2584. Why I celebrate American Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, and although it is not celebrated in the country where I live (except in my house and possibly a few others) it got me thinking… What is something when I was studying in the United States that I am particularly grateful for?

I was living in Waltham, Massachusetts, and studying at a university in Cambridge. About every second Saturday or so I would go to a nearby hall where two women I had met would be tidying up the hall. Their names were Claire and Bernadette. We would have a coffee and a donut. They both worked in a factory that made secret parts for some highly classified military machinery. What the parts were for they were never told. Massachusetts is full of factories like that where people make parts off a blueprint and they don’t know what the parts are or what they are for.

The summer break was approaching. Apart from taking a couple of summer papers, the rest of the summer was free. To be honest I was a poor student. I wasn’t intending to go anywhere but that hadn’t stopped me from looking at the map!

During one coffee Claire and Bernadette asked me, “Where are you going for the summer?” Not wishing to say I would be staying in my little room in Waltham I said, “I am thinking of going to Arizona.”

“And we’re paying for it!” declared Claire. “Provided one thing; provided we can do the planning. We’re not able to travel ourselves so it would be a thrill for us to plan the adventure.”

They explained what they did. There was no coffee facility at the plant they worked in. Bernadette and Claire provided coffee, sugar, and cream. People had their own mugs. There was a tin there for workers to drop in a coin. There were hundreds of people working in the factory. Claire and Bernadette had a policy: any money made they would not spend it on themselves, but spend it on other people, and that would give them a thrill! I didn’t agree to taking their offer at first, but I quietly asked around and everyone said the same thing, “Goodness me! Can those two afford it or what!” So I accepted their kind offer and were to meet them at the hall the following Saturday.

Well! They had maps. They had airline tickets. They had a rental car. They had vouchers for motels.

“We’ve marked on the map places of interest, but do what you want and go where you want! And here’s an envelope with some pocket money.”

When I got home I opened the envelope and there was $2000 in cash.

I set out. It was 115°F when I got off the plane in Phoenix. I loved every minute of my stay. I went everywhere from the Grand Canyon to Tucson. Quite my favourite bit was the Sonora Desert. My biggest thrill was in Walnut Canyon where I saw my first hummingbird! I saw, some quite by accident, snakes and scorpions and road runners and coyotes and ancient ruins and barrel cacti and… goodness! Every moment was pure magic! The saddest bit (and this is true) I stepped out of the car to take a photo of the road sign that said POISONOUS SNAKES AND INSECTS INHABIT THE AREA and I trod on a tarantula and squashed it.

When I got back to Waltham I had hardly spent a dime. I went to give the money back to Claire and Bernadette.

“Don’t be silly,” they said. “Go to New York! Go to Washington DC!”

So I did!

There were many instances of people’s generosity in my time as a student in Boston: the young man who about once a month would call with a can of Fosters beer to share because he didn’t know the difference between New Zealand and Australia (and I never let on); the man who called and said we’re going for a drive and took me to a shop where he bought me the warmest winter coat there was; the lady who sewed Christmas decorations to send home to my mother; the couple who lent me their holiday home at a lake for a week; the Native American at the lake who let me use his traditional canoe every day!  People’s generosity knew no bounds! When I finished my time there the locals had a farewell evening, in which they all sang the New Zealand national anthem that they had secretly learnt!

What I learnt in America wasn’t so much in my studies at university, but in simply living there. They taught me to be generous. In my opinion, of all the nations in the world, the people of the United States would be the ones who best would know how to celebrate a day of Thanksgiving.

And that is why we celebrate American Thanksgiving in the place I live. HAPPY THANKSGIVING to one and all!

At the White House

Dear friends

This is an announcement!

For fifteen days starting tomorrow I shall be posting here, chapter by chapter, my new “book”! It is not a big book. Each of the fifteen chapters is only a couple of pages with a smattering of photos. The usual story-a-day will resume on 2nd October.

This book is called My Neck of the Woods: roads travelled, houses lived. It is really a collection of vignettes of my life over the last twenty years – taking as a unifying theme the houses I have lived in. (In my 71 years I have lived at 36 different addresses – I think).

Those of you who enjoyed my first book of autobiographical vignettes, Bits of a Boyhood, might also enjoy this, although possibly life these days doesn’t hold the same charm as those earlier years!

When all is posted I shall make a downloadable pdf file and put a link in the header of this blog as has been done for other stuff.

Give it a read if you wish – else the stories will recontinue at the start of October! Thanks.

Bruce

2150. Oh for a photo in focus

Recently I’ve been busy; busy busy busy; and I’ll tell you why. But first there’s some explaining to do.

A common bird in New Zealand is the fantail. It’s smaller than a sparrow but with a tail that fans out. In some places (such as where I live) there are dozens of them. They don’t behave like most birds. They flitter-flutter around your head when going for a walk. They’re catching insects that are disturbed. Picture a juggler going for a walk with three or four feathered friends being juggled in the air. If you twirl a tree leaf back and forth between thumb and forefinger, a fantail might sometimes land on your arm! They also come through your house cleaning up any spiders and bugs.

AND because they don’t keep still for any amount of time they are almost impossible to photograph. I have a reason for wanting to photograph one in particular which I shall tell you about shortly.

The usual colouring of a fantail is a dull brown back, yellow breast, and tail feathers that are white and brown. Here is a photos of one that kept almost still for long enough.

Recently in my nearby little town of Stratford, a pure white fantail appeared in a park. Dozens of would-be bird-watchers crowded the park each day in the hope of a glimpse. Only one onlooker managed a half decent photo. I haven’t seen the bird.

Now here’s my secret… About two minutes from my house, in a little glade of trees, is a pitch black fantail. Every day I take my camera on my walk. He/she is usually there flitting about, but seems a little shyer than some of the other fantails. Hence, after a month I have only two out-of-focus photos.

I don’t want to announce its where-about because who wants dozens of onlookers walking onto ones property? So that’s what I’ve been busy doing each afternoon after lunch. I shall post a further photo on this blog should a successful photo session occur. I thought a black fantail to go with the white fantail could be fun.

Tomorrow I shall post a piece of music called “Fantails” composed for oboe and piano. It doesn’t try to capture the fantail’s call which is a twitter-twitter to disturb insects. Rather the music tries to capture its flitter-flutter-all-over-the-place-flight. And who knows? Today’s walk might perhaps be my lucky in-focus day!

Cynthia Jobin reads her poetry

Many of you are followers and admirers of the poetry of American Cynthia Jobin. Cynthia died over two years ago and there are recordings on her website of her reading many of the poems.

I was a little concerned that these recordings might eventually disappear, and so with the support of John Looker (who edited the second printed volume of her poetry) and Deborah Bennison of Bennison Books (who published the second volume) I have downloaded all of Cynthia’s readings and organized them on three webpages.

The first webpage follows the order of poems in Song of Paper.

The second webpage follows the order of poems in A Certain Age.

The third has her reading a number of poems that are not in either published volume. The written version of these unprinted poems can be found on her website.

There are links on each webpage to the other two pages, as well as to her website and to Bennison Books. The address to the first page is HERE.

2100. My fishpond

(As some of you know, for a significant Story Number, I sometimes lapse into reality. Here then is Story 2100 to celebrate Story 2100!)

I thought I would tell you about the time I set out to make a fishpond. It was the first time I had downloaded plans for anything from the internet – and in this case it was how to make a fishpond. It was at a boarding high school in Christchurch where I taught and lived as a house master. I asked the principal of the school if I might make a path through the lawn that was next to the Administration Block. He was more than surprised when I turned up with a tractor with a frontend loader!

The plan was to make the work of art over several weekends. I had multitudinous helpers as every boarding student and his dog wanted to help. The first thing was to dig a hole – no deeper than the Christchurch City Council stipulated before it required safety fencing.

The next thing was to gather rocks to create a tumbling waterfall. Then it was a question of installing an underwater pump and hoses with a secret hole drilled through the bricks into the Administration Block to plug the pump into an electric system! After that it was a question of mixing concrete and creating the tumbling waterfall and pond itself.

The final thing was to landscape the piles of dirt and make a higgledy-piggledy path through the area.

Volunteers arrived with shrubs and pond plants from goodness knows where. One parent donated a little garden statue. Another parent arrived with three goldfish even before there was water in the pond! Oh! I forgot to mention that along with the pump I had installed a water fountain and under water and garden lighting, all on an automatic time switch.

When all was done, things were turned on. I have memories of two comments. One from the headmaster who stood looking at it in wonder and said: “I thought you said you were just making a path.” The other comment was from a neighbouring high school. A team had come to play rugby. After the match the visiting team members were standing looking at the pond. One boy said: “Why can’t our school have one of these?”

Tragically, 14 years later the Christchurch earthquake struck killing 185 people. It also unfortunately destroyed the fishpond.

2055. Peggy Squares

I’m not sure if the huge international following of this blog uses the term “Peggy Squares”. In New Zealand the term goes back to the early 1930s when a six-year-old girl called Peggy started knitting squares (6” by 6”) and getting her mother to darn them together to make blankets for the poor during the Great Depression. It caught on. Every girl and boy in the country began using mother’s unused wool to knit Peggy Squares.

I grew up knitting Peggy Squares. Most boys of my generation did. Boys knitting was commonplace until it was associated with girls only. Sexists.

I THINK that Peggy Squares are different from Granny Squares which I believe came later and are crocheted. Is this right?

Anyway – Peggy and Peggy Squares true or not… every country claims the origin of most things except viruses.

It was 1932. Tommy was seven. He had knitted three Peggy Squares and was taking them to school to go on the pile intended for blanket making. An old spinster aunt called into Tommy’s house. “What are you doing knitting? It’s woman’s stuff,” said the aunt.

Tommy never knitted again. Funny how one little comment can force the whole world into a box.

Old Monk’s Habits Die Hard

Today’s scheduled tale – Story 2039 “A Newsworthy Photograph” – shall appear out of sequence on February 6^th 2021, as I want to say some stuff for today’s posting!

Thing One – A Passing Shower

I am delighted to report that Iseult has reviewed my novel – A Passing Shower – and given it 4 out of 5 stars! Thank you Iseult! The review can be read HERE – and from there to Iseult’s many other book reviews.

I presume everyone’s mother at some stage – at least in Western European Civilization – created some coconut ice. It’s usually half pink and half white. Well, once upon a time there were 5 pieces of coconut ice and I got 4 of them! To want all 5 would have been greedy, and I would have got smacked by Mother, and 5 probably would have made me sick anyway. So I am thrilled to bits with getting 4 stars! If you haven’t read my novel then you don’t know what you’re missing out on. It can be accessed HERE for free.

All sorts of important (and intelligent) people have reviewed my novel apart from Iseult, such as Uma, Yvonne, the late Cynthia, the late Pauline, Lisa, Ian, Andrea, Bianca, Chris. The high percentage of reviewers who have since passed on could well be a hint to you to get cracking before lateness catches up!

I realize that the novel is post-modern and not to everyone’s taste. The narrator is unreliable – in fact she’s a total chaotic mess (try writing a narrator like that! – in fact try reading a narrator like that!) As I said in a comment to Iseult, I once sent the first 50 pages to an agent asking if he would be interested to which he kindly replied with something like, ‘’I think after the first 50 pages I’d get totally pissed off.” The choice is yours!

Thing Two – No More Can Fit Into the Evening

I had said to an editor (THE Editor of Editors – ahem – in fact there are two of them) that I would do something I’m no good at and write a review. Well, here we are although I don’t have any social media network connections to flay about in except for this!

The book is called No More Can Fit Into the Evening: An Anthology of Diverse Voices. This volume of 369 pages by 39 poets from all over is edited by Thomas Davis and Standing Feather for Four Windows Press based in Wisconsin.

There are a number of poets featured you would possibly know from the blogging world. There is Bruce Goodman (who appears far too often on my blog and has six poems), the late Cynthia Jobin (who has 8 poems), John Looker (who has 10 poems), Ethel Mortenson Davis (who has 11 poems), and Thomas Davis (who has 9 poems). Other poets within the volume probably frequent the blogs but I’m not that good at spotting mountain lions in long grass. Having a decent lot of poems from each writer is a brilliant way of getting the flavour of each poet. Rather than simply sip a single martini one gets to hog the whole bar.

My personal poetry-writing voyage is a little chequered. When I was a kid at school – around about aged 15 in 1965 – a “famous” (still famous in New Zealand although dead) poet – James K. Baxter came and spoke to us. He said “Practise writing poetic forms for twenty years and then write your poem.” I attacked poetic forms with a vengeance. And then a couple of years later I showed a poem to another “famous” poet (who shall remain nameless) who pronounced that the poem was a load of crap. I didn’t write another poem for fifty or so years, and then my blogging friend, Cynthia Jobin said “Why not?” So I started writing poems again, and again resorted often to traditional poetic forms.

I am not too good at always comprehending contemporary poetry – and as the title of this volume says, it is “An Anthology of Diverse Voices”. So what I am doing is taking a poem a day – in no particular order – and reading and pondering it each morning. That way I think I am learning to see what each poet is doing and also coming to some understanding of how some contemporary poetry works. It is rather rewarding! A bit like a monk doing half an hour’s meditation each morning.

So I am nowhere near finishing the volume and feel a bit rude recommending it before I’ve finished reading it. However, I can’t wait a year. I should really chat about some of the poems I have pondered, but won’t because you can do it yourself! The voices/styles/concepts/methods in this anthology are so varied and wonderful that I think it’s an ideal book to take a poem regularly and ponder. After all, of course, it’s not a novel! It is a meditation book of modern poetry – even for those who are not too much into poetry. I can really give it no better recommendation than that. As the poet Robin Chapman says in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 1946 (p.102):

It’s the morning of the world
I want to tell you about…

Available at Amazon and all sorts of other places. Four Windows Press is HERE.

Finally, by inference, a story: As one of my students years ago said – he was the captain of the school’s top cricket team and a fairly solid sort of bloke – “Thanks for making us read Wuthering Heights. It was bloody good.”

1914. Award 23: The Aqueduct Plugger Award

Just when I was beginning to doubt the existence of any sort of Higher Being, The Dumbest Blog Ever nominated me for The Adequate Blogger Award. Thank you Dumbest Blogger – it is indeed a thrill. This exemplary award was created by James of James Proclaims. Thank you, James. James not only has interesting postings but he makes pithy and/or sharp-eyed comments here and there. James thinks that answering the questions of this award is “really just a box ticking exercise”. Well James, get yourself a coffee and make yourself comfortable, because I’m about to tick (check) a few boxes regarding The Dumbest Blogger’s complex queries about the meaning of life.

Yipee!

The Dumbest Blogger’s Stupid Questions:

1. Do you like birds?

I am a bird freak – just chickens and ducks. The ducks will have to wait another time because I want to tell you about my Faverolles. Faverolles are a breed of chicken that have an extra toe on each foot. The males have gallant beards and the females have gorgeous ear muffs. They are the quintessence of what the carol Twelve Days of Christmas sings of on the third day when the gift was “Three French Hens”. Faverolles are French! I don’t have them for eggs or meat. I have them for style.

Incidentally, even one bird is a Faverolles – it still has the S on the end. Isn’t that classy? Sort of like a double small “f” starting a surname. Here is a photo of a couple of French Ladies – they are definitely a class act of ffaverolles.

Below is a photo of my rooster who was once King of the Fowl Yard. He looks vicious, but Faverolles have the loveliest of characters. So if you have little kids and you want a couple of pet chickens, get Faverolles. They are child friendly and won’t attack and claw and peck like other beastly breeds. They are a large breed although apparently there is a bantam variety. I’ve never seen the bantam variety so don’t know if they’re as child-friendly as the larger Faverolles.

This particular rooster teamed up with the dog. Every day together they would patrol the garden. No other member of the poultry establishment was allowed over the fence to scratch about. A stray hen would be chased by dog and rooster back to safer ground. The dog and the rooster were inseparable for about three years. The best of friends!

One day an up-and-coming young rooster challenged this big rooster to a fight. The big rooster came off second best. He was no longer in charge of the harem. Mortified he came into the garden to patrol with the dog, and the dog bit the big rooster’s head off.

2. What is your favourite movie?

My favourite movie is Babette’s Feast. If you haven’t seen it don’t expect an action-packed experience. It’s a couple of hours about a woman cooking dinner.

The lead character in this marvelous 1987 film is Stéphane Audran. (The film got an Oscar – if you think that’s important). It’s a brilliant movie.

I have seen this movie twice which is twice more than I have seen The Lord of the Rings. I have also seen The Dam Busters twice – back in the late 1950s – but it’s not as good as Babette’s Feast. As you can see, I’m not that big on going to the pictures. I’ve made three or four attempts to watch Gone with the Wind, the last time being just the other day after they threatened to ban it. The video began and I awoke from a deep sleep on the sofa three hours later and everyone else had gone to bed.

3. When was the last time you used a pencil?

Gosh! It must be years. These days they have medication.

When I was a kid, before the Internet and before TV, my first cousin Bert Worsnop and me (we were the same age) collected coloured pencils. You registered somewhere, and every now and again you’d get some coloured pencils in the mail. Each was a different shade. I think there was something like 180 different shades in the collection. They were fantastic. Of course they were so precious that we kept them in a cabinet and took them out simply to look at but never use.

4. What would you do for a Klondike bar?

My maternal grandmother’s brother, Uncle Herbert (Charles Herbert Lightoller – the highest in command saved off the Titanic!) joined the gold rush in Canada’s Klondike in his earlier days. No doubt it was hard work, and he unquestionably would have killed for a Klondike Bar to quench his thirst up there in that wilderness.

Charles Herbert Lightoller

To get a modern Klondike bar I would have to buy a ticket to North America because I’m not sure that they have them where I live. My passport died years ago, so no Klondike bar for me unless a Klondike bar gets mailed over. We have Eskimo Pies – although the name has recently been changed I believe to something less systemically racist.

Incidentally, I have a letter (in my possession) from Great Uncle Herbert written to my grandmother in which he says “Imagine Doreen expecting her fifth. It must be something in the weather”. That fifth was me! So I was almost famous (of Titanic fame) even before I was born.

I took my mother to see the Titanic movie and all she said at the end was “All that money and he wasn’t the slightest bit like Uncle Herbert.” (She also insisted – family tradition – that the captain of Titanic was drunk).

5. What is the biggest problem facing the human race at this moment in history?

The artistic world is ruled by rules. Publishes and marketers determine what is good and what is bad. This book won’t sell so it’s bad. AND never start a sentence with an “And”. And you use the passive voice. And… And you should do this. And you should do that. This is the way to paint and write and compose. The artist’s world can’t change the world because it’s hidebound by the world.

Anyone who steps out of the established pattern is a nobody.

It’s like lab technicians claiming to be scientists. They’re not scientists; they’re technicians. They put stuff into beakers according to how they’ve been told.

Einstein played the violin. Newton sat in the apple orchard.

Bring back creative people and stop telling everyone how things should be done! Yeah – the bees are in my bonnet.

Newton, Beethoven, Einstein
If you want to employ a genius you have to put up with the hair

6. If James has 42 pieces of chocolate, and Joe has 37 pieces of chocolate, and both James and Joe give 3 pieces of chocolate to Susan, then what is the moral significance of James having 42 pieces of chocolate to begin with?

Clearly Susan had secretly given James the 42 pieces of chocolate in the first place for “favours received” – possibly one on each occasion. Bad luck, Joe. I doubt whether this snippet of unethical behaviour could be classed as having “moral significance”.

When I went to boarding school (in my teens – we weren’t rich and snobby we just lived too far from a high school so we had to go to a boarding school) a dining table sat eight students: seven plus a “table prefect”. Everyone had their set table and chair. There were about 450 students. The small daily slab of butter was in a dish on each table, undivided and uncut. Turns were taken each day to divide the butter into eight equal parts. The person doing the dividing would get the final piece – just to make sure it was divided evenly. Oh the care taken over a quarter inch butter cube!

James and Joe and Susan and others can stick their chocolate or butter where-ever. Personally, I’m off to grab an Eskimo Pie before they go the way of Gone with the Wind.

The Rules – see Question 5 above!

My Nominees:

Anyone who knows me knows I don’t nominate but I recommend. This is NOT because I’m lazy but because I’m lazy. It’s also NOT because I’m afraid of hurting those who miss out because they haven’t been nominated but because I’m afraid of hurting those who miss out because they haven’t been nominated. If I may – just this once – take the easiest way out and suggest clicking on the icons of those who give this a like. That way you’ll be taken magically to their site where there’s so much to discover!

Thanks for reading and thanks again to The Dumbest Blogger and James Proclaims.

1889. Award 22: Mystery at Te Popo

How wonderful to be nominated for The Mystery Blogger Award by Dumbest Blog Ever. The Dumbest Blogger ain’t as dumb as he makes out so go have a peek. He’s also going through a bit of a no-job patch, so see if you can have a read. He’s a good friend too.

Te Popo (in the title of this posting) is the name of the area where I live. It means “The Black Night”.

The award was established by Okoto Engima. She (apparently) is your everyday writer who turned her boredom, love for fashion, and passion for writing into something productive. So, being a fashion icon in my own head, I’m delighted to provide a link.

I’m meant to answer the five questions asked, and then say TWO THINGS ABOUT MYSELF. Of course the very things that some would want to know about me shall remain a secret. Oh! What the heck! Why not expose all? Read on!

Then I’ve got to nominate other bloggers, ask them a similar number of original things in the manner in which I was asked, and finally skedaddle off to bed.

Here are the five questions:

1. Where do UFOs come from?

Three weeks before my fourth birthday (i.e. 21 days before) my parents put a dozen eggs underneath a broody hen. I didn’t know, but they were due to hatch on my birthday. Then on my birthday eve my mother told me the hen was going to hatch out baby chickens tomorrow for my birthday. I went to the chicken coop and watched. Being on a farm I knew that babies came out of the mother’s bottom – like calves and lambs and things. I also knew that chickens came out of eggs. But how did the mother hen get her babies into the eggs after they had come out of her bottom?

I was going to solve this mystery once and for all. I watched all day, and not a thing happened. The next morning the hen had twelve chickens. I do not know how the hen puts the chickens into the eggs, and nor do I know where UFOs come from.

This is my faverolles rooster in my later years!

2. Do you like Mexican food?

We don’t have Taco Bell within a thousand miles of where I live, so all Mexican food has to be hand-crafted – a skill which I have developed to a high standard, especially when opening the can of kidney beans. So yes, I like Mexican food. Once, a couple of years back, the farming neighbours asked me to look after their farm for three weeks while they went away for a vacation. (They had never had such a capable neighbour before, and I said yes because they had lots of farm bikes and I was able to roar around all day on motor bikes here and there – it could have been interpreted as testosterone but it was simply post-adolescent inanity).

By way of thanks the neighbours invited me over for a meal, and we had Mexican. I was foolish enough to declare that one cannot claim to have eaten Mexican tacos properly unless one takes a freshly stuffed taco shell and eats it while jumping up and down in a white shirt on a trampoline. That’s what I had seen Mexican children do.

Some idiot actually photographed it

Who cares? The shirt was old anyway. Of course, those of you who want to see me with my shirt off will have to wait until the TWO THINGS ABOUT MYSELF later. I don’t like to reveal everything all at once.

3. Do you believe in life after love?

I’d like to say yes to this question, but basically I’m a bad loser. I don’t know how many times I’ve fallen in love, or even fallen in infatuation. But each time when the saga is over I turn into a complete wreck. I’m trying to select an example…

Once, when all possibility of romance dissipated, approximately around one in the morning, I screwed up an entire packet of cigarettes and threw them into the fire. The nearest in-the-middle-of-the-night cigarette selling place was about two hours walk away and I didn’t have a car. By the time I got home at five o’clock it was sunrise and I was in a ripe state.

No, there’s no life after love. Or, yes, perhaps there is, but it’s a different life – I have subsequently discovered.

I know it’s confusing but this is not me. These are actually models.

4. What’s your theme song?

I’m a bit “yesterday” when it comes to choosing a theme song. I guess it would have to be the song my father banned from us playing on the (back-then) gramophone. It was the flipside of Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren’s “Goodness Gracious Me”. The song was called “We’re removing Grandpa’s grave to build the sewer”. I absolutely loved it back then (and still do). I suppose part of the appeal was that Dad had banned it and it could only be played when he was out of the house. Apart from that as a ten year old I got given a collection of recordings of music by famous composers and I thrashed Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” to death. Mum would say, “Turn that horrible music down” but I didn’t.

I still get immensely excited by every note of it, and sometimes take the score to bed with me to read like a novel. But for the time being, if you’re hoping to get an insight into my excitement you may have to wait until you hear about the TWO THINGS ABOUT MYSELF towards the end of this reflection.

Getting ready to take Stravinsky’s Rite to bed.

5. Would you rather eat rice or potatoes?

I had two great-great-great grandmothers die in the Irish Potato Famine, so it would be treachery to claim a preference for rice. Besides, I associate rice with China, and they’re not my favourites at present.

There’s so much more one can do with a potato. Rice one can boil or throw over the bride and groom at a wedding. What a waste! Imagine throwing boiled potatoes at a bride and groom. It could be the harbinger of awkward things to come, especially if the groom got bits of mashed potato on his black tuxedo.

TWO THINGS ABOUT MYSELF

At last we have arrived at this most revealing section. Some of you have been faithful online friends for seven or eight years, and some just a few weeks. Some know things about me that others don’t. Anyway, here are bits of me in no particular order and for no particular reason:

1. I was a catholic priest for nearly thirty years. Those years, plus the eight years of training, were an important part of who I am. Sometimes, when people hear of my past, they say “Good on you for leaving”. I always get a little hurt by that. It was almost forty years of my life! I don’t think there was much wrong with what I did!

2. I have had a chronic heart condition for 25 years or so. Apparently I need a heart transplant but I’m not going to be given one because there’s a paucity of hearts about and I haven’t made a big enough contribution to society to be very far up the list! I said to the heart specialist when he told me that, “as long as the heart I would’ve got goes to someone younger who has a life ahead then that is fine”, and he said that no one had said that before and he burst into tears. I thought that might’ve improved my chances but it made Sweet Fanny Adams of a difference!

Anyway, it’s just as well that this wonderful award asks for only two, otherwise I’d be talking about myself all day.

I now have to ask five questions and nominate others. Well, this is the sad bit. I should’ve said it at the beginning. I don’t nominate, but I mention the blog addresses of other bloggers I follow that I like and maybe you miss out on. If I don’t mention you, know that I don’t NOT mention you to make you feel bad.

a). Passing on the flame. This is an archive of poetry translations (Medieval/Baroque/Modern/etc) from the German, by Peter Lach-Newinsky. I like this site because it exposes something to me that I wouldn’t have a clue about otherwise.

b). Observation Blogger. Lifelong learner and blogging enthusiast. Matthew is an Australian who lives in Colombia with his family. I think he’s currently in permanent lockdown – the poor bugger. He posts interesting stuff about music and things. The bits I like most are his introductions to Latin American music, singers, and songs.

c). Lisa of arlingwords blogs about a number of things, but mainly about her communal garden in Washington DC where she creates produce for the poor and gets eaten out by wild and pernicious rabbits.

d). European Origins. As a (lily) white Caucasian I enjoy Marcel’s blog and dream about my European ancestral lineage! I hope I’m allowed to…

e). Sweet Life Kitchens. Noel presents country-style cooking and baking. I like it because it gives a few ideas and shows how to cook things without a million pop-ups and ads that have now taken over recipe sites. This is good stuff!

Now I have provided no questions because these are not nominations but recommendations. But if so desired then recommended bloggers can answer the same five questions no doubt more satisfyingly than my response!

Thanks again to The Dumbest Blogger for his kindness in nominating me.

Here’s a picture of my washing to let you know that despite all I’ve said, it’s a cow of a life.

Poem 96: Self-portrait in still life

(Today there is no story, but Poem 96. This is the second “Self-portrait” poem – the first one was “Landscape” and this one is “Still Life”. This poem is probably not to everyone’s liking. I try to cover as much territory as I can and sometimes feel a bit strangled by the expectations of the occasional some. So if I don’t follow myself I end up in some quagmire of  uncreativity and consumed by self-doubt. Sorry if this didn’t make sense. For those who prefer to be warned, there is a swear word in the poem).

Today I pulled out weeds in the garden.
I don’t have a clue what the weeds are called.
I s’pose they have names.
I have a weed book (with illustrations) called
“Weeds”. All the names inside

are Latin, like Taraxacum officinal
which is just an antediluvian nomenclature for dandelion.
A friend of mine once made tea out of Taraxacum officinal and got the runs.
Yes, I have friends.

(Fa la la la la).

One of the weeds was all tanglely and sticky.
Another had roots so deep it snapped underground.
Yet another was prickly
and another slimy because of spit beetle spit.
Anyway, I couldn’t help but think –

I am a fern frond stuck in a vase in a still life painting
– not that a fern is a weed –
stuck in a vase with a couple of dowdy dead flowers,
and next to a banana.

(Fa la la la la).

I am a fern frond stuck in a vase.
I am a fern frond stuck in a vase next to a banana.
The frond reminds Mabel up the road of the most intricate lace.
But it’s the same all the way up.
It’s the same all the way down.

Everything’s the same.
It’s the same fa la la la la.

(Fa la la la fucking fa la).

Some days I feel the need to escape the picture.

To hear the poem being read click HERE!