A long letter from home

I was sitting here in bed yesterday morning trying to decide exactly what to say to you. Should I say I was giving up the blog? Or should I say I was taking a break?

I don’t want the blog to deteriorate into a sad, dull description of some of my days and experiences, but for the last month or so I have not felt ideas bubbling into my head that I’ve had an urge to share with you. And when I’ve been troubled by some of life’s private dramas and sadnesses I’ve wanted to keep them to myself. I don’t know if this is a new phase of my life. Is it different being 72 in terms of sharing stuff with the world? 

Or is it to do with no longer thinking of myself as a writer? Now when old friends visit and ask about my writing I say ‘Oh, I’m not writing any more, I’m painting.’ This is the current painting I'm working on: a celebration of Derbyshire May verges. It's huge. I am thinking about how to develop it.

My father stopped writing in his seventies too. And no matter how we urged him, he wouldn’t or couldn’t. Did he feel like me? That he had said everything already and that more writing would be rehashing it all?

The blog has been meaningful for me over the years, not only in working out how I feel about both big and small things but in a more basic way too - as a handy record of our life at Hepworth Towers. Dave will ask 'When did I insulate the attic?' and I'll find out by checking the blog. But the other more important meaning for the blog has been connecting with you. 

As I said, I was sitting here yesterday wondering what to do and an email arrived COMPLETELY out of the blue from my dear friend Jan in New Zealand. We email each other just a few times a year. She had just been reading the blog and wanted to write to tell me:

You know, dear Sue, your blog (nearly) always makes me smile. It's like enjoying your favourite chocolate bar after a few weeks without, only much better.

When I had closed the blog today and found myself still smiling I thought I should Tweet. (But I refuse to sign up, sorry.)

Thank you for being a gleam of sunshine and integrity in print and for being such an excellent writer in a world where hideous books both in content and style often seem to float to the top of the pile. Call me old fashioned?...xxxxx

So I emailed straight back and told her I was that moment thinking of ending the blog and this is what she replied:

Don't do it! You are a writer and you need to write; you are an artist and you need a gallery (love your paintings); you are a wife, mother and grandmother-we need to hear of 'normal' families and experience vicariously your love and joy and sorrow and travel plans. Who did not have moist eyes when you posted the picture of greeting your Boulder family after covid? And learnt about margaritas and bears? We learn about Quakers and silent demos of integrity and the plight of the refugees...How about the sequel to Days are where we Live, ten years on? How better to record the historical events, the despair of lock down and the gross unrighteousness and duplicity of the Trumps and the BJ's? And the utter delight of a trip to London after those difficult years? And the lovely poems and book and film reviews...And you are right about recording your personal ups and downs is what makes the blog. It must be hard.

The upshot of all this is that I am not giving up...yet.

I love Jan's phrase 'the gross unrighteousness and duplicity of the Trumps and the BJs' don't you?  I am checking in on the news more often these days, so I can delight in the drip drip drip of Tory MPs denouncing the gross unrighteousness and duplicity of their leader.

Footpath on my favourite local walk

So what has been happening at Hepworth Towers? Here are some disparate happenings and thoughts:

1/  I can tell you one thing: my sweet peas are a flop this year. I planted 80 seeds in pots on the windowsill and 14 came up. This may be because of the compost I used, or the seeds may have been duds. Whatever the reason I've had to buy some seedlings to plant, but even they are sad. They need sunshine and rain and its been dry and cold here forever.

2/  Hepworth Towers is a Jubilee-free zone. We are republicans. Nuff said.

3/  When the school shooting happened in Texas I was numb to it. I do not expect America to ever see sense about their guns. Because of this, I don't read news about the latest obscenity because if I did I would have to imagine my darling Colorado girls being in that situation and that would be unbearable. There is nothing I can do about any of it, so I put it out of my mind. If I lived in America I'd be protesting along with everyone else with brains. But I'm here. Our gun laws constitute one way at least in which the UK is superior to the USA in these dark, dark times.

4/  Dave has been working hard on the garden to make it look tidier in places that have been disreputable for years, and I am so, so grateful. He is not a natural gardener. He has always done landscaping, mown the lawns and done heavy jobs I've asked him to, but every few years he has a yen to grow something. This year it's sunflowers. He currently has 48 two inch high sunflower seedlings sitting on the table tennis table in the back garden, out of the way of the slugs. Every time we want to play he has to lift them off. He checks on them throughout the day and comes in and says sadly 'They don't seem to be growing.'  He thinks that because he can make a table in a couple of days, the sunflowers should be ready to plant out tomorrow and ten foot high by next week. 

5/  The living for pleasure mantra which now guides my days is working very well, except when it comes to cake. I don't know how to tackle this, as putting on weight would not bring me pleasure.

6/  I am reading two books at present: Thinking Again by Jan Morris, which is like a blog in print form, and Philip Pullman's Grimm Tales. They are both dipping-in books. I have taken a break from The Bee Keeper of Aleppo. It was too sad. 

7/  It occurred to me recently that if an Alien landed in Derbyshire in February and then came back in May they'd think it was a different place. This is what our lane looks like this week:

I love living here.

Wishing you all a happy weekend, whatever you're doing. 

Remembering that May, twenty years ago

Do certain types of weather bring particular memories to mind for you?

They do for me.

Sitting outside on warm summer afternoons with the sun shining on the copper beeches and the wood pigeons calling reminds me of my childhood on the farm.

Whatever the weather, I always think of my father in the last week of May because that is when he died, 20 years ago. But this week, with the cold winds and the rain echoing that very particular week, the memories have been stronger than ever.

In my journal at that time I described the day that we buried him:

'All week there has been a succession of sunshine and showers, and a gusty wind. It was the same this morning. We kept looking at the sky to see if there was enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers and there never was....

...The dale was looking lovely, and the river running a full pot. The rain on the new May leaves made their freshness glisten. There was cow parsley and sweet cicely billowing on the verges all of the way, and the may blossom coated the hawthorns with cream. Lady Hill looked its best, in his honour, with the trees silhouetted against the misty, rainy distance. On the green at Bainbridge the leaves on the big copper beech were fully out, but still new enough to be at their richest intensity. Pa would have commented on the tree.' 

Today, in his honour, I'm sharing with you again this piece I had in The Times about losing him:

Voyage around my father

My 85 year old father died this year. The private family burial was a beautiful occasion, the day so special that the first thing I wanted to do when I got home was to write to my father and describe it, tell him what had happened, how we had been and behaved, what everyone had said. So I wrote him a letter and sent a copy to my brothers and sisters and my mother. It makes us cry but captures the day on paper. I don’t know why that is a comfort but it is.

But then my mother asked me to write my father’s obituary for the local paper. This task hung over me like a dreaded piece of homework. I did not want to be writing my father’s obituary, because I did not want my father to be dead.

Once begun it was soon completed, but not to my satisfaction. The paragraphs about his schooling, his work, his successes and his triumphs described the public man. He sounded like a thoroughly accomplished chap (as he was) but I hated that obituary. The required formal style, and the sensitivity to my mother’s feelings, constrained me. I could say that he was brought up a Quaker, but not that for the last ten years of his life he would lie on the sofa every afternoon watching the racing on telly. I could say that he was a keen hockey player but not that he had a passion for Stilton cheese and Craster kippers and home grown raspberries. I could say that he was a successful freelance writer, but make no mention of his sometimes less than happy use of words - that his criticism could be scorching, his rudeness outrageous, or that his acerbic tongue could reduce a sensitive grandchild to a pulp.

Neither could I say how fervently he loved his family, how sure they were of this, how much they valued his wit, intelligence, knowledge and affection, and how much they will miss him sitting smoking in the corner being crabby, and then at the end of the evening asking for a goodbye cuddle. The last time I visited him at home I knew he was ill because it was the first time he did not say “I had a shave especially, so I could give you a kiss.” This could not go in the obituary either: so much for obituaries.

I don’t think I ever described him as “a wonderful father” but so what? He was my father and I loved him. All my life I have felt as though I sailed in a sturdy ship, my family, looking down on other mortals whose ships were not so handsome and fine as mine. When he died it was as though someone had blown a hole in the side of our craft.

I am surprised that at 52 I am so shaken by his death. I am not a child. I have a large and loving family. And dying at 85 he was not robbed – he had a good innings is the cliché. But I am sad for me, not for him.

As children we would roll our eyes when he told us, yet again, about his great-grandfather’s heifer which won first prize in the London Show, and then “was roasted whole for the poor of Chelsea.” Now he is gone I see all the dog-eared stories of his farming forebears as weighty anchors to our family history.

Searching for written records of them in his desk I found a photograph of his mother: it could have been me in Edwardian dress. I used to hate being likened to someone else, but this photograph has been a strange comfort. I now feel like a link in a long chain stretching back into the past, and forward through my children into the future. My father may be gone, but he is still a valid link. He may no longer sit at the head of the table repeating his catch-phrase “As good a Stilton as I’ve tasted in years,” but at future family gatherings one of us can say it for him. “Only if the cheese merits it,” says my brother. Ah, that critical gene again.

©        Sue Hepworth/Times newspapers  2022   published here with kind permission of Times newspapers

Someone mentioned his hat yesterday, that the grandchildren used to dress up in, but now they're adolescent, it's clear-out time. 

"it's a long time to have a hat hanging around," they said. 

It's a long time to be without a father.

A life of pleasure

What do you know? No one has commented on the change of blog title which has been there for some weeks. It used to say Fragments of a Writer's Life. (I was dictating this and the blog interpreted it as 'Fragments of a Righteous Life.' Some hope.)

When I was so miserable before I went to London and got my mojo back - thank you so much, dear Het - a fellow Quaker and friend said I should shed my puritan outlook and live for pleasure, and that is what I'm currently doing.

So what gives me pleasure as well as hosting refugee hospitality days (see last post)?

I'll tell you: trees.

This is our back garden. We planted all the trees in it except for the beech, top right. There's a rowan tree on the left, a silver birch taking centre stage, two silver birches, a blue spruce and two hollies behind, a pine tree at the back you can just make out to the right of the silver birch, and a a plum tree, centre right.  I am especially proud of the pine tree because I grew it from a seed from a cone I picked up in Center Parcs in 2001. That tree is now twenty five feet high.

In the front garden there are two copper beeches (we didn't plant) and across the road in the field a row of stately limes. 

I love to watch these blowing in the breeze with the sun on them, as I lie on the sofa in the evening, exhausted from my life of pleasure.

Last Saturday night

And on the other side of the front garden is our laburnum tree which my brother Jonty gave me as a 6 inch high seedling, 20 odd years ago.

And we have a new generation of baby trees. These are either ones I have grown from seed, or self seeded trees I have found in the garden:

There are two beeches, a sycamore, a hawthorn, a birch, and a field maple. Oh, and an oak that a friend gave me. The field maple is my favourite but don't tell the others. 

And in the interests of honesty, here is a tree I want to pull up and Dave refuses to give up on. It's a spruce we bought as a Christmas tree about fifteen years ago and it has been suffering ever since we planted it out. I think perhaps in those days I didn't cushion the blow of the winter weather by putting my Christmas trees in the shed for a week before planting them out. Dave gave me permission to get rid of it, but then before I did the deed, the tree put out some fresh buds and I hadn't the heart.

But I don't want to leave on a sad note, so here is a self seeded larch I found in the garden two years ago that we have just planted out:

I love my trees.

What times are these, in which
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing!

– Bertolt Brecht, ‘To Those Who Follow in Our Wake‘, 1939

My dream life

I’ve had a week of very poor sleep that included three bad nights and two nightmares. Admittedly I did have one lovely dream where 24 small and delightful children with special needs jumped off the minibus with no adult in charge and had a very happy day with us.

The reason?

Worrying about our Bakewell churches asylum seeker and refugee hospitality day, planned for yesterday, Saturday. In 2017, 2018 and 2019 we had three of these in the summer months each year. We had planned one for April 2020 but then of course Covid arrived.

That meant that the one we held yesterday was the first we'd done for three years, so we were all three years older and rather battered by the Covid years, and when you get into your 60s and 70s (as most of our volunteers are) that makes a difference. It took us some time to get into our stride again in terms of the organising, but finally we got there. 

There are three of us on the planning committee: two of us like to have everything listed and buttoned up at the very least a week ahead of the event, and the third is laid back. She is always smiling, because she knows everything will be all right in the end. (To give you some idea, last night I dreamed she was happily cycling over a motorway on a 3 foot wide bridge with no guard rails while doing tai chi movements with her arms. She is 74.)

Our hospitality days take a lot of planning in terms of transport, premises, volunteers, activities and the lovely lunch that we provide. We aim to make it a warm and welcoming day, a feast and a special occasion, and the craft activities we provide are all things that our guests can make on the day and then take home.

We knew they would be a mixture of nationalities but we didn’t know how many men, women and children would be coming, nor what age any children would be,  which made the planning of the activities nerve-racking. The Bakewell weather also adds an air of uncertainty. If it's fine, there is the park for football, the Meeting House garden for badminton and, for the children, bubbles and a treasure hunt, toy trikes and chalking. And Bakewell has a lovely riverside with picturesque local walks. But what if it rains? What do young men from Afghanistan, for example, like doing on a rainy day out?

But back to the planning. Finally on Thursday night we found out that only two children were coming and they would be 10 year old girls, so I knew I didn’t have to go up in the attic and bring down all the toddler toys. They would probably enjoy doing the crafts, so it was down to hawking out the boxes from under the bed containing the beads and fixings for jewellery, the picture frames and the boxes to decorate, and the fabric shopping bags and fabric paints. I also had to wash a lot of jam jars, both for decorating

and for posies for the lunch tables

I wish I could show you pictures of the day and our happy guests and volunteers. But we don't take photographs in order to protect their privacy. I can show you the delicious jewellery table, though:

They loved the crafts and the lunch and everything else. It was a fine day and I led a sunny walk in the afternoon along the river and through the water meadows. Bakewell was, as always at the weekend, full of tourists and just as we arrived at the love-lock bridge a group of Morris Dancers and clog dancers from Sheffield began a performance. The timing was so perfect, it might have been planned.

There were hugs and smiles as we said goodbye at the end of the day, and as well as the things they had made, they wanted to take the posies. I don't think the flowers will have survived too well on the journey home, but who knows what drab premises they were going home to?

On our walk by the river, two women from Iran picked dandelion clocks and blew them and wished. I thought they must have learned that in England but they said that they did it back home in Iran. How I wish that Priti Patel and all her heartless cronies could see that everyone who seeks refuge here, however they get here,  are just like us, just like people everywhere, special and unique, and worthy of respect and compassion.

Fed up country mouse goes to town (2022)

 I'm home again after a fabulous holiday with Het in London, the theme of which could be captured in this sign I snapped through the bus window:

My week had begun well with this news item. Please do follow the link and watch the video. These young people made my day and inspired me to do this when we walked through Trafalgar Square.

photo by Het

photo by Het

Well, there was a man offering chalk for a donation so what was a Sue supposed to do? BTW when he saw the slogan he smiled and gave me a thumbs up and refused to take a donation. (Also BTW, Het pointed out that anyone else would have squatted down, but I explained that if I'd done that, I wouldn't have been able to get up again.)

That day we walked 10 miles. Not bad for a couple of septuagenerarians. We went to The Woman in White exhibition at the Royal Academy, had lunch at the Wolseley, I bought a new poetry book in Piccadilly, new sandals in Covent Garden, and in the evening we went to the theatre.

We had tickets to see the worthy play The Corn is Green with Nicola Walker. The first line of the ad for this play says 'One person can make all the difference' so you can see why we were keen. Unfortunately the performance was cancelled that day because of Covid, so we had  to make a quick decision as to what to see instead. We toyed with the idea of My Fair Lady - safe, but not the same without Audrey Hepburn - so we plumped for &Juliet.

We were so glad we did. This review says it all. We were probably the oldest people there but had as good a time as all the people at the front of the stalls, waving their arms through the songs. It's bonkers and funny with a less than inspiring script but with terrific singing and dancing and wild stage effects. I was so wired when we came out that I couldn't get to sleep that night. 

photo by Het

The next day was a quiet and sedate trip out to the Dulwich Picture Gallery for their current exhibition The Woman in the Window. It was interesting and stimulating and I thoroughly recommend it. Actually, I'd go and see it again if I was in the vicinity.

Dinner at Legare that night was mega delicious.

On Thursday we rounded off my trip with a visit to the London Garden Museum in Lambeth and a quick dip into the permanent collection at Tate Britain where i chose my favourite painting (it's by Patrick Heron):

I did catch a glimpse from Lambeth of the source of most of my troubles 

 

but I was feeling so chipper by that point that it had no power to spoil anything. So much intellectual and visual stimulation had restored me. 

But the best thing of all was the talking. We talked for three days and still had things to say.

Here's to friendship, art, literature, music, dancing, wonderful food, coffee stops, clothes and fun!

And here's to packing in joy.

As Het said, quoting Marvell, 

"I prefer to 'tear our pleasures with rough strife, through the iron gates of life!'"

Thank you, Het. 

 

Confession time at Hepworth Towers

What has happened to the blog?

Why so few posts, and why such skimpy ones?

Why so many poems?

It's been hard to write because I've been feeling very blue. 

I've been missing living with lots of family after being in Colorado, but mostly it's all the stuff OUT THERE. 

But the overwhelming things are this shoddy, shocking government led by a lying slob, no decent opposition so no hope of change, the war and the ramping up of donations of military hardware instead of an urgent focus on negotiations,and finally the appalling right wing swing in America and so many other places. There seemed to be no hope.

Then there's the whole aging thing: at 72 and a half, what am I for?

I tried various methods to feel better, but the one that seems to have worked well enough for me to admit openly how I have been feeling is not reading the news for a week.

The other thing has been looking forward to going to stay with Het in London. I go tomorrow and I cannot tell you how happy I am about it.  This is what happened the last time.

The third thing is that we have been planning another refugee hospitality day in Bakewell. We haven't hosted one since Covid arrived. Now we feel we can and I am so chuffed about it. Please wish us well. 

I had been wondering if it was time to give up the blog because it's hard to write when your brain is in a black cloud, and I tried to find the place in the blog last spring when I was considering doing that. So I read some of March 2021 and (can I admit it? yes, I can to you, dear readers) I enjoyed it. There I was telling you about my daily struggles and tiny triumphs and then there was  Dave's post - An Aspie's take on lockdown - and I thought "Yes, I can tell them how I've been feeling lately."

From reading past years on the blog I've realised I am subject to bouts of feeling very low. Not so much clinical depression, more serious sadness and hopelessness. And I've told you about it. Sometimes when I look back at the blog I think How could I share all that so openly on here? and I've told you that at times and you've said you like my honesty. So. Here we are now.

By the way, I have also decided that I am going to make the blog book free as an ebook for a few days some time soon. I'll let you know when and then perhaps you would tell friends personally and on social media?

Here is the view from the bedroom window. Isn't the greening of the spring incredible? And look at that sky...

Beginning again

 

The blackbird

It has been a quiet week at Hepworth Towers. I’ve been painting and Dave’s been digging, and yesterday, family came to visit. The elder fabulous grandson is taller now than Dave, and Dave is 6 foot tall. Amazing. How time passes. Soon he’ll be off to Uni. 

It feels different seeing a grandchild grow from birth to adulthood, from seeing one’s own child do the same. I think it’s the distance from the everyday struggles that makes for a diffferent perspective. I say this because I don’t recall looking at my own near-adult children about to leave home and thinking back to their babyhood and thinking ‘Where did it go?’ because the struggles and worries were still so immediate, and also there was another much younger fledgling needing everything, so there was no space to detach and consider. 

I hadn’t planned on writing the above, I’d planned on telling you about our blackbird.

He woke me up at 4.52 this morning. Had it been a person or a pet waking me up at that time I’d have been cross, seriously bad tempered. But the blackbird makes me smile. I listen, and usually I drop back into sleep.

When I’m watering plants in the garden after tea and he sings from the chimney I talk to him, because when he sings he brings me joy.

He doesn’t think ‘I’ll cheer Sue up,’ he just sits and sings because that’s who he is. He is himself, and in just being himself, he spreads happiness.

I’m having a break from trying. I’m having a break from the world. I’m relaxing and just being me, having a holiday from caring so much about everything that’s wrong out there. 

I started a huge painting yesterday. It’s yellow. I don’t know where it’s going but today I might find out.

I hope you have a good day, being yourself.

And here are a few of our tulips.

 

April is the cruellest month

‘April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring  

Dull roots with spring rain.’

The warm weather disappeared last week and there’s been a cold east wind blowing here. Inside the house with no heating on it’s been hard. But I keep telling myself  how lucky we are, and that it’s not a matter of sinking or swimming….it’s just about saving money. And we do have our lovely log burner.

I’m sorry not to have blogged for so long, but my head has been full of private stuff I’ve been working through. I’ve picked up Keep Moving by Maggie Smith again, and I’m back on the cold showers. The world seems so dark right now, and my place in it a mystery.

My sweet peas were very late going in their pots this year, and only 12 out of 80 have germinated so far. They seem slower than usual. Is it the cold? The compost? Who knows? It’s disappointing, though.

So looking for new growth, I decided to pay close attention to the trees on the Trail because I think the new shoots and buds are so delightful - as lovely as lambs. The clarity of some of my photographs is disappointing as that cruel east wind was fluttering the branches.

The other thing that happened yesterday was that I finally finished my washing line painting. It’s called ‘March wind.’

Taking myself in hand - again

 

I’m feeling a bit better, thankfully.

My agenda:

1. Skim, don’t trawl the news.

2. Back on the hot-then-cold-then-blast-of-hot-showers, which I had given up, because cold showers on top of turning off the heating seemed a step too far into ascetism for this soft bunny.

3. Back on the deep breathing.

4. Reading an engrossing book (The Beekeeper of Aleppo.)

5. Practising my sax every day.

6. Writing a to-do list in the morning and crossing things off.

7. A trip away booked…to visit Het in London for yakking, fun and culture. Yippee! 

8. Working on the garden.

9. Painting. Here is the latest, to capture the colours of Colorado in March:

And yes, Pete, I know it is crooked, but I can’t get it straight! Ok, yes, I could if I really tried, but the sun is shining and life is too short, and my readers are forgiving. 

Today’s poem:

Feedback

The woman who wrote from Phoenix

after my reading there

to tell me they were still talking about it

just wrote again to tell me that they had stopped.

Billy Collins

What I wanted

Yesterday morning was odd. Or rather... I was odd.

Dave had set off early in the car on an errand while I was still asleep: usually I like that kind of morning. I like to wake up to a quiet house with no need to speak. I feel free and my world seems spacious. And I usually like Saturdays because I feel as though I can do what I like and not answer to the Puritan who sits on my shoulder throughout the week, asking me if I am using my time profitably.

But yesterday Saturday felt wrong. Something felt missing, and I thought it might be family. Any family - Zoe and co, Isaac and co, the family member who declines to be named and the lovely Jaine. 

I read the news online and felt worse (surprise, surprise.)

I had breakfast in bed and stayed there reading a book. That was no help: it was about the first world war. 

I thought: This isn't what Saturday mornings are like. Saturday mornings in Boulder consist of the girls getting into bed with me, showing me funny cat videos, inviting me into their Minecraft worlds, and Isaac cooking breakfast while Wendy has a lie in. He cooks bacon on Saturdays when I'm there as a treat for me. Then we take the girls to their gym class and we watch them through the viewing window while doing the New York Times crossword together. That is my Saturday morning in Boulder, and that's what I wanted.

Cece and me playing Guess Who

In the early afternoon when I knew Isaac would be waking up, I texted him and said I missed them all and I missed their Saturday morning.

He texted back: it is a strange one this morning. both kids are at sleepovers elsewhere. first time ever.

So it turns out that what I was yearning for wasn't happening anyway. 

I tried to paint outside but the light was too bright and I wasn't in the mood. Eventually I gave myself a talking to, and did some gardening (the first time this year.) I sowed my cosmos and some more sweet peas. Dave had got back and we dug up an annoying and ungainly buddleia and planted something else to replace it. 

When we first moved here the garden was a solace and I sometimes spent all day working in it. It was good to be making a difference to something when I couldn't make a difference to other things in my life, and I couldn't change the awfulness out there in the world. Yesterday that awfulness got me down, but later, walking above the village before tea, I sat down in a field and looked at the view and counted my blessings. 

I'm feeling so bad about the news out there that I'm going to take a week off from it. I shall focus on enjoying tiny moments of happiness and being thankful.   

That book I bought in Boulder called Good Poems for Hard Times is excellent. On the back cover it says the book is “a buoy for people in ordinary trouble.” I think that's me.

Here is a poem I read in it yesterday that I enjoyed:

The Future

On the afternoon talk shows of America
the guests have suffered life's sorrows
long enough. All they require now
is the opportunity for closure,
to put the whole thing behind them
and get on with their lives. That their lives,
in fact, are getting on with them even
as they announce their requirement
is written on the faces of the younger ones
wrinkling their brows, and the skin
of their elders collecting just under their
set chins. It's not easy to escape the past,
but who wouldn't want to live in a future
where the worst has already happened
and Americans can finally relax after daring
to demand a different way? For the rest of us,
the future, barring variations, turns out
to be not so different from the present
where we have always lived—the same
struggle of wishes and losses, and hope,
that old lieutenant, picking us up
every so often to dust us off and adjust
our helmets. Adjustment, for that matter,
may be the one lesson hope has to give,
serving us best when we begin to find
what we didn't know we wanted in what
the future brings. Nobody would have asked
for the ice storm that takes down trees
and knocks the power out, leaving nothing
but two buckets of snow melting
on the wood stove and candlelight so weak,
the old man sitting at the kitchen table
can hardly see to play cards. Yet how else
but by the old woman's laughter
when he mistakes a jack for a queen
would he look at her face in the half-light as if
for the first time while the kitchen around them
and the very cards he holds in his hands
disappear? In the deep moment of his looking
and her looking back, there is no future,
only right now, all, anyway, each one of us
has ever had, and all the two of them,
sitting together in the dark among the cracked
notes of the snow thawing beside them
on the stove, right now will ever need.

Wesley McNair

"The Future" by Wesley McNair, from Talking in the Dark. © David R. Godine, 1998.

Shame

Why, when the world is such a beautiful place...

 

do some people behave in such an ugly fashion? 

And here, the actions of the current UK government have been shameful in so many ways, with this the latest nastiness:

 

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

 

Maggie Smith

 "Good Bones" from Waxwing.  Copyright © 2016 by Maggie Smith.  

 

Yesterday I wrote to my MP to tell her that in times of war it is vital to have a leader who is honourable, truthful and trustworthy, and that Johnson is patently not that person.

Today I am writing to protest against his cruel new policy to dump people fleeing from war and persecution in a country well known for its repressive regime. They come here to seek asylum and we should deal with their asylum claims here. 

I am trying to remain hopeful that eventually compassion, justice and honesty will prevail in public discourse.  

And to remember that it is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.

I've been on my bike on the Trail, I've been to a local art exhibition, and now I'm going to garden and paint. 

I hope you have a lovely Easter weekend.