A day in the country and a fashion disaster

Lord H and I have spent a day in the country with Mother, having the Easter I was too ill to enjoy when it was actually here. If you see what I mean. Mind you, I got up early enough to be able to write today's meditation piece, so here it is:

Meditation 120

The words I read
tell me of poisonous snakes,
scorpions, desert, hardships
and time,

then rivers bringing forth wheat,
barley, grapes, figs,
pomegranates, olives
and honey

but today their meaning
slips over my skin,
like an uncaught memory
for that woman I used to be.

I find I quite like list poems these days - they're very grounding. And as my head is mainly somewhere in the vicinity of the ceiling most of the time, then grounding - of any kind - is good.

Anyway, it was also good to catch up with the Poison Poppet and Mr Grumpy once more (hello, Mother, if you're reading this, as you know appear to have found my blog, arrgghh!!...), Gawd bless 'em both. The day's huge, huge embarrassment - and indeed I hardly dare type this for the shame it will bring upon my head - is that when I arrived at the Essex Home for Crazed Folk, I realised that my mother and I were wearing exactly the same trousers - the blue cord pair from the Edinburgh Woollen Mill. Not only that but we discovered that when we'd bought them, we'd also bought the purple pair as they were on a special half-price offer. Lord preserve us. For nearly 46 years, I have based my whole existence on the absolute truth that I am nothing AT ALL like my mother, IN ANY WAY whatsoever. Now I find that we're virtually twins, except that I'm at least two foot taller than she is. Oh, the shame ... Truly, I fear I will never live this one down.

In the afternoon, when I was sure nobody would be around to see my obvious fashion disaster, we had a rather pleasant walk in the local bluebell wood. The smell from the flowers was gorgeous and there were huge numbers of them - literally a proverbial carpet of blue. Lovely. There was one point though when we caught sight of a rather fierce looking dog, with no obvious owner in sight - so naturally we sent Lord H on ahead to see if he'd be eaten. Husbands can be very useful, you know ... Anyway, the dog legged it, so we were able to pursue our rather Jane Austen-like walk unscathed. Phew.

Meanwhile, at the Crazed Folks' Home, the house martins are back and beginning to nest too, so that's good to see. Apparently they didn't turn up last year for some reason, but have now returned in full force, so Mother has messes on the window and early morning shrieking to look forward to once more - how like the home life of our own dear Queen indeed. Ooh, and I must say a huge thank you to PP and Mr G for generous contributions (offline) to our upcoming Race for Life charity event, which is slowly growing and now stands at £185. It would be great to make our £250 target, but I'm hopeful as there's still about a month to go. As a reminder, it's for Cancer Research, so a very good cause, if anyone out there is so inclined. For which thank you.

Tonight, once safely home, we have sat fascinated and terrified (at the same time) in front of a stonkingly good episode of Primeval. Great stuff indeed - in spite of the fact that it was very like Jurassic Park in lots of ways. We also felt it probably had enough going for it to be a series-end two parter, but it was not to be, alas. Still, great stuff for Saturday night viewing and we hope for more like that, please.

Today's nice things:

1. Poetry
2. Catching up with the old folk
3. Bluebells
4. House martins
5. TV.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website - at the cutting edge of something, but Lord knows what