R's rue

 A new normal has begun me thinks.  Travel chaos seems to springing up in hotspots.  Covid has reached another hidden peak  And The Archers have finally returned to their Friday night, 7 pm slot. I listened to The Archers with interest last night ( For those that perhaps don’t know , The Archers is a radio 4;soap opera which has been running nightly ( except Saturdays) since 1951. It airs for under fifteen minutes a night and centres upon the farming community of Ambridge located in the Midlands)  During the programme, the only Welsh character Natasha ( Mali Harries) has brought her newly born twins home with clueless husband Tom. Whilst the usual banal banter continued , Natasha and her mother sang a lullaby (  Suo Gân) to the twins in Welsh, the two woman harmonising quite beautifully. It proved to be a rather sweet moment of gentle drama and pathos in a soap, not always known for its subtly and it’s nostalgia and sense of place can be describe...

Well I didn't achieve much yesterday. It was a grey and lazy kind of day with drizzle filtering down from the heavens above. In the afternoon, I decided to have a go at the occasional brass-topped table that I rescued from my brother's cottage. I should have taken some "before" pictures but all I have to show you is two "after" images. I spent an hour and a half working on the table - washing it, polishing it, buffing it and I even rinsed it in the light rain falling outside. I am pretty pleased with the end result and hope that my son Ian and his girlfriend Sarah will want it in their new home. I won't be forcing them. The  intricate brass top of the table came from Old Delhi in India and it must have been made some time in 1945 as the curtain was coming down on World War II. My parents were married on December 8th in the Anglican church in New Delhi and they would start their voyage home at the end of that month. I imagine them seeking out souve...

 Grateful  For the view Out my window  The breath I take  Memories  To be made Today  from R's rue https://ift.tt/X2RbUPr

It’s not many people that have a full scale medieval castle which dominates an estuary as a view on the way home from work. I stopped this morning to look at the view. And felt grateful from Going Gently https://ift.tt/DUyacTL

Detritus is what remains. In terms of a human life, it is the debris left behind. Yesterday, Shirley and I were back at Simon's cottage, trying to clear up the detritus. Sorting through it, saving and dismissing his stuff like beachcombers. As Simon lived with our mother for the last years of her active life, there was also some of her detritus to make decisions upon. Bits of evidence of  our family life in the village. Four sons, a mother and a father - none of us thinking of death - just getting on with living. But mostly it was Simon's stuff. Old school reports. Exam certificates. Postcards from afar. Letters that did not get thrown away. Birthday cards. Books and maps. A tin of dome-headed drawing pins. A poem. Leather belts. Fading photographs. A school badge. School ties. My father's green cricket cap from Malton Grammar School circa 1933. A pre-war theatre programme in which Mum was credited. Pressed flowers turned to dust. A cassette tape. Diaries listing the v...