NaPoWriMo

National Poetry Writing month next month! I'm gearing up for it:

 

Daily Poem

 

Set out with a goal! A

DAILY poem. There's a thing.

 

So:How's Spring doing the other side of my duvet?

Well, there are flowers, and a yellow sun

Birds, catkins, and small things wandering through the ivy.

 

And that's just MY garden.

 

There's a stirring here, too, in my heart

The ultimate sense-gate that does more than beat, beat, beat ...

 

Perhaps, in another life, I was a queen, or a courtesan.

I like playing around with those women, who are STILL here:

 

But, and this is a homecoming, I love who I am

And contemplate with satisfaction, the divine ordinariness of this same-same day.

http://www.napowrimo.net/

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International Women's Day

I am vastly privileged. OK, I am not wealthy or famous, but I have more than enough money to do the things I want to do, and time enough to do them in. I am surrounded by the love of my family and the support of my friends. I have nothing to fear.

 

On International Women's Day, I want to spare a thought for women who are living in poverty and fear, whose lives are torn apart by war, or made unbearable by domestic violence. There's little I can do to alleviate their suffering, or carry their burdens, but I can do this: be grateful for what I have, and do the little that I can to make the lives of others a bit more bearable.

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An English Country Churchyard

I love a good rummage round a churchyard, don't you?

I came home the long way yesterday, taking a right turn off the Ross Road at Barber's Bridge for a diversion through the villages of Tibberton and Taynton because it's Spring and the native daffodil is in bloom. The hosts of past centuries are depleted to a remnant in the hedgerow and churchyard now but there they are, and their tenacity makes me proud.

 

I guess St Lawrence's Church, Taynton, isn't grand, but it's loved, and worshippers have gathered here since the time when we had no King, when we were a 'Commonwealth'. A concept I rather like, and wouldn't be too sad to see return ... 'Commondearth' being what we have now. (Disgruntled sigh.)

 

 

 

 

 

This striking monument is for three soldiers from the same family killed or maimed in what their family who buried them would have called 'The Great War'

In Cherished Memory of Thomas Wetmore Ponting of the 12th BATT. London Regt. Rangers killed in action in Flanders April 21st. 1915, 29.

 His brothers, Charles (40) and William (37) died within days of each other just two weeks before the Armistice. Can you imagine how this family suffered? 

On a lighter note, the headstone below marks the final resting place of Ann Watkins (69) died 1894, ('Thy Will Be Done) and her husband, the quaintly named 'Comfort' Watkins who followed her to glory in 1900 ('Jesus Wept')

'Comfort' sends my thoughts off down a track. Do the last vestiges of this village's Presbyterian history reside in Mr Watkins' unusual name? The Church itself was Anglicised long ago, but maybe the Dissenting fervour that built it lingered on in family names?

Enough idle speculation! Today is St David's Day! Greetings to my Welsh family and friends. Here for you is one last glimpse of the daffodils!

 

If you are a fan of British history, St Laurence's Church is Quite Interesting!

https://sites.google.com/site/unitedbeneficehighnam/taynton-church/history-of-taynton

 

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Caught in the Moment

  

Today, I am tidying up. Out of a box under the bed tumbled a heap of photographs, some, like this one, capturing moments long-forgotten from times well-past.

I am thinking this was taken by my cousin Marylyn on a beach in Scotland in 1964, or '65. The three subjects are Geoffrey (Marylyn's husband) Robert (small boy) and Adrian, my brother.

I am not here. It was Adrian's turn to be taken camping by our closest family. I think I begrudged him the treat at the time.

Adrian died, aged just 42, a year or two before the millennium that we had assumed, when we were young, we'd celebrate together.  Geoffrey is dying of Alzheimer's disease and wouldn't know me if I saw him. Why would he? Ten years after this photo was taken, he and Marylyn divorced and we met only once after that - at her funeral. Robert battled decades of depression, then one day just upped and left his wife and daughters, never to be seen again. It happens.

When I teased this photograph out of the pile, I smiled. Their stories have come to an end, as mine must one day, but the photo carries a message: the ending is not the WHOLE story.

Funnily enough, that's a comfort.

 

 

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