Making it to 60
Posted: May 12, 2019 Filed under: Ageing issues, Poem | Tags: birthdays, Friends, George Carlin, Ian Dury 4 CommentsGreetings to all friends who are generous enough to follow this blog of mine. I appreciate it very much.
I (hopefully) make it to 60 today, 12th May 2019 (and a quick hats off to the late and great Ian Dury, with who I share a birth date and who gave me/us ‘Reasons to Be Cheerful’).
I have always loved George Carlin’s piece below, and it seemed like a good day to share it!
Meanwhile : Marc Mordey’s song….
60 years on,
In the merry merry month of May,
Managed a little work
Enjoyed a great deal more of play
Been drenched in love and affection
Avoided most harms and misdirection
Laughed, cried, not much denied
A small measure of pain
Bucketfuls of joy
Tried to be a man
But better at being a boy!
(photo : Helen Carey – the Queen of my dancing days – and I, in Aruba, February 2019)
George Carlin’s views on Ageing
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids? If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about aging that you think in fractions. ‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m four and a half!’ You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five! That’s the key.
You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. ‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m gonna be 16!’ You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16!
And then the greatest day of your life … . You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re Just a sour-dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would! So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.
You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday! You get into your 80’s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime.
And it doesn’t end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; ‘I Was JUST 92.’
Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. ‘I’m 100 and a half!’
May we all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry” Emily Dickinson
Posted: May 9, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentRabbits – a May Day wish.
Posted: May 1, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: May Day, Pembrokeshire, Rabbits 1 CommentMy grandmother ( the angel upon my shoulder) always used to tell me that the first word to say, on the first of each month, was Rabbits. I don’t know where this tradition/ superstition came from, nor why our lop eared friends were chosen but, whenever I am up early ( as I am this May Day, 2019) and listening to the silence outside, I think of our beloved Eleanor Alice, and, in good faith, I whisper the word…..
Would that my grandmother were alive today
As Pembrokeshire awakens to this year’s May Day
“Rabbits!”
That’s the very first word you must say.
And my spring time wish for you?
That;
Good health,
Good fortune,
And freedom of spirit
Accompany you all
Upon your way.
Notre Dame
Posted: April 16, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized 7 CommentsLike so many people, across the world, I was shocked and saddened by the images of this famous and beautiful building being consumed by flames. Forest fires can cleanse and purge, regenerate. Maybe President Macron’s pledge to rebuild will materialise. I hope so. But the building is so much more than that. It is a collection of memories, stories, hopes and fears, intrigues, plots, births, marriages, deaths and funerals. For many, a house of God, for some, a box ticked in the tourism guide, and for all, a centre for humanity. So this, in memoriam….
The building falls
Enflamed at the last,
The spire, hunch backed, then broken.
The world exhales,
A collective gasp,
A sob, a tear,
The siren shriek.
A fiery breath roars skywards.
What’s gone from here?
An icon, yes.
A feature, a show,
Somewhere for hordes of tourist to go,
The chatter, clatter, camera whirl,
Babble, rabble, rainbow guided swirl,
Notre Dame, an oasis perhaps, in this,
Our restless, curious, irreverent world.
(Believers came here too. Who knew?)
More than this though,
Sparks stumbling the night sky,
And thus, atomised
Learning to fly :
Dreams
Schemes
Prayers
Hymns
Joys
Fears
The hatched
The matched
The despatched
The church embattled
Across the years.
As the structure breathes its last
The symbol sighs
The crowds groan, moan, mourn this troubling
Devastating
Demise.
Aloft, the smoke belching
Sated, abated,
Fire fuelled repast
The bell no longer tolls.
The silence is that of the bombed out building,
The ghetto razed,
History, erased.
Adieu sublime,
Au revoir, divine.
The cost?
Our mutual loss?
Farewell,
Forlorn,
Adrift,
Yearning, burning,
Ash stricken.
The whispering echoes of time.
Hummingbirds
Posted: March 28, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 CommentsThe hummingbirds are back
And all is well
They flew across the Atlantic with us
Years ago
They’d sprung from besides the Grand Canyon
They saw us through Bryce, Zion, Salt Lake City
Snow
Sunshine
They didn’t know
They travelled in a suitcase
Benign.
Months later we flagged them up
And they’ve floated serene
Meantimes
Above the Bay, spinning soundlessly
Morfa, Dinas Headed,
That’s where they’ve been.
Lately
We’ve been all at sea
Whilst they, dust dogged and long winter bedraggled
Were caught up in decorators detritus
Rested
Neglected and unseen.
Yesterday
Refreshed, rejuvenated,
Indifferent to all the noise and chatter of this troubled globe
We reinstated our duly mobile birds
Fee flowing silhouette
Shaded
Then sun burst on
Our newly pristine wall
As the chaos continues
The world may yet fall
But the hummingbirds are back
And
Just now
Our slice of the picture sits well
And that’s all.
Happy Christmas
Posted: December 19, 2018 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentA Christmas message, from my ALLTIME favourite author!
I would like to wish a VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS to all my friends, readers and blog followers.
2018 has been a good year for me on the writing front, with lots of acclaim for my wartime LAVENDER ROAD novels, and several of them hitting the best seller charts. All six books are now out as paperbacks, eBooks and audio books worldwide.
For those of you who have read the Lavender Road books there is still the option to have a go at SLICK DEALS, the adventure thriller I wrote a while back to amuse my husband, which is set in Monaco, France, London and lovely Pembrokeshire where we live. For the more romantic of you there is also THE ART OF LOVING, a light romance set in Germany, which launched my writing career so many years ago by getting me short-listed for the RNA new writer award!
Many of…
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Betty, elemental – for Roger, Emma and family.
Posted: December 17, 2018 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 CommentsA good friend of ours, Betty Hill, died recently. We went to her funeral service (as the Easterly wind snapped and bit its way into West Wales) and the following quote, which she had chosen, was shared :
‘Total annihilation is impossible.We are the prisoners of an infinity without outlet, wherein nothing perishes, wherein everything is dispersed, but nothing lost.Neither a body nor a thought can drop out of the universe, out of time and space. Not an atom of our flesh, not a quiver of our nerves, will go where they cease to be, for there is no place where anything ceases to be. The brightness of a star extinguished millions of years ago still wanders in the ether where our eyes will perhaps behold it this very night, pursuing its endless road. it is the same with all that we see, as with all that we do not see.’ Maurice Maeterlinck.1912.
Betty was gracious, elegant, interesting and interested. She reminded me very much of my grandmother. I wish I had known her better and for longer.
This poem is for her, as I imagine her now…
Betty, elemental.
I am a mote of dust, blown in from Saharan sands
A snap of Jack Frost, chilling the way.
A speck of smoke from a long ago liner.
A swallow, skyline skimming, swooping, above Kings Terrace
The bell in the cry of an oyster catcher, keening across Newport Bay
A ripple, as a seal explores Nevern estuary.
I am a hint of perfume, dripping from Skomer bluebells,
A flare of sunset, exploding across Dinas Head
A blade of grass in Llanychaer.
A hint of morning mist as the Berry Hill cows call.
A note in the minutes of the W.I.
I am a snowflake, falling in Edmonton.
A smudge of ink in a secretarial ledger.
I am a piece of clay, fired in ceramic.
I am bold colour, and medieval motif.
I am the turned up corner of a smile on my grandchildren’s faces
A hair on the lion’s head of my son in law
A stroke of paint on Roger’s palette.
And I am
A breath of wind in my daughter’s face, as she gazes westwards.
I am grace sublime,
Sun and star kissed
Pain dismissed,
The silent voice of calm
Of love, care and kindness
Aswim in the universe
Sorrows shadowed,
Goodbye distress.
Fundamental.
I am Betty,
elemental.
