“An apology is a good way to have the last word.” Anon

After a few weeks of being so far behind in reading the blogs I follow, I eventually spent all day yesterday glued to the computer reading, reading, occasionally commenting and often clicking ‘like’.  So now I am caught up and today have only 32 items in the inbox.  Hoorah!

But now I think I must have offended WordPress in some way.  I have tried to respond to various bloggers today and after pressing ‘post comment’ the comment has disappeared into the ether.  So for the many bloggers I follow and particularly those who have mentioned my blogs in their posts – Elizabeth at Mirth and Motivation and Caterel at caterel.wordpress.com and therefore deserve a response from me, I offer my heartfelt apologies.  Hopefully, whatever the gremlin is it will disappear later today.

____________

I recently came across this quote from Stephen Levine, poet, author and teacher.  It’s in his book A Year To Live

“If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say?  And why are you waiting? “

Who would I call?  My two sisters on a three-way call.  Why my sisters and not my family?  Because my sisters would not be able to be with me while my children and grandchildren are here in New Zealand and able to come to me.

What would I say? I would tell them how very special they both are to me.  What important parts they have played in my life.  How I have missed being and sharing with them over the years.   And if it was at all possible, I would wish to be all together again. It is now 12 years since we were all together (and that was for Mother’s funeral).

Why am I waiting?  I am not.

So think about it.  Who would you phone, what would you say and why are you waiting?

A stiff apology is a second insult…. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.  G.K. Chesterton, English author, poet and playwright.  1874 – 14 June

Recent posts on sisters

• And the best friends of all are sisters
• Ode to a sister
• For my sisters

Isaac Kaufmann Funk ( 1839 –  1912) was an American Lutheran minister, editor, lexicographer, publisher, and spelling reformer.    He is most well known for  The Standard Dictionary of the English Language published in 1893.   We are told via Wikipedia that “He worked with a team of more than 740 people.  His aim was to provide essential information thoroughly and simply at the same time. In order to achieve this he placed current meanings first, archaic meanings second, and etymologies last. “

We know that he collaborated with his classmate, Adam Willis Wagnalls and the I K Funk company was renamed Funk and Wagnalls and the encyclopedia was renamed Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Encyclopedia in 1931.  It was later renamed New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, Universal Standard Encyclopedia, Funk & Wagnalls Standard Reference Encyclopedia, and Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia.quoted the best 10 words in the English language.as :

I read somewhere (?) that Isaac Funk considered the following the best ten words in the English language:

• Mist
• Hush
• Luminous
• Murmuring
• Dawn
• Chimes
• Lullaby
• Melody
• Tranquil
• Golden

These are in no particular order and I wonder how he arrived at this list of ten.  Certainly they are all gentle words with no harsh sounds or undertones.  Was he a gentle man looking to find equally gentle words?  I wonder

My choice of 10 words would be (again in no particular order):

• Love
• Gentle
• Friendship
• Family
• Giving
• Safety
• Tranquil
• Tenderness
• Acceptance
• Delight

What would your words be.  It’s fun to limit the choice to only 10.  Of course, there are many, many other words I could have chosen.  Why did I choose these?  They are all gentle words and maybe reflect where I am in my life’s journey now.

“But now the days grow short
I’m in the autumn of the year
And I think of my life as vintage wine
From fine old keys
From the brim to the dregs
and it poured sweet and clear
It was a very good year”
As sung by Frank Sinatra – It Was a Very Good Year.

And for me, they have mostly been very good years!

And a final word today from the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341 BCE – 270 BCE)

“It is impossible to live a pleasant life without
living wisely and well and justly.
And it is impossible to live wisely and well
and justly without living a pleasant life.” 

Some recent posts on words –

• A Lovely New Word
• Kangaroos
• Madman, Murderer and Words

Related articles

• Word for the Day: Multitudinous (kenneyediting.wordpress.com)

“If tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her
Did I try in every way to show her every day
That she’s my only one
And if my time on earth were through
And she must face this world without me
Is the love I gave her in the past
Gonna be enough to last
If tomorrow never comes”
From If Tomorrow Never Comes sung by Garth Brooks.
Click here to see the video.

It seemed that this was the song playing on every radio station on the day my husband died. For years when and if I heard it played I would immediately be transported back to that dark, awful day and would be close to if not in, tears.  I can now listen without the tears but still remember that day.  Fast forward 14 years….

And  I have to ask how is it that we recognise other people’s children growing and becoming wise and not our own?  Do we still think of them as “our children” even when they are grown and have children of their own.

Recently I was discussing my late husband with a grandson aged 15.  He said that he hadn’t known Grampa but he knew from his parents and his aunt and uncle that he was a ‘good guy’ and that he would have liked to have known him.

Feeling in a rather playful teasing mood I responded that he wasn’t to be trusted as he had promised to love me forever and this wasn’t forever.  My son rapidly jumped in to tell us both that this was his father’s forever. He had loved me until he died and would continue to love me forever.

Well I can tell you that brought me up very short and in rapid time.  How come this child of mine now knows and sees things that I don’t?  All this time I thought I was the teacher and here he is teaching me.

I have had this thought with me for some 14 years – and yes, at the beginning it was an angry thought that over the years has mellowed to be a thought that I had from time to time.  My son has now put it into perspective.   I have always known that “when the student is ready the teacher will appear” and I know that the teacher can be our special other, friend, peer or as in this case a son.

Although my son doesn’t read my blogs I would like to thank him for this insight.   And I really love this quote from Walter M Schirra Sr.  His son is much more famous having been on all of America’s first three space programs (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo).  But I should like to know more about WMS snr.

“You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons.
And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out
to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes.”
Walter M. Schirra, Sr.

I now seem to be using my blog as a receptacle for thoughts and feelings that I wish to share.  Thank you for bearing with me.

My rainbow

On February 22 2011 at 12.51 pm a devastating 6.3 earthquake shook Christchurch, killing 185 people and bringing chaos to NZ second largest city.

Today around the country and around the world, services and memorials are being held to mark this day and to pay tribute to those who lost their lives but also to those who made a difference – emergency workers, medical personnel, first responders, police etc.

Of course, all newspapers in New Zealand are carrying the quake as headline stories  Here’s what our Wellington papers the Dominion Post has to say:

“Today is a day for remembering. It is also a day for learning.

It is a day for remembering the students, office workers and passers-by who lost their lives when Christchurch was struck by New Zealand’s worst natural disaster since the 1931 Napier earthquake.

It is a day to remember the courage of medical professionals and ordinary citizens who risked their lives to help survivors trapped in precariously balanced rubble.

It is a day to acknowledge the forbearance of Christchurch’s inhabitants. It is a day to remember the search and rescue teams that came from Japan, Australia, the United States, Taiwan, Great Britain and Singapore to help search for survivors.

And it is a day to learn the lessons of February 22, 2011. New Zealand sits atop the boundary of two major tectonic plates  the Pacific Plate and the Australian Plate. Earthquakes are inevitable. The only uncertainty is when and where they will occur.

In Christchurch people died needlessly in some cases because buildings failed to cope with stresses they were supposed to be able to withstand, in others because unreinforced masonry buildings damaged by the September 4 quake that preceded February 22 were allowed to stand despite presenting an increased risk to the public and in yet others because of the narrow brief given to engineers.

Instead of being asked whether buildings were safe to occupy, they were asked whether buildings had been structurally weakened by the earlier quake.

For some, the difference between a few words proved the difference between life and death. Cost and the preservation of historic buildings were put above public safety.

The tension between cost and safety is not unique to Christchurch. Here in the capital, the Wellington City Council estimates there are about 435 “earthquake-prone” unreinforced masonry buildings.

Another 350 buildings, built between 1940 and 1979, are classified as “earthquake risk”. To bring both groups up to 67 per cent of the standard for new buildings would cost close to $2.5 billion.

Plainly, that is unaffordable. Building owners have to be able to recoup expenditure through rents. Older buildings, no matter how structurally sound, are not going to generate the same returns as modern, purpose-built premises.

However, doing nothing is not an option either. Hard decisions have to be made and they have to be made soon. There is no telling when an earthquake will strike Wellington.

Some older buildings should be strengthened to preserve the character of the city. Others must be demolished because of the hazard they present, not just to occupants, but to passers-by.

With judicious planning what springs up in their wake can be just as much an adornment to the city as what was knocked down.

The Christchurch quakes were unexpected. Before the first quake struck seismologists were unaware of the faultline that lay buried beneath the city. The same cannot be said of Wellington.

A big one is coming. When it arrives we must be ready.”

Christchurch Cathedral is probably the most recognisable iconic building in Christchurch and there is strong resolve to rebuild a Cathedral in the City’s centre if the land is found to be stable.

Related articles

• One day one tornado and one earthquake 
• VIDEO: New Zealand quake: One year on (bbc.co.uk)
• The dark heart of town (theage.com.au)
• Darkness in the heart of town (smh.com.au)
• Taking a city from shell to shipshape (smh.com.au)

Are you going to Scarborough Fayre
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine.

Some of you will remember the line about parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme in the old British ballad  “Scarborough Fayre” and later made famous by  Simon and Garfunkel with their hit song  “Are You Going to Scarborough Fair”.

Well here in New Zealand we see a lot of sitcoms both from the US and the UK.  We were recently being shown a series called Rosemary and Thyme, the general theme of which is that two women each with a love of plants, get together to form a gardening partnership.  They are Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme hence the name Rosemary and Thyme.

Image via Wikipedia

No ordinary gardeners these.  Laura Thyme was married to a policeman, was in the police force herself and has a son who is also a policeman.  You can guess where this is going?

Rosemary Boxer was a former university professor and they share a passion for horticulture.

They are also amateur sleuths, with Rosemary being the intuitive one and Laura the practical one.  It seems that as soon as they start a new assignment some dastardly happening occurs.  Plots, conspiracies and killers abound amongst the gardens they are asked to tend and put right.  And in each episode there is a dead body and sometimes even two dead bodies.

A recent episode was entitled ‘Three Legs Good”**.  In it the two women are hired to help recreate  an old garden in Regent’s Park, London.  We are told that the garden was originally created by garden great William Nesfield.   Joggers, students, tramps and even nannies who have lost their charges, constantly interrupt them in their work.  Then their peace is shattered when a little three-legged dog leads the ladies to the body of its owner who has been murdered.

Another murder rapidly follows and they determine (before the police of course) that the original murder was a case of mistaken identity!  They adopt the dog and then in a convoluted way (such is the case in all these sitcoms) they find that the dog had lost its leg in a car accident.  Its master was driving the car with his married lover – she was killed in the accident and the dog lost its leg.

The show is peppered with shots of beautiful gardens, fantastic places to visit and quite often, lovely gracious homes in which they stay.

In all an innocent series and although there are murders and mayhem, we dont see the murders being committed.   The series takes me back so many years, when violence was not shown on television.

**The title Three Legs Good is an allusion to George Orwell’s book Animal Farm. When the animals first turn out the farmer and start running their own lives, their slogan is “Four legs good, two legs bad”. Eventually the pigs move into the farm-house and learn to walk on two legs, and the slogan becomes “Four legs good, two legs better.”

Our England is a garden, and such gardens
are not made
By singing: -”Oh, how beautiful!”
and sitting in the shade.
~Rudyard Kipling, “The Glory of the Garden”

Related articles

• DVD Review: Rosemary & Thyme – The Complete Collection (blogcritics.org)
• Adventures in Netflix! Episode 9: Rosemary and Thyme (with guest EmotedLlama) (soulishexhortations.wordpress.com)

Look where it is pointing

We know it is summer.  Our calendars tell us so but the weather is anything but summery.  But wait – we have had four good days in a row.  Sunshine, mild (not hot) temperatures, no rain and no wind.  So yes it is summer.

I read the following on www.newzealand.com:

Summer in New Zealand means sizzling barbecues and salads, sauvignon blanc, swimming at the beach, and long lazy days at the bach or crib – Kiwi for a holiday home.

Well that is certainly what we expect but unfortunately this year it hasn’t materialised.  The site goes on to say:

From December to February, New Zealand is alive with the sound of crickets, and not just the insect variety. As soon as the weather warms up, Kiwis vacate the cities and head to baches, campgrounds and holiday resorts up and down the country.

Christmas is a time for relaxed al fresco dining, and the weeks leading up to it and those following are celebrated in Kiwi style.  I wrote about this in an earlier blog.

Image Dreamstime free

So you can expect to see an influx of Kiwis/New Zealanders in the northern hemisphere during your summer,  After all we have most certainly missed out here.

And just because I liked her and love her books -

If life is a bowl of cherries what am I doing in the pits.
Erma Bombeck.

Related articles

• A Kiwi Christmas (allpoetsaremad.com)

The undamaged St Paul's Cathedral surrounded by smoke and bombed-out buildings in December 1940. Image via Wikipedia

If you have read any of my earlier blogs you will know that I was born and brought up in London during the Second World War.

It is a well known fact that London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights in 1940/41 and more than one million houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 20,000 civilians were killed.  We had an aunt who went to visit her sister and after the air raid warning sounded decided to spend the night.  A very lucky decision because the next day when she and her daughters returned home, they found their house razed to the ground.

So I grew up surrounded by bombed sites where houses used to stand and I thought nothing of it.  I really thought everybody lived this way.  Well I was only a few months old when the war started and 7 when it ended in May 1945.

All through these bomb sites a little flower grew.  Well it grew like a weed and while it did have a Latin name – saxifraga -  it was quickly renamed London Pride.  It came to represent the pride and the unstoppable nature of Londoners at the time.   Noel Coward wrote a song about it.  Coward later said that the song came to him when he was sitting on a railway station in London.   He looked about him and saw the flowers and the people going about their business as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening and  he became “overwhelmed by a wave of sentimental pride”  If you haven’t heard it, click here.  

London Pride has been handed down to us.
London Pride is a flower that’s free.
London Pride means our own dear town to us,
And our pride it for ever will be……..

It is very sentimental and very outdated now.  But at the time it was a rallying song for Londoners during the dark days of the Blitz, when people were mourning the loss of husbands, sons, family members and their homes.

And now I must admit that I love Noel Coward.  I have a couple of biographies and know the words to most of the songs he wrote.  Another great favourite is “I’ve been  to a marvellous party” but that has to wait for another day.

Related articles

• Color Photos Taken in London During The World War II (vintage-everyday.blogspot.com)
• World War II London Blitz Diary, Volume 2, 1941 (A Woman’s Revelations Enduring War and Marriage) [Kindle Edition] (swag.com)

At school we had an English teacher (Miss English by name) who was reputed to have been engaged to Rupert Brooke the poet who wrote:

IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
There shall be  in that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,        
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less  
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

W B Yeats (the Irish poet) described Brooke at the Most Handsome Man in the World.  Photos show that possibly was correct at the time, although of course, as years pass thoughts on handsome and pretty change.

via Wikipedia

At school we took at face value the story of the engagement and the marriage that never came to be because of the death of Rupert Brooke.

However, I recently came across a book about Brooke at the library entitled Rupert Brooke, Life, Death and Myth.  I learned that he was educated at Rugby where his father was a housemaster and then went on to win a scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge where his uncle was the Dean.  Here he read Classics followed by English Literature and became involved with the Marlowe Dramatic Society where he met such luminaries as Virginia Woolf.  Woolf described him as:

 ” . . .all that could be kind and interesting, substantial and good-hearted . . . he had such a gift with people, and such sanity and force . . .”

And it was this gift with people that found him a member of the large group of intellectuals and writers that Woolf named ‘The Neo Pagans” and it was in this group that Brooke became ‘enchanted’ with a young woman Noel Olivier.

Brooke fell in love with the 15-year-old Olivier when he was 20, but it appears that the love was not reciprocated.   Noel Olivier kept their letters but she steadfastly refused to have them published until after her death.  The letters were  then published by Pipi Harris under the title Song of Love.  They show an exchange filled with  romantic longing, self-reflection and  self-discovery.   Brooke discusses his depression, makes threats of suicide and writes of a love affair with Katherine Cox, whom he rejected as “unclean” after she responded to his sexual advances.  He becomes angry,  possessive, whining and insecure while Olivier is feisty, more level-headed and determined to pursue her career in medicine.  She rejected his proposal of marriage which perhaps played a part in his subsequent physical and mental breakdown.

He was most definitely a confused young man.  There are tales of his involvement in  the homosexual Cambridge secret society “the Apostles”.  Of course, at the time homosexuality and bi-sexuality were not admitted to by polite society, and so addicted to secrecy, he was loved by both men and women, and was himself highly sexually ambivalent.

So in all of this I now (some 60 years later) reject the claim that our Miss English was engaged to be married to The Most Handsome Man in the World.  But oh how it made our teenage hearts beat with sorrow for this couple and the woman doomed to live out her spinster’s life dreaming of what might have been.

Incidentally, this woman introduced me to the great poets of England and elsewhere and I while  Rupert Brooke has fallen from favour over the years I still enjoy reading his poetry.

Related articles

• Jill Dawson: On Lolita and Rupert Brookes (smritidaniel.wordpress.com)
• Comparison of Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke (socyberty.com)

“The older you get, the more awards you get. So, if you live long enough, then you get all the awards eventually.”
Kirk Douglas

My friend Dor at Technicolor Day Dreams has nominated me for the Sunshine Blog Award for which I thank her.

This is the first time I have received this particular award.  We are told that it  is supposed to be given to “bloggers who are inspirational, and who have impacted your blogging or your life.”   Wow!  How’s that for giving one a warm and fuzzy feeling?

Of course, each award comes with certain requirements.  This one has questions to be answered:

Favourite colour:  
Favourite animal: 
Favourite number:
Favourite non-alcoholic drink:
Facebook or Twitter?
My passion:
Getting or giving presents?
Favourite pattern: 
Favourite day of the week:
Favourite flower:

I have waxed lyrical told my feelings on these awards in the past.  And as usual I shall respectfully  manipulate change the rules to suit me.

• Why anyone would be interested in my responses to these questions is a mystery to me and therefore, gracefully decline to answer them.
• I nominate all of the bloggers in my blog roll for this award.

Once again I trust that I am not upsetting anybody with this post.  I am overwhelmed by the number of people who read and like my posts,  the number who faithfully follow, those who comment and those who so generously nominate me for these awards.  Thank you all, sincerely.

My rainbow

Related articles

• Awards (growingyoungereachday.wordpress.com)

“When Solomon said that there was a time
and a place for everything he had not
encountered the problem of parking
an automobile.”
Bob Edwards

On Tuesday I wrote about my computer and how easily my son got the sound and the second monitor to work.  Thanks to all of you who told me that you have done some other daft things.

Well I thought I would tell you about another thing.  Years ago, shortly after my (not now so) dashing young Scotsman died I lived with my son and his family for several months.

One night, while daughter in law was making dinner, I went off to meet my son from the train.  A simple task you say?  What could happen in a 2 km drive?

Well, unbeknownst to me during the day a huge load of top soil had been delivered to the railway parking area.  There were no lights – it is a small community where they live and so a small, unmanned station.  Well, you guessed it.  I drove into the pile of soil.

The train arrived and my son was greeted by his mother and her tale of woe.  He tried to reverse the car without success and so he suggested that we go over to the gas station where we  knew the owner, and borrow his van.  This was quite old and used for run around jobs.  The gas store owner was delighted to spring to the help of a damsel in distress.

So now there are three of us – the owner thought he could tow my Toyota Corolla out of the pile, but miscalculated and somehow ended up with his van stuck in the pile of earth.

So my son, who had a 6 litre Ford something at the time, took off on foot to get his car.  He eventually arrived and did his best to tow out the stranded vehicles but again without success and again, managed to strand his car in the soil.

Even all those years ago my son and I each always had our cell phones with us, but neither of us had them that night.  So three sheepish people made their way back to the gas station to call the AA who eventually turned up and rescued all three vehicles.

Embarrassing? Yes, bus a great story to tell over the next few days.  And dinner – well fortunately my daughter in law hadn’t started to cook the steak when I left so all was well.  But the little boys were in bed when we got back and so their father missed out on the usual bedtime ritual.