R's rue

The Patriarchs – An Elegy The weather in the window this morning is snow, unseasonal singular flakes, a slow winter’s final shiver. On such an occasion to presume to eulogise one man is to pipe up for a whole generation – that crew whose survival was always the stuff of minor miracle, who came ashore in orange-crate coracles, fought ingenious wars, finagled triumphs at sea with flaming decoy boats, and side-stepped torpedoes. Husbands to duty, they unrolled their plans across billiard tables and vehicle bonnets, regrouped at breakfast. What their secrets were was everyone’s guess and nobody’s business. Great-grandfathers from birth, in time they became both inner core and outer case in a family heirloom of nesting dolls. Like evidence of early man their boot-prints stand in the hardened earth of rose-beds and borders. They were sons of a zodiac out of sync with the solar year, but turned their minds to the day’s big science and heavy questions. To study their...

  Nuala texted me around three to see if I was watching Of course she knew I would have been. I found the whole thing rather moving. It wasn’t grand, I thought, but more beautifully choreographed and the more personal touches such as the use of the land rover and his riding carriage with his gloves left quietly on his seat were simple and powerful reminders of the man. from Going Gently https://ift.tt/3tukByS

Yesterday, Clint agreed to take me west once more. It was another lovely spring day when the green of the fields was greener and the blue of the sky was more blue. We were heading back to the same region I visited on Monday but a mile east of the grouse shooters' cabin. There were squares for The Geograph Project that I needed to bag. Clint parked himself on Cow Low Lane close to Cow Low Farm and immediately began napping - with his mandible relaxed, he soon began snoring quietly. Ewes with new lambs occupied the adjacent fields and some of them rushed towards me believing perhaps that I was the farmer bringing supplementary food pellets. Hob Tor looking towards Chapel-en-le-Frith With no public footpaths marked on my map, I headed across sheep pastures under ancient Lady Low with its Neolithic round barrow, then I found ways over or through drystone walls up to Black Edge where I was delighted to discover an unofficial but pretty well-trodden path skirting Combs Moss w...

 Last night I got home just in time for The Big Gay Quiz. Our team won a respectable fourth place, which was fun. Afterwards I watched the lovely gay, Yorkshire Farmer film Gods Own Country which is a delight and incredibly moving. It must rank as my favourite gay movie  Anyhow.... There is a famous line in Gone With The Wind when Rhett Butler turns on the spoilt and game playing  Scarlet O’Hara “Open your eyes and look at me. No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how."  It’s a cracking quote and is one that got me thinking on my commute home yesterday. Where did I have my first proper kiss?  I’m discounting the time I was unexpected kissed by a policeman in full uniform when he came around to the psychiatric unit I was working in for a brew on night shift.  I was more surprised than romantically aroused when that happened, so...