Post Christmas

As distinct from Christmas post! It is a strange time when one festivity is over and the New Year not yet upon us.  What can one do but shop and eat chocolate? I am always glad when normal life and routines resume but some kind of winter celebration does seem necessary. I love trimming the tree and, in this photo, a friend's dog spotted a bird on a branch outside the window, gave in to canine curiosity and emerged tastefully decorated with tinsel.

CONKERS

One of the most popular crazes of my childhood was conkers. Gathering them, all brown and shiny in their shells, was the start of the fun and then they had to be strung, taken to school, and thwacked at someone else's. If your conker smashed another it became a one-er but if it cracked a conker that had beaten three others it was a triumphant four-er. Some cheats soaked theirs in vinegar or roasted them in an oven. Those traitors met a stern fate behind the bicycle sheds in the lunch hour and never did it again!


(With thanks to MadHatter for the photograph)

CRAZES

When I was at junior school just after WWII we had seasonal crazes. For weeks or months we absolutely had to have a hoop and we would run, beating it with a stick. Then the prized possession was a top which had to be set spinning with a whip and you must wrap the string lash round inadequate hollows first to get it going. (Did you know that the fascinating wobble of a top in motion is called "sleeping" - hence the phrase "sleeping like a top"?) This was followed by ancient, scratched marbles which were precious in those austere times and some children played at jacks but I thought that game futile whereas the others were meaningful and significant! What effect did these obsessions have on our adult personalities? Do modern children have these ritual compulsions? Answers in the comment box - please.

AUTUMN LEAVES

I love shuffling through the dead leaves that gather in clumps on pathways; the rustling is so soothing and it brings back memories of childhood when it was a forbidden pleasure because of the risk of dirtying new shoes. Now my adult foot revives those times - clad in my day-old purple footware.  Purple? Oh yes - something else I could not have as they were unobtainable after the war. I just had to buy them now.
PS I did clean my shoes afterwards in case of ash disease.

Oh that lovely purple shoe!

WRAPPED CUCUMBERS

I like cucumbers, their fresh smell, their deep green, the fact they are good for you in all manner of  gentle cucumbery ways. In fact, they are COOL. Yet I hate the way the distributers wrap them in tough plastic coverings, enclosing their delicate slender bodies in unbeathing man-made substances, causing them suffering and me wounded fingers. How do you get these coats off without slicing down their length, cutting into the vegetable and chopping at the hand holding the thing in place? Answers on the back of a postage stamp please!

FLU JAB

I LOVE having my flu jab and can't wait till tomorrow for it. I even like the process: the orderly long queue four-deep outside the surgery an hour early; the smell of antiseptic and the motherly face of the nurse whose expression says, unnecessarily in my case of course, "Come on, be brave!" Most of all I enjoy thinking of us as a band of soldiers fighting those horrid little viruses which plot to lay us low in our beds coughing and suffering.  Swine flu, bird flu - I defy you and your works and hold out my arm in readiness.

FROM HAMLET

Wearing my other hat as a poet, I sometimes like to take a quotation and build on it. Here is a short one derived from Hamlet's teasing of Polonius about the shape of clouds:

SKY-GAZING
Methinks it is not like a weasel;
                  methinks that a cloud is a cloud.
Let poets, priests, lovers and madmen
                  deem that fell death be not proud
and declare he shall have no dominion.
                  Methinks that a shroud is a shroud.

For my analysis of the play, wearing yet another hat visit: http://www.classicsenglishliterature.com

SCULPTURES IN PARIS

The most beautiful small sculpture gallery in Paris must be the Atelier Brancusi just outside the Pompidou Centre. The works are simple, minimalist, neutrally coloured and soothing. You can also see his workrooms and tools - and it is free. Check opening hours before going and spend a long time gazing and gazing and being moved and uplifted.

PUTTING THINGS OFF

Organisation versus procrastination: the everyday problem. Here's a sonnet I wrote about it, though I am an inveterate list-maker (I have a list of lists most Mondays!)

NO PRISONERS
An army of small chores waits by your bed:
if you get up, they'll snipe at you, attack
your weak outposts, excuses. Turn your back,
lie doggo, plan your strategy, feign dead.
Prioritise, put the least urgent first;
procrastinate: do nothing for today;
run up some ship-shape lists, stow them away ...
now take a recce - have the troops dispersed?
Your life will float above the Plimsoll line
without those paper waves, red-crested bills,
appointments, emails, car tax, dentists' drills
waiting to probe your rotten depths - and mine.
     Whar shall we do with all these brave new hours
     before weeds bayonet the lotus flowers?
    


.

WHAT A SUMMER!

The whole country has had a huge party: Jubilee, Olympics, Paralympics, Proms - all a riotous success and in the worst weather for 100 years. I will remember the River Pageant for ever: the spirit was tremendous despite the cold, or maybe because of it as we huddled together for warmth and ate multiple sausage rolls as fuel. I had on seven thermal layers consisting of ... but you don't want to know that do you?

LOSE WEIGHT AND KEEP IT OFF

Ten years ago I was dress size 14 (U.K.) and rising steadily. I reduced to a size 8 and have stayed there. I decided on a daily sensible intake of food and drink (10 units a week of alcohol) which I could sustain indefinitely, I exercised more and I did not worry about how long it would take or how much I would lose. Little treats were and are still part of my regime. It took 18 months to arrive but there has been no problem maintaining this weight.

Here are 2 do not's and 2 do's.
1) Do not think about food and drink more than is absolutely necessary.
2) Do not set a target date or weight.
3) Do eat a little less and drink less alcohol than you were consuming.
4) Do take a bit more exercise each day until you reach a workable amount.

Remember: a chocolate bar gives enjoyment for a few seconds; being slimmer will give pleasure for life.

 

Good luck!!!

DOG IMITATES STATUE

I love it when dogs behave naturally like humans and sit at the driver's wheel in a car as if they are about to turn the ignition and set off to some canine haven.  Here is my neighbour's dog trying to look like the statue - or, maybe, Pygmalion-like, hoping it would come alive so that it can become an object of adoration.

Garden Centres

I have ambivalent feeling towards these places: lovely plants and flowers but all imprisoned in pots and placed in military rows. I wish they would leap from their ranks and files, rise up out of their containers, march towards my garden on their root-like legs and settle higgledy-piggledy in my borders. I only hope they are not allergic to weeds.

SEA BATHING

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, quite like a dip in the surfy briny. Waves roll in and you can either mount up over them or be knocked down by them, in my case the latter.  In the middle of this inclement summer, the sun came out at a remote Pembrokeshire shingle beach called Abermawr and in I plunged, to emerge reinvigorated - and disastrously hungry for sausage rolls and fruit cake.  Will I sink next time if this goes on?

Government Health Warning: those of a sensitive disposition may wish to look away before viewing this photograph of me in my shortie wetsuit. Too late? Sorry!

RECEIPTS

Yesterday I went into Monmouth and bought some frozen peas and had a mocha.  Why did I end up with a pocket full of receipts? Am I likely to ask for my money back on my mocha a week later? Even worse, I am often asked to fill in  a questionnaire: how do you rate your frozen pea experience on a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is unbearably exciting and 10 is disastrously dire?  I gave this much thought and decided that six and a half was appropriate but that was not allowed. I will ask for a ballot box and post the receipts into it bearing the appropriate number of ticks and crosses: true democracy there then!

MODERN MOTHS

My wardrobe used to be inhabited by old-fashioned Lepidoptera of decent size, restrained eating habits and the acceptance that moth balls were things to die for not dance at. Now I have the present generation of teenagers: tiny, indiscriminately voracious for any fabric and partying giddily at the smell of the little sachets I put in there to see them off.  If they all love wool so much, why aren't sheep covered with the little blighters?

Landovery statue

This marvellous creation stands proudly rising near the ruins of the castle overlooking the main car park in Llandovery. It is worth a detour as it glints magnificently in the sun and the plaque is equally unusual. He was a rebel supporting Glydwr (Glendower of recent TV fame) and boasts the tongue-twisting name of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd Fychan of Caeo, hanged, drawn and quaartered on October 9th 1401. I have analysed Skakespeare's play, Henry IV pt i ( which does not, unfortunately, include Llewelyn but does feature Glendower), on my website: Classics of English Literature: essays by Barbara Daniels

TEN THINGS ABOUT YOU ...

... that I should like to have genetically modified.

1)   The way you snore directly in my ear;
2)   and when I call, "Food's ready!" disappear
      just long enough for souffles to collapse;
3)   your tendency to mumble, "Mmm ... perhaps
      or, on the other hand, mmm ... maybe not,"
4)   that funny little wart-like, dark red spot
      on your bald patch; 5) your pigeon-toed left foot;
6)   and, while they're at it, get your chin to jut
      a half inch forward, level with your lips;
7)   expand your chest commensurate with your hips;
8)   I hope they can retune your nasal voice;
9)   my mother always felt, if she'd the choice,
      she'd modify the somewhat piggy size
10 a & b)
      and shape and coloration of your eyes;
      in fact she said (I didn't like her tone)
      there wasn't much that she would leave alone
      but since I love you, darling, as you are,
      (almost) I wouldn't venture quite that far
      so, one last thing, I'll number it (10c)
      you are a bit TOO  critical of me.


        

South Bank

From a rather unappealing concrete wilderness this place has been transformed with modern sculptures, beaches and a general sense of liveliness.

Paddington Station

I am a fan of this station, oddly enough, as it may seem strange to like a station when one is always in transit and encumbered.  But it is comparatively small, well-lit and human.  There are fascinating statues on Platform 1: Brunel, looking neat and thoughtful, and the imposing and moving War Memorial to the men and women of the Great Western Railway who gave their lives.

My ginger nuts for emotional health!

Market jitters

Five crosses for this phrase because it makes me very, very, very, very, very cross.  Who are these people who raid pension funds, do complex money dealings that no-one else understands, give themselves fat bonuses and then get the jitters like some Victorian maiden with the vapours? I'm the one who should be jittery: it is my money they play with - what there is of it! Yet I soldier on, baking ginger nuts to save cash and going to the gym to avoid expense to the NHS. I'm not lying on a chaise longue sniffing smelling salts.  I am made of sterner stuff.

Hammersmith Bridge Jubilee Saturday

Hammersmith Bridge

This bridge is lesser known than the more central ones but I think its quiet yet ornate gold and green are marvellous.  It is not showy but it is dignified. It looks particularly fine in the sun - remember that big yellow blobby thing we used to see sometimes in June in a blue sky.  Here I am by the bridge on the Saturday before the Jubilee River Pageant, where we all contracted semi-hypothermia but had a marvellous time. 

Jubilee River Pageant

The herald on the tube.

Jubilee River Pageant

I just love life's quirky little moments. After the Pageant, seen from a place of honour on the Millennium Bridge: flotilla, bells, Queen's barge, Dunkirk boats and all the rest, we met a herald on the train. Such a time-jump! He explained the work they do when not on ceremonial occasions. Another world.

For poem about Dunkirk boats see Lancashire to Monmouthshire: a poet's journey, also hyperlinked from the right-hand side of this site.

Five ticks for the Millennium Bridge for the River Pageant

Chargers

Not horses but the things for charging appliances. I am no techie but I do have a laptop, a smart phone, a Kindle and a Nintendo (for Solitaire) - maybe I am a bit techie after all! I keep their chargers, all different and none interchangeable, in separate plastic bags within a canvas carrier with compartments. In the night, they are overtaken by feeding or breeding frenzy and climb out to intermingle their wires with knots that would baffle the most advanced Boy Scout. Back in they go to defeat me with their double thingumabobs when I have vital blogging work to do. So far - and I am crossing all fingers - they have not succeeded in reproducing but I just know that, one morning, I am going to find hundreds more of them, all inextricably entwined and silently laughing at me.

Aquilegia

This lovely flower is one of my favourites. Sometimes called Granny's Bonnets, it springs up every year from apparently dead soil and bursts like a delicate firework all over my borders.  I have purple and mauve but my neighbour has a lovely deep pink colour.  I am so envious that I may just pop out one dark night when they are in pod and ... Next year I shall also have super reddish rockets!!!

My wireless mouse

I love - loved - my wireless mouse. He was black and fitted my hand perfectly with a feel of suede to the touch.  In his tummy was a neat slot for the widget that goes into the side of the laptop, so useful! There was also a red light which flickered violently when you picked him up as though his little heart was panicking at being off the gound.  So why the past tense? I have lost his widget and he doesn't work. I have ordered another similar but it won't be the same and I feel as if I am in mourning. Ah - maybe I left the widget in the laptop when I took it to the computer doctor for a health check?  Do you think I am becoming too anthropomorphic about these items? Or even mousomorphic!

The simple life

"Love but few and simple things;
Simple life much comfort brings." Thomas a Kempis
I love this quotation and the philosophy it expresses. A good night's sleep, a walk on the beach followed by a Mocha and a chocolate truffle and, a little later, a gin and tonic by the fire ... Possibly not quite what he had in mind but quite simple and such a comfort!

My right ear

I have a particular liking for my right ear. I nearly said that I am very attached to it except that seems the wrong way round as it is, I hope, strongly attached to me.  It sticks out prominently and even disturbs my sleek, glossy, bobbed hair.  In the nursing home where I was born, they swaddled the new babies and laid them on a table on their right sides for the loving parents to come and cuddle, but they forgot to check that the ears were flat against the heads.  Consequently we all have right ears almost at 90 degrees but I love this relic of a bit of ancient history. Imagine a world of perfect ears - how dull and bland!

While you're on your feet ...

My extreme dislike of this expression dates from my childhood when, as an only child, I lived in a non-centrally heated house with my parents.  On a winter's evening we would be sitting round the fire, dreading having to go out into the icy rooms beyond. If a call of nature happened and the unfortunate victim (usually me!) stood up to go to the bathroom, my mother or father would say: "While you're on your feet, could you make a pot of tea, bring some coal in, stoke the fire, lay the table for breakfast tomorrow and put hot water bottles in all the beds?" Consequently we sat there, crossing our legs with increasing rigidity, until one of us gave in and dashed out shouting, "I can't wait!"  This was merely a temporary remission as, on return, there would be the lugubrious refrain: "While you're ..."

Voice recognition sub-titles

I do not know whether to love or hate those strips of text that cross the TV screen attempting to translate what someone is saying. They are both inept and hilarious. The best was an account of someone with a shotgun firing "pellets indiscriminately." First it said that it fired "pets indiscriminately" and then corrected itself, claiming that the gun fired "poets indiscriminately." Now we poets are a feisty lot and yet we do nothing without discrimination. We object to this implication.

Bank Holidays

What are they for? Why are they always on a Monday? Why are they bunched together in April and May? Who likes them? Why does it always rain on them? Please put a cross by any that you cannot answer. I have given them the maximum five crosses. They are therefore the opposite of my postie!

My audience

I have a website and five blogs, one in the process of metamorphosing into another website like some bright butterfly. (Confused already? So am I!) That one is called Classics of English Literature: essays by Barbara Daniels (catchy eh?) and, at the moment, has a couple of arcane paragraphs about prefigurement and the double time scheme in "Othello". I thought no-one would be interested until I got round to discussing why the hero is a bit of a chump. But yesterday 19 people from Russia were glued to my thoughts on the best editions for knowing your Second Quarto from your First Folio. I love you all - all nineteen. And the one Bulgarian.

P.S. to Broadband

My ailing black box (see below) spent a day lying on a chaise longue taking regular aspirins and suddenly woke up feeling better. I am now deeply enamoured of it. It knows what it is doing and tells me all about its improving strength. The problem is that I don't know what I am doing. Every time I put a post on Facebook two photos of me appear, grinning like deranged twins. I have cookies in my browser and a bundle on my bitly. All very worrying - so I'm off to that chaise longue with a packet of aspirins.

Broadband

Everyone else had broadband whilst I was spending megabucks on Mochas in the bar of a local hotel with wi-fi.  So yesterday I installed its diddy black box with its three lovely blue eyes.  Then I read the booklet.  It seems that it takes ten days to settle down and achieve full speed.  Ten days! What is it doing meanwhile?  I picture it lying on a sofa like some Victorian spinster with the vapours waiting for a sniff of smelling salts to wake it up and get it going.  I feel such guilt about the poor thing's sickly health that I have drawn the curtains round it and will use it very gently and infrequently until it has completely recovered from its tumultuous journey. Off to the Three Salmons again!

Baked Apples

Even the ubiquitous Bramley is charmed when baked. I dig out the core, widen it and press my special mixture well into the hole. This compound is dried fruit well marinated (in an ancient Spanish liquid of unknown origin) with plenty of moist dark brown sugar. I then cut a shallow equator in the skin, pop it in the oven and hey presto - a fluffy delicacy! There must be a magic moment when the hard apple turns into candy-floss but I always miss it. Please don't phone me when I am performing this sorcery.

CAPTCHA

This is the unpronounceable and unspellable name for the unreadable device composed of weird letters and numbers that pops up when you want to subscribe to something on the Internet. All squidgy and interlaced these images are intended to prevent machines from imitating people and receiving emails. They appear in a little box and you have to copy them accurately. It seems only humans can do this. The problem is that I can't. I try and fail repeatedly as they give me ever easier versions (or, sometimes, more difficult ones) until a backward monkey on a bad day could do it. Clearly this is very worrying in two ways: I cannot always access my Facebook page and get an apologetic message which shows they DO know who I am in fact. But more disquieting still is what it says about me. Am I somewhere suspended in a cyberspace chain of evolution, neither human nor machine? Am I a kind of missing link between homo sapiens and a robot?

Weather

This is NOT a gripe about what the sky is throwing at us right now - climate is what you expect and weather is what you get! (Mark Twain? Misquoted?) I like weather and missed it when I lived in California for six months and experienced climate - so boring that I longed for a British "showers with sunny intervals" or "sunny intervals with showers" scenario.

Our postman

Five ticks for our postie! He is tall, blond and Norman - not his name but his ancestry. He knows how to leave my (daily!) Amazon parcels in a specially appointed dustbin at the back door. He then turns the pointed stone on top so that it faces outwards not inwards as a secret sign he has left something. Ooops - not so secret now, I suppose!

Water

Water is clearly A Good Thing and deserves its maximum five ticks - but why oh why is it always in the wrong place? Far too much of it is down my neck when I am out hiking and not enough in parts of Britain where people are suffering hose-pipe bans. They can have some of mine for their cabbages if they like!

My Kindle

I love it and have bought it a lovely red leather case (not the one with a light) which opens like a book. I gather that most people buy light reading matter for their Kindles and show their hefty classics on the bookshelf. But I am the reverse: my Kindle is full of free Jane Austen and Balzac and my shelves weighted down with Bill Bryson and Jilly Cooper!

Digital TV

To protest about digital TV seems rather like objecting to the invention of the wheel! I am sure it is fine for city dwellers but in this small town in Wales we have loss of signal and pixillations all too frequently. There am I in dressing gown and cocoa (if you see what I mean) ready for the ten o'clock news and what I get is a screen of dancing squares like a crazy art installation and a background of strangled sounds. Why did they have to turn off the analogue signal? I do not need channels called Rabbit - or worse - I just want Dad's Army!

The Sea

I love being by the sea in a small cove in North Pembrokeshire where the water is clear and cold. But sometimes, in other places, I get:
Mal de Mer
It's calm tonight, like some old smelly dog
tongueing my ankles: rotten seaweed fronds
curl round my big toes; ice-cream papers clog
the space under my foot arches; beyond
float lumps of scum, dead ducks on a millpond.
And now a gale blows up: foul brown spume flies
into my ears; salt grit invades my eyes;
two rubber things, unspeakable, attack
my knees and bloodless, blue, goose-pimply thighs;
I'm felled by an oiled clump of bladderwrack.

Paper Clips

Five crosses for these. They are the work of a malign spirit! I avoid them whenever possible but am forced to use them when printing off some poems - of the 1239 I have written! - and sending them by snail mail. The clips hook in their multitudes onto my jumper and refuse to let go so that I look like a medieval knight part way through being equipped for battle. That is one reason why I now publish more on the Internet. I wonder how Keats managed his paper clips?

The Archers

I am a fan of this long running series and listen every evening. I am aware of its faults and shortcomings: the tendency to soap opera, the lack of any realistic nastiness in village life and the concentration on a few characters who do tend to be bland - Brian excepted. But is addictive and its quiet tone is welcome. At the moment it is raising contemporary issues about the future of farming and the fact that farmers must diversify to survive. I quite miss it on Saturdays!

The Travellers Return

The Rover's Arms
I'm pestered, goaded, tortured, racked.
It's August and the pub is packed
With journey-making, tedious bores
Who must traipse off to foreign shores
To bring back tans and lurid snaps,
With anecdotes. One day perhaps
When I have had enough to drink
I'll tell them what I really think.
I abominate your tales,
I cannot stomach the details
Of what you ate and where you went
And whom you met and what you spent.
I loathe, reject, detest and spurn
That way you show off your sunburn
And yap with smug complacency.
You are anathema to me.
Why should I empathise or care?
It seems to me that once you're there
You like to feel yourself at home.
Why take the trouble, time to roam
To seek some little bar or dive
That replicates the one that I've
Lurked in all summer? Don't you find
That travelling narrows the mind?

French GCSE

I love French and have spent three years brushing up my ancient "A" level. This has come in handy to help my granddaughter with her GCSE. But that syllabus! So boring - assuming all teenagers want to learn how to say they play at basketball. No literature, no encouragement to write or speak about interesting topics. All in the name of relevance, I assume.

Ticks and Crosses

This blog is entirely about my personal likes and dislikes, things I find irritating and those I find appealing.  No attempt to be fair or impartial - just a subjective medley.