Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

G and I are going to the Edinburgh Festival (via EasyJet, cross fingers )on Sunday morning. I have a small handful of tickets pre-booked - Britten's Illumations/Lachrymae, an Indian dance company in Samanvaya and dear old Count Arthur Strong The Musical. A couple of of organ recitals in the cathedral, a pub jazz guitar evening and a late night performance of Padilla's Lamentations. If that all sounds a bit serious, I am planning to rely on on-the-spot bookings for fringe comedy events and be seduced into buying by the wandering ticket floggers. There's a long list of gallery things to see - some stunning exhibitions, most especially Mueck and Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs.

The weather forecast looks rather dodgy but I must get to the Botanical Gardens this time, I have missed them on every previous visit. And I note that our apartment is conveniently located in the same road as The Verandah; if it's good enough for Cliff .....just as long as they don't serve his wine.

The man with the big drill came, plugged the house full of holes and filled them with white fluff. I almost can't wait for it to get cold now to see if it is going to make a difference. I am still picking up wafted bits of wool from the garden and mopping up brick dust from flower beds (and pristine upvc windows, drD). Thank God that's over.

The continuing struggle with a badly achieved bathroom/lavatory installation reached crisis point this week. We finally knocked out the lavatory after noticing persistent damp; sure enough, the devils had cracked the collar, stuffed it with newspaper and cemented over it. Back to the beginning again, but we have been able (at their expense) to rid ourselves of their awful carpentry and lay ceramic floor tiles. I lie in bed thinking about what I would like to do to them with their redundant pipework.

Two females here have knee problems. This is Ivy with corn on her nose and visibly poor old joints, legacy of an injury, I wish I could pass her a paracetamol. And I saw the consultant with my patent collapsing knee, apparently it's a misaligned patella that was always there but is not now being well-managed by older ligaments. No surgery now, hooray, but in about 10 years, he said. Till then, exercises, walking and 'putting up with' are the order of play. And falling over, of course. Followed by a reappraisal of the wisdom of managing a three acre garden.

I'll pass on my physio's latest instruction for stretching; with both your elbows, and then your feet while sitting down, describe all the letters of the alphabet. It's surprisingly energetic.

G has been in a bread-making phase, he gets these enthusiasms. He bakes very early, allowing me to wake up to the smell of a new loaf cooling on the rack. Nothing sweeter than breakfast with a pot of coffee, the crossword and a few slices of warm bread with jam out on the garden table.

On a perfect day the larks were up in the blue above the dark yews. Grasshoppers sang and bees browsed the pink willowherb. It seemed preposterous to think of death on such an afternoon.
Walking round the gravestones it was touching to see that so many were carefully tended. I recorded just a few of them. This was at the village of Ludham in the Broads; its superb church is the source of many unusual stories which I shall tell quite soon.

If you missed it, replay here, or do try to catch the repeat on Saturday of an excellent programme in the Poetry Societies series on Radio 4 - it visited Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire and cheered the soul with its evidence of truly imaginative teaching to receptive, articulate young people. An evening gathering with a glass of wine and freedom to listen to and choose poetry off-syllabus is proving popular. There is some ace writing by lesser-known poets and one home-grown poem that showed real promise.


You don't usually expect much in the way of articulacy in replies to tax enquiries, but H. J. Lee of the Revenue is a dab hand:
Dear Mr Addison, I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more-than-prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise....

Old fir tree, I must mark your going.
For days I have known of it,
And carried a grumbling sort of grief,
Touching your bark and waiting.

Your shade grew wide in forty years,
A family's place to hide from heat.
We drank tea there, read the news
And dozed through summer afternoons.

Perfect home to tiny birds -
Goldcrests and willow-tits wove nests
Among your hanging branches.
Inside, sitting at table, we would watch
The tree-creeper land and climb,
Circling your trunk.

But you reached too high
And came too close to us.
A whipping wind would fell you one bad day
To break our home. So, against my heart,
I let them take you down.

Iron wedges and the screaming saw
Have left me with dust and piercing light
Flooding the empty space where you should be.