Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

Scillas - pools of intense blue as far as the eye could see


The grass path


Wistaria asleep














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These small dictums derived from my home culture are, I find, virtually ineradicable. Failure to comply still brings a slight frisson:

Leaving the pegs on the clothes-line for next time is a bad habit

Sticky tops on sauce and jam jars signal sluttishness

Always tidy the cushions before you go to bed

Dusting behind furniture makes a room look cleaner

Never wear an ankle-chain, only prostitutes do this

After serving yourself, touch your own plate with your bread and butter before raising it to your mouth

Nobody will ever think better of you for telling a dirty joke

All underwear and linen must be properly aired or you will catch your death

Don't forget to clean the bit of your shoes underneath, between heel and sole

Women (that is, ladies) should always cross their legs when seated

Do any such absolutes plague you?

G took this shot of the area in front of the house just under three weeks ago. Today the blossom on the Amelanchier tree to the left is about to burst into bloom and the apple tree beyond is budding. I noticed that the little bonsai on the table is in leaf as I sat there drinking my coffee in the sun. The orchard and wood are full of daffodils, a flush of wild garlic is breaking through the leaf mould. We know of six nests beside the house; from the dining room window we can watch our robin, a blue-tit and, sheer heaven, a goldcrest who has woven a nest in a branch of pendulous fir.

My sister and her husband are spending Easter with us. He left here at 4 a.m. to drive to an antiques fair where he is selling - he had a good day. Skinny and I sat for ages over breakfast catching up. We drove up to our family graves in the old churchyard speckled with daffodils; the wild bees were already coming and going to their hive in a hole in the church tower. The quietness there was wonderful, just the sound of birdsong and the chatter of geese on the distant lake.

In a field on our way we noticed a lone cow in terrible distress, her udders horribly distended. She belongs to a notoriously uncaring farmer; we got smartly on to the RSPCA to send an inspector out there fast. After seeing the condition of this man's livestock over the years and being incredulous that he is still allowed to keep animals after many prosecutions, my solution to his behaviour is simple. I'd chain him up, make him stand for many winter nights up to his thighs in freezing mud, offer him mouldy carrots or nothing at all to eat, and make him watch his babies die as they were born into filthy puddles. Swine.

We followed up a fish and chip supper with a game of 'Hearts' on the kitchen table. Tomorrow - to Anglesey Abbey to see the spring flowers and maybe a quick dip into nearby Cambridge if the weather's poor. Just thought I'd make a few diary notes so you won't think I'm lazing about doing nuthin'.

We went to Holt today, and plunged into its good bookshops. My friend spent a small fortune on some local history and a superb book on amber. I found a poet new to me and shelled out almost a tenner to own her - The Bridge: poems 1939-1944 by Ruth Pitter in its first edition. (There was a duplicate of it on the shelf, priced £25, with its original bookseller's invoice made out to Siegfried Sassoon.)

I knew nothing about Pitter but found out more; reading on into the poems I was disappointed. Here is a lost poet who had her time in the sun and great critical acclaim, who waits perhaps for a Larkinesque revival. I like her leaning to rhyme, but her rhythm hiccups often, her scansion is off. I admire her broad canvas - she is especially strong on the natural world and I'll later use a mellow poem on apple trees. I bought her because the Cressett Press volume is beautiful, it intrigued me to find out about her and I opened the pages at this very middling poem which nevertheless returns to me a good memory of the Suffolk coast:

THE ESTUARY

Light, stillness and peace lie on the broad sands,
On the salt-marshes the sleep of the afternoon.
The sky's immaculate; the horizon stands
Steadfast, level and clear over the dune.

There are voices of children, musical and thin,
Not far, nor near, there in the sandy hills;
As the light begins to wane, so the tide comes in,
The shallow creek at our feet silently fills;

And silently, like sleep to the weary mind,
Silently, like the evening after the day,
The big ship bears inshore with the inshore wind,
Changes her course, and comes on up through the bay,

Rolling along the fair deep channel she knows,
Surging along, right on top of the tide.
I see the flowery wreath of foam at the bows,
The long bright wash streaming away from her side.

I see the flashing gulls follow her in,
Screaming and tumbling, like children wildly at play,
The sea-borne crescent arising, pallid and thin,
The flat safe twilight shore shelving away.

Whether remembered or dreamed, read of or told,
So it has dwelt with me, so shall it dwell with me ever:
The brave ship coming home like a lamb to the fold,
Home with the tide into the mighty river.

Night Coming On
Artist unknown

Below are my answers to the game as passed to me by Dick Jones:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

THE PURSUIT OF LOVE by Nancy Mitford


Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

LEWIS DODD from The Constant Nymph
DICKON from the Secret Garden (as my best friend)
Larry's RICHARD III
Mr. ROCHESTER from Jane Eyre


The last book you bought is:

ENDURING LOVE by Ian McEwan


The last book you read:

SET IN DARKNESS by Ian Rankin


What are you currently reading?


MILLIONS LIKE US: British Women's Fiction of the Second World War by Jenny Hartley
PORTRAIT IN SEPIA by Isabel Allende
POEMS OF LOVE by John Donne


Five books you would take to a deserted island:

COMPLETE WORKS of William Shakespeare

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING by T.H. White



THE DIARY OF A NOBODY by George and Weedon Grossmith

ANTHOLOGY OF 20th CENTURY BRITISH AND IRISH POETRY edited by Keith Tuma

HISTORY OF ART by H.W. Janson


Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Robert Brady
Nancy Gandhi
Amy Kane
Because these three write extremely classy blogs and I have the nerve to ask them to waste a little time in order to amuse us.

Some lives are so extraordinary that they appear to have been conjured by a Feydeau or a Milligan. One such was that of the recently deceased Jeanette Schmid.
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I am the proprietor of a first-class catering establishment, the place is packed from 7 a.m. until late afternoon.

I serve communal dishes that appeal to diverse types - today's plat du jour of bread, fat, sultanas, sunflower seeds, chopped nuts and corn was savoured by Messieurs Pheasant, Deer, Partridge, Goose, Cockerel, Crow, Blackbird, Starling, Squirrel, Mouse, Mallard, Jay, Songthrush and Magpie.

Additions to the à la carte menu have brought in a more discerning clientele. Le Fromage Irlandais Doux and some exquisite maize served on a bed of diced apple have been popular with a large family all wearing tails and two rather jaundiced couples rarely seen round here.

I run a continuous cabaret for my customers. High on a tree-top platform of butcher's suet, dare-devil tits dive to hang upside down ten at a time; from cracks in oak branches comes the sound of catchy rhythmic drumming. Another acrobat scales mighty tree trunks in seconds, while a kleptomaniac in his blue and orange coat pinches and hides a peanut every thirty seconds with stunning sleight of beak and wing. Queues form around the in-house bathing pool and the drinks bar is crowded.

My Commis Chef is in charge of cubing two loaves each morning and preparing greenstuffs and windfalls for dessert. We find the work rewarding, delighting in watching our clients tucking-in; they often leave us a generous deposit as they depart and just lately they have started to organise some pretty good community singing.

I have been trying to do a reconstruction on Lu's right ear with Photoshop. After enlarging her head I wanted to flatten out the background and took infinite care filling in with grey (those silver links were hell to do). But as you can see from the original, her ear and back are in shadow; to make them out and delineate them naturally is very difficult. It doesn't look right - I have been fiddling with it for a couple of hours. Has anyone any advice on how I should approach this, apart from buying Photoshop for Dummies?

I haven't made time for writing this week. Among other things, we have had visitors, swept snow and taken walks in it, been to a funeral and a bit of a do afterwards, made bread and cleared out the correspondence file. Birds have needed feeding four or five times a day in this hard weather.
This afternoon we had lunch on our laps and watched an utterly therapeutic video of Branagh's cheering "Much Ado" - balmy Tuscany and Denzel Washington sinuous in leather trews. I also climbed into bed early three nights in a row and went straight to sleep - unprecedented.

There was a sudden library book glut - three reservations arriving at once. On the couch with toffees I devoured two Ian Rankin novels set in the grey winter of Edinburgh. I love his Rebus thrillers, tightly written, full of local colour and references to that complex city. My eyes were on stalks, unable to stop reading until all the strands came apart.

Still on the table is Bob Dylan's Chronicle 1; halfway in I know him slightly better, but not intimately. It's very Dylan, so far and no further. He has read widely and well and peppers his text with literary allusions; I made a list of early folk singers to be checked and marked at least a dozen brilliant epithets with bits of paper. The most interesting revelations concern his flight from the public's insistence that he be the figurehead of the seventies protest movement. He wanted none of it, seeking only peace and domesticity. His lyrics were his contribution.

Another small revolution around here - we had Sky satellite TV installed yesterday. This house is surrounded by trees and backed by forest, as a result we have never had a decent TV picture; wind or rain moves branches and breaks up reception. As a last throw we decided to invest and it has worked, the image is superb, such a relief, just like putting on glasses and seeing clearly at last. What we will make of the hundreds of viewing possibilities remains to be seen. I must admit to being currently fascinated by the "Please date me" stations where spotty Herberts try to convince girls that they have kerrismer. The girls flash the statutory cleavage and call for tall guys who basically make them laugh. Sad stuff.

I'll try to do better next week, but I want to get round to a bit of sketching too. There are two lady bloggers out there with fine faces and I'm suddenly itching to have a crack at their likenesses. And I might start decorating my bedroom - one blue wall? I'm behind with the ironing and I'm having lunch with my old boss on Wednesday.

Gaze at me then,
A softly wrapped cocoon
Tight in bunny blankets.
And I will stare back, sucking and laughing.
See, here is your son
Waiting to grow and crush you with ideas.

You thought to make a copy of yourselves,
Whose nightly struggling made me.
The shutter of my unfocused eyes
Records the poverty of your dreams.
Wait, I will grow and master you.

This flesh will ache and stretch,
Grow hair and sweat in the sun of your old age.
I will forge the world that's next beyond your own,
Build houses in the sky and make men live forever.

I who wield the rattle now
Will change it for a whip: I'll beat your hearts
To make them bleed my dreams,
Your backs will be the paths to my beginning.

You made a man whose growing will use up your life.
By which you feel fulfilled, imperative complete.
I will make children too, see visions, replicate.
Then I will be the old skin sloughed.
And so from womb to womb the skein is stretched,

All youth sucks dry the past like golden eggs,
Crushing their shells for funeral dust.
Nourish me, approve and make me fat with love.
I will not stay so small.