Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

Do you feel like helping towards a definition? (Via Serendip)

.......of a leading educational publisher's catalogue

      

The enormity of what has happened in Asia is so shocking that knowledge of it lodges like a stone in the heart. The unnoticed daily things - plentiful water, food, transport, communications and shelter are now perceived as huge privileges by contrast. In that context donating money should not be cosmetic, should hurt, should cause some sacrifice. What I gave last night seemed adequate, but having thought about it all day and carried the stone through the greedy bustle of a city shopping centre, I am shamed into doing more.

'Sidonie Goossens, the harpist who died yesterday aged 105, had a professional career as an orchestral player which lasted for nearly 70 years, probably an unrivalled achievement'.

A good fairy must surely have attended her birth; to have the gift of music, to live such an extended creative life and to have the good fortune to die in one's sleep is to be amazingly blessed. She will probably be pressed immediately into heavenly service, harpists being a welcome breed up there.

We had some presents that were not exactly in sweeties and sweaters mode:

- a CD of a thunderstorm from Pat, 'to listen to tucked up safe in bed with a book'. I did so last night and it was wonderful.

- a fur cat stuffed with lavender-scented wheat. Warm it in the microwave and cuddle while listening to a thunderstorm.

- G, and everyone else, is stunned by his black and silver thong from my mad sister.
Also a set of red leather juggling balls. Hmm.

- A bunch of CD's from Sean - U2 How to dismantle an atom bomb; Israel Iz Kamakawiwo 'Ole Facing future (??); Kings of Convenience Versus; Maroon 5 Songs about Jane. I can't get myself past the U2, played often and extremely loud as soon as G is out of earshot. I'll get round to the others.

- A super book on Gregorian Chant by Huston Smith with a 'Mass of St Mary' tucked in the back pocket.

- Body Firming Cream. Probably contains concrete.

- a total of fifteen assorted candles, my weakness. One is the heavenly 'Nantucket Briar'.

A copy of Delia's old 1982 Evening Standard Cookbook to replace my disgusting stained and tattered copy. And some star anise.

The house was too hot after an evening with a couple of friends. We had watched Bridget Jones on DVD, eaten the Colonel's American hickory cheese board with the last of the wine and talked until 12.30. As their tail lights vanished down the drive, I stood in the dark and felt the arrival of the West wind. Clouds sped past a suddenly bright moon, shadows slipped over the flagstones. I walked out among the trees, listening to the creaks of rubbing branches and the thrash of the poplars across the meadow.

Earlier, laying holly wreaths in a remote churchyard, I felt that quick lift of wind stir the dead chestnut leaves at my feet; from the field a white dance of seagulls rose, hundreds riding the gust before settling again to feed among the plough lines. In the church a musty smell hung in the cold air, the old Saxon font, full of white flowers, shone in the gloom. I spoke into the silence a plain greeting to the babes christened over seven centuries, to the dead whose crumbled bones lay beneath the grass outside, to the spirits of my family still lingering there.

And now I have opened my window to the darkness, so that I may hear the wind rising higher and the toss of the trees as I go to sleep.

Mantlepiece nativity

- O. Henry The Gift of the Magi A short story of great charm.
- Geertgen tot Sint Jans The Nativity at Night Mysterious and beautiful.
- Malcolm Davidson Doggerel in the Manger The kid builds a crib.

A chocolate comb
A can of worms opener
A non-stick frying pan
Two sticky frying pans
A book end
Abrasive partridges
An inflatable fridge
Nervous door handles
A mobile phone booth
An overnight tea-bag
Day-glo tippex
Underwater ash-tray
15 amp bath plug
Pair of socks. Identical but for the colour
Box of Tunisian (past their sell-by) dates
See-through elastoplasts
Nasal floss (unwaxed)
A canteen of magnetic cutlery
A hip joint
A groovy cartiledge
Three way mirror
Not a pipe

Roger McGough

While doing an image browse, (for a laurel wreath, actually) I fell for a fine strong face looking at me across time, as captured by a master sculptor in the first century A.D.
You may like to become acquainted with the Roman emperor, Antoninus Pius, for it is he. I knew nothing of him previously. He was a good man, and it's a good story.

- 50 things to eat before you die. Wot no treacle pudding? I have eaten 39 of them (items not puddings). The omissions won't cause me much regret, fancy eating Roo. (via Little Blogger)

- I have found The Face Memory Game to be good exercise for ageing grey matter.

So Blunkett's had to go and we have the boor Clark to keep us safe and guard our legal system. The only plus there is that education gets out from under. And what was it all for? An essentially honest politician, probably the cleverest in the Cabinet, goes down the chute for adultery and some minor (and I mean minor) infringement that wouldn't cause a frisson in nine tenths of the world. The hounds of the third estate bit his heels all the way and in the Commons today the sneering Howard chucked Blunkett's indiscreet book across the table like a grenade. That was what blew him out, sharp words about Straw and the others. I don't doubt that he'll be back if Tony makes a third term.
That's the sequence of the usual nonsense - scandal, enquiry, resignation, rehabilitation, return - vide Mandleson, Parkinson.

I was rather lovely, you know. Women admired me and the men in my life were besotted, always wanting to take me in their arms. Fortunately I was photographed just at the peak of this plump loveliness with my direct blue gaze fixed on the camera. I even make myself go gooey. It was all downhill from there.

Today I walked, swept huge piles of leaves and started putting up the tree in the house. Too laid-back by knowing that we are going out on Christmas Day, I have overdone it and arranged five lots of entertaining in seven days - drinks and some sort of party food. I just get straight from one lot and start again, replacing the night-lights in red glass pots, hoovering up crisps and polishing glasses. The family of eight who are coming on Sunday evening want to play games - two kids of eleven and fourteen among them. Any ideas? Not my usual thing, I'd be grateful for advice.

Our Christmas with the Colonel - who is off home to Idaho at some unearthly hour this morning - featured hot punch and Glenfiddich fruit cake that he brought from Inverness last week. We gave him his present but his pleasure was all for the silly turkey hat that I picked up in a gimcrack store, his round face beamed under the tight cap with its projecting yellow velour head. A most ridiculous sight that he will inflict on his kids and long-suffering girl-friend.

Getting the last of the cards off, I queued in the village post office pension line behind the famous 'Moaning Fay':

"Thass gorn as soon as it's in me hand. I hen't gort scarce enough left for twenty fags. I'd like a bit of that ham on the boon, but thass no good, I can't hev it. Bloody Blair, he gort plenty I spect. Stuffin hisself I spect. And that hoom secketary blook and his fancy piece. Poncing about, the lot on 'em. Doon't know what paverty is them lot."

"They are talking about increasing pension to £105 for everyone, Fay."

"I'll be in me box time they get round to that, pramises, always pramises, I vooted Labour, but they hen't done narthin for us old' uns. Well, anyway, like I always say to Billy, mustn't grumble must we?"



I went to Newmarket, the home of British horse-racing, some thirty miles away, for a library farewell do. On either side, as you drive into town, strings of racehorses stretch out on the the broad green gallops. More lines stop traffic as they cross the main road on their way back to the yards, heads up, prancing, full of themselves.

Many very small men are about in the high street and young stable girls in tight breeches, rosy from riding out. Newsagents offer piles of 'The Racing Times' and M&S stocks jodphurs. Plenty of money about here, the great red brick villas with their adjacent stables look well-tended, disciplined. Swish hotels and trendy boutiques shine crystal light into the early evening darkness. In pubs barmen are polishing up their counters ready for the evening's crack. A focused and attractive place, all bustle and business, breeches and bets.

We set off on a drive to Hampshire that usually takes three hours max'. We took usual precautions for the older bladder - a last minute pee and two instead of six cups of tea.

Sailing up the M11 at seventy I was laughing at G's odd recall of the lyrics as he sang the Banana Boat Song - "Old icon and he wouldn't go home" - when were suddenly diverted into a cone-land leading to the Watford-bound M25. Twenty extra miles further on we stuck fast as heavy cutting gear and ambulances passed at full blare; two hours later we finally moved onto the M25 which by then had gridlocked - it took three hours to reach Heathrow with another after that. Final score, seven incredible hours without a pee.

Why? Because G, once at the wheel, will not stop for anything less than a herd of wild steers loose on the road. He passed the one available rest-stop, "We'll go at the next one," he said, clutching his crutch. I displaced pain through a seated cha cha, and some diverting fantasies about the guy in the Porsche next-door. We arrived cross-legged, ignoring our waiting hosts in an undignified squabble to be first in the lavatory.

So I have been looking for in-car solutions for future crises. Thanks to Manly I have found mine - the incredibly easy Pee-Zee which I shall attempt to order - although it wouldn't take a Leonardo to copy it with a sheet of plastic. I think one could make the required position by sliding foward in the seat. Note to self, wear a skirt for a change.

As for G, we have found just the thing. In a raffle I won a wide-necked flask of Paul Masson wine with a screw top - measures up perfectly. And, to be honest, once used, you wouldn't notice the difference in the contents from the original.

- You will enjoy linking to Lesley Harpold's latest Advent calendar to be found here

Found on the web ages ago and now unfindable again, all I know of these is that they are by someone called Schmidt. They pay for looking at for a little while, their lack of incident and soft tones are calming.

Sunday was a great media PR night for achievers from the ethnic communities. Black barrister Shaun Wallace won the Mastermind final and two Asian girls were finalists in our first national televised spelling competition. Gayathri walked off with the prizes. The coolness of the kids under pressure was amazing, I doubt that I could ever have come up with 'chihuahua' correctly in those conditions. Being keen on good spelling, I think it's a wonderful development; it resulted in thousands of enthusiastic children from all backgrounds studying their wordlists and dictionaries - a fine obsession. A friend said he thought it bad to stress them out like that, the losers shouldn't be humiliated and disappointed so publicly. That's nannying and at at the risk of sounding Kipling-esque I'd observe that we all shed tears at failure along the way, learn to compete and be courageous, to win is not a bad thing though it has been out of fashion in education for a decade.

It is true that most of the finalists were middle class kids with supportive families, but they are the pilot-fishes and if the thing grows here as it has in the USA an even wider spectrum of kids will get involved. What do you think, a good thing?

Anyway, my heart bled for the eleven year-old finalist from our Eastern region who didn't put a foot wrong until he hit the word 'toxopholist', or is it 'toxophilist'?

Five horses now live next door, this is a quick (dodgy, but very like) sketch of chestnut Charley from Ireland, a wicked little beggar if ever there was one. Stand talking and he stamps and bites your clothes, feet, anything to get attention. But when I hold his muzzle in my cupped hands, breathe his breath and put my face against his, he will stand quiet, pleased to be loved. There are two grays, one big and swaying, one small and nippy. The new mare, another chestnut is beautiful and wary of men. M and E get up every day at six to see to them, and I see them still working in the barns till late evening. As with us all, they begrudge no effort to indulge their passion.

I walked over at the week-end and went round the boxes and saw the daft thing that made me write this post. Each horse has an advent calendar in its stall with healthy apple treats behind the cardboard doors. Spoiled rotten.

"You must go a little further every day, exercise that leg, strengthen muscles." said the surgeon. So I do a daily couple of miles round an old estate kept by the Forestry Commission. A mature arboretum stands above the lakes where Canada geese heckle for bread and coots run squawking into reeds. The old mansion is now an hotel, its terraces and columns foil for wedding groups. There's a log fire in the bar, hot coffee if it's cold and mud hasn't clung too much about my boots.

I keep bread for four beige cygnets who wait below the small bridge on the lower lake. Behind is dark yew and alder scrub leading to the deeper forest. My friend heard weeping here one early summer morning and found a woman in her nightdress lying in the water, for all the world like the Millais Ophelia. She was trying to drown but could not. Months later she succeeded in dying by other means. Her memory lurks among the whispering bulrushes.

The back pasture where wild orchids sometimes grow is grazing for sheep; this great field is home to ancient oaks and a vast arthritic lime tree, deafening with bees in summer months. Beyond in a spinney is a small catholic chapel; it was built for a lady of the manor by her Edwardian husband with the bizarre fortune he made from manufacturing dolls' eyes. The presbytery, once redolent with scents of the old priest's cabbagey dinners, is now a family home and hosts a pack of racing Huskies. At dusk their distant howling brings shudders and shades of Siberia.

The grass concourse up to the Hall is lined by a gap-toothed sweep of giant redwoods - 200 year-old Wellingtonians, some struck and split by lightning to reveal startling salmon pink bark. A broken statue of two fighting bulls marks the gravel path to iron gates and the old lodge. This was for sale recently at £300,000; mother knew it when the lodge-keeper had to poach to make a bob or two, now it brings visions of Penelope Keith.

I turn for home through the forest along mossy paths, jumping at the barking of deer, slipping where horses have churned the mud. The last pine plantation breaks onto the banks of the stream and I see our house through the trees.