under another sun

Busy at Kenny towers this morning. I got up early and did a little writing, and after breakfast, Caroline round to give Beth a fitness session. Beth also off to the dentist leaving Enzo with Lorraine for a while.  After I returned from my walk, while learning how to befriend my brain thank's to Rachel Barr's book and taking in some of the mellow glories of Autumn, I found Enzo screaming his little head off. He soon calmed down with Lorrane's cooing,  but the sound is nerve jangling. Sweet how Enzo is so pleased to see his mum though. My bedtime read the last few days is Edward Thomas's book The South Country . A torrent of  description about walking in the southern counties of the UK. Though Thomas writes beautifully, it verges into purple prose from time to time. Somehow the book's form makes you feel that all walks blend into one another as Thomas ambles through the pre-first world war countryside. Almost hallucinogenic. I love his poetry, and this work has touche...

Took a while to clamber out of bed this morning, a slow breakfast. Then off to Maynard's Green to a large house with a pottery studio at the end of the garden. Here we looked at pottery tools, and Lorraine bought several things, and a twelve kilo bag of white clay. The woman there very pleasant. Also there was a little van there run by another woman, who we bought some a refreshing cup of tea and some millionaire's shortbread. On the way home we stopped at Alfriston, at Much Ado Books, where I bought a nice book by Edward Thomas, and Lorraine bought some doilies, to press into clay among other uses. Also we sauntered into the village store, where we bought some bits and pieces, and two pasties. These proved to be absolutely delicious. Mine was a Caribbean chicken one, which was stunningly good, Lorraine had a steak one which was fab.  Delores's birthday today. So we met Delores, already a bottle of Kylie down, and Sophia her daughter, and Asher on the platform at Seaford, b...

All day at my desk, working really fluently and happily on the book. The rain and hail of the outside world did not tempt me. Instead I worked or Noah-ishly listened to radio or internet clips of the flooding. Things are getting bad for lots of people including the French Bloke and Bouncy Max who have been islanded in Chertsey Meads for some time. But - touch wood - but everything seems fine in Brighton and Mum and Mas fine high up in Edgware. Pleased when Lorraine got home from driving around the county. All good, except for the cats, who are depressed by the rain and tetchy with each other.Spoke to Mum via facetime, and to Janet and Ken, who I will visit tomorrow. In the bleak but beautiful words of Edward Thomas. Rain Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into this solitude. Blessed are t...

Men dying like the leaves Up at 6:30 again thanks to the kitten, then an early start. More erection copy. Only a few more days this before I can get onto glaucoma. Remembrance day today. Lots of stuff on the radio and TV about the first world war, and the Spanish flu pandemic afterwards which one expert was saying killed 50 million people globally. Picked up my copy of The lost voices of World War 1 edited by Tim Cross. This had been given me by World War II poet Victor West who was a friend of mine but is now dead. The 11th hour always makes me think of Wilfred Owen's parents getting the dreaded telegram as the bells for armistice rang out in Shrewsbury, or one of my all time favourite poets Edward Thomas, when asked by a friend having enlisted in the Artists rifles at the age of 37 what he was fighting for, picked up a handful of soil and crumbled it between his fingers, saying "literally, for this." All that nobility lost, a generation of poets, for what seems today ...