I recently found this poem which I wrote over forty years ago when my wonderful, wonderful  mother died. I'm afraid it is very sad.

Limp lids

Half closed

Eyes staring dully from within

The children’s rabbit tossed by the dog

Limp and still and growing cold

Your life

Snapped sharp at the neck

By gentle Jesus.

You reached across a moment ago

Reached from the space in which you roam

And took my hand

Your fingers weak but warm.

And now they’re cold. The hand

Lies heavy in my palm.

Your eyes were closed as you lay drifting

And now they’re open.

But you’re not there.

In dying, you’re so beautiful.

Your lips, curved almost in a smile,

Are parted, but no breath stirs.

In dying, you are beautiful.

I, as a child, no world without you,

The only beauty in it there

Because of you.

And so afraid I’d wake

And find you gone.

And now, you have.

And see –

Look –

Feel –

You’re here. In me. And even now

You’re beautiful.

Your gift of death is beautiful.

Hello!

Hello, everybody!

It has been such a long time since I was last able to add to my blog,  so as I am not feeling too bad  today,  I felt I must at least let you know how I am and what has been happening.

I shan't trouble you with all the ins and outs of it; suffice it to say that things went a bit haywire health wise and I have been, and still am, to a large extent, pretty poorly.

I have hardly been anywhere for ages and am still pretty much stuck within these four walls, so there have been no talks or book signings, unfortunately. I haven’t even been able to get any further with the half-completed   sequel to ‘Someday, Maybe’ because it hasn't been  possible to sit staring at a computer screen  for more than a very  few minutes without the back of my head and my neck going into spasm. I find myself having a great deal of empathy with  Mary, Queen of Scots, because my head feels permanently as if I have a sharp, but heavy,  iron axe sticking into the back of it!

(And in case you might think of suggesting it, neither can I write freehand for more than a very short spellI only have one arm that works properly and   my right hand is so  badly damaged  that it also goes into spasm like my head if it feels overused,  the fingers can't hang onto anything properly and, of course, I keep dropping my pen.)

So with continual pain, that permanent headache, lack of sleep  and a great deal of medication which muddles and clouds the old brain, trying to hold onto my ‘freds’ in order to do anything much is just that bit beyond me, at present anyway. 

There is some light, though. I was given an iPad for Christmas and have discovered Siri so I am hoping to be able to do rather more. He does seem to have some difficulty in understanding my dictation and produces the most awful and irrelevant garbage a lot of the time, which, of course, all requires painful correction, but still…!  

 Maybe it is because, as my husband tells me, I don't speak loudly enough (my chest is also affected) although what I say is, he is deaf!

Because the complicated work involved in working on a novel is too much for me at present, my plan for Siri is to help me to keep at least some creative juices flowing by taking down a children’s story which will be comparatively straightforward and which I plan to write in brief paragraphs and in short episodes, so that I can do a little whenever I feel up to it. I hope it will  strike an amusing  chord with those children who are one of two sisters or with parents who have two daughters to whom to read aloud and who have been rather surprised to find out how very different those two children are! 

 Hopefully, more on that anon.

In the meantime, if you have read ‘Someday, Maybe’ or ‘Moving On’, I hope that you enjoyed them and please do a review for me if you can. if you haven’t read them yet, please do! They are available from Amazon and many other booksellers.

apology

Just a very brief word to say, so sorry, everyone, I'm currently out of action for health reasons. Hopefully back before long.

Are writers introverts?

sometime i love to be alone not becouse of lonely..
it's just because i love to spending time with myself and enjoy every little things that i like to do..
so being alone does'nt make me feel lost anywhere
the loneliness let me noe what i need for me all de time..
heppiest moment ever when im alone.

                            Veronica Francis

It is said that an extravert is someone whose batteries are charged by being around people while an introvert gets charged by being alone. Writing is a solitary art; you need solitude for creation. Writers need peace and quiet enough to work, for a start. They need to concentrate. Even those of us who collaborate, write our own pieces separately and knit them together later. Writers get their energy from time alone with their minds. On a good day for writers, there’s a buzz about it; everything else fades away except people and the story in their heads; a “flow” develops and they become lost in thought. They can write pages without pausing, each word leading naturally to the next. At the very least, writers have to be happy on their own.

Then, in order to observe and gain insight into people’s minds and personalities - or where are their characters and their dialogues to come from -  writers must stand back, build a bit of a wall between themselves and other people. To stand back from, to hold back from… It does suggest that they are necessarily rather aloof and reticent.

Is that true? Are all writers introverts, then? I’m interested. What do you think?

'Play on, play on and play the game!'*

Dad already has his much loved copies of ‘Moving On’ and ‘Someday, Maybe’, so I suggested a ticket to a cricket match as a special gift for Father’s day

Offspring  seemed to think it was a good idea and are currently debating the virtues of the One Day game on the Saturday versus the International 120 at on the Tuesday. (It’s no use asking me. I do know that he isn’t keen on One Day matches, but that’s as far as watching it on telly is concerned, and I haven’t the faintest what a 120 is. You’d think I’d have picked up a bit more after 55 years of being a cricket widow, but I haven’t.)

I know he really only enjoys watching test matches on the television, and I can’t think why.  I hear him occasionally swearing or cheering and clapping at some mysterious event, but the pleasure of five days spent watching the grass grow and  men in white* wandering about rubbing a ball up and down their leg, eludes me. If you’ve got to watch a sporting game, it shouldn’t last more than one hour and it should be clear all the time who is winning and who is losing. I’ve learned not to ask that question anyway with cricket. The answer is always too complicated to hope to understand.

(*Or red or green or blue, these days, what’s that all about? The only good thing about it was that the whites against the green  all looked quite pretty.)

Andy Brice (‘Moving On’) knows he’s found a good man when he hears that his neighbour likes cricket, and looked forward to joining the local club. My man, though, doesn’t seem to want to get involved with local club matches any more.  I have it on good information (his) that one of the things that seems to have happened with is that it is very hard to get team members actually out to play.  They don’t want to play away fixtures and will rarely appear for duty more than once in a week, if that.  “Now, in my day…”

Ah, the good old days…. Let me tell you about his day.

Back in the dark days, when the dinosaurs roamed the land, there would be a match every Saturday and every Sunday throughout the season, which seemed to last a lot longer than it does now. There would be mid week games on a Wednesday and Thursday as well, and then there was at least one tour (which is another whole story). Very rarely did anyone miss a match. All team members played in every game, sudden blindness, two broken legs or similar providing the only possible excuses for missing one. Matches seemed to go on from lunchtime until after eleven or twelve in the evening, longer if the game was away from home.

It took me quite a few years to realize that they didn’t really play on after dark under floodlights.

I did try to like cricket, I did, really. In the very early days, I used to go along to matches and try to pass the endless, boring hours perched on a deckchair in the long grass and batting away the midges and the wasps by trying to do some embroidery. We ended up with quite a few grubby and badly decorated pillow cases and table cloths in our bottom drawer before I gave up the will to live - I mean, the will to pretend that I was enthralled and happy. I actually hadn’t a clue what they thought they were all up to out there for hours and hours on the field. It wasn’t even as if you could join them for tea or get together with your man in the bar afterwards, because of course, Women Were Not Permitted To Enter The Clubhouse.

It was quite a well-appointed clubhouse, too, well decorated, with plenty of facilities and plenty of room for all. Occasionally,  visiting wives with bedraggled children tried to break into our clubhouse to shelter from a shower of unexpected rain, only to find  themselves chased out again sharpish, to wander and keep dry where they might, until their men had finished draining the free jugs, buying each other extra pints, dissecting the match in the every minute  detail, laughing at each other’s jokes,   patting each other enough on the backs, (always calling each other, presumably in a gesture of male bonding and camaraderie, by the surname with a ‘y’ or an ‘o’ attached at the end, as ‘Jonesy’ or ‘Gibbo’; it seemed to be mandatory.) and they  (and the coach driver if any) were ready to leave the bar.

After a long, long while, it was grudgingly agreed that the women might come just a little closer and shelter on the verandah outside beneath the overhanging roof – and then, a few years later again, under pressure, the decision was taken to allow the women (though only those unaccompanied by children) to sit upstairs in the committee room on match days. They would even be welcome to purchase a drink, or to have one sent up to them, but downward ordering or upward despatch of liquid refreshment would be done only via a butler’s hatch.

The committee suggested that in return for this privilege wives ought to take over the making of teas from the caterer.

We said no.

This noble committee decision was, some time later amended in an enormous gesture towards equality. One small area at the far end of the clubhouse from the bar would be closed off by a set of heavy doors. Drinks could be carried to this area and the ladies were free there to disport themselves at will. They could even be joined by those men who wished to be with them (though not many did as there really wasn’t very much room.) Should one of the men passing through the doors on their occasional provisioning of drinks carelessly leave one open and should a Female be spotted peering through it towards the bar, someone would stride across smartly and slam the door sharply shut.

Some men, of course, would have been happy to have a mixed membership without restrictions, and they do indeed have one now, but for me, it came too late. Even if I did not applaud the great GBS for his comment that “The English are not a spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give then some idea of eternity,” for me, it is much, much too late.  But bless him, it is Father’s Day coming, and he’s allowed to have his passions.

“There’s a breathless hush in the close tonight -*

Ten to make and the match to win.

A bumping pitch and a blinding light

An hour to play and the last man in…

                                                                                             *Sir Henry Newbold.  

Jim Norris and his tum. -1) 1930s

You may not have helped but notice that both Jim Norris (‘Someday, Maybe’) and Andy Brice (‘Moving On’) are men who are extremely fond of their stomachs.  (Fortunately for them, they are both married to women who see it as their role to have a meal on the table when their man comes in!) I thought it be rather fun from time to time to have a look at some of the things that Jim or Andy might have found waiting on the table.

Today, let’s start with JIM and pick a day from the early chapters of the book, ‘Someday, Maybe’, which opens in the 1930s:-

Jim has a market garden, so that, although money is in very short supply, and the best of the crops have to be set aside for customers so that the family have to make do with the bruised fruit and the windfall apples, there are still plenty of fresh vegetables left over after the boxes are done for the delivery rounds as well as the apples and a variety of soft fruits in their seasons. There are also the hedgerows with their prickly swathes of blackberries, and the fields and hills and woods with their wild herbs and mushrooms and their bilberries.

They occasionally buy meat from the farm, and there are sometimes fish in the nearby river and rabbits and pigeons to be found when Jim goes out with his shotgun. They keep quite a few hens, which they feed by boiling up their scraps with bran, so there are eggs (though they must sell most) and once in a very long while there is the treat of a chicken. This is occasionally roasted, but is usually an old boiler; past her best for laying or as a broody, but she makes a delicious stew.

Nobody is concerned about fats and carbohydrates, and so they have no worries about eating too much butter, cream and cheese. Mary has her milk and cream - unpasteurized and very rich - fresh from the nearby farm and often makes her own butter, using elbow grease to turn the paddle in the wooden churn and, naturally, adding plenty of salt for flavour and preservation, before rinsing and patting the rich, creamy butter into blocks with her pair of wooden paddles. She usually buys cheese from the shop. Frying and roasting is done with lard and dripping, from the occasional roasted meat or from some kidneys, if they can get any, and obtained, if necessary, from the butcher.

The village shop provides most of the other things that they might need, like flour sugar or rice and a few tins, but they try to keep their shopping bills as low as possible. Mary saves the ends of candles and remoulds them and reuses slivers of soap; stored in a jar in a little water, the liquid feels a little slimy, but it works a treat. borax and vinegar, baking soda, ammonia and a bar of household soap deal with her washing and cleaning needs.

So what might Jim actually eat during one of his days in the 1930s?

For his breakfast:-

Mary is out as usual in the early morning seeing to the hens, but has managed to brew some tea and to make some porridge which she has left simmering on the stove. We find Jim helping himself to the porridge and then cutting and buttering a couple of thick slices of bread to have with a cup of tea for his breakfast. This doesn’t sound very exciting, but at this hour he has too many demands on his time to prepare and eat anything more. He may well grab an apple for his pocket from the storage shed when he goes out to get the customer’s fruit and vegetable orders onto the trap ready for the morning round – or even an onion; he is quite partial to a sweet raw onion around ten o’clock when his stomach usually starts to growl. If Mary has plenty and is willing, he may manage to take a small wedge of good strong cheese wrapped up in greaseproof paper to accompany it.

For his dinner:-

Mary prepares the main meal of the day for half-past twelve.  Yesterday she plucked, gutted and boiled up a couple of pigeons,  so today Jim will have one of his favourites – a pigeon pie with a rich gravy of onions and carrots and gravy under a crispy golden lid of suet crust pastry. She will serve it with cabbage – sensibly boiled for a good long time with some soda bicarb in the water to preserve the green colour – and a pile of potatoes mashed with butter and a good dollop of cream.  To follow, apple dumplings, apples sliced with sugar and sultanas mixed in, enveloped in individual blankets of short crust pastry and served with custard. (The full fat, unpasteurised milk from the farm makes lovely, creamy custard.)  Oh, and a cup of tea.

For his tea:-

They only have afternoon tea when they have a visitor, but Mary will usually bring out a drink for him at mid-afternoon wherever he is working in the garden – sometimes homemade lemonade, sometimes tea, sometimes even beer.

When he comes in at 5, there won’t be a great deal of time because there is still the evening round of deliveries to be done as well as many other jobs for both of them to get through. Mary will have made an effort, though, and he can rely on there being a sort of High Tea, with both something savoury and something sweet on the teatime table. (Teatime isn’t complete for Jim without a cake or on the table.)

Today, we will give him one of his favourite savouries - Cheese Dreams. Mary butters bread for sandwiches, filling these with grated cheese and chutney, then beats an egg with two tablespoonfuls of milk. She pours this onto a plate and dips each sandwich into it on both sides, before frying them in butter until they are golden brown and the cheese inside has melted and is piping hot. There will be some bread and butter and a small pot of honey or jam in case it’s needed, and maybe a bit of lettuce and a few tomatoes in the summer, and to follow there is a tasty seed cake, and some sticky parkin left from the last week’s bake.

Oh, and tea, of course. There is always tea.

And for his supper?

Often he will pop in to see an old friend or a faithful customer on his evening round and he may well be offered something to eat or drink, but there is Meg the horse to see to when they get home as well as a myriad of smaller tasks and though he may have had several cups of tea on his travels, he is always thirsty again and a bit hungry again when he does lock the back door for the night at last. Once Mary has seen to the hens for the night, tucked her little Patsy safely to sleep in her little room, made up whatever floral decorations are needed customers for the next day and finished – or put on hold – all her other tasks – they are both too weary to do more than sit at the kitchen table over a plate of bread or crackers and cheese and whatever bits of cake there might still be left. Once in a while, just for a comforting change, Mary may suggest cocoa or even Horlicks if they have a jar. Otherwise, it will be a big pot of tea.

That’s lot of tea in a day for people in a cottage with an outside lav. Good thing they each have a large china po under their side of the bed. 

Politicians, don't forget the Arts! .

'If thou of fortune be bereft

And in thy store there be but left

two fishes, sell one and with the dole

Buy hyacinths to feed the soul.'

                   

                 Muslihuddin Sadi. 

We know that the flower has the shape and colour and perfume that it has, but why do we find it beautiful and why do we seem to need beauty?  Science is beginning to show us just why. Beauty seems to be in the genes of the beholder. Humans just work better when they are looking at certain shapes and colours. hearing certain sounds, smelling different scents - and I don't just mean 'work' in the obvious sense, but in terms of making the best of what we have,  physically and mentally and emotionally. And why do we need the arts? They are part of our humanity. Making art, in all its varieties,  gives us the chance of sharing our experiences with others and  making  some sense of the chaos of life - and what do a Beethoven symphony, a Monet painting and a Shakespearean soliloquy have in common? They give us a means of finding beauty. We need businesses to make the country money, but  we also need beauty - and the Arts. We forget to include it in our education system  at our peril.