Golf, battles and that upstart tea boy

I am battling with sickness and hope in this morning's meditation, which possibly isn't a subject fit for such a bright and sunshiny day but here it is anyway:

Meditation 136

Hold his sickness
in your hands
and bear on your shoulders
death’s strange knowledge.

When you find the words
you came for,
hurry back
to where your heart lies,

carrying the light
in the circle
of your arms:
your last and clearest hope.

Have spent a very enjoyable morning on the golf course with Marian - we both played well but not, sadly, as well as last week. However, I have to say that my putting was rather good - unexpectedly so. Can't imagine why that should be but, hey, I'm not complaining. We were accompanied round by that distinctive trill of chaffinch song (in case you don't know, it's the long phrase of notes which usually ends with three little notes in a high-low-high trio that can sound like the bird is saying "ginger beer") - but the usual woodpecker was missing. Ah well, you can't have it all.

Back home, the marvellous Lynda has come to cut my hair, so I can now see out (very useful for golf) and I've spent the rest of the day getting to the final stage of the great Gathandrian war in Hallsfoot's Battle. I have to convey the fourth and last legend and somehow intersperse it with the Gathandrians' attempts to rescue Simon and the mind-executioner as they slug it out regardless. Hmm, no pressure then. Mustn't forget the snow-raven either - I've left him rather up in the air (always a good place for a raven really, of any colour) and will have to give him something useful to do at some point. If only I could remember where exactly he was right now. I think I'll make that tomorrow's problem though - after all, Gathandria wasn't (re-)built in a day.

I've now read the first of the Vulpes Libris book review package which arrived last week, which happened to be Jill Dawson's novel about Rupert Brooke, called The Great Lover. As I'll be writing a review for Vulpes, I won't reveal much about it now, except to say that I was much amused to see two brief mentions of my grandfather, Justin Brooke (no relation), who was at Cambridge with Rupert and one of his neo-pagan set. He's charmingly dismissed as "the Brooke Bond Tea Boy" - which probably says it all, hey ho. Still, it's better than how Justin is described in Nigel Jones' biography of the great Rupert. There, my less-than-illustrious ancestor is described as a young man who at Cambridge "continued to devote most of his energy to the stage, often playing female parts, to which his clean-cut, boyish good looks and 22-inch wasp-waist predisposed him." Really, my dears, perhaps Dawson let us all off lightly. If you think too deeply about it, it's probably an astonishment I'm here at all. Hell, no wonder I write what I do - it's in the genes. Anyone for a cuppa?...

Tonight, I shall watch Have I Got News for You? and the last episode of Reggie Perrin, but I must video the Sheila Hancock poetry programme for watching later. It looks interesting for sure.

And, finally, after being gently castigated by the good Tony for failing to mention this in yesterday's Nice Things List (look below, Tony!), another special mention must go to Lord H for a second toothpaste pre-squeezed onto toothbrush moment today - what a marital hero that man is! I really will start a new tube soon.

Today's nice things:

1. Poetry
2. Golf
3. Haircuts
4. Writing Hallsfoot
5. Books - and strange grandfathers
6. TV
7. Marital toothpaste moments! See - I remembered!

Anne Brooke - wondering why the hell nobody inherited that wasp-waist, sigh ...
Cancer Research Race for Life - helping the nation's health