My World In May

I am still struggling with my new computer;

it looks like all my thousands of photos have gone to a place

where Yosemite cannot go.

The app which recovers photos from the original iphoto app

isn’t available in the UK at present.

I can foresee hours of fun with Apple Helplines.

Still, new photos are accepted happily.

Editing them is a bit of a headache yet.

But practice makes perfect 

so here are a couple pf pictures I took yesterday

just to be getting on with

for 

Our World Tuesday

 Queen Anne’s Lace over the River

The Castle from the Bailey

Despite the fine weather clouds and sunny aspect,

 and the deep, juicy green of fields and meadows

the wind was chill and we made for home quickly

after just one circumambulation of the castle.

For many beautiful pictures go to http://ourworldtuesdaymeme.blogspot.co.uk. The folks there will be happy to welcome you.

Village Life - Outdoors

Nothing can stop an English village celebrating its

traditional festivals, even if the ‘tradition’ goes back only a dozen years or so.

Village pubs and cafes benefit, as does the one and only souvenir shop.

Well, why not.

Valley’s End is away from all major roads and cities

and has little apart from its delightful scenery to attract the visitor,

so an invented ‘tradition’ like the spring festival brings a bit of profit to the rural economy.

The organisers work hard to provide all kinds of harmless fun;

there’s archery,

  

there are riding displays and medieval jousting

  

there is music like this band of drummers,

and many booths selling food and drink,

genuinely home-made arts and crafts as well as mass-produced tat.

Many village organisations advertise themselves and their wares here

and the Women’s Institute always has a stall selling cakes that disappear

as fast as snow in summer.

Everyone is happy.

As the field is right outside my garden hedge and people troop

past all day long through what is usually the quietest and most

secluded path,

I am always very happy when it’s all over.

This is a contribution to Our World Tuesday.

Click on the link for many other contributions.

My World Tuesday - Food

Crabapples

for the birds

Chicken of the Woods

for herbivores

Carrots, sweet peppers, celery,

courgettes, onions, garlic

for vegetarians

Dinner is served.

If you want to check out what other participants have found to show off in Our World Tuesday, simply click on the link. 

Home Made and Home Grown in My World

Walking on the river bank

I heard a tinkle as of wind chimes.

Peering into the sun-pierced shadows 

above the flowing water

I saw some brave, inventive soul had created

 a new instrument:

Three empty cans suspended from a tree branch,  

whose gently swaying motion made sweet music

to accompany the rambler.

. 

A few seeds blown about by a careless breeze and,

hey presto, 

the damp course between stone slabs and house wall

has acquired its very own decoration:

two rogue lobelias.

For other scenes from Our Tuesday World click on the link.

A Couple Sightseeing

He came first,

marching up the hill,

hands in pockets,

not turning to see where she’d got to.  

Then she came,

following him at a very respectful distance

of three minutes,

with shorter steps.

 And this is where both were headed.

I wonder if they actually met up at the top

or if he came down the hill

three minutes ahead of her.

This is my contribution to Our World Tuesday. If you click on the link you will find many more people sharing their world with you.

There Are Changes In My World - Spring Will Conquer

Nine days into the cruellest month

there are no lilacs breeding out of the dead land.

 

At the beginning of April winter still kept us warm, 

covering earth in forgetful snow

feeding a little life with dried tubers.

It was the memory of spring which sustained life.

 But soon spring rains will stir dull roots.

 Lambs defy the chill winds from the East,

and the first rays of the sun melt winter’s cover for the last time.

New life is emerging all around us,

 there is no gainsaying nature's determination to overcome.

Secretive primroses nestle on sunny banks, 

 at noon opening their golden faces to unaccustomed warmth 

and rock cress clings to stone walls,

keeping a precarious foothold in the narrowest crevice. 

(with thanks to T.S. Eliot)

Click on the link for contributions from all over the world to Our World Tuesday

No Climate For Easter Bonnets

Really Hilary?

Thank you so much.

This is My World 

in the glorious Shropshire Hills during Easter week 2013

Sky and land are one colour.

The castle looms ghostlier than ever.

If it weren’t for people and dogs

you’d hardly know where one begins and the other ends.

Beloved is struggling to get down the path 

from the house to the field.

Millie is having fun but scents are well covered,

she has to work hard to reach attractive doggie perfumes through the snow.

For more scenes of Our World Tuesday

click on the link.

You may not believe it but there are places

where the sun shines.

Beauty And Kindness All Around In My World

It’s wonderful when I have to eat my words!

No matter whether I complain about the weather, tiresome people, the boring place we live in, or my own shortcomings, before I can turn around, somebody or something smacks me right between the eyes to prove me wrong.

Dark rain clouds and snowy skies hang heavy over the valley, draining the spirit of man and beast. And then the sun comes out and Wham! the gentle world surrounding me is transformed into one of beauty and joy.

Just when I finished telling  Mary D of Stalled at Twelve, a blog I never miss, how I admire her for her humanity and wish I had a little more of it myself, she writes to praise me for having loved, learned and understood much in my life; she has only my blog to go on and if that’s the opinion she has, I am grateful.

Nobody can be in any doubt that I do not find the entire human race likeable. I am not proud of it but I don’t consider it a failing either. But I don’t often enough expect people to be kind and helpful without ulterior motive, until somebody’s selfless act of generosity brings me up short in amazement. This is what happened this evening. Beloved came to me, greatly disturbed, showing me the dead transmitter for the central heating boiler. “I never touched it”, he was really worried that I'd blame him - his eyesight is too poor to recognise the symbols and he’s got it wrong before now. I fumbled and fussed with the thing, it wouldn’t work. I tried the batteries, dead, and no working ones as back up in the house.  We were just accepting that we’d have to be without heating when I decided to ring my neighbour and good friend Sally for help. “I am sure we have spares”, she said immediately. “I’ll have a look for them and bring them over”. It was after nine pm and pouring with rain, the way from her house to mine goes through a dark field and is 200m or more. I protested that I’d come to her house. “No no”, she said, “I’ll bring them over.” Which she did, within ten minutes, dripping wet in her anorak and armed with her flashlight. With the new batteries I  could re-programme the transmitter and we are once again cosy in a warm house. Thank you very much, Sally. We couldn't ask for a better neighbour.

Would many people be as kind as Sally? I don’t know. But I’m learning to expect - and ask for and accept - the help people in this little place at the end of the valley, this tiny town I call My World are willing to give.




For more contributions to Our World Tuesday click on the link.

On Black Hill

Between the rains, the floods and the frosts we had one beautiful day a couple of weeks ago and Millie and I drove up to Black Hill, just above Valley’s End. The Hill itself is nothing much, the usual Forestry Commission plantations of conifers, inhabited only by birds and animals, and otherwise used only by walkers, with or without dogs. On its lower slopes,  farmers in flat caps, on ancient tractors, round up sheep and till their fields. It is a very old landscape, hardly changed over the centuries, with stone-age burial mounds dotted about.

This is the landscape where the novelist and travel writer Bruce Chatwin wrote the first chapters of his book On the Black Hill, a tale about twin brothers, living and farming in the Welsh Marches. It is a wonderful novel, spanning eighty years of hard work and life in a small rural community, far removed from the wonders of towns and cities. On The Black Hill was Chatwin’s deepest and darkest book (he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for it in 1982), which was made into a film of the same name in 1987.  Chatwin died of AIDS in 1989.

Three Scots Pines guard a pre-historic burial mound.

Black Hill is surrounded by lonely fields which lose themselves into the blue distance.

This is my contribution to Our World Tuesday.

If you click on the link you will find wonderful entries from bloggers

from all over the world.

A Day Out in My World

On a day of tempestuous weather my  friend Rafe and I set off for a visit to the theatre, facing  a six hour roundtrip of 222 miles in the pouring rain,  between Valley's End in Shropshire and Bath in Somerset. When I told my friend Deborah during a skype chat, she gasped. "That's hardcore", she said.   Theatre Royal Bath was doing 'The Tempest', Shakespeare's late, great drama, with Tim Pigott-Smith as Prospero, a production I didn't want to miss. 

The route crosses the Severn Estuary which forms the boundary between Wales and England in this stretch. We're on the way home in the early evening here; by this time the rain had stopped and I could take a shot through the windscreen.

Second Severn Crossing - inaugurated in 1996

Ail Groesfan Hafren (Welsh name)

The Theatre Royal, Bath

The wonky main entrance to the theatre was once part of the house belonging to Beau Nash, the celebrated 18th C dandy and leader of fashion, and master of ceremonies at the spa town. We had lunch in the handsome building on the right, according to a plaque on the wall the former residence of Beau Nash and now an Italian restaurant.

The plaque reads "This was the splendid home of Beau Nash, the 'King of Bath' and his handsome and faithful mistress, Juliana Popjoy. They spent the whole of the latter part of their lives here, until the Beau's death in 1761 at the age of 86. We preserve this building at the high standards Beau Nash set for Bath. We think that Juliana Popjoy approves. Indeed, she is occasionally seen here, dressed in grey, and we suspect she has an eye on whether we are entertaining our guests as well as she entertained the Beau's friends in the same rooms 250 years ago."

We both loved the production. A very elderly couple in front of us was occasionally shushed by their daughter, who must have been treating them to an unfamiliar outing - the woman's hearing aid whistled like a phone going off ("turn it off, Mum!")  and the pair scraped their ice cream tubs rather enthusiastically after the interval, then asking loudly what they should do with the empty containers - but matinees are like that sometimes; the action in the audience can occasionally be as distracting as the action on the stage.

We're only half a mile away from Pennsylvania here. Pennsylvania, the small village in South Gloucestershire, between the historic cities of Bath and Bristol, that is. The village was named after the US state by Quakers, and Wikipedia says it has a petrol station and at least one bed and breakfast. So all of you who will, no doubt, flock here now that I've mentioned it, had better book your room well in advance! The countryside off the A46 is very pretty indeed, even if Pennsylvania itself is nothing to write home about.

Another shot through the windscreen of the Severn bridge on the way home, driving at motorway speed.

Although this outing took us a long way from Valley's End, a theatre visit is very much part of my world, which means that I am offering this contribution to Our World Tuesday  with a clear conscience.                                    

The Last Resting Place In Valley's End

 Although I have no immediate, or even long-term, plans to join the Valley's End inhabitants who have reached their final destination in this utterly peaceful spot, there can be few people who would object to being laid to rest here.

Pure white bindweed grows in the hedge
and white daisies litter the grass around the graves.

The cemetery is the least oppressive place
I can think of, nobody insists on forcing
garish flowers or elaborate funeral processions
on the tranquil scene. Now and then somebody
sits on one of the benches which are dotted around
the perimeter; the ones resting here don't mind at all.

The concept of trespass is unknown.

Some officious person keen on Health And Safety decided that nearly all the crosses were unsafe, in danger of falling over if the living should lean against them or shake them loose - most unlikely, as all who come here, the troubled and untroubled, be they mourners or those just visiting, are instantly stilled by the tranquility and hushed into a calm and peaceful frame of mind. But once these matters have been mentioned, they need to be acted upon, hence the dismantling of the gravestones.

The cattle in the field behind saw it happen, ruminated for a little while, then turned their attention back to more pressing matters.  Now that the fuss is over and the 'job's-worths' have been satisfied, it will be a long time before noisy tools return to the cemetery to finish the job.

I doubt that the dead are bothered.

This post joins the many who have banded together to show the best of their world in Our World Tuesday.

The Spider And The Fly - My World

Do My World pictures have to be beautiful?

Can they be about something I found fascinating?

While having my muesli breakfast in the conservatory I heard a very faint buzzing sound. I looked around me and saw nothing that could be the source of the low buzz; following my ears, I came upon the scene of murder most foul: a tiny spider was busily circling a still (just) living fly three times its size, the noise came from the fly's vibrating wings. Round and round the spider went, even climbing up on to the fly and spending a long time near it's front end. (Do flies have faces?) The buzzing got fainter and fainter.

Eventually, the deed was done, the spider went off, under the rim of the shelf, leaving the dead fly behind. There wasn't a spider's web, there were no silver threads and I could see no nest. But I was curious to find out what would happen to the fly, why it had to be killed.

I have no idea how the spider did it, I saw neither pulleys nor strings, nor any kind of mechanical device; nor did he call for his relations to come and help him shift the massive weight of the fly.

But the next time I looked, the fly corpse had moved right to the edge of the shelf. There was no draught to shift it. The corpse was still there an hour later, I couldn't bear it any longer. I got rid of it.

I hope there are no starving spider babies cursing me.

Our World Tuesday

(Sorry Folks)

My World in Spring

On a walk in the woods, and on field edges, I looked for signs of Spring and, lo and behold, they are plentiful; although the trees are still without leaves, there's colour and life all around, if you look closely enough.

There's a whole bank of golden celandine smiling at the observer; tiny little plants which are a pest in the garden, as they tend to spread relentlessly, but in the wild they are a welcome sight.

Nobody could ever be churlish enough to begrudge space to the wild primrose. Every year at this time I go to seek it out on a steep and narrow bank between the castle mound and the river, a  secretive place, where the grey heron has sole fishing rights and
a rare curlew's mournful call can be heard.

Even here, in this almost unspoilt backwater, birds and flowers are disappearing.

I am glad that the few people who explore our paradise are walkers and nature lovers, who tread gently and quietly.

Nearer the village, garden escapees are colonising old walls. There are people who would like to see them 'tidied' away, but, luckily, there are enough fire breathing dragons like me to persuade them otherwise.

Once these delightful rock plants have taken hold, they are almost impossible to get rid of. A little judicious stuffing of crevices, when nobody is looking, helps them along nicely.

Who said hooligans are always destructive?

Back in the garden, things are progressing nicely,
miniature daffodils and tulips are shooting up everywhere under the watchful eye of a red-hatted pipe-smoking old  countryman, my one and only garden gnome, an expensive example of the genus, who was a present from a German friend.

He's made of china and has to be kept indoors until after the worst of the weather. He's likely to split his breeches otherwise.


He's already done so once and has been lovingly restored by another friend, who mended his broken body and then repainted him.

I would hate to part with him. Everybody is entitled to at least one piece of Kitsch in the garden; he is mine, a very much loved member of the household.

This is my contribution to the wonderful site Our World Tuesday where people from all over the world show off the beauties of their own regions.