Inspirational 2!

Napoleon, summoning the night

It’s been a cold, wet, wild, windy, weatherbeaten week here on the edge of the world. The kind of week when a little bit of inspiration goes a long way. So I thought I'd share a few things with you all - even though some of you are away in far off places enjoying yourselves - like - New York, and - well, yes, Lisbon!

For those of you stuck at home like me, take a minute to break free of toil and care and let your mind float away...

Rather like this:

Photo by Tone Batt

And - while you're in the right frame of mind, read, learn and inwardly digest this excellent advice:

'Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something ...no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.' Christopher Morley

Hear, hear! 

For both these gems I sincerely thank Unbought Delicacies - a lovely blog brought to me by a friend, whom I also thank!

Next up, here is some music.  I don't know if you have been watching BBC's The Choir, but it is truly fantastic! More crying. In fact all Gareth Malone's Choir programmes are guaranteed to make me cry. If you haven't seen The Choir - Military Wives, then try and watch it - just make sure you have a large box of tissues readily to hand, as it rather spoils things to have to go and look for one half-way through. If you can't see the whole programme for whatever reason, here is a wonderful clip of them singing in London - fantastic! Better still if you can see the background to how they got there!


Gareth Malone also did the marvellous programme 'Boys Don't Sing'.


When you have finished drying your eyes, feast them on these amazing ceramics. Being an ignorant hayseed, I didn't know anything about William de Morgan until quite recently. 
Oh boy.
Now I lie in bed wondering how I can break into the V&A, or possibly the Met, or anywhere else really, to steal one of his amazing pieces and keep it under my bed; so that I can surreptitiously pull it out, night and morning, and drool.
On reflection I think it is quite dusty underneath my bed, and there was once a mouse, eating the conkers I had put there to ENSURE that no spider every dared come anywhere NEAR me during the night - so perhaps I won't put it there.
It will just have to go on the dresser in the kitchen, and if anyone says, 'Isn't that the famous William de Morgan piece...?' I'll just reply, in a nonchalant fashion - 'Oh that old thing? No, no, my husband was just playing around in his ceramic class...'


Sadly I couldn't find a picture of my favourite piece, to show you (possibly because it's already under my bed) - but these are still wondrous.


Get ready.

Goodness, how I do love hares!

Zebras are pretty cool too - especially this one, but you don't see so many of them round here.

Quite frankly, I want to eat the glaze on that vase in the middle. It is - words fail me. Edible.

How can this be ceramic?

Aren't they lovely?

You can look at lots of his lovely stuff at William de Morgan's images
(Except the ones I've stolen, of course.)


I wish I could show you the whole of Frozen Planet - the next treat in store. I can't. But if you aren't watching it, or can't watch it, then make a plan - any plan - even indecently illegal plans - and DO watch it. It is quite amazing. The photography is breathtaking (and I mean that quite literally) I also spend at least half the programme with my eyes squinting shut because I can't bear to watch. There are no holds barred here, and it really brings you close up and personal with the unbelievable daily struggle and gamble that is life on this planet.
Life is tough.
If you are an animal it can be really tough.
If you are an animal in the outer reaches of the north or south pole, it is seriously on the edge.

An official taste of Frozen Planet
A not so official taste of Frozen Planet




My next gem is an interesting picture for you to look at: It's edgy. 
Literally. 
I like edgy things. 
They often make you think.

It's one of my husband's pieces. A drypoint print.


Lastly, to celebrate the fact that November, with all it's associated miseries, is nearly over (sorry, anyone who likes November, but it really isn't my favourite month) - here is a poem that I wrote.

November

A bitter wind blows through November trees

across a garden that now grieves for spring, for summer,

the extravagant glory of autumn.  I scoop wet stems and leaves

into a ragged heap, sheaves of a forlorn harvest

destined to rot.  The bile of the year collecting in sallow piles,

these trophies that the weary year forgot.

Pale buds too nondescript to name, one last bright

flame of flower against the earth where nothing new will

this year come to birth.  I wrench out roots, discard dead stalks.

Nothing will come of this.  The shoots that promise life

beyond my reach, distanced by hard-pruned days, each

a life sentence.  Oh, swiftly come

the bright sharp knife of winter to release me from

the tomb of this enfolding death, splinter this stale decaying

of the earth, scythe the drab days, fragment the inert self.

The Authorized Challenge

This week's 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, also known as the Authorized Bible.

The challenge was to write 100 words using at least one of the following well-known phrases from the King James Bible as inspiration.

   ...the powers that be / the apple of his eye / the writing on the wall... 

You didn't have to include the phrase if you didn't want to - just make it clear by the content, which phrases you were using. It had to be suitable for a PG audience.

I'm afraid my entry this week blatantly - flagrantly - steals its inspiration from Stephen Leatherhead's wonderful piece last week. I hope you don't mind, Stephen - please look on it as an homage to your marvellous imagination! I also couldn't manage to steer it away from the intrinsically Biblical theme, so apologies for the distinctly Old Testament high moral ground!

Um! Rather depressing viewpoint!

Here it is:

Regretfully, he gazed down at the small, damaged planet. 

How they had changed it, the human race! His own fault, really – Adam had been the apple of his eye, so he’d given him overall control. 

Foolishly, as it turned out. 

He'd seen the writing on the wall: now they were devouring everything – the planet, each other, themselves – in pursuit of that mirage-god, More. He’d tried, sent endless messengers, but they never listened. 

He sighed. The powers that be had declared Earth a waste of time, a failed experiment.
There was nothing he could do. He would switch it off. 

Tomorrow.

However, there is another Biblical quote, so maybe a ray of hope: '...one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.'

Tomorrow could be some way off!

What d'you reckon?

Run, Chicken, Run!

Last night I dreamt that I ran away with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Honesty compels me to confess that the whole affair was more indecisive than in flagrante – I haven’t yet been able to recall exactly where we ran to, but never mind.

When I relayed this interesting snippet to my husband across the breakfast cereals, he rolled his eyes to heaven, shook his head sadly and left the table.

I’m still not sure whether that was a tacit comment on my penchant for fanciful dreams or on the improbability of my securing so eligible a parti as the alliterating-chef.

If  pressed, I would have to say that while I’m a great admirer of Hugh’s, he’s not the heart-throb pinned inside my wardrobe door, nor does he feature on my list of elopement candidates.

It must be about chickens.

As far as chickens are concerned, HF-W and I are as one.

Well, nearly as one.

You may recall that some years ago, Hugh inaugurated the 'Chicken Out' campaign - to alleviate the lot of commercially reared poultry. (Let’s all raise our glasses to him!) I don’t know about you, but it made me weep. Admittedly, it doesn’t take much, but the way Britain – Ireland - America? – the world? - rears chickens for human consumption is despicable. In fact, let’s not beat around the bush here, the intensive rearing of any animal is despicable. The way we produce food is deeply, deeply flawed.

And it’s not just meat. Take milk. I know it’s so normal, we don’t even think about it, but to me there is something completely wrong about taking a calf away from its mother as soon as it’s born so that we get the milk – while it gets fed from a bucket in a shed somewhere else. How can that be right for the mother or the calf? The de-facto birthright of an animal to be with its mother doesn’t even register on the scale – with cows or chickens. We have turned them into machines.

Sorry – I’ll get off my soap-box now.

Mercifully, vegetables are less emotive, and with more and more people growing their own, it’s easier and less expensive to be choosy about how they are produced. Isn’t it funny, how time and perspective change everything. I remember once, years ago, standing in my local greengrocer’s in London and looking with amazement at the produce on show. It was spectacular, and everything had been proudly labelled by the owner – oranges from Israel, apples from New Zealand, cherries from America – everything came from somewhere else. I was deeply impressed at the time – the first glimmerings of the global village back then, I guess. Now I stand in my local Country Market, Beltra, and it gives me huge satisfaction to see the variety and quality of local produce, to know that it comes from within a few miles. It is good to be part of the new (and oh, so old) approach to food that Country Markets epitomises with its message: ‘Buy local – buy Irish – buy well!’ It’s good to be in touch with the food I eat, to know how and where it’s been produced, that the producer has been fairly paid for it, but it hasn’t ‘cost the earth’ in any sense.

Which brings me back to the chickens.

(I’ve been trying to avoid the chickens. As always, I’m uncomfortably on the edge here.)

Like Hugh, I’m very fond of poultry. I have a small flock of them myself.

In fact, I should probably introduce you to Napoleon at this point. You will see for yourself why he’s called Napoleon.

Napoleon and his first wife, Josephine

 

Isn’t he gorgeous? (He causes my husband more rolling of the eyes, but I know that’s just because he is jealous) Sadly, his first wife, Josephine, pictured beside him, beautifully clad in speckled grey, is no more. But happily a friend supplied Napoleon with a second wife, Marie Louise – very tiny, but every inch the Empress.

The Empress Marie Louise

Apart from the two royals – referred to for some reason by my husband as ‘your babies’ – we have 17 other, lesser creatures – Wellington, his girls and Henrietta. 

Henrietta is an impudent, determined, irascible, bolshy little hen with a will of iron – what you might term ‘a hen with attitude’. Back in the spring, she turned clocky on me. Dreaming of the joys of motherhood, she took to her bed of straw and refused to move. Equally determined, I removed all the eggs and told her that she was wasting her time, keeping a fruitless vigil.

Henrietta Hen

Now, as you may know, it takes just 21 days for an incubated egg to become a chick. Had I known what I was up against, Henrietta would have won hands – or rather, wings-down and we could have saved a lot of time. Instead I held out for 3 long months, at the end of which I felt like a beast and she, thin and bald-tummied, hadn’t once emerged from her empty nest, except when I’d physically thrown her out of it.

I gave in. As a result, she is the proud mother of 6, which is all fine and dandy, except that 4 of them – inevitably – are cockerels. 

Now this is no doubt why I have been dreaming of HF-W, who manifestly believes in giving an animal a marvellous life and then turning it into several marvellous meals. Totally logical. In fact, best practice. So what IS my problem? I just need to start thinking: yum-yum, start calling my cockerels Coq-au-vin, Chasseur, Drumstick and Sunday Roast.

Pathetic idiot that I am, instead of my taste-buds tingling whenever I see them, instead of bisto-whiffs passing beneath my nose, I find myself thinking: who needs meat? Who even likes chicken? Cheese-on-toast is very nice, laced with pickle and mustard. 
Hugh would definitely not approve. These birds have, after all, lived the life of Reilly – running wild all over my garden, bullying their smaller sisters and daring the cats to one-to-one combat.

I need to take a leaf out of Henrietta’s book and become determined.

I need to overcome this – this chicken-heartedness.

Wellington will certainly not be so lily-livered. If they grow much bigger, he’ll take matters into his own hands. Or the cats will. Or M. Reynard, who nightly prowls the orchard.

Besides, we will get fed up with cheese-on-toast.

Eventually.

Let’s hope that in our brief encounter last night, Hugh gave me a jolly good talking to!

Colour Challenge!

Thank you so much - everyone out there who is reading this blog! It is amazing, and rather humbling, to know that people from Russia to Argentina, from Canada to Hong Kong, and from New Zealand to the Bahamas are checking in to Writing from the Edge. As a friend said to me today - isn't the internet a wonderful thing!

He also said that he thought new posts would come to him automatically. I believe this can be arranged! If you would like your friendly cyber-postman to deliver new posts, hot from the press, straight to your email door - just fill in the email slot above and click 'submit' (your email details won't be passed to me) and/or click on Follow or Subscribe in the right hand column. At least - I think that's what you do! I am a complete novice, so you probably - in fact, almost certainly - know more than I do about these things!

When I finished writing my entry for this week's 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups a few days ago, I logged onto Julia's Place to double check that I had the wording of the challenge correct, and found that loads of people had already got their act together and published their pieces. I couldn't resist digging in straight away, and it was great fun reading them all. The internet may be a wonderful thing, but the imagination is just wild! Whatever else may happening in Europe, they can't take that away from us, thank heavens!

Anyway, by the time I'd read all that lot, my household was screaming for supper, or at least certain members were - my husband and the divine duo don't scream (but are all cats as vociferous as mine?), so I'm only now getting back to it, and all I can say is, it's a big mistake reading other entries before posting your own - it surely makes one feel inadequate!

The challenge this week was to write a piece of dialogue of 158 words (including the prompt) on: ...'Are you sure it should be that colour?'...

Tentatively, here is my entry: 

     ‘How’re you doing?’ Paul asked anxiously.

     ‘Winning, hopefully.’ Luke said, depressing the plunger. ‘We’ll see soon enough.’ He paused. ‘D’you remember our den – when we were kids?’ he said.

     ‘What? Yes – yes, of course, but…’

     ‘Remember when we planned to leave wha’sisname’s gang – join Colin’s?’

     ‘Of course I remember, but what…?’

     ‘He told us to paint our den door.’

     ‘The one we nicked from my dad’s shed!’ Paul grinned. ‘I’d hardly forget that. “Green for me, blue for him,” Colin said. “Choose whose side you’re on!” And you painted it turquoise, you pillock!’

     ‘It looked green to me.’ Cautiously, Luke tipped the glass phial. ‘You said:  “Are you sure it should be that colour?”’

     ‘I was right – because then Colin and the lads turned up…’

     ‘And you said “RUN!”’ Luke looked up, his face pale. ‘You need to run now! This shouldn’t be that colour – I can’t diffuse it! It’s going to blow. Go – get out of here!’