rust ,normality, forgiven

A garden of rust flowers on an iron railing from which the paint has long peeled.

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A mode of normality is restored. The few decorations which come out every year for Christmas are back in their cupboard. The cards have been taken down. Our guests have gone home. The last remnants of the turkey - some stock. which has formed a promising jelly in the fridge - will be used to night in a soup. "Soup of the evening, beautiful soup".

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When delivering a card to a neighbour who has just had a successful operation, I have the opportunity to apologise to his wife for writing: "Dear D, Heidi has just heard from D that you are recovering from an operation. We would like ... etc". I should have written "Dear D, I have just heard from A..." Please apologise to D," I say. "I quite understand," says A " I do the same thing myself." I should of course have written a new card but the cold weather seems to have slowed me down like the birds in The Grove. Now I feel reassured and forgiven.

messages, unexpected, aftercare

Messages.

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Hopping and running very fast over the brick pavement of Mount Pleasant among the passing shoppers is a long tailed tit. It seems to be disturbed neither by the feet of pedestrians nor by the cars parked against the kerb where, every now and then, a door opens and a human torso emerges. At first I think that it has lost the will or the capacity to fly so close does it allow me to approach. Then reassuringly it flies off across the road. The cold weather seems to have made birds slower to react or more friendly to humans. This is not the first occasion since the cold began that I have found myself eye to eye with a wild bird.

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Having reached the Sony support centre after a weekend without the laptop, I am cheered by the quality of the help provided. Windows is restored, and I am relieved, as one is when a piece of metal filled with circuits is returned from a moribund state to one where it fulfills its purpose. I am even happier when the "supporter" at the end of the line asks what time would be convenient for him to ring me tomorrow to check that everything is working as it should be.

lights, shoots, starling

Winter lights.

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In the Grove, through bare patches of earth, dusted with rime, premature shoots of daffodils appear diffident, regretful, lit by the sun, which offers no warmth.

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A fluting call punctuated by squeaks and twitters makes me look up. There on a TV aerial sits a starling in the cold afternoon , solitary and, to judge by the flocks that one often sees at this time of year, looking for company.

trunks, people, rhetoric

From the archive: trunks in perspective.

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A upright, elderly man wearing a flat cap outside the National Westminster Bank, is smoking a cigarette, and enjoying it. He has a walking stick with a steel spike. His aquiline face and moustache and tall, narrow frame makes me want to photograph him. Do people mind if you ask to photograph them? Some might be flattered. Others might be suspicious. Others hostile. It is worth thinking up a strategy to approach suitable subjects. They can always say "no", but if one in five says "yes", it could add a new dimension to my blogging procedure.

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Reading something written five centuries ago, which strikes you as being as beautifully expressed and accurate now, as it was then, can, because of its longevity, give all the more pleasure for its double edge of truth. It is for that reason that I turn, from time to time, to the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. He wrote openly and honestly about himself, about his doubts and his failings, in a style, which reveals him as an enchanting companion, never didactic, never pious, often witty and seldom other than entertaining. Today I find him talking about rhetoric, in modern language, "spin". Writing on The Vanity of Words, he quotes Aristo, who defined rhetoric as the science of persuading people" and Socrates and Plato, who called it the art of deceiving and flattering". Montaigne himself concludes: " It is an instrument invented to manipulate and agitate a crowd and disorderly populace and an instrument that is employed only in a sick state, in the same way as medicine". Confronted, as we are nowadays, with a constant stream of words designed to persuade and manipulate a weak and fickle public, I find some consolation in the thought that today's excesses are not necessarily new to our mode of life.

archive, new year, jay

Because the lap top has lost Windows and none of the usual or recommended steps have brought it back, I am upstairs in the studio with the old computer, enjoying the afternoon sun entering the window at eye level. I have resorted to the archive for today's leaf. It is in fact a leaf of four years ago, which I found in this skeletal state on the compost heap, and have preserved, between the pages of a notebook, ever since. Some visitors may have seen it before because I doubled it up with a mirror image to make a pair of wings for a Christmas card. Today I am glad to find it on my Picassa file: it consoles me for the temporary loss of lap top comfort. and it still inspires me as a symbol, frail and delicate though it may be , of survival.

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Auld lang syne still appeals despite it endless repetition. "A cup of kindness" is to my mind the best thing that one human being can offer another. One of the later verses, I dare say seldom sung south of the border, goes:

"And there's a hand, my trusty fiere, (companion)

And gie's a hand o' thine,

And we'll tak a right guid-willie (hearty) waught (big drink)

Fo auld lang syne".

Two sorts of cup, but both appropriate on New Year's Day. A Happy New Year then!

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In the garden among the bare branches of a tree, the colourful feathers of a jay - pinky brown breast, black tail, white stripes on wings, a spot of blue somewhere. Blackbirds, robins, sparrows, magpies, crows, thrushes and various tits are here in plenty, but you don't so often see or hear a jay.

end of year, indulgence, reading

The Grove at twilight. End of the day, end of the year.

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Tocai with foie gras.

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Reading by the window with the lamp looking over my shoulder and the cold rain nagging at the glass.

down, surprise, aromas

Season of sales and drastic reductions

Close-bosom friend of declining profits...

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I hear the poet Frieda Hughes - daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath - interviewed on the radio. She says that she used not to read her parents' poetry because she wanted first to develop her own style and literary identity. One day on the London Underground she saw facing her seat, one of the short poems in the series Poems on the Underground - poems designed to help passengers pass the time, in place of the usual advertisements. The poem was entitled Full Moon and Little Frieda. It was by her father, Ted Hughes, and she had never read it before. She tells the interviewer that she wanted to nudge the person in the seat next to her and say: "See that poem. It's about me."

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In the rain, past a dripping shrubbery, I make my way to the kitchen garden for the first time for several days. In the street, the pavements and tarmac are greasy and unattractive, but here the earth exudes moisture and the leeks, some of which I have come to lift for tonight's meal, though a little flattened by the recent snow, give me a generous, aromatic welcome.

map, rug, oracle

The map of The Grove, like The Grove itself, was covered with snow during the recent wintry conditions. It is always good to know where you are.

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As I pass a row of cottages, which give directly on to the pavement, a front door opens, a hand holding a rug reaches out and shakes the rug. A little cloud of dust rises. The rug quivers and is gone. The door closes, and leaves behind a sense of mystery, a fairy story unwritten.

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For a long time the word verification letter, which I was encountering were disappointing, clumsy without any hidden sense or curious harmony that I could discern. Then, suddenly, in the last hour or so WV is back to form. Like some sort of oracle it comes up in quick succession with "weast", "mecism" and "knonst".

icicle, older, penguin

Suspense.

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Every year the same Christmas photographs appear. The people are the same. But a whole year has passed. As I become older I notice more than I used to, the changes in the few photographs of me which get through - a certain shrinking of the features, a wariness about the glance. Perhaps this is due to the stress of getting into place, while the delayed release switch on the camera is in operation, and the machine is bleeping like pedestrian traffic lights urging you to cross the road quickly to make way for road traffic. But I know that in fact the years are chipping away at the face I have got used to. The consolation, and one that I am truly glad of, is that I am still here to look it in the eye.

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In his film Encounters at the Edge of the World, Werner Herzog photographs and interviews people who live and work in the Antarctic, and shows astonishingly beautiful scenes beneath as well as above the ice. He tells us at the beginning of the film that this is not another another film about penguins, but later there is a brief and forlorn penguin episode which I can't get out of my head. He films a group of penguins following an annual migration route to the sea. Off they go in single file like pilgrims, except for one penguin who turns round and makes its solitary way inland towards a frozen, mountainous waste on the horizon. Some internal mechanism has gone wrong and we see the lone bird battling on through the wilderness, impelled by a perverse and faulty, inner vision, on its way, Herzog says, to certain death. The image, I think to myself, says something about courage, a blind and misguided courage (not beyond comparison with human courage) which I find noble and sad, but which I do not wholly understand.

memory, gadget, cooking

Even the last grubby mounds of unmelted snow have now disappeared. This composition in The Grove made just a week ago is just a memory.

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Two gadgets that have come into the house this Christmas are a citrus presser and pourer and a folding chopping board. Both are are remarkably ingenious and helpful. The pourer consists of a perforated cylinder with sharp edges that pierces a lemon or lime and when twisted extracts the juice which can be poured from the top, the fruit effectively becoming a little jug. The lid consists of a removable, green, plastic seal, which you take off to pour the juice generated inside the fruit, and replace to preserve the content for further squeezing. The chopping board is made from thin, very tough plastic. It folds to make a shovel-like, angled receptacle to assist in the spill-free transfer of chopped material into a pan or other container. When in use as a board it opens out perfectly flat ready for chopping.

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Cooking this year has been a great pleasure. On Christmas day, there were six to cook for; on other days four. I cannot explain why there is little I like doing more than cooking. Though the results are rather less permanent, I think I prefer cooking to writing poetry or even, dare I day it, to the daily production of this blog.

once, compass, speakers

Once upon a time there was a snow squirrel who lived in The Grove ....

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In a Christmas cracker is a small compass with a cord which can be hung on a key ring.

I always like to have a compass on my key ring because it helps to remind me where I am. My old keyring -compass fell off and broke. Until now, despite looking everwhere, I couldn't find a replacement. Hurrah for Christmas crackers!

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My new laptop, which replaces the PC (now in the studio upstairs), has one drawback: the integral speakers are only adequate if you are not listening to music. The speakers which Santa Claus brought me yesterday raise the Vaio to hi-fi standard. Hurray for auxiliary speakers.

rose, kiss, sentiment

Frosted rose.

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In the Nepalese restaurant called Mooli a dish called Seku wa Barbat consists of tender pieces of boneless lamb "with" the menu says, "a kiss of spice".

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While listening to the traditional carol service from Kings College Cambridge on BBC Radio 4, I roll out pastry for mince pies, make circles of the pastry with the rim of a wine glass, spoon mincemeat into the tarts and cover the filling with more disks of pastry, which I glaze with an egg and milk glaze, pierce with a cross to let the steam escape. The music and the readings from the gospels help concentration and inspire a sense of the appropriate, if not the eternal. Christmas cards are displayed in a suitable places all over the house, and, by the front door in the hall, hangs a bunch of pagan mistletoe . A turkey awaits the usual services in the cold cupboard which, when this house was young, used to be a coal hole. I am momentarily troubled by the feeling that I am engaged in a sentimental charade, and that maybe the feelings of goodwill and kindness that surge in my foggy brain are ersatz emotions picked up from habit and brainwashing.

Then, to quote my friend Anna, who on such occasions would probably say "Pish!" to such negative thouhgts, I say "Pish". And a happy Christmas to all who step by and visit this site, and who are kind enough to say hello from time to time, and whom I have come to regard as good and dear friends. A few years ago, I would never have thought that such links could be made with people of like mind and interests living in the USA, Australia, India, France, the West of England, the North of Engand , Tunbridge Wells even, and who knows where else. This is a good time, despite all the attendant horrors, to be alive. To all of you I raise a virtual glass and wish that it were a real one poured for you: A happy New Year!

gone, understanding, homeopathy

Nearly all the snow has melted. What is left are awkward mounds of ice on footpaths, which in the sleet falling at the moment, seem to be designed to throw the unwary on to the ground in undignified heaps, limbs spread in all directions. The snow was lovely while it was bright and crisp and even, and now - well, since we are looking for beautiful things - it is a challenge.

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From the shelf I take down The Arctic Fox a slim book of poems by Marianne Moore. It is published by Faber and Faber in a bold, yellow jacket with blue rules, a colour and style fashionable in the Sixties. The first poem in the book is a short one entitled O to Be a Dragon. It goes:

"If I, like Solomon,...

could have my wish -

my wish ... O to be a dragon,

a symbol of the power of Heaven -of silkworm

size or immense; at times invisible.

Felicitous phenomenon."

Much of the page is blank leaving plenty of space for the Corporation of London Libraries to plant its circular stamp in the middle of the white space. For at one time, it seems, it is to that organisation that the book belonged. Pasted on the page facing the inside back cover, meanwhile, is an unused form testifying to a manifest lack of interest in Marianne Moore among the libraries' patrons. Judging by the handwriting, in which the price is penciled on the inside front cover, I must have bought it from Hall's bookshop, but there is no indication of how it progressed from London to Tunbridge Wells. A note to the poem at the back of the book suggests that marauding librarians and indifferent clients are, in the end, of little account . "Solomon's wish," it says: "An understanding heart." Kings 3: 9." I'll second that.

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A 30C homeopathic preparation is, according to Ben Goldacre author of the fad-bashing best seller Bad Science, a dilution in the order of one in 1,000,000,000, 000, 000, 000, 000,000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000. (I think I've copied that right). Not everyone believes, like Goldacre, that homeopathy is based on unsound principles, though you can see why some, myself included, are sceptical. A couple of days ago, I begin to feel the symptoms of a cold, which, in my experience, are invariably followed by a deep and hacking cough. To combat these, Heidi provides me with three minuscule pills, which I must allow to melt under my tongue at intervals of two and a half hours. They have been supplied for just such an occasion by some homeopathic friends in Germany. The dilution ratio is reassuring, because I note that they are derived from Aconite, which I know to be, in more than miniscule portions, a sure and deadly poison. While still doubtful about how so small a dose of anything can affect the human body and its ailments, I have to report three days later, that the cold has gone, and no cough has materialised. But who knows? I remember years ago a male Harley Street specialist saying, with conversation-stopping finality, at a dinner party in response to a claim from me about a cold prevention procedure fashionable at the time: " I took it too and I didn't get pregnant."

snow, risk, surprise

The Grove with child in red leggings.

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Elderly people, who generally lead sheltered lives, can sometimes enjoy the risky options of urban living. I admit to enjoying the titillation provided on the understanding that I survive. Today the choice is between breaking a leg on the ice-layered pavements of Mount Sion or walking on the road and being killed by a 4 WD spitting chewed up snow and grit.

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A surprise parcel awaits us. I have been given a number to ring by Kim, who is my son,Toby's other half, in order to track its progress. All I am told is that it is something that requires attention when it arrives. I need to know when to expect it so that someone can be in when it is delivered. The number I ring turns out to be in Cornwall. How I love the West Country accent and the phrases that go with it! " Right, my love", says a warm female voice. "OK, my love! I say I have been given the number to track a parcel. "This number is in Cornwall, my love," she says. "I am in Kent, " I say."It will take a minute my love, I'll give you the number of the local depot. When the parcel turns up it consists of an insulated box with sausage-shaped bags of ice inside. Kept cold by the ice, is a big packet if white crab meat (bliss, Heidi's favourite) and a generous bag of scallops, (bliss, my favourite). Serendipity and spot on. Scallop and potato salad, tonight,then. I'll use the Ratte potatoes which I bought in the market this morning. Tomorrow crab salad or some other delectable concoction of crab, and then a long promised seafood risotto, when Heidi's other daughter Jenny, arrives from Paris, to join her sister Caroline, who is already here. Thank you Toby and Kim.

shopping, pleasures, walk

The long walk to the shops.

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The great Dr Samuel Johnson is best known for his conversation as reported by his biographer James Boswell, and for his Dictionary of the English Language, the first of any importance. His pronouncements are appreciated for their wit, learning, and directness. He saw the point when other people did not, and invariably came straight to it. He never pussyfooted. People would ask his opinion knowing that his response would be entertaining if not wise. This Christmas there have been reviews in the press, most of them complimentary, of a new biography by David Nokes. One, today, includes a quotation, new to me and I dare say new to others, which throws fresh light on his inclinations, and adds a new dimension to his humanity. According to his friend, the actor, David Garrick, when asked what he believed were the greatest pleasures in life, he replied, "Fucking and drinking."

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In Calverley Ground, I pass an old woman with a stick walking slowly on the compacted snow. Ahead walks a black Labrador, a green tennis ball in its mouth. After a few yards it puts the ball down and waits for its mistress. She catches up. The dog picks up the ball and walks on. A few yards further on, the process is repeated. Eventually, at a convenient spot, the old lady picks up the ball and with some effort, achieves an underarm throw. The dog bounds after the ball and brings it back, its pent up energy released, just for a moment. But that is all. It is cold and slippery under foot and the mistress has done her duty. The dog collects the ball and they proceed slowly on their way.

finial, twilight, geese

Snow-capped finial of railing across the road from our house.

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Some languages have expressions rich and poetic, which belong to themselves entirely, and which you feel must tell us something significant about the perceptions and attitudes of the people who speak them. What other language I wonder more picturesquely (and might one say Gallic-ly) describes the twilight hour, than the French entre chien et loup, the half light when it is difficult to tell the difference between a dog and a wolf, and, by extension, between other creatures and objects flitting in and out of the darkness! It is as though a poem has formed in the language like a bubble or whirlpool in a stream.

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In today's paper, the caption beneath a photograph of geese bred for the table - "necks on the line" - says it all. Taken at breast level and cropped to show a frieze of plump, feathered bosoms surmounted by long necks, orange beaks and searching eyes, the photograph prompts the thought: yes, geese have long necks.

Snow 2, spontaneity, soup

Figures in a landscape.

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Dave King comments here two days ago on train conversations. He says that he would be more disposed to talk to someone who opened a conversation as he sat down. But he wasn't sure why.

I'm not sure either, but I think it has something to do with spontaneity. It seems more natural and uncalculating than a pondered approach after exchanged glances and clearings of the the throat. Having witnessed my Mother-in-Law at work, I still found her example hard to follow. Only once did I manage it well; and then only after an evening' s drinking, on my way home from London.

I recall walking past the old Blackfriar's Station and noting that, among European destinations embossed above the portal was St Petersberg (at that time still known as Leningrad). I turned right up Fleet Street and made my way down the Strand to Charing Cross, still full of good cheer. On entering the compartment of the train I was struck by a sense of despondency among what were to be my fellow passengers (in those days passengers sat facing one another, a potentially more convivial arrangement than the present aircraft style seating where you look at the back of neck of the person in front of you). The faces were tired and drawn, and most sheltered behind newspapers. As I sat down, I said to the person opposite: "Do you know if this train goes to St Peterberg?" The newspapers rustled, were raised and lowered and raised again. But I was saved: someone smiled. Then someone laughed. The conversation that ensued was lively and varied, touching politics, travel, history and everything was wrong with the world. and one or two things that were right with it. The 50 minute journey home seemed to last five. Or that's how I remember it.

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Another day for soup. Finely chopped carrots, celery, green beans, an onion and a clove of garlic softened with two rashers of bacon also chopped. When the vegetables are transparent, chicken stock is added ,and with the stock a chopped skinned tomato; and with the tomato some small pasta shells and a tin of borlotti bean. The rest is a matter of seasoning and tasting until the desired flavour and consistency is achieved. Oh yes, and you should, at this point ,add some slices of sausage from the new Polish shop round the corner. If there isn't a Polish shop round the corner, something from the supermarket will do.

snow, peas, igloo

Calverley Ground after last night's snow.

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"He's got peas on his knees," said my sister-in-law when I ring to speak to my brother. Confronted by my incomprehension, she says that he is lying down nursing his knees with bags of frozen garden peas. "An old football injury," she explains, "is troubling him. The peas are helping." I hope so.

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In The Grove this morning, a woman stands guard over a wigwam shaped igloo. "My sons made it this morning," she says. "They made a big snow ball and hollowed out the middle. They were up at 5 o'clock this morning." This morning I wake early too and, mesmerised by the big, beautiful silence and the white light leaking through the shutters, want to be up and about taking photographs, sampling the depth of the snow. Making an igloo doesn't occur to me, but I can understand their enthusiasm. "It's perfect snow for skiing," says Caroline, who is staying with us. "She lives in Munich and skis regularly, cross country as well as on the slopes. She knows her snow. The snow, so rare for us nowadays, is overwhelming. It has brought everything to a halt. Peace and silence reigns.

reaching, notebook, snow

Two spires and a finial.

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Sunday 15 February 2009 marks the first page of my current notebook, of which no more than one clear page remains. There is a stack of seven such notebooks on my desk at the moment. Looking at them I realize that, largely thanks to the Three Beautiful Things formula, the contents of the notebooks and my approach to note-making has changed considerably. To begin with, the notes consisted largely of drawings of whatever happened to catch my attention - a head or a tree, a flower or bird, a dog or a cat. But posting three observations every day is hard when holes begin to pepper your memory, and drawings will not suffice. So nowadays synoptic accounts of conversations, bird and plant behaviour, the oddities of urban living, the pleasures of gardening and reading, have taken over. I notice however that there are still drawings - a reindeer head, a pig snout, a parrot, a cat which have popped among the words, just as words once used to pop up among the drawings. I treasure this book and the others though I doubt if the scrawled indecipherable phrases and abbreviations would mean anything to anyone other than their errant author. They are a poor thing but they are my own.

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The strange but rich language of the BBC forecasters grows ever more fascinating. I hear to day that "more meaningful snow is driving in over high ground..."

stall, rule, Christmas card

Wool and fleeces at the Farmers' Market.

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Jeff Wild who lives in Switzerland commented on my chance meeting and three minute conversation with the Shakespeare scholar and editor John Russell Brown the other day.He knew who I was talking about. How lucky I was he says to have met him like that. Lucky too to live in an age when people can so easily communicate from different corners of the Earth on matters of common interest. The global village, once forecast as a miraculous means of intercourse for the human race as a whole is coming to pass. The encounter meanwhile has reminded me of the rule formulated by the mother of my first wife, which I have not forgotten: if you want a conversation on a train, strike it up as you sit down. If I had managed to do that on this occasion, our conversation would have lasted the best part of an hour instead of three minutes. Unless of course, as it is quite possible, Mr Russell Brown grew tired of my naive observations and returned to the manuscript he was correcting.

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It starts to snow as it is getting dark. In Calverley Place the shop windows are lit. The snow settles. Shoppers say the same thing: It's quite like a Christmas card. Cold though and wet when the thin flakes melt on your neck.