stoney path of good intentions

Cor! sun in the sky, washing on the line, children playing in the gardens on their Easter holidays, must be Spring.
T is patrolling the churchyard checking for falling gravestones. Government health and safety directive;- someone kneeling to pray, replacing a wind-blown plastic flower, getting a stone out of their hoof, may lean for support on a gravestone - it may topple and they may then ...........need a funeral in double quick time.
[Added problem - The Crematorium is backed up as usual I expect.]

plantings

First day warm enough [for me] to do some gardening. The soil is sandy and free draining here, but is saturated today with all the rain we have been having.
I think I read once that Native Americans despair of our English attitude to rain, they say that if we only reported it as a blessing, instead of moaning, we would have a happier more balanced reaction to weather.
I suspect the NA may not have lived in Carlisle, which should be pronounced phonetically to rhyme with drizzle.
Rain was forecast but so far has not arrived to bless us.
I chopped down a large portion of the yucca. This fat spiky fellow had outgrown the conservatory, and so after much kicking at it's stubborn pot, was eventually separated from same and placed in the common soil outside my workroom window.
I assumed it would then not do very much, facing early morning frosts and winds straight from Siberia,topped off with a weedy English sun.
However it grew an even sturdier trunk, divided to make a tree, and threatened anyone who approached with blindness. But over the years I have ceased to admire and become querulous, how about my yellow rambler rose in the shade behind this exotic, where ever yuccas come from they can now go back.
I threw some little daffodil bulbs, [received from polite ladies who lunch, a gorgeous yellow on a dank day, but now just straggly leaves], into various holes had a word with the lilies [all soggy and not trying] and pronounced myself - Done.
Most of the flowers in the church yard are plastic, and have added some gaiety to counter the threat of the dark yews.
When the church was demolished by the doodle bug they rebuilt it with an entrance path from the road. I suspect they [god's bureaucrats] sold off some church land to pay for the concrete eyesore they then erected, which meant the original path was leading nowhere - no comment].
However the yews that stood along the abandoned way still gloom at each other.
I take the doggy that way so she can wee in the pightle that runs round the outside of the churchyard and not on the incumbents, but i don't walk between the yews.
God's busybodies have tried to ban doggies and plastic flowers at different times but failed.

keeping my head above water

After a good run of books, I seem to be chucking them to one side lately, untidy, impatient, expensive, loads of sins.
I can't seem to get into Benjamin Black [ aka John Banville - Booker winner] even tho these 2 latest books a have a crime inserted [thus the name disguise] and have been widely praised. I knew I would never read his winning sad story [life is sad enough] but at the mo his thriller has underwhelmed, tho I will give it another go.
I also got [i.e. paid Amazon] The Race by Richard North Patterson, as I had heard it enthusiastically reviewed on radio 5 [3pm Thursdays]. On the whole they do tend to review positively, maybe because the author is usually there, but the phone-in civilian reader is often harder.
The Race is a novel about the American election for POTUS, and was said to be uncannily prescient as the candidate is black. However I have tossed it aside as the author is one of those who describes people and things happening from the outside, rather than .......as they happen, if you see what I mean; an excess of adjectives may be another way of saying it. [Also the way i write I fear].
I picked up my next purchase "Body of Lies" , novel by David Ignatius, also a R5 choice, and another American, maybe that is where I am going wrong. At first it comes across well, he seems to have a deep and informed knowledge of the current situation in Iraq, his CIA character is an unlikely sensitive agent, I was steaming along, nodding my metaphorical head at the insights examined until it came to the blond with blue eyes. Things went down hill rapidly as Mr. Iganatius tackled sex and romance.
When I was young enough to go to Saturday morning pictures the boys used to sit up the front and boo and hiss when Hopalong Cassidy kissed Dale whatsit, some men still feel the same but are convinced by their agents that they can write about the sloppy bits if they try.
As an antidote to current issues I decided to have a go at Lark Rise to Candleford. To tell the truth I was annoyed at wasting money on my 2 hardbacks and wandered round Waterstones picking up 3 for 2, always disastrous as i can never find a decent 3rd one.
However after enjoying all ten episodes of L to C on the gog, I did think I would read the book, as the reading experience is usually even better.
Hmmmm. I am up to page 37 - I know how to kill a pig and chop it up, hang the bits and swop them with the neighbours, I have been led to appreciate the joys of growing turnips, but i have yet to be introduced to a Character.
I also "got" that Anne Enright book that won [hurray] The Gathering. At first i really enjoyed it, she is a very poetic writer, but after a while the depressing weight of damp pink flesh [one of her favourite topics] got me down and it has been thrown aside in favour of retaining a sense of humour.
I am not a book snob, I enjoy rubbish, if it carries me along with enthusiasm. The library van comes twice a month [I know there is a crudity in there] and I read both of the latest David Baldaccis, The Camel Club and the Collectors, they zing along, has creaky old persons as it's heroes and only becomes unbelievable when you realise how perfect the American good guys always are [ no friendly fire]. DB is OK, he writes a wildly patriotic plot while cunningly pointing up the flaws of American diplomacy, including water boarding.
Mr Pip also arrived on the library van, [Lloyd Jones], excellent stuff, unusual use of Dickens on New Guinea island, but after three quarters of joy it suddenly turned very nasty and I felt a bit mugged myself.
I heard Sara Peretsky on this week, she has written Bleeding Kansas, not a V I Warsawski which i usually enjoy, tho they can be over researched to my taste, but a "stand alone" as they called it about the reactionary inhabitants of Dorothy's home state. The reviewers praised it, but the phone-in said it was dead boring and he couldn't finish it, so now I am torn.
Lee Child was there too, but I had visitors and could only discern general cooing form the radio in the background. I haven't read any of his, so would be grateful for a steer.
I have the paperback of Donna Leon [in my 3 for 2] Suffer the little children, which i don't think i have read. [Oh the horror and shame of unwittingly buying a book twice.] I enjoy her crimes being set in Venice, although I have only spent a few days there, it is nice to wander the calles with her.
The last of my trio is What was Lost by Catherine Flynn, a Costa [which i should have been saying perhaps] first novel award. It looks like it may be depressing, so I will save Donna till last so she can cheer me up, crime solved - Venice still afloat.

Cut it out

Went to have my hair cut today as the impression of an elderly sheep dog was getting too realistic. Usually i just chop lumps off so I can see where I am going.
This village has, as I believe I have said before, [but I like the symmetry] 3 churches [of England, Methodist and a closed Baptist] 3 shops, [village stores, newspaper and cake shop and Chinese take away] and 3 pubs.
One profits from the river side location by turning out smartish, reassuringly expensive food via young persons probably on minimum wage, another, recently re-opened, promising local beers and bar food, and one, sadly closed.
The latter is a loss as the chef was great, especially with a rack of lamb, but he moved on to better things, and as the food there after was tasteless - people stopped coming. Even the rackety peeps banned from the other two gave it up, one needs a crowd to racket amongst i suppose.
We do have a post office, hidden at the back of a house these days, she hides the sign as she doesn't want to get robbed, and on my way back from sending my newsletters re ERTF [if you ask you will probably get told, so be warned] I saw the hairdressers in the village car park was open, and it transpired had an appointment for after lunch.
Most old ladies in this village either trek on the bus to town, or have the lady who comes round their houses and gives them a ghastly dry cut, so it is a miracle this emporium in an old missen hut survives.
My cutter was a large lady whose very dyed blond helmet did not augur well. She and the apprentice however were giggling fit to bust when I arrived so i guess they thought me worthy of comment also.
They made an odd couple, the apprentice was a Goth, hairpin thin, all dyed in black, bare midriff clasped by a sparkly belt which constantly needed hitching up, as obviously she had no hips yet, if ever.
Madam Cutter was large, my vision of a solid medieval Suffolk peasant - I have just finished the excellent 2nd book of Adriana Norman set in the twelfth century, so i am still seeing the world thru that prism.
M Cutter was armed to trim, strutting a black leather holster, bristling with tools of her trade. Unfortunately it was hung tightly round her hips which meant it cut deeply into her stomach. swelling defiantly above and below.
I went in tough, not wanting to come out with a bubble cut, [I said that - but I don't think they had any idea what I was referring to] and laid down my rules.
Goth gave me a perfunctory hair wash, perhaps trying to avoid getting her nails wet.
MC agreed to give me two cuts, the short one on top and the long one for the back. I guess I came out looking a bit like Gilly Cooper.
We parted amiably, I left a tip for Goth. There are no street lights round here, I didn't want to bump into her resentment on a dark night .

Snail City

Proper snow today, always a pleasure till you have to take the doggy for a walk. Turned round at the end of the Millenium hedge, much to Hattie's disgust, didn't even get to the gate, way short of the river edge and the walk back thru the trees.

The river is brown, yesterday it had real waves in the wind, ridden by white horses, but they couldn't gallop over the road as they sometimes do when the wind and high tide combine. Then the cars have to crawl by on the other side of the road which is somewhat higher.

Resident swans gather in the lay-by, it is my ambition to see them floating along the road, but not so far.
The Hedge was planted by the local worthies with millennium money, to replace the one destroyed by the farmer in less integrated days. Now he has extended it himself. I assume it is him as it is growing more strongly than the careful placement of the village ladies. There is mostly hawthorn, May and blackthorn [is that the same thing] and occasional holly sentries that grow well in this sandy soil
A few weeks back we discovered tree snails, loads of them nestled in the cleft of branches, is this usual?

We did not have such things in Ilford when I was a child, no trees on a new council estate. I didn't know corn started off green, I thought it grew yellow from the beginning, but i did know milk didn't grow in those special little milk bottles, a daily crate balanced on the heaters in the classroom, warmed and disgusting, complete with straw. Milk monitor was not really a position of power.

painting a picture

I am all of a glow as C & S, sister bloggers, claim they will write to me if I become a political prisoner.[see below] Very nice, but more importantly girls write to God or Gordon or somebody to get me out, failing that send the library van!
The Russians were amazing, and Matisse' Dancers were boggling. So bright, the dancers are almost fluorescent orange. The painting is as big as my dining room wall, any one of my walls. It is gorgeous, I wish I was a talented octopus so I could stitch, paint and write all at once.
The whole show was exciting to me and S as it had so many different ?styles of painting, loads of energy pulsating off the walls, which are themselves pulsating as they are painted either fuchsia pink or lapis lazuli blue. the paintings leap at you.
We rotated in a daze and came to rest in front of the Matisse at intervals.The huge shambling Picasso woman was beckoning from the periphery, but Matisse won.
Then we went into the Cranach exhibition across the hall, as I love his weird high breasted nudes, unlike old Matisse they are small and exquisite, and a little subtle naughtiness in their eyes, tho as a pal of Martin Luther I don't know if Cranach realised that. Probably. maybe he didn't mean it kindly as women were usually the route of all evil it seemed. S was entranced with the skill of the painting, tiny miracles.
An Art Gallery is a strange place. Given i do produce the odd piece which sells, I imagine it fondly under anothers happy gaze, perhaps gently lit from above on their dining room wall. Perhaps not.
But in a gallery all the work is piled on the walls like a supermarket, each clammering for attention, or lost behind something more noticeable. We march thru - attention caught or not. All that work and commitment and probably not looked at for more than 5seconds, before attention wanders on to thoughts of a cup of tea. Bit like blogging really. That's OK, the process is the thing.
I sometimes took kids to Galleries when I was a teacher [I won't claim I was "teaching" ]and usually we just marched cheerfully thru and then raced for the ice cream van. I hoped that at least they got the idea that such huge building existed [often the largest place they had ever been, except maybe Court?] and might want to go back when they matured.
One good effect of putting stuff in a Gallery is that then we know someone regards it as art. So much conceptual art might be thrown in a skip as rubbish if it was placed outside. Often in Tate Modern I will doubtfully regard a bench or a light switch, not sure if it is functional or valuable.
We did, amazingly, totter on the Tate M [such resilience in ones so old] and viewed the new Cornelia Parker [She of the exploded shed and squashed brass band, both of which I admire]. For Easter, or not, she has done Thirty Pieces of Silver.
Collected loads of old silver tea services and other silver bric a brac and steam rollered it into approximate flatness [some rebelled and maintained a profile] then had each individual piece suspended from the high ceiling on fishing line, into 30 circles , just inches above the floor. You really have to be there.
It was impressive as a construction, Big. Clever-ish, thoughts of squashed aristocracy, middle class parlours, also attractive - but not a patch on Matisse' Dancers ll

non personage

Sometimes my belief in machines just evaporates, which leaves me in an somewhat exposed position as a newly converted blogger.
When signing in - it tells me my email address doesn't exist or the password is wrong, but quite often it doesn't really mean what it says, apparently it is toying with me, or even having a laugh. In the main i suppose I prefer a machine with which i am communing to have a sense of humour, but supposing it gets cranky.
I am probably overwrought by the end of the serial on the gog last night, where the State, with the power of the IT machines, trounced all the socially aware angelic hosts ranged against it. No happy ending.
Eventually people were injected with a Tag, nothing could be done without leaving a trail, and the Tag could be electronically adjusted so that nothing could be done that wasn't approved of, like entering a public building; leaving the country etc. They could ban me from the library van, tho the laptop on the van has to be downloaded back at the main library so I could hide in the interim.
Then on the steam radio they were discussing companies selling the info gleaned from our computer use to one another so we could, in time, be advertised into submission. Actually i very rarely read adverts, so I am probably a non person already.
Of course a Blog is a literary way of revealing myself and my activities...............
So I will declare that tomorrow I am going to see the Russians, or at least the paintings in the Royal Academy exhibition. I will drive to the station and pay the extortionate fee to park, which at least relieves me of the guilt of not having taken the bus as I am suffering for my comfort and that must make it OK.
Buy a concessionary day return and bumble round London on a Travel card. Tag. Tag.
No problem as long as we have a benign government, but when is government ever that?
These days I tend to feel a non person anyway; obviously things are going on, and I should at least March against Them, but I increasingly feel impotent. I am an old lady, it will all happen no matter what i think, or after I am dead. Strangely relaxing in a way.
I do write my Amnesty letters and pay towards Greenpeace to junket around having a heroic time on my behalf: but then I wonder if I ever am a political prisoner whether anyone will write on my behalf.
I know it is possible to get excited about opinions. When I was at Greenham [only visiting] and the police rode their horses at moi, and others, I did surge forward very recklessly, livid with rebellion. Maybe living in the country where most opinions are somewhat reactionary has drained me of outrage, and ambition, and energy, and excitement.
Maybe going to London will recharge my batteries, or merely reassure me that there is life in the old bitch yet!

for this relief much thanks

I left a comment on Carol's Blog yesterday, I have never done that before, on any Blog. Have a new adventure every day that's me.
Today i finished a pot, well it is drying, I suspect it will crack, then went to sainsbury's and then visited another stitcher.
Only taken 12 years to get friendly, that's Suffolk for you.
We had a very enjoyable time,chatting of mutual interests, and she is booked to come here soon, things happen when they should I suppose, or when they damn well will. I was watching a gog prog about the galaxy and beyond last night, gives one a better sense of perspective, for a while.
S my stitcher friend is a magical patchworker, produces the most gorgeous art quilts full of subtle detail and beautiful colours.
I wish I was more like her, pile upon pile of gorgeous detail and she would like to hand stitch in the way I do, mostly bodging, but I have hit on a method at the mo which I find satisfying.
Note to self, add a pic of the Sun God.
OK.
The god is an ess, but like actor/tress she is not going to demean herself by adding the diminutive, or whatever it is. She is a Big Lady so no-one will give her an argument.
Last night i watched Raines on the gog. It is an American series with Jeff Goldblum, which is reason enough for me to be addicted, I think he is very fanciable. He plays a cop who in the process of investigating murders [homicides] conjures up the victim. and discusses the case with them until it is solved, takes about an hour, whereupon they leave satisfied.
Obviously it falls in the genre that includes the film where K Spacey sees dead people, but until the end one doesn't realise that is because he is dead too. What is it called.
Opportunity for a comment here!!
Jeff handles the whole affair at a lean of the most laid back, and has all the tics and quirks that make it seem that he is such a good actor. Did you see him in The Fly, so good. Jurassic Park, not so good, the film, not the blessed Jeffrey.
It all fits with this church yard over the hedge tho; not that i see dead people. so far. I am fascinated by their names, and the older carvings on the stones. Tho the newer ones are good too. Our local grave stone carver has 2 kids, one kid died of leukemia, and then the other died in a diving [swimming pool] accident so he got to do both his kids stones. That should not happen.
I would like to have done an apprenticeship with him, re carving, but i couldn't allow myself to enter that stone circle.
Some of the 18th century stones have winged skulls carved into them, these days they are more cheery. One has Champion batteries as part of the design, as he was sponsored by them as a speed boat champion.
The stone carver did a design of twisted film strips and lap tops for his son, as he was doing media at the time it happened and his sister got sprigs of rosemary.
Of course I should have crossed needles and thread.
Graveyards have figured for a long time. My first husband [unlike The Duchess doesn't hang on my wall, but should] was an archaeologist and we spent a lot of time reading gravestones for some reason. I guess he was studying Norman churches and I was left wandering. It is impossible to see a word, carved or not, without reading it. All those words skidding round all those minds/brains.
Now I am adding to them for no very good reason, maybe pouring some out like this relieves the pressure.

happy endings

We have just got back from a 3 day break up in Southwold.
Before I went I was very bad tempered, miserable, impotent, ratty - any negative phrase would stick to me like a burr, and get under my saddle - and itch like mad.
Now I am serene, we had a few good blowy walks, fairly nice food and hotel[including me being rude to the maitre d'] and I read most of 2 books. Otherwise the world is the same, except a few fallen trees, but I have changed.
The books were/are good. First I finished This Foul Night's Work, by the marvellous Fred Vargas. She is a somewhat fey French archaeologist,with a wonderful translator Sian Reynolds; she must be good because one of the things I like about the writing is the poetical prose.
This is by far the best book of the five she has written, and I adored it. Young Fred claims she takes a 3 week holiday from archaeologing and writes a book. Would that it worked that way for moi.
I am now reading The Other Boleyn girl by Philippa Gregory, which I imagine is better than the film, judging by the reviews. I have never had a sister, or a brother so most people's emotional development is on another planet. I wonder what proportion of people are only children, this alien race, except in China of course.
I give my books away to friends and Charity shops, as there would be no room to walk otherwise. It seems lately that in my desire to make room for the next I am shedding lots of my recent history, while on the shelves sits books I am fond of, bring back parts of my story. I want to keep both Fred and Philippa, who will have to go to make room?
We once had a neighbour whom I called Toad, He was quite a nice young man really, nothing much to complain of, except for once when we walked past Notre Dame he popped up, making a special time suddenly feel ordinary, or strange, colliding worlds, universes. the example of string theory. Anyway he was amazed I had book shelves, at home, not in France, he always throws away his books once he has read them.
He waited years for his girl to return to him tho.
Well with another woman for company, but he never gave her the key, she would sit outside in her cheap red car looking furious till he came home.
Anyway his lady love returned from abroad, they married, had kids and now I hear they are divorced. So sad, wrong book, wrong shelf, who knows.

blogs and turds

There is a Blogdom being established.
Carol has mentioned my blog in dispatches. She has put pictures on her blog, some lovely book covers and illustrations, she owns a book shop.
Sue started me blogging with her Sue Space, we are each quite different in our blogging, Carol restarted me when my NYR ran out before the end of January.
Bloggers Unite you have nothing to lose but your inhibitions. Carol doesn't like the word Blog, it does have the weight of dog turd about it.
My neighbour collects our dog's turds and throws them behind my parked car, presumably thinking I will step into them with lasting result. We take doggy for a walk twice a day, so he doesn't find them often, maybe he searches everyday, in hopes.
Dog turds really do get a reaction, cat turds not so much, crafty cats hide them till you plant bulbs;big horses' turds mount in the field through which I walk doggy. The stable woman collects them with a special gadget and piles them in a turd mountain in a corner. When she sees me with doggy she demands I pick up the doggy turds as the horses roll in them. I refuse. Never a dull moment in the country.

dream life

Kathleen and Kenneth were sent from this world in 1910, before the War and the slump, it was just the narrative in my head that saw their father in despair after the trenches. Harry left in 1917 so he and they were possibly born about the same time. Strange the way these things turn out.
I have no belief in an after life, so why do I keep their graves clear and nick a poppy for Harry each November. Because they are part of my story I suppose.
Dunno why Harry is even in our church yard, he should be with all the other adolescent skeletons in the Army and Navy churchyard down the road. Church yards everywhere, full stops in our landscape. Sudden stops. Centre of our own story then no more words.
Kathleen and Kenneth were drowned in a barrel, a friend googled them. She is a solicitor and likes to know the detail. She does a lot of Family case work, so must have a lot of details in her head.
My mother does Family Tree, she likes to know - not just the names, but where they lived, each and every address, what they did for a living, the tree stretches wider and wider, a manic oak shading many graveyards.
They are all dead, she will be, we will all be.
One day someone may read my gravestone just the other side of the hedge and muse on my story. Doesn't know she [would be a she] could read my Blog. or maybe she will, it won't tell her much except I can be a miserable cow.
How can the rest of you not be, that is my question. Even as a child I found it terrifying that I had not always been here,
Where was I when I was not. Where will I be when I am not.
There was a play on television, a man was injured and lost his identity, he had no idea who he was, I had nightmares for years. That and crossing the burning bridges and running away down the dark tunnels of course.I did get over the bridge in the end when I was in my 40s maybe, and stopped dreaming that one, must mean something.
I dream every night, big extravaganzas, Sometimes in my dream i think this would make a great film; a great comedy once, believe it or believe it not. I must write the plot down I think in my dream, giggling, no I won't forget it, it is just too perfect and hilarious. Obviously I can never remember.
Usually I resent my dreams, all that effort and tension, every night, Leave me alone, let me rest. Then just as I fall asleep next night I can almost touch the previous dream,then it waves rudely and I am off on a new roller coaster.
My son says he doesn't dream, doesn't have headaches either. is this fair!!!?
I have worked out which is the real life, as I can remember yesterday, but i can't remember my dreams.
Are Kathleen, Kenneth and Harry dreaming? Of course not, that is horrible writerly whimsy.

Dr Johnson

Sage advice for melancholics like me Be not solitary, be not idle.