1- A hypograt first, and dominating my headlines in every way – I have now had the physio, the Emergency room doctor, an orthopaedic doctor, and finally, an ultrasound scan – all of which is to say, it is now conclusive that I have ruptured (they won’t say broken, because its not a bone) my Achilles tendon, which is as close as I am going to get to the greatest warrior and hero of the Greek army in the Trojan War…
2- I have a boot which looks like it belongs to a StarWars trooper, and I now have great sympathy for Medieval Knights getting in and out of their armour…
The boot has a stack of wedges under my heel to angle the foot down and give the chance of the tendon reconnecting by itself…
3- The Orthopaedic surgeon can now decide on a course of action – from my advance research on Google (AI) – it appears that surgery is avoided for older people like myself (really – is that me?) although there are less invasive keyhole procedures. The alternative is wearing the boot with wedges that I am now wearing in the hope that the tendon will reconnect by itself. Against this, as I see it, I wasted nearly two weeks before going to the doctors – not because I am a typical doctor-avoiding man, but because it just didn’t feel that bad – more like a sprain, so I thought I would give it a chance to heal by itself. However, I wonder if the gap is now too big for the tendon to self-heal… I hope to hear from the surgeon early next week…
4- A former Weed of the Week returns since it has now developed a plume? Flower? Although if this is the flower – what is the corn-cob that develops lower down the fully grown plant – is there a biologist in the house?
5- Since the TToT is a place for reflection – in particular on things we are grateful for, I have decided to start a new photographic thread – things that are seen in reflection. This first one is from when I was in my early 20’s and living in a squat in Brixton. If that sounds very Bohemian, I did have a proper job, manager in a restaurant in central London – my first venture into catering (if you haven’t seen Tony – about Anthony Bourdain – go see it – it’s streaming now). These two friends, who I have completely lost touch with, held up the mirror which was lying in the back garden for a bit of trick photography. I do remember the girl on the right was French and diminutive dancer…
Note the very full head of hair – fully red too lol
6- I am getting back into a writing flow again – yesterday I finished a poem for November’s Keighley Library Poets. It was my suggestion for the prompt to be: Write a poem In The Shadow Of (ITSO) Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. This was a radio play but it contains many passages of pure poetry prose as well as several poems by the Rev. Eli Jenkins (one of the characters). The language is an inspiration to poets everywhere. If you have never heard it, you can listen to the definitive Richard Burton version below – go on, put your feet up with a cuppa, close your eyes, and treat yourself… I will share myITSO poem after the Library group meeting…
7- Barbara has had to respond to my incapacity by doing more, for which I am very grateful, but I hope it will serve to dissolve some of her own incapacity and lift her depression…
8- Tracking shows that my three mini-poetry books arrived in New York and my friend Akua, confirmed that she received them!
9- The Autumn continues to be mild (well you couldn’t expect a post from an Englishman without reference to the weather – by which standard, Miski is almost naturalised English) and I haven’t had to wrap our olive tree in frost-proof gauze yet…
10- Thanks for all the well wishes about my leg from you lovely people…
I realise that my TToT’s have become vast and sprawling of late, understandable when covering travels, but perhaps placing an undue demand on you lovely readers and so I am trying to rein in a little this week…
1- Due to my travels I missed out on the TToT meme of photographing the second bookshelf down on the right-hand side of the right-most bookshelf as you enter the room – which in the case below, is my bedroom/study…
In this case, the shelf is for art books…
2- Grateful for the view from the smaller of our kitchen windows (we live in an upside-down house, so the kitchen is upstairs) and here shows the lovely early morning Autumn sunshine. Hypograt, the view is being overtaken by a Christmas tree which a neighbour planted in the graveyard many years ago. During our 6 month abscence during covid, said neighbour curtailed the top of the tree, but, as trees will do, it simply sprouted a new crown which is now well past the kitchen window and I include a shot (with different weather altogether) from a mere 15 months ago to show how fast it grows…
3- Going to the cinema – we have a choice of Northern Morris Cinemas in two of our local towns – independents who struggle but are surviving, albeit with slightly sticky carpets in the lobby, and The Ilkley Cinema, a posh independent with three rows of settees for seating (so quite small audiences in two screens) and where pizza, cake and coffee are brought to your seat! I went to watch “Pressure” about the conflict between and American and English meteorologist to deliver the right forecast and allow the D-Day invasion to proceed – excellent! A tribute to meteorologists…
I really must work at smiling for selfies but in my defence, Barbara had not come (though they gave a credit note) and my grandson, who I was waiting for) got the time wrong , reading 17.15 as 7.15pm and arrived as I was leaving…
4. At the risk of inflaming Clark’s bulb envy, the last in the bulb succession for the year flowered this week, the Spider Orchid Lily. I showed them to you last year, when they were a late planting yet still flowered in July so I expected them to be earlier this year, but here we are in October, after an admittedly late Summer/mild Autumn…
5- Hypograt – Barbara cannot bring herself to go out today as planned, which means that I will be working on my mini-poetry book project instead. I would much rather we were going out – depression is the pits…
6- The last few weeks have been so busy that I have hardly got any writing done, you may recall that I had to get up at 5am to complete my Deadlines short story last week, however I managed to write for one of the dVerse Poets Pub prompts this week which you can read here. The Deadlines story was my second attempt at a piece of fan fiction and although I didn’t flag it as such, I was surprised that none of the commenters picked up on it! I can’t link to the Deadlines site because it is closed to non-participants but I realised I can make it available to you here – see if you can guess the book it is a fan-extension of…
7- I am still getting dribs and drabs of Poetry Postcards arriving (though I still have about 10 bonus ones to reply to) – its nice that the festival putters on…
8- Grateful for the TToT since, as well as the lovely people it connects me too, it acts like a kind of diary – which was after all, the original idea of a Blog…
9- I did manage to write a poem for my Keighley Library Poets Group which will be meeting on Tuseday evening. The prompt was Wonder which was also the National Poetry Day prompt for this year. Keighley library was the beneficiary of a £10,000 grant towards its construction, by Andrew Carneige the Scottish born millionaire who made his fortune in America and used it to promote literacy by building many libraries all over Britain – bless him…
10- Hypograt – I fell over in a building site, an old Department store, Brown and Muff, known eventually as “The Harrods of the North” after it was bought by the House of Fraser which owns Harrods in London. I was checking some measurements for my boss who bought the building to convert into appartments. It could have been worse, everybody else had just left the building but I was not badly hurt and picked myself up and am now nearly recovered from a merely sore calf – it did though, make driving home that day feel as if the clutch was twice as stiff as normal going home that day and it reminds me that I need to write a lone-working safety policy for the factory where I work! Incidentally, another hypograt, we are applying for SALSA Accreditation, without which some wholesalers will not buy from us. We had the mentoring day which is like having a mock exam, lol! We have a lot of work to do to pass but – and here is the hypograt – it may make my bosses take seriously, some of the things I have been telling them need doing…
Hmmm… Not sure I was any less sprawling in this week’s TToT – but as Archy the Cockroach in “Archy and Mehitabel” was wont to say “wothehell wothehell” (Archy – a reincarnated Free Verse poet, communicates with the humans in the newspaper office where he lives, by jumping, with great effort, on the keys of a typewriter which they leave primed with a sheet of paper each night – he cannot work punctuation or capitals…
Wishing you each and every one, the very best possible week to come…
Now many people wouldn’t consider this a weed, but if a weed is a plant which is growing in the wrong place, then it certainly is. I only noticed this Sweetcorn plant growing in a flower pot after we returned from holiday and it was only when I figured out where it had come from that I knew what it was – I had installed a bird-seed feeder above these pots, and I have to say the little blighters scattered a fair bit of seed on the ground including, I realised that included sweetcorn, although I examined the remains of the packet and couldn’t see any whole seeds – such is the determined power of nature…
2.- I have bought some fat balls for the birds this winter and am awaiting a special caged feeder that will only allow small birds to feed and keep them safe whilst they do it…
3.- Another exhibit from the Museum of the Confluence in Lyon. Another temporary show was one of ceremonial costumes from Mali. What was as interesting as the costumes/masks was the degree of community participation involved with their use – these one are worn specifically by the sons of Blacksmiths who dance through the village at night…
Apologies for the light flare on the English captions…
The feathers are from domesticated birds, these days…
4.- As children, a treat in our family was to have a spoonful of leftover pudding from the night before at the bottom of our bowl of cornflakes and now, the leftovers are more and I can indulge for a few days… This is an apple crumble with walnut halves nestled into the crumble. My sister in Canada says they don’t know what she means by crumble and would refer to this as an Apple Crisp – how about you?
and what makes the pudding all the sweeter is that these were foraged for free from roadside trees…
5.- Barbara, who stayed with her daughter whilst I was meeting my friends last weekend, has been intermittently better this week…
6.- I am still getting the odd postcard from the Poetry Postcard festival – I still have 10 or so bonus cards to send replies to…
7.- I am doing a writing challenge called “Deadlines” to write 12 short stories in 12 months and of course, there is a deadline day each month. By the last deadline, on Wednesday last, I had not written anything so I got up at 5am (it was a work day) and completed and posted an 1800 word story by 7.30 – talk about pantsing it! The prompt was “Daisy” and I immediately thought of Daisy in The Great Gatsby and wrote a fan fiction piece about her final demise…
8.- I am making some miniature poetry books for an exchange which I thought was this month but am relieved to find is not until November – in the words of the Fairport Convention song by Sandy Denny “Who knows where the time goes…”
9.- I like to watch 10 minutes of TV while I eat my breakfast and have discovered that YouTube is perfect for this – either I watch a short or I can work my way through a longer item such as a documentary about the story of Fairport Convention the group who invented British Folk Rock…
10.- Online friends here and on other sites, scattered around the world who bring joy and variety to life…
Things for which I am thankful – Travelogue 3 – unlimited by numbers, gratitudes…
After three days in Mohern, we continued on our way to a village a few miles outside the city of Lyon (B on the map) and itself, on the banks of the River Saône where we would spend four days exploring. First off, I have to say – WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CITY IS LYON!!! We drove through the city on the evening we arrived despite warnings from the hosts about traffic, but actually, being caught in rush hour offers the chance to look around which as the driver, I am not always afforded. On this excursion, we also drove up and over one of the ridges of the city away from the river and saw that whilst not as delighful as the (no doubt expensive) riverside areas, the city is still pleasant enough. Rochetailee-sur-Saône is crowned by a Chateau which is now a motor museum but I picture it here to give a flavour of the architecture…
The first whole day, we drove a short way down the Saône to board a ferry/bus that took us as far as the old city quarter…
Barbara and I sailing down the Saône including a hapless photo-bomber. I really must work on my selfie smile!
I managed a sketch of this from a Cafe across from teh Old Quarter but didn’t quite finish it so took this for reference…
Lyon considers itself the gastronomic capital of France (though I am sure other cities would dispute this) and one of its most famous chefs is Paul Bocuse whose restaurant was close to us. He is responsible for developing the Nouvelle Cuisine in which a selection of small “refined” dishes replaced the heavy sauces and large dishes which had dominated French cooking.
The splendid facade of Paul Bocuse’s restaurant…
Returning to the car after taking these photographs to show Barbara, I told her that the great man, pausing from his labours on the balcony, had given me a wave – she believed me for a moment before zooming in and realising it was another piece of Trompe l’Oeuil – Paul died in 2018 but for a moment, I had her fooled!
Sometimes, it is only when you review your photos that you spot things you had not realised were there – here, the shadows of vegetation mingle with the fabric pattern of Barbara’s trousers…
I couldn’t resist shooting this little video of a strip club which seemed curiously out of place in the Old Quarter but wait till you see the name of the pottery shop next door…
(The Angry Pixie – presumably at having to share the street with a strip club!)
Another lovely shop sold vintage items – appropriately, for the Old Quarter which included, light fittings, photographic rolls of film and all sorts. Take a peek at their website here.
Some gargoyles for Cai…
On our last day in Lyon, a Saturday, we drove to Les Confluences Museum – a very futuristic piece of Deconstructivist architecture near to the confluence of the Saône and the Rhône rivers. Notice the difference between the French and English use of confluence – in French, it is plural because there are two rivers whereas in English it is singular because the confluence is a thing in its own right. (no wonder English replaced the French as the international language) Sorry to any Francophiles but English is so much easier to learn (though not to speak or write perfectly) sufficiently to be understood. Sorry France – the world has spoken…
Here is Les Confluence with the Saône river in the distance to right joining the Rhône river in the foreground. An array of houseboats too…
This one, moored in front of the museum is perhaps a houseboat or pehaps a tour boat…
Les Confluence Museum in all its Deconstructivist glory…
Taking a tea break from present shopping in Neuville-sur-Saône – shoppimng is hard work – honest!
Finally, we set off back towards Rotterdam and the ferry back to England, but we broke it into two six hour drives, stopping for two days in the Champagne region near Rheims. The motorways were free flowing with little traffic and the French drivers (99%) were well behaved as regards the speed limits. We continued to see many wind-farms – at times, we could see 100 or more in all directions in an area similar to the Downs near Misky (but much more extensive). This is just the kind of area where English nimbys (Not In My Back-yard) would protest loudly at the mere mention of windmills… Europe has embraced the need for energy security and freeing itself from Russian gas and oil…
The Marne River runs through Champagne – grape vines in the foreground….
I had never seen Walnuts growing but they were gently falling each day at the Airbnb we were staying at. You can see how the shelled nut is cocooned inside a soft casing…
A bit blurry but a picture of the red warning lights on the massive sea wind farm off the Hook of Holland which gives an impression of the profusion…
And so back to England – normal gratitudes will resume next weekend…
I wasn’t sure if I would write this week as we are now on holiday in France, Misky suggested taking notes for later posts and Clark also said this is a tradition in the TToT but I have a lot of thoughts about the journey and decided to write them as a travel piece without numbering the grats (or hypograts)…
I conceived and planned this holiday quite quickly – it had to fit in before a reunion weekend with my school friends of 50+ years ago in October plus an important inspection at work, and even though the time of anticipation was small, there was still that countdown which seems to slow time, but eventually the last day of work came and went, my boss’s parting call “Take care – I still need you in my life!” Take that as you will…
We decided to take the overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam again, as we had earlier in the year when we holidayed in the Netherlands. I am always reminded, when finally catching sight of theRiver Humber, of Hull’s great Metaphysical poet, Andrew Marvell, who famously wrote the attempted seduction poem, “To his Coy Mistress” which enchanted my imagination when studying it at school but which I now take, at the age of 71, as a wider reflection on the shortness of life generally, and the need to make the most of it – very metaphysical… In the poem, Marvel says to his would-be lover, “Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain.” and a muddy tide it is, the waters never other than murky… You can read the full poem here, and a poem in which I introduced the lady’s somewhat indignant riposte, here! Indeed, when we arrived at the ship and looked over the side of the dock, she appeared to be resting on the mud with the tide still ebbing and as the hours neared the departure time, a strange small ship was loitering on the seaward side of the ship – a ship that I looked up (Oh, the joys of the internet!) and discovered she was the UKD Marlin – a trailing suction hopper dredger! UKD presumably stands for United Kingdom Dredger – who knew? And the UKD Marlin was just itching for us to set sail so she could go about her vital business of hoovering the RORO berth clear of Humber mud!
The good ship UKD Marlin getting about her business as we head out down the Humber…
The Captain of The Pride of Rotterdam had welcomed us aboard with the news that the wind would be rising from the South-west to be gale force seven in the latter part of the crossing, and so we could expect some rolling during the night. Visiting the toilet in our cabin in the wee small hours of the night, I was momentarily spooked by the unexpected movement of the red emergency bell pull. (the check-in lady had kindly upgraded us to a disabled cabin so that Barbara could use her boot-scooter on board and have room to park it in the cabin) Then I realised the movement of the bell-pull was a result of the said rocking and rolling of the ship and returned to my bunk to be rocked in the cradle of the deep until we passed the sheltered waters beyond the Hook of Holland. You may find this video of the spooky bell-pull’s movements oddly relaxing…
The ferry docks at eight in the morning and on that occasion, we had only an hour-and-a-half drive to our destination – a reflection of how compact the Netherlands are, but yesterday, we had a drive of six-and-a-half as measured by the satnav. Of course, that doesn’t allow for holdups or breaks, and the reality was nearer eight-and-a-half hours! First off, it took nearly two-and-a-half hours to leave the port – due to our shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot exercise (Brexit), we are now obliged to use biometric data to pass into Europe which means getting out of your car, entering a booth and loking into a camera as well as placing your fingers on a fingerprint scanner and so we crawled along in a queue of cars, eager to be on our way with a long drive ahead of us. Curses be on Nigel Farage who led the campaign to take us out of Europe and who still gets paid a pension from his stint as a Member of the European Parliament – oh the irony…
Eventually we were on our way and had a choice of three routes, courtesy of Google, with six hours minimum on the table. We decided to take the middle route, figuring that an extra half-hour was neither here nor there – this would have taken us through five countries – imagine that! Netherlands, Belgium, tiny Luxembourg, Germany and finally France. A half hour in, the implacable lady that is the voice of my satnav, stated that delays on our chosen route would result in additional driving and we could save twenty-two minutes by switching to an alternative route – I decided to accept, though without time to stop and inspect the new route since we were on a motorway – it turns out that Google simply took us back to the “mainly through Germany” route so we missed out on our five country marathon – c’est la vie…
Freedom of movement between European nations in the Schengen zone means that crossing into Germany is marked merely by a roadside sign – blink and you could miss it! What I could not miss, was a change in the culture of driving. all the way through the Netherlands, the speed limit had been no more than 100kms per hour (62 miles per hour) but once in Germany, on their famously named “autobahns”, the speed limit sometimes rose to 130kph (80.77mph), which drivers took not as a limit but as a challenge to achieve or exceed. In England, the national speed limit on motorways is 70 mph, although, in practice, the speed where traffic is free-flowing is often nearer 8omph. Not only do drivers in Germany achieve the speed limit but they aggressively tailgate anyone who gets in their way of reaching their goal! The result is, (and we were travelling on a lot of two lane motorways), that you end up with a big difference between the fast outer lane and the nearside lane where lorries and those who want to travel at a more modest speed are, and this makes moving out into the fast lane quite hazardous, calling for bouts of sudden acceleration to match the speed there. This different culture kicked in the moment we crossed into Germany…
To begin with, we were driving under grey skies with even the odd drop of drizzle, but as the day wore on and we progressed South, the skies cleared and the temperatures soared until even driving with the windows open did not relieve the feeling of driving in an oven… The landscapes at the journey’s outset were also rather beige, if not grey, lots of featureless factories arrayed in Dutch neatness, and when finally we hit the countryside, it was flat and uninspiring, but by the afternoon, we reached the Mosel wine-growing area where small vineyards were arrayed on the slopes of volcanic rock. Speaking of rocks, we stopped to stretch our legs at a “Rastplatz” (Rest place) called “Blau Stein” which conjured up an image of beer steins overflowing with foamy lager – something which, considering the heat, would have been most welcome at that moment (if I wasn’t driving) but sadly the most this rest pace had to offer, was somewhere to stop, and toilets. There was, however, a large boulder painted blue and I realised the error of my fevered imagination, not a beer stein, but a Blue Stone lol…
From that point on, the landscapes became more exciting, extensive woods, almost mountains and masses of windmills! There had, of course, been lots of wind-power in evidence in the Netherlands where windmills have been in vital use for centuries, but Germany too, has embraced the wind farm as a way to cut down on CO2 emissions as well as to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas in the age of global warming and political heat. In England, there are still many objections to on-land wind farms, which I find extraordinary given a year which has seen five heatwaves one after another. I think that all these NIMBYS (Not in My BackYard) should be forcibly relocated to live right next to one of the remaining coal-fired power statioins to see how they feel about windmills then. I feel that when the generation that grew up with the Teletubbies comes to power, they will embrace windmills and feel inexplicably comforted by the sight of them…
Evetually, still with an hour-and-a-half to go, we crested a rise and saw before us the broad sweep of The Rhine valley which moment, put me in mind of Keats’ poem describing Cortez first seeing the Pacific Ocean from “a peak in Darien” and so I felt the need to record the moment with a video…
Finally, at 7.10pm, we arrived at our AirBnB – a maisonette in the garden of out hosts who were most welcoming. The garden is at once familiar, a bramble trained along a fence, rhubarb and blackcurrant bushes and novel – peach and fig trees and a grapevine over a trellis. We disgraced ourselves by locking ourselves out whilst having a last cup of tea (alright, it was me – my fault) but it was only 10pm and we had no choice but to rouse our hosts ( Nous sommes desolais…) and get them to let us in – and so to bed…
So that’s it folks – Day One of our French road trip…
1.- I am grateful for the boundless curiosity which i inherited from my Dad and too, the habit of passing on snippets which interest me – of course he was part of the age before the internet which gives us boundless access to knowledge (not all of it coorect though). One such snippet was the story of Common Ragwort, a weed which was supposedly brought to Britain and grown in Kew Gardens from which it allegedly escaped and spread across Britain along the newly built railways.
As a geography student, this story fascinated me too touching on ecology as well as the unit I studied on “Weeds, Pests, and Aliens”. I didn’t really encounter Ragwort till we bought a cottage in the West of Ireland where Ragwort grew in the three acres of fields that came with the cottage. The farmer who sold it to us, explained that whilst not poisonous to cattle and horses whilst growing, once cut along with grass to make hay, then it was poisonous and so the farmer must go over the field and remove the offending weeds. My father’s account also claimed that the weed was rife until the one and only caterpillar to munch on it was brought from foreign parts, and then the weed became manageable… There the story might end, but – I have access to the internet and there is thirty years of people adding information about their hobbies and passions to comb through…
2.- # The Internet, aka the World Wide Web
Disambiguation!
It turns out that the story of Ragwort escaping Kew Gardens is a myth and that Ragwort in endemic throughout Europe and Asia! However, there was a Botanical Garden and an escaping Ragwort which spread along the railways and it was nearer to home than we thought – Oxford Ragwort which originally came from the slopes of Mount Etna…
Senecio chrysanthemifolius and S. aethnensis grow at low and high altitudes on the volcano respectively, and form hybrids where they meet naturally at mid altitude. It was material from this hybrid zone that was grown in the Oxford Botanic Garden by Bobart the Younger in the early 1700s. Plants that later escaped from the Garden spread across the UK via the clinker beds of railway lines and, over the next few hundred years, diverged from the hybrids and their parents sufficiently to become recognised as a separate species, S. squalidus, the Oxford ragwort https://www.obga.ox.ac.uk/oxford-ragwort
As to the poisonous qualities of ragwort, it is poisonous, though animals would have to eat a massive amount to be seriously poisoned and this is unlikely because it doesn’t taste good – however, once cut, along with the grass, the unpleasant taste goes and so animals are more likely to ingest it.. This and other interesting facts can be found in this video in defence of Ragwort and on behalf of the many creatures and their parasites who depend on Ragwort…
Weed of the Week – The Runner Up…
For trying it’s best to find a place to grow…
3.- Returning from a haircut by way of the churchyard at the back of our house, I was looking at how the lower half was cleared of gravestones (with permission of relatives) and the gravestones were arranged arround the outside or laid down as paths which opened up a great space of grass.
A charming celebration of a person’s life – they don’t write elegies like that on gravestones today…
My favourite gravestone replete with a whole orchestra of instruments – our house in the background…
A nautical gravestone…
4.- This christmas tree was planted by a near neighbour ( I know the guilty party) too close to our house and it has already been cut down once but has grown 10 feet in just the last year and is directly in line with our kitchen window…
5.- Butterflies abounded…
6.- An unusual Clematis like a clematis has been crossed with a Campanula…
7.- One of the first things I posted on TToT, was a picture of Barbara when we visited a PYO wildflower field near Helmsley so that is at least a year ago, well we went again this weekend and this time we picked some flowers, which are lasting far better than I thought they might…
8.- English Eccentricity! The pictures below are at Thirsk, on the way back from the Flower Field and these knitted offerings are to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the Thirsk Yarn Bombers. They will replace this display with poppies for Remembrance Sunday and there will be 3 or 4 different displays during any given year – incredible work!
9.- MUSIC – and today I offer you Irma Thomas It’s Raining… (In the hope that you all have enough of the stuff…)
I would love to have a muse, I think faced with a blank page or a knotty prompt she would be there in a blink with ideas and inspiration chewing the cud, I imagine her gifts to me quite gratis she would require no acknowledgement of our collaboration a relationship too good to be true
Why are muses generally “she” or is it in opposition to the poet’s gender – opposites attract and all that can I pay to go on a course to get my gal is there an Agency for muses that pairs you up like speed dating could AI write me the perfect letter of application – guaranteed to find the perfect match a muse for life – no shallow fling here today abandoned to blank page tomorrow
Instead, if I choose to accept this prompt or if I wake with an itch that only the laying down of poetry can sooth I face each piece of poesie on my own, flying solo never knowing where the words will take me on today’s adventure but within a moment the idea arrives the point of departure then buckle up for the ride here goes blue sky thinking…
Misky’s series of poems The Old Woman With No Cat which always makes me smile if not laugh out loud – the entire series is available to read here: The Old Woman With No Cat.
I have come to the top of the waiting list for a partial lower denture courtesy of the student dentists at Leeds Dental Hospital. I have been a volunteer patient for the students on and off since 2015 and have passed through the hands of about 5 or 6 generations of studnts. Treatment is free bar your dedication to turning up every other week for a whole morning or afternoon. I enjoy the contact with this age group, the free treatment up to and including, crowns, bridges, and now a denture. I also enjoy popping into the Leeds Art Gallery and taking a look at som favourite paintings.
I hope I haven’t shown you this before, but it is a large painting (c 9′ x 5′) of a Norwegian fiord and both the painting and the subject are stupendous…
4. I am grateful that before the age of photography, painters recorded scenes of historical significance – even if they had to employ considerable imagination. The painting below tells a sad tale form the days of the infamous British Empire and yet another ill-fated attempt to control Afghanistan. You can read the story below…
5. Summer is the time for nature in all ots fecundity and I offer a selection of “weeds” which have caught my eye this week…
I don’t know what these purple “weeds” are but one man’s weeds are another man’s flowers…
Albrecht Durer painted a littlr watercolour of a “foot of grass” and in this tribute, you can see how many plants have colonised what began as planted grass – clover, dandelions, buttercups, and I can see at least two species of grass and i don’t know what else…
This is no weed except by virtue of its growing in the wrong place – it is, I think, Wheat!
Some people take no care of their front urban “gardens” except to clear all vegetation from them periodically, but here, Blackberry runners are eagerly racing out in all directions from a tiny diamond of bare earth…
6. My weather app says expect Saturday to be the first rain-free day – AND ITS SUNDAY!!! Still, gratefull not to have to be watering the garden.
7. Grateful that biting the bullet and paying for a continuous blood monitoring device has brought my diabetes under better control…
8. Ten Things of Thankful…
9. The sun has just come out…
10. Something that is on the tip of my tongue…
Have a great week, everybody – stay safe and healthy!
A rose called Afternoon Delight Recalls love, perhaps a person But the good Baroness Rothschild And her erstwhile husband, Baron With roses, we commemorate Their wealth and rank of State With both hybrid and heritage Bush Rose’s names and image But who was the Beautiful Girl Who FloribundaBetty Cuthbert Perhaps a veryBlushing Knockout Or a Brilliant Pink Iceberg Be we infamous or famous Will a rose one day recall us…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Poetics invites us to celebrate the names of roses, a long list of which you can find here (from which the photos are taken).
“Choose any subject you would like to write about…” that is the object of the A to Z Challenge, and thinking of things that interest me is not a problem for me, but choosing a subject not only to write about, but to write in a way that other people will catch my interest – that is the real challenge! This year I turn to a subject, close to our skin if not our hearts, and yet, again, I wonder if this subject will get some people past the title on the list – dismissed as niche? For this year, my theme is What We Wear – Fabrics and Fibres
So we are getting to som e difficult letters V, X and Y – X I am going to steal to give Wool a whole post to itself, Y there was one fabric Youghal Lace but I lumped that in with Lace under “L” so for V I am just going to elaborate on the V fabrics and eschew a topic…
Velvet, Velveteen and Velour…
I have felt a bit nerdy making the deep dive into Fabrics and Fibres that this A to Z subject has turned out to be, but there are other bloggers who have made textiles the entire and permanent subject of their blogs and for Velvet, I discovered a video that answers everything I was going to write on the subject – Textile with Alberto is a YouTube channel of videos made by Alberto – an Italian textile technician, so, take it away, Alberto…
Honestly, the video left me nothing to say, but let me summarise: once made from silk, by a complex and labour-intensive weaving process, Velvet became more affordable once mechanical looms could do the job and also with the use of cheaper yarns ranging from cotton to synthetics. The essence of the process is that two layers of cloth are woven at the same time – linked by an extra warp (or in the case of Velveteen, weft) and then a knife cuts the linked threads and separates the two layers of velvet. Velvet is soft, shiny and will take all sorts of finishing, printing, polishing or creating areas where the pile is selectively dissolved away (devoré). Velour is a velvety-looking fabric but is produced by knitting rather than weaving. Right there, we can see how velvet has become an adjective to describe luxuriance – try finding an ad for drinking chocolate that doesn’t use the word velvety…
This shows the way two layers of fabric (the grey threads) are linked by extra threads (the dark blue) which are then cut apart to create the pile on the two separated fabrics – Wikipedia
Devoré – Thanks to my sister for pointing out this fabric. Devore velvet is a textile created using the devoré (burnout) technique, where a chemical paste selectively dissolves cellulose-based fibres in a mixed-fibre velvet, leaving behind a semi-transparent pattern against the remaining protein-based fibres such as silk. This process produces a visually striking contrast of sheer and opaque areas, giving the fabric a textured, elegant appearance. It is often made from blends like silk and viscose, which allow the chemical process to work effectively. (Wikipedia)
A dress from Shein UK showing patterned Devoré fabric – note how the fabric is transparent where the pile has been removed, necessitating an underslip.
Velour– Velour is a knitted fabric, which makes it stretchy (unlike velvet and velveteen, which are woven). Velour is soft, allows freedom of movement, and is used for activewear and loungewear.
Searching for an image to illustrate Velour, how could I resist this one, lol… A velour onezie!
Velours de Kasaï – Not to be confused with Velour in any way – Velours du Kasaï (Kasaï velvet) is a kind of textile fabric made in Kasai, a province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaïre). Traditionally, the weaving is done by men of the Shoowa from the Kuba ethnic group, while the embroidery is reserved to women. Ideally, the embroiderers should be pregnant. The technique is still practised. is formed of many triangles of bark, alternately black and white. These are cut out of the raw bark either natural, or dyed black and sewn together.
Velvet Panné – a long and flattened pile velvet, creating a shiny and luxurious look.
Ventile – Ventile, is a registered trademark used to brand a special high-quality woven cotton fabric first developed by scientists at the Shirley Institute in Manchester, England. Originally created to overcome a shortage of flax used for fire hoses and water buckets, its properties were also useful for pilots’ immersion suits, but expensive and leaky if exposed to sweat or oils. Extra-long-staple (ELS) cotton fibres are used to form a low-twist yarn, which is then woven into a tight high-density textile to create a 100% cotton fabric, capable of providing an effective barrier against inclement weather. In wet weather the softly spun yarns – within the tight weave – dynamically expand to form an effective barrier against the elements. (Wikipedia)
Vinyl Coated Polyester – is made up of a polyester scrim, a bonding or adhesive agent, and an exterior PVC coating. The scrim supports the coating (which is initially applied in liquid form) and provides the tensile strength, elongation, tear strength, and dimensional stability of the resulting fabric. Depending on its formula, the PVC coating makes the material waterproof and resistant to dirt, mildew, oil, salt, chemicals and UV rays and gives the material added strength and durability. It can be sewn or heat sealed by way of RF(Radio Frequency) welding or hot-air welding. (Wikipedia)
Voile – a soft, sheer fabric, usually made of 99% cotton or cotton blended with linen or polyester. Named for its light weight, the fabric is mostly used in soft furnishing. In tropical climates, voile is used for window treatments and mosquito nets. When used as curtain material, voile is similar to net curtains.
I compiled a list of as many fabrics, fibres and related items as possible (278 items which I will make available at the end of the A to Z), from several sources, the most comprehensive of which was Wikipedia. Since there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, I could not write in detail about every instance so I have taken snippets of text for the brief descriptions and linked to the source in the name of the item. I am indebted to all the contributors to those Wikipedia pages and the depth of knowledge to be found there…
