frugality and poetry

I love the mistiness of Bodmin moor, my resolve is to explore the other two large moors of Dartmoor and the moors on Land's End.  Yorkshire moors are somewhat different but travel across them in the mist or the snow and they can be just as exhilarating.

It rains this morning, dullness everywhere, a bleak greyness but I like this soft autumn feel to the day, and today its Poetry day, what to choose, my poets seem all gloomy sadly; What about R.S.Thomas, vicar in Wales, a miserable writer of poetry;

There is no present in Wales,

And no future;

There is only the past,

Brittle with relics,

Wind-bitten towers and castles

with sham ghosts;

Mouldering quarries and mines

I shan't go on because he becomes rude about the people and I happen to love Wales and its echo of past history. There is Ted Hughes being equally moody in Bridestones and yet I love his descriptive images in The Hawk and Pike, shall I turn to Gary Snyder which I quoted as winter started to settle in some years ago, it captures the nature of 'thinking', already I see the still waters round the standing stones on Bodmin Moor float through; the reeds blowing in the wind, saturated land lying atop rock.

Clearing the mind and sliding in
to that created space,
a web of waters streaming over rocks,
air misty but not raining,

The Piper Stones on Bodmin Moor

But enough of that what took my fancy yesterday, listening to how to be frugal on the radio, the blog in question Frugal Queen has had blog awards so I found it on the web and read her blogs, such a robust clear-sighted person rather terrified me in her confidence. But anyway, apart from being completely sensible she gave links, one of them was for this company who make clothes in Derbyshire, rather beautiful  but expensive of course - David Nieper.  Of course they are British made, and reflect that in their price, though having watched  Panorama show the terrible conditions in which some of our clothes are made in Bangladesh, perhaps we should learn to save up and just have one or two choice items.... But then LS pointed out how would these people ever get out of their poverty, he likened it to when Britain was struggling through the Industrial Age, and the terrible conditions that existed in the mills and work houses... the world is a wicked place.

Frugality is the watchword of self-suffiency of course, I have rather lost my way there now, though have always practised it through my life but times are different, no hens at the door at the moment! But if I take anything away from her blog it is that if you have a £100, spend £85 and put the rest away, there again the world might slip into a black void taking my savings with it ;)