Why is it that by the time it comes to going on holiday I'm almost too tired to go. Why is it that I have an almost primeval need to put my house in order, both metaphorically and actually?
I've been writing a list for the last five days, containing all the things I need, or feel I need to do before I go, the laugh is that I'm only going for five nights, mind you the luggage tells another story. I must admit to a sense of achievement every time I cross off an entry on my list, if only I didn't add another three things each time.
Today I've done the last wash, I now have an empty laundry basket - that will not last - The ironing is up straight. Oh yes and I've done the gardening even down to pruning the shrubs. Elsie has been taken to the kennels. Petrol has been purchased, packing has been done. I have nothing left on my list. I have binned it.
Apart from clothes, wash bags etc. I have packed two novels, paints and paper, and two embroidery projects. I'm not sure wether I'm hoping for good weather or not. I really am looking forward to this break, the last few months have been busy and stressful one way and another. We are lucky in knowing the hotel and surroundings will not disappoint. So folks it's off I go.
But I will just write one more short list before bed to remind me of the last minute things I need to pack.
.
Saturday 21 May 2011
Wednesday 11 May 2011
Grumpy Old Women
You may have heard of the programme Grumpy Old Men on the Tele and Radio. Well I currently feel like a grumpy old women following one programme I was watching on the television on Monday evening and Radio 4 on Tuesday lunchtime.
Monday evening there was a moving account of the market town of Wootton Bassett's residents tribute to the young men and women who have given their lives whilst on active service, and are being repatriated from the Military Airfield to Oxford via Wootton Bassett.
The film talked to various residents, old servicemen and women, shopkeepers school children and those who regularly stand as the roadside as the hearse and its escort vehicles pass through. The family of the deceased wait outside the local hotel, having arrived from the airfield before the hearse reaches the town. As the procession enters the town, the local church ring a sombre peel and the town becomes silent. Those flag bearers standing at the roadside lower their flags in tribute as the hearse passes. It then halts beside the mourning family for a minute and a half giving them time to lay flowers on the hearse, and it then slowly moves off. The whole thing is done with great dignity. Many other tributes and wreaths are laid by family and local residents at the war memorial which is in the high street.
So you may ask what is in this most moving and well made documentary to get me so cross. Well they talked to a veteran of the last world war who regularly attends these repatriations. He showed the large album he was keeping of the cards and written tributes that had been left with floral tributes at the war memorial.
He explained that he collected them "so that they are not ruined by the rain, or blown about in the wind". We saw him in this film arriving back at home at what appeared to be immediately after the repatriation with a clutch of these cards, place them in the album, close it up and place it back in its place in his home.
I was upset and amazed that it had been filmed, surely the producer could see that this was in fact a dreadful thing for someone to do. Those cards written by mourners bearing very personal and heart felt messages do not belong in this gentlemens cupboard. I can understand his desire to care for them. But surely there is also dignity and beauty in decay. Just as everything of beauty must come to an end, so these tributes must be left to their demise. I also worried at what the families would feel that their tributes were being taken away. Well that was Monday.
On Tuesday lunchtime whilst listening to the news programme "The World at One", I was struck by the interview being conducted by Martha Carney. She had invited Ken Clarke, the current Justice Secretary to answer questions on prison sentencing. I have a lot of time for Ken, not necessarily his politics but for his general good sense and well thought through reasoning on such an important issue. He is also a jazz fan which I like. Martha asked her questions and then proceeded to talk and heckle him all the way through his answer, meaning we were unable to understand either her questions or his response. How rude. She had invited him on the programme, she might have shown him the courtesy of listening. Who does she think she is, Jeremy Paxman?
I do find the older I get the more intolerant I'm becoming, or is it opinionated?
Monday evening there was a moving account of the market town of Wootton Bassett's residents tribute to the young men and women who have given their lives whilst on active service, and are being repatriated from the Military Airfield to Oxford via Wootton Bassett.
The film talked to various residents, old servicemen and women, shopkeepers school children and those who regularly stand as the roadside as the hearse and its escort vehicles pass through. The family of the deceased wait outside the local hotel, having arrived from the airfield before the hearse reaches the town. As the procession enters the town, the local church ring a sombre peel and the town becomes silent. Those flag bearers standing at the roadside lower their flags in tribute as the hearse passes. It then halts beside the mourning family for a minute and a half giving them time to lay flowers on the hearse, and it then slowly moves off. The whole thing is done with great dignity. Many other tributes and wreaths are laid by family and local residents at the war memorial which is in the high street.
So you may ask what is in this most moving and well made documentary to get me so cross. Well they talked to a veteran of the last world war who regularly attends these repatriations. He showed the large album he was keeping of the cards and written tributes that had been left with floral tributes at the war memorial.
He explained that he collected them "so that they are not ruined by the rain, or blown about in the wind". We saw him in this film arriving back at home at what appeared to be immediately after the repatriation with a clutch of these cards, place them in the album, close it up and place it back in its place in his home.
I was upset and amazed that it had been filmed, surely the producer could see that this was in fact a dreadful thing for someone to do. Those cards written by mourners bearing very personal and heart felt messages do not belong in this gentlemens cupboard. I can understand his desire to care for them. But surely there is also dignity and beauty in decay. Just as everything of beauty must come to an end, so these tributes must be left to their demise. I also worried at what the families would feel that their tributes were being taken away. Well that was Monday.
On Tuesday lunchtime whilst listening to the news programme "The World at One", I was struck by the interview being conducted by Martha Carney. She had invited Ken Clarke, the current Justice Secretary to answer questions on prison sentencing. I have a lot of time for Ken, not necessarily his politics but for his general good sense and well thought through reasoning on such an important issue. He is also a jazz fan which I like. Martha asked her questions and then proceeded to talk and heckle him all the way through his answer, meaning we were unable to understand either her questions or his response. How rude. She had invited him on the programme, she might have shown him the courtesy of listening. Who does she think she is, Jeremy Paxman?
I do find the older I get the more intolerant I'm becoming, or is it opinionated?
Saturday 7 May 2011
Homesickness
Having chatted to Miff the other day he encouraged me to open a blog well here we go. Whilst talking about books we were reading I mentioned that I was trying a new author Suzannah Dunn. I'm really enjoying it,it's a historical novel set during the reign of Mary Tudor, just after her disasterous marriage to Phillip of Spain. By the way this took place in Winchester Cathedral. Many Spaniards joined Phillip when he came to England amongst them a sundial maker? He was not very happy and obviously missing home his wife and three year old son.
I have not been so moved by a piece of writting for a very long time, it brought back to my mind a situation that I had experienced myself - I'll explain later anyway here is the piece of writing.
`These past thirteen days, he'd been shaken to the core by how homesick he felt: the savagery of it, its relentlessness. Dizzied by it, was how he felt. About to buckle. Hollowed, as if something had been ripped from him. His chest sang with the pain and he was confused and ashamed because he saw no sign that other men felt like this. Antonio certainly didn't. But,then, other men too would hide it, wouldn't they, so there'd be no knowing. He hadn't anticipated feeling like this. He'd often been away from home - sometimes for a couple of weeks - and had never enjoyed it, but nothing had prepared him for this. And because he hadn't anticipated it, he felt tripped up, tricked by it, taken unawares and thereby enslaved by it. He couldn't see how he'd get from under it, or how he was going to cope, to continue, from day to day. Common sense told him that he would, that it would lessen, but he didn't believe it. This homesickness was going to hunt him down.
He missed his little Francisco - God, how he missed him - and in six weeks there'd be so much more to miss, because he was growing so fast. A head taller at a time, he seemed. Rafael felt that his son's head came up to his chest now, even though he knew it couldn't be so - but that's where he felt the lack of him, that's where the hollowness was. That little head. Rafael longed to cup the back of it as he had when Francisco was a baby; take the weight of it, enjoy the fit and solidness of it in one hand. His little boy's hair, too; his silly blond hair, as Rafael thought affectionately of it. He longed to touch it, to relish its abundance. Not much of it was there when he was newborn, most of it had grown since - which Rafael found almost comical, and touching; all that busy, vigorous but gloriously oblivious growing that Francisco had done for himself.................`
That is the particular passage that I understood so well, but would not be able to write so eloquently. It reminded me of the time that Matthew went away to a Chorister training course in Haileybury. I never to this day know how Matthew felt about going away from home, he appeared to be totally relaxed about it, it was me that wasn't coping. He must have been about eight, he had gone with friends all should have been well, but I felt bereft. That hollowness described in that passage sums up how I felt. I could not sleep for worry, I'm sure that I must have driven Pete mad. I remember driving back to see him and watching him unobserved skipping about the place once had had prossesed angelically from the chapel after a service. Oh the joys of parenthood they never leave you not matter how old you or your children are.
I have not been so moved by a piece of writting for a very long time, it brought back to my mind a situation that I had experienced myself - I'll explain later anyway here is the piece of writing.
`These past thirteen days, he'd been shaken to the core by how homesick he felt: the savagery of it, its relentlessness. Dizzied by it, was how he felt. About to buckle. Hollowed, as if something had been ripped from him. His chest sang with the pain and he was confused and ashamed because he saw no sign that other men felt like this. Antonio certainly didn't. But,then, other men too would hide it, wouldn't they, so there'd be no knowing. He hadn't anticipated feeling like this. He'd often been away from home - sometimes for a couple of weeks - and had never enjoyed it, but nothing had prepared him for this. And because he hadn't anticipated it, he felt tripped up, tricked by it, taken unawares and thereby enslaved by it. He couldn't see how he'd get from under it, or how he was going to cope, to continue, from day to day. Common sense told him that he would, that it would lessen, but he didn't believe it. This homesickness was going to hunt him down.
He missed his little Francisco - God, how he missed him - and in six weeks there'd be so much more to miss, because he was growing so fast. A head taller at a time, he seemed. Rafael felt that his son's head came up to his chest now, even though he knew it couldn't be so - but that's where he felt the lack of him, that's where the hollowness was. That little head. Rafael longed to cup the back of it as he had when Francisco was a baby; take the weight of it, enjoy the fit and solidness of it in one hand. His little boy's hair, too; his silly blond hair, as Rafael thought affectionately of it. He longed to touch it, to relish its abundance. Not much of it was there when he was newborn, most of it had grown since - which Rafael found almost comical, and touching; all that busy, vigorous but gloriously oblivious growing that Francisco had done for himself.................`
That is the particular passage that I understood so well, but would not be able to write so eloquently. It reminded me of the time that Matthew went away to a Chorister training course in Haileybury. I never to this day know how Matthew felt about going away from home, he appeared to be totally relaxed about it, it was me that wasn't coping. He must have been about eight, he had gone with friends all should have been well, but I felt bereft. That hollowness described in that passage sums up how I felt. I could not sleep for worry, I'm sure that I must have driven Pete mad. I remember driving back to see him and watching him unobserved skipping about the place once had had prossesed angelically from the chapel after a service. Oh the joys of parenthood they never leave you not matter how old you or your children are.
Friday 6 May 2011
New blog started
This is the first issue of my new weblog. I have created it at about 22:30 on 6 May 2011.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)