grass 2 names sounds

Grass again. This time in Calverley Park. Here are the names of  some grasses: Sweet vernal grass, Holy grass, Feather grass, Timothy grass,  Common bent, Loose silky-bent; Meadow fox tail; Yorkshire fog; Silvery hair grass; Hairy oat grass, Cock's foot, Sheep's fescue .... I don't know precisely the names of those in my picture but one day I promise myself I will learn to identify the different grasses which grow on heath and meadow, hill and verge.

I'm looking forward Henry IV Part 2 on BBC 2 on Saturday, having caught up with Part 1 on BBC I Player and the catch-up facility on our TV. Although I know these plays reasonably well, returning to  them and  Richard II, which precedes them,  via these remarkable productions, as ever when rereading Shakespeare, brings new dimensions and new aspects of the plays to wonder at.  Much of the genius of the history plays is to be found in the support provided for historical by invented characters.The  multi-layered creation of Falstaff apart ( if there were no other, surely a  mark of  the author's genius)  the names alone of  his companions Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet, Pistol and Poins are inspired. Dickens is good at inventing names, but too often they move from likely names into fantasy and caricature. Shakespeare's names  manage both to paint a picture and at the same time to make you believe that they are the  names of real people. No better instance than  the law officers Fang and Snare and country soldiers Ralph Mouldy,Peter Bullcalf, Francis Feeble and Thomas Wart In HIV2.

Devices to clap over your ears to listen to music or pod casts seem to proliferate. They are one aspect of  technology which I can reject without difficulty. Even when  there is a din as there as in the last few days with painters banging and scraping at the fabric of the house, I feel the need to hear the real world at work in the background to whatever else I may be listening. Someone the other day called it "soundscape" For similar reasons I shun sunglasses which modify the colours in my field of vision.