Ab Imo Pectore

From the bottom of my heart. Not to be confused with, "from the heart of my bottom".

I have just been reading about the battles of Agincourt and Waterloo. What stands out/to attention/the test of time, is that, in the past, there was a huge amount of physical courage. Perhaps today that courage still exists but, if it does, it is rarely put to the test where we live.

Invading pumpkins

Absolute Proof of God's Existence

 This, as you know, is one of my dogs. Gilty. He is a small beautiful animal; attentive, kind, sensitive and constant. Of course, we all fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing the animals we care about. But to dismiss the ministrations of  a being so utterly perfect as something trivial is to forget the essence of life itself.

When I got divorced I was severely depressed. I was ill and physically weak, I didn't sleep, I ate little - to the extent that I lost 15 kilos and weighed 70. On arriving home in the evening, Gilty followed me everywhere. I would sit on the stairs and he would sit next to me, sometimes for 20 minutes or more, resting his nose on my lap. I didn't allow the dogs to sleep in the house but at that time I let them sleep in the kitchen. As soon as I went to bed I would shut the door waiting for the wave of insomnia to envelop, like sleep but the wrong way round. As soon as I had closed the door Gilty would be scratching at it. When that didn't work he would hurl himself at it making a noise, a violent thudding. I would let him into the room and he would jump onto the bed spreading himself generously over the canopy of the bed. I never saw him leave but, when I awoke he was always gone.  

 

Dogged

 I think what I want to say is that I feel very lucky and very protected. I have done very little to deserve my beautiful sons, house, dogs, girlfriend, my parents, my job-which I adore, and my friends.

Today's poem:

DRINKING SONG

You're always right, I'm always wrong

By rote I know you just how strong

By wrote I writ you letters long

Signed; yores before, ewer always wright,

Drinking myself into the night.

You're always right, I'm always wrong

Forgive this trite pathetic song

Forgive this spiteful ink-filled prong

Signed; flaws afore, you're almost right,

Drinking myself into the night

You're always right, I'm always wrong

But who's to say for just how long

This heinous torture must go on?

Signed; buy fore goods, you're never right,

Drinking myself into the night

And

Where am I? When am I? Who am I? All of these questions are absurd. So it is somewhat paradoxical that human beings habitually try and answer them. Where am I? (in my life, my metaphysical stage of development, - or may be I'm just blitzed and I might as well be in Rawtenstall). When am I? (in the present, mindful of what's happening, in the past thinking about how seductive youth is. (!!!!!!! I think not.), in the future, that is, living only in the imagination?

Every morning when Jacky wakes up he says, "snuggle daddy!". We might be sleeping in the same bed or not; it doesn't matter. "Snuggle daddy!". Then, I am the richest man in the whole world. Rockefeller, Branson, Midas, Croesus; they are poor desolate souls bereft of cuddles from their vivacious, imaginative gorgeous son.

Let's get rid of July.

4th Right

5th right

View from the bar to my favourite beach (End of July) 

Hello Granny (That church looks familiar)

I am Scottish

  All this nationalism. Catalonia, Scotland, Mars. I am an immigrant. My home is here, by definition- by definition because it's where I live. Why do people feel a kind of entitlement just because of what it says on their passport? I might be able to understand it if the interested parties were people who had saved the world from fascism. But, in general, they are just people who want to believe in something. They generally appeal to history even when their connection to the machinery of the past is patently tenuous. It's just a football fan mentality. Everybody wants something for free. I'm American and proud of it! I'm a Republican and proud of it! I'm a woman and proud of it! I always say what I think!  What these people are really saying is that, by belonging to a certain group they have rights that have accrued to them historically in spite of the fact they might have done nothing to deserve preferential treatment through their own personal endeavour. Give me a freebie!

Work hard, try your best, be generous and shut up!!

Here endeth the lesson.

Today's poem:

There must be a wound! 
No one can be this hurt 
and not bleed. 

How could she injure me so? 
No marks 
No bruise 

Worse! 
People say 'My, you're looking well' 
.....God help me! 
She's mummified me - 
ALIVE! 

'Land

Here I am vacillating like a rusty slinky that has just waterfallen down a steep staircase. This is the longest period of labour inactivity I have had in 30 years. The garden and the dogs are feeling the benefit.

I am starting a few private classes this week and I hope I will be able to flesh-out my timetable by mid-October.

In the Nature Reserve Quite Near Blackburn

I have those shoes at home now. They didn't last two minutes. In the two months since that photo was taken Jacob now takes 2 to 3 sizes of bigger shoe!! It shouldn't be surprising should it? By the time he's ten he will be bigger than me.

Silver birches

Bring back the birch? Not good enough for them, that's what I say! Why don't they bring back the oak or the Giant Redwood.

White Pine

Knotty too. We like Knotty.  I am making a cupboard for the porch at the moment, out of white pine. One of the knotts broke the drill-bit.

Which park is this?

And this?

Local symbol of Manhood

Quasi-Local symbol of Boyhood 

The local climate spitting water rather than fire

Have just read Neville Shute's A Town like Alice, for the first time. What a fabulous book! Makes me feel better about people even though it's just a story.

Today's poem:

Tease ... (Parody Joyce Kilmer Trees)

I think that I will never free
The joy that lives inside of me.
The me that hears the jeers of jest
Still takes a stand and still protests.
That hips weren’t made to swing and sway
While lips and eyes attract their prey.
And all things that those ladies wear
Are just a ploy ~ so men beware!
That bosom where your head has lain
May often bring you grief and pain.
So God made girls like me, the seed
From which can grow the friend you need.

'gland part 3

I need a back transplant. But they are pretty hard to come by. I probably have a pill dependency now. The pain without them is all-embracing, debilitating, frustrating and impinges upon one's mood remorselessly. The pills are pretty good though.

Sunnyhurst wood

Can't remember how to spell it. What's a hurst/hearst anyway?

Stunningly beautiful. Some of the things we take for granted every day, that's what they are. Stunningly beautiful. The light filtering through the canopy of trees, the ecstatic proliferation of green, the Italianate bridges. Those parks are delicious.

With Carlo in Boldventure park

Owlish

It's amazing what we take for granted sometimes. Living in a foreign country makes you reassess what you believe to have been assimilated and subsequently forgotten. If it weren't for the parks Darwen would be a place to drive through as quickly as possible on the way to somewhere else.

Looking miserable after last orders

Generational leap

There is birth and death. And a bit in the middle. The bit in the middle might be long or short, different shades of grey. It might contain a greater or a lesser quantity of beer.

To the world

View from Darwen Tower

Meeting of two mines

Stairstruck

Deep Thought

Today´s poem:

I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,
I said 'You don't belong in here', he said 'I beg you pardon?',
I said 'This place is England, what are you doing here?',
He said 'Ah, then I must be lost' and then 'Oh dear, oh dear'.

'I should be back in Africa, on Saranghetti's Plain',
'Pray, where is the nearest station where I can catch a train?'.
He caught the bus to Finchley and then to Mincing lane,
And over the Embankment, where he got lost, again.

The police they put him in a cell, but it was far too small,
So they tied him to a lampost and he slept against the wall.
But as the policemen lay sleeping by the twinkling light of dawn,
The lampost and the wall were there, but the elephant was gone!

So if you see an elephant, in a Jumbo Jet,
You can be sure that Africa's the place he's trying to get!