Miscellany on Sunday

Today is Sunday, a damp and drizzly day, a time to contemplate the world outside.  First of all as I wash up and watch the birds at the bird feeder, a greater spotted woodpecker flies in (music - she wears red feathers and a hula-hula skirt) actually he is a male feeding on the nuts.  Here comes the chaffinch, then my little feathery balls of tree sparrows, the coal tits make an appearance and so do blue tits. 

Taken from The Woodland Trust

I watched the kitten yesterday evening sleeping quietly by the honeysuckle, is she lonely I wonder, her sleepiness shows a confidence in my presence, she will often doze off as I fill her bowl with biscuits and I wonder what will happen to her in the future.

I talked to a friend over the church wall, sad news the dreaded C has invaded the person who so kindly helped me make up the single bed in the downstairs room for Paul and in which I sleep now.  He is unrecognisable she says, such things haunt the mind all day.  Gossip is not always happy, and we contemplate the new world we have arrived via the virus.

Yes music was on my mind yesterday, I thought of Bob Dylan's  - It's a Hard Rain Gonna Fall but then decided it was too miserable for 'Desert Island Discs' but I love the poetic words even though they are beginning to reflect the world we live in now.  My next thought went to Leonard Cohen and 'You want it Darker', again too near  the grave to be happy.  So another favourite and a bit more cheerful  Ra-Ra Rasputin, I love music you can dance to and the words always make me laugh. As for classical, putting Mozart to one side for the moment, English music still holds its charm, Ralph Vaughan William 'The Lark Ascending' can still catch the heart. Sea music by Peter Maxwell Davies, and then there's a composer that dances at the back of my brain, high church music in a discordant tone, a bit like Davies is doing at the moment.......

I was going to take the above paragraph out but it takes me on an enticing adventure into music and will leave it, just to jog my memory. Roses are beginning to emerge, Rosa Mundi with its stripey petals, Compassion's pink blooms are beginning to unfold, and is that a Graham Thomas yellow rose or did it die last year and I have another named rose?

I note a certain grumbling about the status of George Floyd, he is a criminal they say.  Yes, maybe, but this movement has just made him a symbol of a truth that so called Anglo-Saxons have been hiding under the bed for years, we are ever so slightly racist ;) Like women had to get through the 'glass ceiling' years ago, we now have to as some one put it so beautifully yesterday  about black people.  We do not want to be on the menu anymore, we want to sit at the table.....................

Warning; Political - rubber bullets hurt

America is breaking down, when they shoot at the journalists they shoot at truth and reporting.  Politics may not figure in the things you want to know each day.  But it is serious.  A president who just shoots his mouth off has now become a dangerous force to be reckoned with.  I trust that my government will have nothing to do with him and will speak out against what is happening in the USA.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH8Zw8gjAEU

The above video is a BBC news clip, the Guardian has also something to say  Says much more than myself but that was because I was so angry this morning.  Yes protesting out on the street is a firework ready to go off, looters are not to be accepted by the law abiding.  Black people though have the unalienable rights to call for justice and equal recognition and our journalists have the right to free speech and recording of the events that happen.  End of rant..........

The final version of the Declaration of Independence declares: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Friday 5th June - rain has fallen

We're playing 8 records chosen as favourite pieces of music as featured in 'Desert Island Discs' on Going Gently blog and Radio 4 today.  I have never got to the eight I would choose, but two so far would be from my favourite classical to John Peel's favourite 'Teenage Kicks'.  John  Peel the background music from the 60s  on radio 1, I can still here his voice.  The classical is Mozart's Clarinet music, it swoops and glides with such intensity.  Perhaps Schubert's 'The Trout' as well, I love the images of sparkling water dancing in the sunlight, it reminds me of childhood and a Welsh farm and tickling for trout.

On F/B the black image has appeared again and again, a call for the racism and hate to stop.  We all pay lip service to it, that of course is not right we do not all there are some ready to hurt black people and bring them down and we have witnessed such an act recently.  Technology brings us the music I am playing at the moment but it was a phone that brought  those harrowing 8 minutes and 46 seconds a man died at the brutal treatment of a police officer.  It was noted all round the world, another nail in the coffin of the human race.  Anger is riding a wave, will things be different though amongst all the other woes of the world.  The BBC showed the memorial service on its news last night, the whole time of the act.  It gave you pause to think, to wander round the faces of those who were grieving, there was pride and anguish, as there always is when a family has to face the death of a loved one.  It should never have happened but it has sparked a wave of knowledge and sympathy and we should be glad of that.

Only a poem this morning

Joanne left this poem in comments a few days ago, (thank you) so I thought to record it here as we are in bumblebee prime time.  Naomi shihab Nye is a poet I have never come across before, so in the space of two weeks I have been introduced to two new poets, Brian Bilston is the other, I will put him up later on in the week.

A friend from long ago said on F/B that perhaps one day we would meet up at the stones. That part of my life seems to have vanished, though I will still drag up a photo or two but to be honest Yorkshire does not hold such a delightful palette of prehistoric stone circles and stones as Wiltshire.  Avebury, Stonehenge, and Stanton Drew stone circles.  Stoney Littleton, Wayland Smithy and West Kennet Barrow cannot be found round here.

Silbury Hill 

GIRLS, GIRLS

When the boys are alone,
they wash the dishes with facecloths.

When a honeybee is alone — rare, very rare —
it tastes the sweetness
it lives inside all the time.

What pollen are we gathering, anyway?
Bees take naps, too.
Maybe honeybees taste pollen side by side
pretending they’re alone.
Maybe the concept of “alone” means nothing
in a hive.

A bumblebee is not a honeybee.
It only pretends to be.

The cell phone in your pocket
buzzes against your leg.
It’s not a honeybee, though. It’s just a
mining bee, or leaf-cutter, or
carpenter.

You’re stung by messages from people far away.
You can’t make anyone well.
You can’t stop a war.
What good are you?

Bees drink from thousands of flowers,
spitting up nectar
so you may have honey
in your tea.

Maybe you don’t want to think about it
so much.
Pass the honey please.

During winter, bees lock legs
and beat wings fast to stay warm.
Fifty thousand bees can live in
a single hive.
Clover honey is most popular
and clover is a weed.
All the worker bees are female.
Why is that no surprise?

-Naomi Shihab Nye, from Honeybee

It's a sorry state of affairs

Wednesday 3rd June

Today's news.  Jeremy the snail who had a  left spiralled shell and who died three years ago, and left a family of 52 other snails.  Well it was all an accident being born with a left spiral and not a right according to a scientist today who has been studying the case of left against right..  Well join the clan Jeremy I'm left handed as well, and manage quite happily, (except for scissors).  Such frivolous news makes the day a bit less full of more dramatic things.  But suddenly in the deep recesses of my brain I remember at nursery school being made to use my right hand for drawing, it did not work.  One other thing I would ask of the snails and slugs, I know the rain today will be a welcome relief for all of you but don't climb up the bags and eat my bean plants please.  I don't use slug pellets because of all the other creatures in the garden.

It is raining, joy of joys and I must go to Bata to get animal food.  Also the 'rape' of Yorkshire beauty spots will be called to a halt, and rubbish tipping will stop.  Something is wrong, people need the great outdoors but they don't know how to look after it, perhaps self mocking signs might help ;) I could put forth the theory that the human race is stupid but then I might get lynched, but double parking down narrow lanes how did you get out early?  And how does a picnic result in tons of rubbish, okay middle class sensibilities would be seen out with a wicker basket with all the accoutrements bound down inside, with elegant food to boot but forget them.  The contents of a supermarket sprawled along the grass or on the beach really is too much, just think it out more.

End of rant.  One further point, when I walk the dog, I will pick up the empty cans and sweet packets people so kindly throw out of their car windows as they go by, but I can't do it most of the times because I need rubber gloves to pick up the stuff now and forget to take them with me.

And not forgetting the next Unwanted insect from foreign parts, on the list the murderous Asian Hornet that feasts I believe on the leg muscles of our beautiful honeybee.  If sighted, report!

Another angle

Went for a walk round the church yard, to visit Margaret Wood's grave.

Looking over the garden wall at Lucy waiting patiently at the gate

Louisa Margaret Wood July 1915 till August 2011

East end of church

decorative carving

Penny has dropped, she has seen me, after wildly waving my arms and yelling.  I know what Lucy is thinking - "mad cow

 why is she there?"

Why these photographs, well every now and then I think of  Margaret Wood, her life in the village and how it had changed over the years.  She was  brought up in this village, born and died and never married.  Her old ramshackle cottage sold to a builder, who promptly pulled it down and built two smart houses in its place. Life goes on but what we leave behind in the way of history is sad, the land on which it stood now has another three homes on it - 5 in all.

All morning the farm traffic has piled past with tractors pulling large trailers of silage, the farms have grown big over the years she lived here, when in all probability the hay was cut with scythes when she was young.

And a couple of 'stolen' photos of a lady who was very much part of  village life.

With her brother John, she was 4 years

Slightly blurry  photo of award at Buckingham Palace, I should think for selling poppies

Go to Google Earth, and you can still see the cottage hidden behind trees before it was pulled down.  The two new houses were named after the two of the trees in the garden.  She was a bit of a celebrity in the village I think, in the end she lived in a caravan in her garden and people looked after her.  Someone told me that as the cottage fell into disrepair and the roof developed a big hole, the bedroom floor collapsed under the weight of a bucketful of money.  All gone now, papers destroyed by the builder, just one life lived in one place, I wonder what she gossiped about?  She left her money to the church, no flowers on her grave to remember her though.  Grave yards can be a sad place but they are also a place where people gather their thoughts and remember their loved ones but she has no one to remember her.  Another Eleanor Rigby?  No because she lived in the quiet safety of her village.

The old Willow cottage. I can see an old beech tree which must have been replaced by a young beech tree, which has since died.

This would have been the back garden of the cottage, (jungle growth) the brick wall similar to ours. 

The brick wall has vanished now and a hawthorn hedge has replaced it, a bone of contention in the village. 

The World has changed

So where to begin, there is good and bad news as always.  George Floyd killed by a white police officer.  The injustice has sparked race riots and protest all over America.  The television is lit up by marching protesters, fires and cars overturned, with a few peaceful people trying to stop this flow of anger.  Peace be with them and perhaps one day we will look on everyone as equal.

Our country has exploded outward after lockdown has been declared partly open, the great experiment begins.

Sometimes news only lights up the bad and violent, for instance my view of Turkey has always been somewhat clouded by the anti-Turkish news not only about its president but by the need of Turkey to join Europe, the Muslim influence, as in the black presence in America.  Then Nigel Slater comes along and with courtesy and gentle manners opens up  the country that is both kind and hardworking.  Food, that essential we must think about every day is his gift, a generous manner and a willingness to praise everything so different.

So does one good thing cancel another, not quite it just rights the world into a more navigable place.  The ceanothus's blueness is alive with little bumble bees their yellow pollen sacks full, and they are indeed nesting above in the old coke house, not far too fly then.  The blue of the ceanthus highlighting the colour of the roses and the mock orange's white flower is beginning to show.

Yesterday, I made an order to Holland and Barrett for dried fruit, one thing that seems to have dried up on the shelves. I eat dried fruit in lieu of chocolate trying to keep my weight down.  But some of it is for baking into a simple tea bread.  Notice that all their expensive Manuka honey is half price but went for Australian honey, even at half price Manuka is expensive.  Is it really a magic bullet of healthiness;)

Sunday

We are being allowed more freedom, it is a bit like having a gun with one bullet in it.  Russian roulette is the game we must play, any one up for it?  I think most people will decide upon sensible decisions but the few that don't will put others in danger.  I have only one thought to add, what if the doctors and nurses, front line in the stakes of death, refuse to administer to us, as they have a right to.  After all 'free will' is the prerogative of all!  In the end it is  just not me, but everyone else that needs protecting...

And of course we are a sodding messy race as well;)

Gorgeous morning once more, Lucy and I walked down to the green, now is the time of the grasses (as tall as an elephant's eye) who remembers that song I wonder.  Also, of course their lesser brethren the docks.  One ugly plant amongst the soft rippling of flowering wild grasses.  I shall have to learn some more about the docks, for after all are they not the cure against nettle stings?

Saturday 30th May - Allingham

 

The weather is so soft with its gentle warmth that one wonders if we are in for a drought?  The gardens remind me of a piece of music, for reverence of flowers is not a modern phenomenon.  The Victorian Garden was a television programme many years ago, I fell in love with the music and every time I hear it on the radio it brings back memories....  Here in this video Helen Allingham's paintings are shown.

"You have the radiance and innocence of reinstated infant divinity showered again among the flowers of English meadows by Mrs.Allingham and Kate Greenaway".  John Ruskin

Paintings of pretty gardens.  Her cottage paintings perhaps reflect more of a truth, the poverty of ramshackle thatched cottages, a bucolic England, now part of our culture  in  holiday cottages decor as they try to seduce you into spending your money on their second homes for a holiday in a cottage with 'roses round the door'.  Never read the history of Britain without realising the rich got rich on the hard labour of the poor.

Some time later: Well I remembered an article in John Ruskin's The Art of England, a rather worn copy of the 1893 edition I own.  It was about Kate Greenaway and Mrs.Allingham, though I could not find much about the latter.

But Ruskin and I are on the same page as to social conditions, he was talking about how children in Victorian Britain were often drawn being eaten by crocodiles and lions, this of course due to a religious bias that said you must frighten your children into obedience.

"But in England it was long repressed by the terrible action of our wealth, compelling our painters to represent the children of the poor as in wickedness or misery".

I like John Ruskin, he writes voluminously ;), the subjects racing off his pen, and like William Morris was a social commentator of his time

Wandering around as usual; But finding this book, an original, and I questioned its value on the net, well it will not reach the £85 asked by one bookseller mine is a rather  dirty copy.  But the cover is vellum, animal skin, and so should be able to clean up gently.  I remember an old friend who also collected old books, talking about the use of cigarette paper to mend a torn page. Remember when those who could not afford expensive made up cigarettes, pulling out their little boxes of Rizla papers?

A moment

Weather beautiful. The wind is still, the sun breaks through cloud and the garden is filled with bird chatter.  Chris Packham on Springwatch last night was so delighted with his world in the woods by his home near the New Forest.  There is an excitement in the air, we have pulled the hold called 'stop the world I want to get off' and it is so intriguing. Badgers coming out in daylight, dolphins swim into our harbours, the Thames in the countryside, clear and beautiful because there are no boats.  Chase the butterflies and bees take in the magic for this moment.  

My garden has grown with unrestrained vigour, the weeds, dandelion and creeping buttercup all but obliterated.  My favourites come into flower, the roses, honeysuckles, cranesbills and a couple of foxgloves from last year.

Now for a small video, I promise to improve but I still can't edit properly.....

stairway to heaven

Well yesterday I chased bees, there is a bumble nest under the roof of the old coke house.  A honey suckle sprinkles its magic over the fence and the ceonothus is just coming into bloom, its soft blue flowering habit somewhat unusual in a garden given over to pinks, reds and yellows.  My camera played up when I tried to film it, but I am going to give it another try.  Cameras have a language I do not understand, full of abbreviations, numbers and complicated instructions.

Dominic Cummings is passing in a swirl of news, we all move on.  So the above video will please the heart, we are in a new era at the moment so how do we change the world?  Arundhati Roy, an Indian novelist talks about how the pandemic is a portal to a new world.

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.  On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing".

Yes I would like a different world, it will probably never happen but there has been a slight adjustment to the old world.  Here in our country and others we have learnt of kindness from the majority of people, we have learnt that we do not have to rely on the outdated stuffiness and crap of educated Eton boys.  The people who count are doctors, nurses, cleaners, dustbin men, supermarket shop workers and kind neighbours.  They have done their jobs in the face of a cruel pandemic.  We won't go back to the original world, this world and the air we breath is cleaner, pollution has fallen away.  The animals have wandered into our towns, are they really concerned about our welfare ;)

Will you really go into a changing room and try on clothes that someone else has worn, we now walk around with strictures to obey - two metres distance, it will be marked by yellow lines and chalked pavements. And of course we will all keep our fingers crossed that there will not be a second wave.

Guardian podcast on DC

Idle thoughts

They seek him here,
they seek him there,
those Frenchies/journalists seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
That demned elusive Pimpernel/Cummings

I had been worrying a bit where Dominic had gone, when last seen fleeing 10 Downing Street because of the virus.  Well he has made the headlines again.  Could we not have a bit of charity here?  As a letter from a headteacher in York described Dominic he suffers from 'arrogance personified' well we could all have recognised that, he has a personality deficiency, amongst other deficiencies.  Johnson also has not got the hang of running this country, his defence of Dominic really was a bit foolish, not Churchillian at all.  More like defending the back of an old mate!  Does he not realise that when you run a government you run it for the people (60 million and still counting) and not an air-head of a nonsense lad.  

Dillie Keane had it right when she blamed Cummings for the 'herd immunity' solution, and though looking back retrospectively is not a good idea, would we not have had less deaths than the 36,793 deaths up till today.  The headteacher who wrote above to his MP was angry that his mother died alone in a care home a couple of hundred of miles away and he did not visit her because of the 'lockdown'.  The bishops are also rumbling away on Twitter about the unfairness of it all.  

Forward good Conservatives, strike the serpent from the heart of your government,  And then all be quiet about him please, because Dominic should not be given air time, there are more important things happening in the world!

Let's get rid of the boomers!

Okay just found this funny  video from Dillie Keane - A Song for Dominic Cummings.  Poor man hounded from here to there and he was not doing anything really bad, just protecting his family, and unfortunately moving from one part of the country to another.  Obviously there is one law for some the rest of us have to abide by the actual law.

So to the anonymous troll, who sadly can't appear unless he shows his real credentials, we are getting the message ;) 

Jackie Morris and the Bookshop Band

This is a video of a concert since closed because of the virus.  It was to take place at St.David's cathedral in Pembrokeshire, a favourite holiday place.  Jackie Morris and Robert MacFarlane wrote the book of 'The Lost Words', which at that time certain words had been left out of the Oxford dictionary.  The young singer, Beth is  sweet  but I must admit I moved on through her songs.  The picture of the little daughter in her 'outfit' was charming, and the whole naive video of 25 minutes is a joy to watch.

It shows how people cope in this age of lockdown, and brings the message home that our young are still dreaming......... And it is going in my blog/diary

Friday 22nd May

 Serendipity;  the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. or.....

The faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.

I used that word the other day on Y/P blog and thought about it.  'Dipping into serenity' was my first thought, a clever use of a word, but it was Horace Walpole,  in 1754 who first used it and wrote it down.

old photo of foxglove

 So what was my serendipitous moment yesterday.  Well there I was reading about the mating of carder bees, when Brigit Howard put a little video of the act in progress, single bees, like the carder bees, are different in their approach to sex.  Has it never occurred to anyone though, that the queen bee is the residential head of the household, the male bee is very inferior and normally dies after mating, how did that switching of power happen I wonder?

Sometimes I love the shape of leaves better than the flowers

When I took my mug of tea into the garden in the evening, there were several honeybees on the perennial geraniums and a white tailed bumble bee in the bush my day was complete.

Just been shopping at 7 o clock, joy of joys, my weekly outing, along with Lucy who just likes to ride in the car. A grey horse and rider went past the gate and we greeted each other - life is so exciting ;).  I have taken to do my weekly shop in the small Co-op in Kirkby, it is easier they have all that I need, and the shelves are already beginning to fill up, could it be that the panic is over? Toilet rolls on the shelves, read an interesting  article on bidets yesterday, not something cultivated in Britain but I will not digress into the subject some might find  it distasteful but they do save an awful lot of tree lives.

An article on 'The Bottom Line about Bidets', culled from the Smithonsian magazine  It is graphic!

World Bee Day

Its about Bees today, clever poem by brian Bilston

Wednesday 20th May

It is going to be warm today, the day dawns with immaculate beauty, cool at the moment.  The news hits us like a typhoon wave, but most people have turned their backs on it, not entirely a good strategy. Today it is diabetics that are pulled to the fore, as they calculate at which age stage the virus is most dangerous.  My son is type 1, healthy and slim, Monday he was talking about coming down, and my heart filled with fear.  Luckily train times don't marry up and it is postponed for the time being.  Of course I want to see him but travelling on trains? no is the answer.

The older I get the more I see that the system is broken, the country is almost running itself, London-centric politicians flounder in front of us, pissing in the wind.  Best they keep their mouths shut, for what comes out is derided the next day by an ever hungry news lobby, whose only function is to strike us with fear.

Well that's off my chest ;) First time yesterday I asked a volunteer for help in getting my prescription from the chemist.  I somehow felt that the chemist might be a place of contagion, weird surely?

Today I will make a virtual tour of Cornwall and its cromlechs, remembering that the weather was not too good. Also there is a fatless teabread to be made and blackberry jelly to be simmered gently until it reaches that stage of firmness and clear dark purple.

this would you believe is a settlement on the moors

The faded carvings of old church porches

The captivating small Duloe stone circle of quartz stone

Trevethy Quoit

Lanyon Quoit

Ultimately we don't know! - Steven Bush Quote

Will there be a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of the year? We don't know. What are the long term health effects of having the novel coronavirus on those who get it? We don't know. Is longterm immunity from the disease even possible? We don't know. Could the novel coronavirus vanish unexpectedly? We don't know. Are schools significant vectors of infection? We don't know.

The Independent on the 'Blame Game'

Tuesday 19th May

Wake up again to more rain, thank goodness.  There is a song on Camelot, singing the praises of rain at night and sunny weather in the day.  Two videos today one of the rose bed and its promise of flowers, and the other continuing the theme of food by Liziqi.  How to prepare a squash in several different ways.  The sheer scale of self-sufficiency in her video is breathtaking and you begin to realise that humanity cannot take this path, she is living out a dream but her videos allows us to explore different ideas. And she is probably packing in a great deal of money but I don't like being cynical! I just love the scenery.

My second video is just me with an ever hungry bantam following, there is a big sign above my head obviously to all the animals - SHE PROVIDES FOOD.  The bantams have given up on corn and now demand cooked potatoes, rice and pasta, so it is just a question of doing extra.  Forgotten toast as well but they still manage to lay eggs.  Lucy is also getting into that mood as well, human food is better than dog food, and she will leave hers until there is no more chance of it coming from above.

There is a ceanothus just by the coke house, which has quadrupled in size over the winter, I love the powder blue of its flower against the dark green of its foliage.  Blue flowers are special in the garden, always wanted the blue poppy but of course it only performs on acid soil.

Monday 18th May

A light shower freshens up the garden, I let my squawking hen out, she demands her freedom every day. Fill up, once more the fat balls for the birds. I have tree sparrows, coal tits and jackdaws feeding hungrily on them and also of course the starlings who are raising a family underneath the roof next door, the babes always clamouring for food.

Watched Nigel Slater, probably the only cook I admire for his gentle ways and enthusiam, he was travelling in Lebanon, and was very complimentary on all the food he tasted.  It did bring home the message that you eat what the agriculture of your country provides.  Rosewater and Orange water to flavour, what pictures it brings to the mind as he collected with the owner,  who had planted many types of fruit and roses, the fragrances  of roses and fruit.  In fact it was two sisters that had started this company and a table full of delicious fruit preserves and jams was laid before Slater.

Coincidentally talking to my son later on, only to find he was also interested in Lebanese food and had sent me some photos of what he had cooked last night.

Rice with vermicelli, green chilli, spring onion, pomegranate seeds and bacon. On the side I had kibbeh, humus, red harissa and eggplant tomato stew.  Not forgetting the salad...

Is the whole nation turning into cooks I wonder, my daughter is always asked at breakfast by her almost grown-up children what she plans to cook for tea, and has been concocting sophisticated complicated dishes for  them.  What will happen in the future though as Brexit drives its heart through the country.

Me on the other hand, drags out the Dorothy Hartley's book on 'Food in England' to see if she makes potato pastry, I very much doubt that pomegranates are to be found in either Kirkby or Pickering!  He has offered to buy me a book on Lebanese cookery, but will I use it? or more to the point will the poor postman have to hump even more parcels to the door?

Mark has also been out walking, there is a path not far from his home that leads up the hills that surround Bath.  His goal is Beckford's Tower, and I see from the photo he sent me Kelston Round Hill in the distance and the village of Weston.

Sunday 17th May

Green Eyes thinking

Words fail me, so a little 'stream of consciousness'.  There is a terrible piece of music on radio 3 - dying, dying, dying - wish he would not take so long over it!  Apparently Tennyson wrote the original poem?

I moved my computer downstairs on to the table, and now I can look out on the back garden and the birds, and the kitten growing larger by the day, she sits by the french windows looking in occasionally.

Barack Obama has added his voice to the controversy.......

“Do what you think is right,” Obama told the students. “Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way — which is why things are so screwed up.”

Screwed up is the under statement of the time, everyone is arguing about whether to let us all out in a limited freedom, or whether this move will encourage the virus into a second wave.  The teachers are under pressure to return to school along with the children, everyone is uncertain of what to do.

View from the stones of the village

Yesterday I mooched around the photographs of Eskdalemuir, though of course holidays are off limit, especially in the other three countries of Britain.  Will there be a break up,  Brexit news is going along very quietly, the government have one hell of a distraction issue in the virus, no-deal Brexit might well creep through, as also many other unsavoury items such as chlorinated chicken.

Internet has been off, so I watched Nigel Slater in Lebanon, he is so enthusiastic about Lebanese cooking but then being London orientated he can shop in the relevant shops, think I shall check on how to make flat breads just in case we run out of yeast. But we are not starving which cannot be said for India as people traipse hundreds of kilometres to their home villages.  My only 'want' at the  moment is coffee beans for grinding, been off the shelves for weeks.  So I picked up some ground coffee but fear it may be decaffeinated unfortunately.

Friday 15th May

My day as usual started early, I had planned to go shopping at the small Co-op in Pickering and arrived just after seven. All change again, sanitation station outside with different coloured sanitary bottles.  No black shopping baskets, you have to use the trolleys, the arrows have become more definitive, you walk a determined path. Less food but a good choice of a very limited nature though. But aubergines have suddenly appeared which is a first time.  A large part of my shopping is cat and dog food and necessities such as cheese, milk, butter and fruit.  Next to this small Co-op was the Kia garage and car centre but now all the cars have disappeared and it would seem that a new much larger Co-op will be built.

Reading of some people's washing of food coming into the house, must say I am very negligent on that point, just washing my hands and the odd fruit.  Lucy helps me unpack, she adores pears and once managed to eat two after one shop.

The two gold finch are on the lawn, I stop to watch, a pair of jewels in the greenery, they are eating the dandelion seed.  One moment there are dandelions everywhere, their bright yellow faces reaching to the sun and then we are left with the feathery seed heads, spreading their young to cover the verges and wild spaces once more.

I have kneaded dough for bread and made a mushroom sauce, not sure what it is going on but there was a surplus of mushrooms.  Grated the old bread for fish cakes and now waiting for lunch, which will be hard boiled egg mayonnaise sandwich with lettuce from the garden.

Rachel on her blog has written about the things missing in life, or not. There is only one thing I miss, and that is Paul, but he lives in my heart if not my head all the time.

Thursday 14th May

A night of frost, though tender plants were in the house.  The back lawn looks like a storm has hit it.  Leaves and young branches are scattered around, dandelions shorn of their yellow flowers and odd feathers sticking up, presumably left by the playful kitten.  Green Eyes follows the hens around as if they are playmates.  Various members of her family skulk through but all are wary of Lucy.

I have managed my two jobs a day and feel virtuous, a walk round the garden watching the buds of roses break, and all the lavender plants  waiting to break into that soft purple buds of sweet smelling scent.

Not sure whether to take Lucy for a walk, her front feet bleed occasionally and last time we went she lay down in the middle of the lane, on a corner, to lick them.  We had fun this morning clearing out a cupboard to put all the animal foods I have acquired, I found one of those neck collars, which she wore for 5 minutes.

Restrictions are easing on the lockdown but many people are still wary.  Given the question would I let my child go back to school, the answer would be no I am afraid.  Did a fun survey on F/B and the end answer, was "stay the **** home" .  It would seem to my simple mind that congregations of people will of course spread the virus amongst themselves. The answer is of course that the economy must survive, measuring lives against money though? 

The care homes and their vulnerability were dusted under the carpet at the beginning, now truths are beginning to out, we were so unprepared for a pandemic, though warnings have been on the radar for a couple of years.  Many old people have now died unnecessary earlier deaths, the lives of the care workers put at risk with no PPE to be had.

A pair of gold finch have been around regularly on the lawn, such bright little creatures they must be nesting in the yews.  Starlings are nesting under the roof tiles next door and Irene says the mistle thrush seems to have given up building a nest in their trellising, which is sad.