e e cummings

I think that we should add a little art, here and there. Many years ago, when I was at college, my friend Coker introduced me to the poems of e e cummings (who did not believe in punctuation.) (I've probably got that wrong, but since nobody reads this except me, who gives a damn!)

Here is a poem that I love.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

The poem finished at that last line, this is me again, still suffering from the machinations of the Widow Cliquot. Happy August, World! See you in September.

La fin d'ete

Yes, I know, the French is crap! Not to worry.

I was going to put another rumination on the end of the holiday, but I decided to do something different. 7.40 pm on Sunday 31st August. School starts at 8.30 am on Monday September 1st. So nothing much to do but panic.

No, siree. My wife and I have just had a chicken dinner to die for, the chicken was so moist and succulent. Thank you St. Michel, you really know how to raise free range chickens! However, to help it go down and to celebrate this last day of Summer, we had a very nice bottle of the Widow Cliquot's best frothy white pop! C'est Magnifique! Good grief, or even Sacre Bleu, that widow knows how to make a bottle of fizzy pop. However, I probably don't know how to make sense after drinking it.

I have had a very nice last day of the holiday. We went to Church at 8.30 to a Book of Common Prayer Communion, which will mean nothing if you aren't someone like me who adores the BCP. Then we came home and I washed the car (and as soon as I finished it started to rain and has not stopped. So what! Then we had a salmon salad for lunch and went out to a local Garden Centre and bought a tray of Pansies. Then we came home and had a cup of tea and a cake. Did a bit of sorting out my school bag for tomorrow, then had Dinner and the Widow's Wine. And here I am.

Nothing much more to say really.

The question is, can I keep the blog going when I'm back at school. We shall have to see but I will do my best.

My target is to write something, even if it is just a very little, every day. But I still haven't finished going back over my Summer Holiday photographs. My aim is to get my photos online and keep the blog going. And build an igloo out of ice cream.

If anyone evr reads this besides me and Pat and maybe Daniele, go and look at Boris's Blog, it is in the margin on the right? It is A M A Z I N G. Grud! I wish that I could draw like him!

C U 2Morra

Justin Thyme

This is the last step on the bottom patio, or it was. It has been wobbling for a while but about three weeks ago it popped up when I stepped on it and then smashed into three pieces as it returned to its position. It had to be replaced or it was going to cause real problems.

Before we went to Suffolk I made a promise that I'd fix it before I went back to school. Nearly didn't make it!

However, today I got on with the job, mixed the cement and laid (or is it layed) the new paving stone into place.

Now this may not seem to be important to anyone else in the world, but it matters to me. As a history teacher I don't make a very good pavior. So I'm quite pleased with myself tonight. Though I must admit that my back doesn't half ache.

Saturday!

And it is Saturday, 30th September. In real terms the holiday is over and it's back to work at the chalkface on Monday. So today isn't the penultimate day of the holiday, but just another weekend. Bugger!

Yesterday we went into Manchester. We do that fairly frequently because Manchester is our nearest city. We had to go for a meeting, but we got there four hours early. We parked in the car park for the arena, opposite what used to be Boddington's Brewery. Now, sadly, just a car park with this rather forlorn chimney left standing in the middle. It's a real shame. I mean, I never really drank Boddies, it's not my sort of beer, but it was Manchester's Beer, and now they make it somewhere else, probably in Poland or the Czeck Republic. How can "The Cream of Manchester" be made anywhere else. The funny thing is that they brew Scottish & Newcastle Beer in Moss Side, now where is the sense in that?

It's very liberating, writing a diary like this that you know will never be read by anyone. You can say anything you like.

Anyway, we parked in Salford and decided to walk into the city, it isn't that far. On the way we passed the Cathedral. Now we go to visit the Cathedral everywhere we go on holidays. I love looking at Cathedrals. But we never visit our own. Well, I've been once, many years ago when I was in the city doing a town trail with a bunch of Year 11s. But I only popped in. pat has been a few times for Guides, but usually for services. Did I take my camera, did I hell as like. "Oh, I'm only going into Manchester. What will I need a camera for there?" I must go again fairly soon and take a decent camera. That Cathedral is lovely, small but very nice indeed. More of this, I'm sure, anon.

We also had a very nice lunch at Bella Italia on Deansgate (Which I now believe to be short for St Dennis Gate). St Dennis is one of the patrons of the Cathedral. Back to lunch. We had a lovely simple lunch, Bruschetta, A Goat's Cheese Salad and Cheesecake. Bottle of beer (Peroni) and a lovely lunch with my wife. What more can you ask for? But don't go to the Bella Italia in Piccadilly. We went there three weeks ago and the service was abominable. So if anyone from Bella Italia ever reads this blog, sack the manager!

Then we had our meeting, then we went shopping at Tesco, then we went home. But it was a nice day!

Today I plan to do a little bit of heavy work in the garden, and if I don't stop this then I will never start. So TTFN.

Link to Picasa Web Gallery for Aldeburgh

Aldeburgh

Aldeburgh

Hmmm. So you can publish a photograph straight out of Picasa into the Blog. This picture is described as large. It doesn't look large to me. Oh well.

So we came back from our Suffolk Holiday last Friday. I just told you that in my previous post. We stayed in a village called Dallinghoo, and if anyone ever reads this, and if anyone who reads it wants a nice place to stay, I can seriously recommend Wheelwrights Cottage. More about that in another, later, post.

On the last day of our holiday we went to Aldeburgh. We have been before. Once, when I was young I might well have hated a place like Aldeburgh. I very much doubt that there is anything to do around there if you are under 18, but then I may be wrong and this is no social commentary.

I love it, now. I adore the sky, it is so immense. I have always lived in hilly areas. Born in the Lake District and now I live in the Dark Peak of Derbyshire. So you go to Suffolk and it is flattish, and gently rolling. Go to the sea coast and the vista opens up over the North Sea. We spent about five hours wandering around, from one end of the village to the other, it doesn't take long.

To the south of the village, or town, there is a Martello Tower which was built to keep the French out! The picture above shows the view back towards Aldeburgh from about half way to the tower.

Now I'm just going to post this. Then I'll try to put a link to my photo album, just so that you can be critical. See you in a bit. (Might be 20 minutes, two days or six years.)

Ruminations on the end of a holiday (Part 1)

I need to point out that I never claimed that I would be good at this blogging, and I'm awfully aware that nobody is ever going to read it. However, I can treat it as a diary, but I was never much good with diaries either. When I was young, like lots of people, I used to get a diary every Christmas as a small present. Usually thin and crappy from Woollies, but the thought was what counted. I always set to with a will to keep a diary every day for the next year, and usually got as far as January 5th, by which time I was getting bored of writing, it's raining again and it's cold.

So Samuael Pepys I am not! But if I really try, I may not write anything every day. Unlike Daniele I have not got that much time!

Let us see how we go.

Pat and I got back off holiday last Friday morning. As is our wont we decided to come back early because, being the August Bank Holiday, we expected the roads to get very busy. They were. So we drove straight up from the Suffolk coast where we stayed, near to Woodbridge in Suffolk, and straight home to Glossop in Derbyshire. I don't know how long that is, but it was four and a half hours straight driving, with a couple of breaks for breakfast and coffee. We set off at about 5 am and got home by about 10.30. But I was knackered. Somebody like my friend Richard, who drives for a living, would say that four and a bit hours driving was nothing, but my driving is usually limited to an hour at the outside.

I didn't do much for the rest of Friday, just sat and read a book. Must come back to that book! I really enjoyed it.

I've then spent the best part of three days faffing (you won't find that in the French / English Dictionary D.) about with my photographs. Two computers and two "My Pictures" Directories, both with different content and both with multiple copies of the same image. I do not claim to be a good photographer, but I do try to get something nice out of my camera. Anyway.

So I spent what seems like days getting that straight. I now have one, consolidated, set of photographs. I have also fallen in love with Google. Not the Search Engine, but all the freebies that they let you have as well. So here I am writing a blog on Blogger. I've got my Calendar going and I thought that I'd give Picasa a go as well.

Maybe I'll let you look if you are good. But you will only carp about my photographs.

Well, I think I will see if I can work out how to link the two things together.

Bye for now.