out for a walk in the park

and found more colour than expected

to leaven the grey.

Drip, drip, drip

The builders have left for the weekend.

                                                        

Rain, rain,rain

Drip, drip, drip.

Leak, leak, leak.

Yellow stain,

Stain, stain.

Buckets, bowls and crates

Splish, splish, splish

again.

Tarpaulin?

What tarpaulin?

The word tarpaulin originated as a compound of the words tar and palling, 

referring to a tarred canvas pall used to cover objects on ships.

 By association, according to one theory,

 sailors became known astarpaulins and eventually tars.

Wikipedia

The sofa

I climbed up a very tall thin ladder into scaffolding

and onto the roof today.

Ostensibly I was there to approve the repairs

with my builders,

but actually I was there

so that I could say I had been there;

that I was still nimble enough to climb a ladder;

steady enough not to fall;

brave enough.

And did I enjoy the view?

No. 

I chatted nonchalantly about 

the flashing,

the felting, 

the leading, 

the slipped slates;

all the while

 concentrating hard on not looking at the view.

I was girding myself for the climb down.

So much harder to manage

without the giddy impulse 

that had driven me up there;

the momentary, foolish desire not to be seen as a sofa...

'He looked at her amiably, as though she were a nice sofa.

That must be the penalty of the grey hairs,

the tired shadows under the eyes,

that must be the beginning of getting old.

She had noticed it.

Young men looked at you as though you were a nice sofa,

an article of furniture which they would

never be desirous of acquiring.

The signal flags were hauled down,

the lights went out,

all commerce between the sexes to cease forthwith.'

One FIne Day by Mollie Panter-Downes

One Fine Day 2

Laura watches a nice young man,

(perhaps newly demobbed), 

a hiker with a pocket Keats in his knapsack,

as he gets off the bus.

'He walks alone by choice, thought Laura. 

He walks with calm, manly decision, 

while my day is a feeble woman's day, 

following a domestic chalk line, 

bound to the tyranny of my house

with its voices saying, 

Clean me, polish me, 

save me from the spider and the butterfly.

It is so long since I measured out a day for myself and said, 

This is mine, I shall be alone. 

Men are so much wiser, she thought,

striding deliberately off,

shaking the press of other people from them

and climbing the lonely hill.

One day soon, she promised herself vaguely

as the bus passed the first cottages of Wealding.'

from One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes

One Fine Day

by Mollie Panter-Downes.


I should probably be reading this in July,

 no matter, it may be set in one hot day,

but the narrator takes us back and forth through the seasons

and I am so enjoying it now.

Laura returning from another dispiriting shopping trip
to an unstaffed house,
reminisces about life before the war,

'coming in to the kitchen one autumn morning.

(Chandler had brought in a basket of pale-yellow pears, 
Victoria's cheeks were red as her little coat as she sat in her pram, 
the spider's webs had looped sparkling bridges 
across the smoky blue ravines of the Michaelmas daisies). 

There stood Mrs Abbey, making an apple charlotte, 

Laura remembered perfectly. 
Her hands flew, trimming bread crusts,

 lining the dish, adding fruit and cloves and brown sugar 

which immediately looked good, appetizing, 

when her fat pink hands touched them. 

Laura had stopped there watching,

for the operation had the fascination 

of the simple thing swiftly and perfectly done.'

Winter Sunshine by Phillis Waters 1940s

What not to look for in Autumn

Blackberries -

choose between wizened

or unripe.

Our meagre harvest today.

However yesterday,

out on the Ashdown Forest

the Ladybird book came to life.

Fly-agaric toadstools with their scarlet umbrellas,

A colony of fungi with shiny yellow tufts

called sulphur tuft.

And as a bonus:

an iron spring,

a teepee in a clearing,

an old orchard,

and a fine vine.

Stylist's own

There is much that is covetable in the Toast catalogue,

but the things I'd like to buy

are never for sale.

The haberdasher's chair

Cosmos and Buddleia

on

the haberdasher's chair.

A taller than average chair,

placed at the counter for customers to sit upon

while they chose their wares.

We use it for haircuts but

I can never see it without being reminded of

Milly-Molly-Mandy

who was left in charge of Miss Muggins's shop.

I was once left in charge of a village shop.

It was called Pound Lane Stores.

I can still remember the thrill.

I rang up a million pounds on the cash register

and was in a good deal of trouble.

Milly-Molly-Mandy would never have been so silly.

As she said to little-friend Susan,

who called in for some safety-pins,

'No, this isn't play; it's business. I've got to be very, very careful.'

Skullduggery

I've found a skull in the garden.

Quite a large skull.

Not a bird, or a mouse.

Not a fox or a squirrel.

I've photographed it

and would like to consult

you

about it,

but first,

instead of showing it without warning

here are pictures less alarming,

more charming,

more comme il faut.

It has to be said though,

that a skull is certainly useful and

some might even say beautiful.