A Hardy poem for you.

Those who know me, will know how interested I am in Thomas Hardy and his work. I was faffing around with poetry yesterday. I would now like to share my favourite Hardy poem with you. I couldn't get a swallows picture, but I do have one of the River Towy and its meanders. This view is looking back towards Carmarthen.

OVERLOOKING THE RIVER STOUR

The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
Above the river-gleam
In the wet June's last beam:
Like little crossbows animate
The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
Above the river-gleam.

Planing up shavings of crystal spray
A moor-hen darted out
From the bank thereabout,
And through the stream-shine ripped his way;
Planing up shavings of crystal spray
A moor-hen darted out.

Closed were the kingcups; and the mead
Dripped in monotonous green,
Through the day's morning sheen
Had shown it golden and honeybee'd;
Closed were the kingcups; and the mead
Dripped in monotonous green.

And never I turned my head, alack,
While these things met my gaze
Through the pane's drop-drenched glaze,
To see the more behind my back . . .
O never I turned, but let, alack,
These less things hold my gaze.

Hardy lived in Sturminster Newton when he and Emma were first married, in a semi-detached villa called "Riverside", which suggests that the poem above was capturing his view from the room he worked in.

When we lived in Dorset, we went to auction there each week, bought our cheese from the market, and our bread flour from Sturminster Mill, which is a wonderful place. I have a x-stitch picture of it which I stitched when we first moved here, and I was still missing Dorset so much. Happy memories.

Half a brick . . .

I felt in the mood for writing today. Poetry. It just came to me when my brain was in neutral. I wish I had a photo of the place which is in my mind's eye. I wish I could remember the NAME of the place which is in my mind's eye. If I can find the scrap of paper it is written down on, I will update you. My daughter and I found this when we were scrambling up a steep hillside to pick gorse blossoms for wine (Nancy and all Stateside, gorse is incredibly prickly, but has beautiful lemon yellow blossoms which smell of coconut, and seem to flower almost all the year round. There is an old saying, something like when the gorse doesn't bloom, love's out of fashion. Meaning, never! It used to be used as feed during the winter months, and at St Fagans, the Museum of Welsh Life, near Cardiff, they have saved and rebuilt a gorse mill, which used to crush and chop the gorse and make it edible for livestock). All that was left of the house was as described in the poem - just a shadow of a memory of times past. Later we looked it up in the 1881 census and found the family that had lived there then. This poem is for them:

HALF A BRICK . . .

Half a brick. That’s all that was left of what had been a home

When Victoria still reigned.

Half a brick. A house platform cut into the slate bedrock:

The flat face of a back wall, frost-cracks blackened by rainwater.

A spring nearby: not far to haul a bucket.

A pallor of Snowdrops in the woodland above,

Once gathered by childish fingers.

A trackway to it: blocked by fallen trees that were saplings

When he laboured in the fields below.

The same wind which blew the children’s hair,

Made tangles for the taming brush,

Now sweeps the hearth clear,

Makes the bracken nod where three girls played and a mother smiled.

Homes that were once neighbours still remain,

Sunk into the hillside like dumplings in stew.

But here - names in a census, and half a brick,

Tell no tale.

For the Lewis family of Ffosgrech.

The Spoon in the Antique Shop

An oil lamp gleams on a kitchen table, as a fat ginger cat lurks beneath,

Snickering through his coat with teeth like dirty ivory.

The suck and pop of a pot of porridge vies with the stuttering tick of an old clock,

And there is the jarring scrape of spoon on metal.

Hands dry as sandpaper from bricking the front step tighten apron strings.

The cat’s basilisk stare fixes on a wailing toddler.

“Hush now my babby, we’ll soon have you fed.”

The scrape of spoon on metal becomes a childhood anthem,

As it stirs soup and stew; apples and custard; chutney and jam.

It is an extension of the mother: her identity.

It is the last thing packed on moving house, the first unwrapped.

It survives funerals and weddings and christenings;

Gaining a personality of its own.

On the shelf in the antique shop it has wooden spoons for company;

The embrace of a Keiller’s Marmalade jar, and

A rolling pin rubs shoulders with it.

I pick it up, noticing the wear patterns, the chipped edges; the price tag of £4.

£4 for a woman’s soul . . .

The turning of the year . . .

This is one of my favourite local photographs. I only have a cheapish digital camera, but sometimes it surprises me with the way it captures the light. This picture reminds me of a lovely day spent walking, one Saturday around early February last year.

The first snowdrops are starting to flower again now. Not as profusely as this bank, at Nant Gwilw, but give them another two or three weeks and it will really start to feel like spring is emerging and giving us all hope in the depths of winter.

Nant Gwilw, now sadly a ruinous farmhouse and tumbled outbuildings on the lane to Brechfa, was once famed for a particular wild flower, a lavender coloured iris which was taken to America, and named after the place it was found. Sadly, last year the entire area around the farmhouse and outbuildings was cleared so if the iris still survived, it would only now be along the banks of the little stream. Here is a link which tells you more about this story:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/wfha2000/walespic/030222-5.htm

I know of no battle in this area either, but I shall certainly look for the iris and hope it has survived.

Cats

We have . . . eight. We didn't set out to have eight - but they seem to think there is a written invitation at the front gate and they just turn up. This is Honey, who came by invitation. She is a Maine Coone, which means she is incredibly bright and a real bossy-boots into the bargain. When she came to us she hadn't been socialised with other cats (certainly not oodles of them all at once anyway) and had never Been Outside (except if she'd escaped). We had a difficult initial period as she immediately came into roaring season and had to be confined to barracks, spraying mightily on every upright surface. She was then spayed, and gradually introduced to the others, but then she was allowed to Go Out. You would think we had given her the doors to Heaven itself. As you can see, she was longing to get outside and Kill Things. She has turned into the Honey Monster - at least to all rodents. But as you can see, she also likes her creature comforts . . .

Reading

I never get as much chance as I would wish to just curl up with a book. During the day it seems an indulgence, like going to bed in the daytime (even though you are ill); at night, it is a challenge to stay awake further than a chapter. I live for books. I cannot imagine a world without them. I HAVE to read. When sufficiently desperate, I will even read bus time tables or the labels on sauce bottles. I am sure this will be familiar to some of you. At the moment, with the thought of downsizing from this rambling old house very much in our thoughts, I am trying to be sensible and do a cull of the books I "can" live without, as I know I can't take them all with me. My husband had his - smaller - collection too. I am hoping he will prune his a little so the sacrifice isn't all mine! Having said this though, this being sensible about downsizing business, has this stopped me buying books? Erm . . . actually, no . . . But I am thinking twice! My hand does hover a little, but I am still to be found crouched down in front of boxes of books at the Car Boot Sale, rifling through their contents as you never know quite what will turn up. It might be a book I have waited half a lifetime for. I have a list in my pocket, of what forum friends are looking out for as well, so really I'm searching as much on their behalf as mine . . . aren't I?

I do collect, however, I must be honest about that. Old horse books (I have collected antiquarian horse books since I started work at 16); literary biographies and critiques: especially Thomas Hardy, the Brontes and Dickens; Victorian social history; books on the countryside; cookery books - anything with the word 'Farmhouse' or 'Country' in the title is difficult to resist. I love all sorts of needlecrafts, so my hand often hovers over embroidery or quilting books. I can corner the market in books on history and archaeology, but there's always the one that "got away" . . .

If I HAD to choose books for a desert island, I would be hard-pressed I must admit. They allow so FEW on Desert Island Discs . . . Hmmm. For the sake or argument, we will allow . . . four. Golly gosh. ONLY 4 books. As I'm the arbitrator I think I shall indulge myself with "complete works of" . . . OK. Here goes:

1. Complete diaries (even the ones his widow burned after his untimely death just a few weeks after their wedding - peritonitis, poor man) of the Rev. Francis Kilvert. We are fortunate enough to live within day out driving distance of Clyro, the village a mile from Hay-on-Wye, on the Welsh side of the Wye, where he was curate for some years. I have read and re-read his diaries, as they are published, and books about him and his writing. If I had those, I could evoke some wonderful memories and imagine, in my mind's eye, the places that he knew so well, some of which are familiar to me.

2. Complete works of Thomas Hardy. In hard back please, and since I can indulge myself, let's make that first editions too. I would read Jude the Obscure first, to get it over with, so I would never need to touch it again. It was the first of his novels that I read, and it took me 6 years to pluck up the courage to read something else of his, but now they are my good companions. I assume that his complete poems would also be thrown in for good measure.

3. Complete works of Somerville and Ross, Irish writers who painted such funny stories of Irish country life, and the chasing of the fox, in those halcyon times before it was considered politically incorrect to do so. Their talent for the creation of characters who ride right off the page because they are so alive would have me crying with laughter.

4. This is very, very difficult. Would I chose one of the children's pony stories that I still have, mostly in Armada paperback editions which are falling apart from being read and reread and now the glue which held them together is as dry as desert dust. Or Elizabeth Sutherland's The Five Euphemias, which I have started reading several times, and then gotten waylaid by something less stuffy, but I still really want to read it. Or the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, which would evoke such wonderful thoughts of the English countryside with its amazing illstrations and sayings. Or Flora Thompson's books, brought to the front of my memory again now that 'LarkRise to Candleford' is being dramatised on tv. Or the complete works of Diana Gabaldon, so that I could fall in love with Jamie all over again, on my desert island . . . Or? I don't know. Like Scarlett O'Hara, I will think about that tomorrow - and let you know! What would you choose?

Flooding continued

Some more photos:



This is the other side of the bridge from the "floating pub" yesterday. As you can see, the river is over the road and nosey-parkering across the adjacent fields. Water levels are considerably lower today, but apparently there is more heavy rain forecast for the next three days, so we aren't out of the woods yet. Spare a thought for Tewkesbury, flooded again and nearly as badly as it was last summer.

This is the other side of the little boundary stream from the view I posted yesterday. It was VERY busy getting somewhere in a hurry.

Yesterday's rain

Last night the photos I posted last night were swallowed up by the ether . . . Today I've hit the jackpot! This is a little river near me - normally a stream really - but turned into a rageing torrent yesterday. Love the light in this. This stream used to be the border of the very last of the lands belonging to Tally Abbey (which is a fair way from here). There was a monastic cell here, and I believe bits of it ended up incorporated in the lower part of our house - beautifully dressed stone. By the 1850s it had become merely a stable . . .

The top photo is downstream - it could be worse yet though last night's rain wasn't so heavy and it is now cold and starry out.

I have loading problems with the photos so will probably have to have a series of individual photos when the broadband connection is good enough. Do you think the folks in the pub were filling sandbags?