Look at Me!

Just look at me!

I am the Peppe Poppy 

and I think I am too beautiful for words.

I grow five feet tall and dominate every other plant around me.

Just as well perhaps, 

that my glory lasts for no more than 10 days.

             

Can't do much gardening for a few days. Somehow, I've hurt my ankle and it was  all swollen up and painful. I have no idea what I've done to it. There are times when I do something silly and hurt myself accidentally;  I yelp, shout "ow, that hurt", hobble for a bit, then simply carry on doing what I was doing.  And promptly forget all about it. This is what must have happened.

However, help was at hand. I saw Jilly and her magic hands took hold of my ankle and massaged it. She also told me to wrap it in a cotton cloth filled with soda crystals and keep this on overnight. 

Well, I wouldn't have believed it, but it worked; the cloth was damp in the morning, the soda had solidified and the swelling was reduced considerably.  I can definitely recommend the procedure.

Just to be sure I had done no lasting harm I popped into the surgery. The doctor reassured me but recommended that I keep the foot rested for a day or two. He had no answer to my question regarding the efficacy of the soda crystals. "I don't know", he said, "I can't tell you why this worked."

Still, no gardening or dog walking for the weekend. So here are some photos of the garden I took earlier in the week.

The Scraper's Diary March 14th, 1947, Dortmund

We played at Wuppertal yesterday, after all, but something had to go wrong, as it has done so far with all our shows.The stand and music lorry got held up, and half the audience waited half an hour for us to begin. The other dozen blokes went out.

Back at the barracks a pontoon school started operations. Being fairly hard up, I stayed out, and, as the stakes rose, I grew more thankful for my impecuniosity. I went to bed at 2.15, and the school went to another room, where they played until 7.30 a.m. One chap lost £8, another about £5.

At three, the dance band returned from the officer's mess. Jock, who is in my room, was rolling drunk, and Harry and Ginger put him to bed.

We woke this morning at ten, with bad headaches and tempers.

About half an hour after the lights went out, I got a terrible fit of coughing. I couldn't stop and was very nearly sick on the spot. My eyes and nose were streaming; however, it passed.

Today, no duty for myself and Mike, so we wandered through Dortmund with Len. It is terribly devastated. Words cannot convey the devastation.

We went into a shop where Len saw a cushion cover he wanted. He picked it up, and an assistant approached.

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch," she said. Len looked dumb.

"Parlez-vous Français", she said. Len shook his head.

"Do you speak English", she said. Len said "Yes", and "How much is this?"

o-o-o-o-o

I've been over here a week now, and I want to attempt to give my impressions of Germany, before I realize how wrong I am. Naturally I speak only of the Rhineland as seen through a bad soldier's eyes, but they are quite compassionate eyes, and human.

Strange as it may seem, the first strange thing to me in Germany is that traffic keeps to the right. To that, I cannot accustom myself.

Somehow, in my innocent, untravelled and untrammelled mind, I thought that this trip would be a great adventure, seeing new places and new faces, and finding strange things and long-dreamt romance around the corner. Of course I was wrong, as anyone could have told me had I confided in them, but I found out by experience, and somehow I wasn't surprised.

Wislawa Szymborska

In Praise of Dreams

In my dreams

I paint like Vermeer van Delft.

I speak fluent Greek

and not only with the living.

I drive a car

which obeys me.

I am talented,

I write long, great poems. 

I hear voices,

no less than the major saints.

You would be amazed

at my virtuosity on the piano.

I float through the air as is proper,

that is, all by myself.

Falling from the roof

I can softly land on green grass.

I don't find it hard

to breathe under water.

I can't complain:

I've succeeded in discovering Atlantis.

I'm delighted that just before dying

I always manage to wake.

Right after the outbreak of war

I turn over on my favourite side.

I am but need not be

a child of my time.

A few years ago

I saw two suns.

And the day before yesterday a penguin

With the utmost clarity.

The Price of Beauty

Sorry folks, I'm afraid, I feel a rant coming on. Look away now, if ranting doesn't light your candle.

Recently, I read an article in the paper on the lengths some people go to to alter their appearance, for the sake of vanity. Obviously, I know it's nothing new and has been going on for quite some time now, has almost become commonplace and routine. I also realize, that it is a blessing for people who have undergone traumatic events resulting in serious physical and facial disfigurement; surgery can change their lives for the better, give them back what they have lost.

However, this article dealt only with vanity. We live in a world which iconizes and celebrates youth, westernized, caucasian youth, at that.  The pursuit of body improvement is a global industry  now worth $160bn a year. Hair straightening, skin lightening, diet programs, body building are only the foothills of "physical improvement", hardly worth a mention. In Africa, the use of hair straightening products is widespread. Surgical procedures such as nose jobs are widely carried out in the near and far east, Tehran apparently being the world capital for rhinoplasty, while the Chinese go in for nose implants. 

We are brainwashing ourselves to believe that we can only be attractive and lovable if we have bigger noses, smaller noses, bigger boobs, smaller boobs, a flatter stomach, western eyes, straight hair, curly hair, blond hair, tighter skin.

The photos in this article are too gruesome to reproduce here; I also wouldn't want to scare anybody witless. You know of people in the public eye, actors, socialites, with their wind-tunnel-faces, "having work done", but so far, I have not visualized what this actually entails. However, seeing the flaps of bleeding skin being lifted, stretched, pulled, cut and sewn up, made me gag. 

So, my good-looking days, my pretty, youthful days days are behind me; life and the years have left their mark on my face; childbearing and illness have taken the zing and spring out of my body; so what? 

Although surgery is not for me,  I will always defend your right to being chopped up, nipped, tucked and reassembled, if you so desire; however, my suggestion would be: have the lobotomy first.

 

Scenes from a Walk

 Hurrah! It's stopped raining.

Shropshire Way, here we come, Benno and I.

Somebody else is on his way;  

One man went to mow,

went to mow a meadow;

What's up?

A hearty lunch or a tiring walk?

Any ideas? 

Of course not, and don't point that camera at me, you voyeur!

Fish'n Chips

Hi there, ex-pat Brits,

are any of you drooling at the mouth?

My pub lunch wasn't half good!

Omar Khayyam

Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer, Omar Khayyam, was born on the 18th May 1048.

One of the best known quatrains of his Rubaiyat is one of the most beautiful love poems ever written and often quoted.:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,

A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse    -   and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness  -

And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

The Scraper's Diary, March 12th, 1947 Dortmund

We arrived back at Duesseldorf at 3.30 this morning.

I, having forecast that time to within one minute, won twenty five cigarettes.

Being told to move off at 10 for Wuppertal, I rose at 9, but, as usual, we didn't leave until 1.30 - and then, when we reached Wuppertal, we weren't expected until tomorrow, so we went on to Dortmund, and are preparing for a really long night's rest.

As I have a little spare time now, I will note down one or two things, that have been festering in my mind for a day or three.

Whatever you may hear to the contrary, the British soldier out here has a cushy time compared to us bods stationed in Blighty.

He gets better food. The worst meal I have had here was the equal to the best I have had at Larkhill. Moreover, the cookhouses are scrupulously clean, and smell-less.

Moreover, he never has to queue for his food.

Moreover, he is waited on by German men and sometimes, pretty women.

The barrracks here are all brick and centrally heated.

Moreover, they often have hot water.

Moreover, there are adequate wash-places and baths, and lavatories.

Moreover, the beds are all sprung.

Moreover, there are often German girls to clean the room and press his suits.

A soldier here can buy 75 cigarettes a week at 8d for twenty.

Moreover, his sweet ration is greater than ours.

Moreover, he gets 50 cigarettes a week free.

He can buy far more in his canteens and Naafis than we can in our shops.

He has all the facilities of the Black Market at his disposal - and these are terrific.

And now he has the R.A. (S.P.) band for a few weeks.

Of course, he doesn't get home at weekends, but German girls are very fetching and quite cheap.

o-o-o-o-o

"What did you want all them biscuits for, Pop?" says Bill.

"Didn't you see him", says Taffy, the driver, "Round the back with a tart?"

"What", says Bill, "Old Nelly, the three biscuit queen?"

General laughter.

"And him a respectable married man", says Ginger. "I don't know".

"He's the biggest old ram in the band, after the old man", says someone.

"Cor yes", says Bill. "Did you see him coming back from the dance? Sitting in the back of the bus with a blonde tart. Bit of all right, that was".

"Strewth", says someone else, "look at the bloody floods. look, splashed that old ----'s stockings, didn't we"?

"What time are we getting back?", I say.

"Dunno", says Ginger. "Tomorrow", and someone starts singing "We won't be home till morning".

"Cor", says Ginger. "Four weeks. Roll on. Bloody roll on".

And we lapse into a meditative silence as the coach rolls on through the devastation of Cologne.

Bliss

Today I have been to see Jilly, the miracle worker.

I make my own garden compost out of all green garden waste, cardboard and newspapers, vegetable kitchen waste and grass clippings; after six months or so, the resulting mess is excellent stuff, dark and friable, crumbly and sweetly earthy, smelling of nothing so much as goodness. You can tell, I love the stuff? Sure, I do. There's nothing more satisfying than deeply covering a bed in it, and myself in the process. The plants positively sigh in ecstasy.

Gardener regularly turns the heaps for me; it is rather hard work. Unfortunately, he tends to overfill the bags, once the compost is ready, making it almost impossible for me to help myself to the pure gold when he's not here, which is most of the time.

So there I am, pushing and pulling, shoving and heaving, trying to fill a wheelbarrow. It's my back that pays the penalty, leaving me bent and crippled.

Which is where Jilly comes in. Jilly is a tiny person with healing hands. Boy, can she do massage! I lie down on her couch a cripple and get off ........... still a cripple, but of a different sort and for a short time only. Her clever hands pummel and knead, digging deep, isolating and homing in on the most painful knots and stiffest muscles, working on them until they give in and dissolve and I emerge bruised and battered, but once again straight backed and upright. Smelling beautifully, too, because Jilly works her miracles using the essential oils of aromatherapy.

Now this is what I would spend a lot of money on, When I am Rich, should I ever get rich. Clouds and diamonds are all very well, but, to my mind, nothing beats an hour's worth of close personal attention. 

Spring hedgerows

This one's for you, English Rider:

 

campion and bluebells

    stitchwort                           

daisies

buttercups

Queen Annes's lace

all of them "under an English heaven".

Country Ladies

Yes, I know, the feminist says "country women", but these ladies are wonderfully old-fashioned and feminism passed them by when the fighting first started and has still not caught up with them. So, ladies they are and will remain.

They have names to suit their status: Edna and Audrey and Joyce and Pauline and Margaret; delightfully old-fashioned names to suit delightful old-fashioned ladies. The youngest of them is 75 and the oldest is 86. They are not as hale and hearty as they once were, nor are they as active, although both the 75 year old and the 82 year old could show me a thing or two when it comes to stamina.

When I rang one of the ladies to see if she would like a visit,  for a chat, "to cheer her up", I found that no cheering up was required. "Come on over", she said, "I'm having a little tea party; we have a designer/dressmaker coming to do a presentation, you'd enjoy it, I'm sure".

When I arrived, the ladies were assembled around the tea table, tucking into delicate sandwiches.  home made scones and cakes, and "catching up". Catching up is very much a good gossip about absent friends, never malicious or unkind, but very thorough, nonetheless.  They were having a high old time, cheeks getting pinker by the minute.

The dressmaker arrived, a giggly but efficient young woman, who arranged her laptop to suit everyone and the show began. Flouncy, frilly summer dresses provoked oohs and aahs, as did little girl's dresses, but the highlight of the show were several wedding dresses, very elaborate and fancy, the sort often called "meringues".

The clothes were totally unsuitable for anybody over 40, much less 70 - I can't imagine what the dressmaker was thinking of - but the show was a complete success with the ladies. They loved the clothes, but did agree that perhaps they were not quite the thing; they enjoyed the make-up lessons, which followed, even more, although Margaret said, she'd long ago stopped bothering. "Why", the others said, "putting on a bit of slap can make all the difference".

And as for me? I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon; I sincerely hope that the ladies will continue to consider me their "young" friend and continue to invite me to share their fun.

Summer 1945

The war was over.

The guns ceased firing and the bombs ceased dropping at midnight on May 8th-9th. Germany, and Europe, fell silent for the first time since September 1939.

Millions and millions had died, on battlefields all over Europe, in concentration camps and in a thousand bombed out towns and cities. Men, women and children, the innocent and guilty alike.

The slaughter had ended. The Third Reich was defeated. It was time to turn away from the ruins and look to survival and re-birth.

May 1945 was Germany's darkest hour, "Zero Hour".

The people were there, and the land - the first dazed, bleeding and hungry, and, when winter came, shivering in their rags in makeshift shelters and cellars, often open to the elements. Much of the land was a vast wasteland of rubble, the infrastructure destroyed, factories and workshops demolished, neither transport nor food supply intact.

As I have said before, most houses in our little village were undamaged or only slightly damaged. My paternal grandfather's house in the same village had taken a hit, but was left comparatively intact, having lost no more than half a wall. We did not experience the desperate shortage of housing; although the influx of millions of refugees and expellees from the eastern parts of the former Reich, which soon began, certainly affected the villages in the Lower Rhine area.

I was too small to know any of this; life is as life is. There were already two families living in our small house, the landlady and her son returned some time in May; there was no room for refugees. These were housed in hastily erected wooden sheds, in community halls and other public buildings, even churches and church halls.

Food was a different matter. You ate what rations you were allocated, what your garden could produce, what you could beg or steal. It was possible to move about freely again; except, there was no transport. If you had a bicycle, you were lucky. The retreating Wehrmacht had left behind sacks of flour in a hotel; these were soon plundered by the villagers. Even in the countryside meat and fat were rare, towns and cities were worse off.

Official records show that the military government deemed a diet of 792 calories per day sufficient for each person; however, the acute shortages meant that often rations amounting to no more than 400-500 calories per day could be distributed. If available, the fat or meat ration per month would amount to 400 grams of each.

No wonder, therefore, that people foraged for food wherever they could. In fields and hedges and woods, people found free food, nettles, fungi, wild leaves and roots became part of the daily diet. Berries were gathered in gardens, hedgerows and woods. Women and children roamed the countryside, carrying baskets and bags, during that summer. The hope was, that soon it would be harvest time; farmers were once again tending their fields with the help of everyone who was not needed elsewhere, old men and young boys providing unpaid labour, or labour in return for food.

Father had a very great, personal problem. He had been a smoker and the lack of tobacco hit him hard. I remember him trying to turn strawberry and rhubarb leaves into tobacco.He dried these leaves on top of the large family wardrobe; the smell was not unpleasant. Each time he discovered a new type of leaf, he was full of hope, only for the hope to be dashed as soon as he tried to stuff the dried leaves into his pipe and smoke it. Although Mother was sympathetic to his needs, his ever more desperate attempts soon began to annoy her; she saw our many other problems as far more deserving of ingenuity and effort. Poor Dad.

Eventually, he tried growing tobacco. By August, he was ready to start harvesting. Again, the top of the wardrobe became his drying shed. Sadly, this attempt too failed. He persevered and smoked the "tobacco" in his pipe, even tried to roll the leaves into a cigar-shaped wedge. Sadly, the climate just wasn't suitable for growing the stuff; besides, who knows what kind of seeds he had been given.

It was to be a long time before Father enjoyed his pipe again. In the meantime, lack of food, and ways and means of procuring it became the family's main preoccupation.

What is happiness, pt.2

I asked the question this morning, and this evening I found, maybe not the answer, but certainly an answer in John Dryden (1631-1700), translating Horace:

Happy The Man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call today his own;

He who, secure within, can say,

Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair or foul, or rain or shine, 

The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.

Not heaven itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

It is the old adage:   CARPE DIEM   -   Seize the Day

What is happiness?

Well, little things please little minds!

Like pegging out the laundry on a windy and sunny day!

or catching the intoxicating scent of  lilac blossom.

Maybe, I should start a fashion for

praising the little things.

What is happiness?

Who knows?

Everybody's concept of happiness is different; 

it is a state of mind which may vary from day to day;

an elusive, always fleeting quality, a feeling which cannot be defined.

Clun Green Man Day 2009

Over the weekend of the first May bank holiday, the Green Man Festival is held in the small Shropshire town of Clun.

On Clun bridge, a fifteenth century packhorse bridge
leading from the upper town to the lower town
the Green Man battles Frostie, the spirit of winter, and his ice maidens.

The Green Man invariably wins the battle, generously aided and abetted by the noisy crowds lining the banks of the river Clun; whereupon he proceeds triumphantly to the Castle grounds, accompanied by his May Queen with her attendants and knightly retinue, to open the May fair festivities.

There are food stalls catering for all tastes, there is a beer hall (of course); there are ice cream vendors and sweetie stalls for children.

 There are all sorts of craft shops, handmade wooden toys, jewellery; paintings and musical instruments are for sale.

There are medieval tumblers and jousting displays; there are Morris dancers, there is even a mummers' play

There are many Charity stalls where money is raised for the Church, for Africa (Tools for Self-Reliance), for Wildlife Organisations, local children's organisations and many more.

The Green Man symbolizes an ancient rite of passage, which exists in some form  in many cultures all over the world, celebrating rebirth each spring.  

SHOCK HORROR

Carol Ann Duffy

the first female Poet Laureate

and not only female but also lesbian!

Poet For Our Times

I write the headlines for a Daily Paper. 

It's just a knack one's born with all-right-Squire.

You do not have to be an educator,

 just bang the words down like they're screaming FIRE!

CECIL-KEAYS ROW SHOCK TELLS EYETIE WAITER.

ENGLAND FAN CALLS WHINGEING FROG A LIAR.

Cheers. Thing is, you've got to grab attention

with just one phrase as punters rush on by.

I've made mistakes too numerous to mention,

so now we print the buggers inches high.

TOP MP PANTIE ROMP INCREASES TENSION.

RENT BOY; ROCK STAR PAID ME WELL TO LIE.

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet

for our times. My shout. Know what I mean?

I've got a special talent and I show it

in punchy haikus featuring the Queen.

DIPLOMAT IN BED WITH SERBO-CROAT.

EASTENDERS' BONKING SHOCK IS WELL-OBSCENE.

Of course, these days, there's not the sense of panic

you got a few years back. What with the box

et. cet. I wish I'd been around when the Titanic

sank. To headline that, mate, would've been the tops.

SEE PAGE 3 TODAY GENTS THEY'RE GIGANTIC.

KINNOCK BASHER MAGGIE PULLS OUT STOPS.

And, yes, I have a dream - make that a scotch, ta -

that kids will know my headlines off by heart.

IMMIGRANTS FLOOD IN CLAIMS HEATHROW WATCHER,

GREEN PARTY WOMAN IS A NIGHTCLUB TART.

The poems of the decade..... Stuff 'em! Gotcha!

The instant tits and bottom line of art.

The Scraper's Diary, March 10th 1947, Moenchengladbach

We were called on parade "ready to move off" at 9 a.m. At eleven the coach turned up, and we moved off. From Duesseldorf to here is about fifteen minutes, but the Rhine is in spate, and the ferry is therefore out of use; so we drove here via Cologne, through flooded roads, and got lost. We drove over a hundred miles, and arrived at a quarter to five. We do a concert at eight and then go back to Duesseldorf tonight. Dress on.

Parts of Cologne are razed to the ground. The cry is not "Look at that damage!" but "Look, a home!"