May morning

[Lat-Literal]

Wunderbar!! What a voice.

Yes - and fortunately not "Wunderbar" in a Zarah "What A Perfect Night for Love" Leander way.

(I still have a soft spot for Fischer-Dieskau - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFtKg9jM81k)

[greenilex]

Thanks for picking up loose ends and dropped stitches so sympathetically.

Downpour held off until we were on the way home, so no damage to bookstall - we even sold a few.

[greenilex]

Hope it may be OK to cling to May topic maybe a minute longer in a strong and stable fashion...we are not anywhere near June yet.

I was wondering why the German Romantic poets seem more attached to the merry month than we do?

[french frank]

I was wondering why the German Romantic poets seem more attached to the merry month than we do?

Maybe it's warmer over there? It's still feeling pretty chilly here most of the time unless there's really full sunshine (then it's warmer outside than in the house).

[vinteuil]

Maybe it's warmer over there?

.... but do we have many June pomes? Well, Burrrns, praps...

April seems to be our month, whether Chaucer or TS Eliot.

[Sir Velo]

April seems to be our month, whether Chaucer or TS Eliot.

April's become the new May.

[greenilex]

Drawing to a close now - pass me the can, lad.

[cloughie]

Drawing to a close now - pass me the can, lad.

Whilst there's a day or two left:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxcM-kbhRB0

[gradus]

Classic track, many thanks for posting it.

[Lat-Literal]

Classic track, many thanks for posting it.

The best ever bus driver although it is "Born Free" for me and always will be.

Late May Ramble

Two more days of May. I am asked where I am going to walk this time. "Nowhere - there will be too many kids running around this week". But this is immediately checked - and countered - by the realization I have fallen sloppily into the sort of adult response that isn't parental or maybe it especially is. I don't know. How could I? What I know is I have no problems with children. Not, at least, the sort of an age who would like Godstone zoo which I myself am currently missing. It's the modern parents around them who scare me to hell. Is this isolating? It shouldn't be. I am told by those in the know that it is also the opinion of modern parents about modern parents. They are unable to see themselves.

A week ago no one would have asked where I was walking. Medical tests a-plenty along with medical challenges. My own. Those close to me. It was for some time assumed that I would always be in bed. One GP, who actually I like, veers between a tone of "we think you are a hypochondriac" and "we are not sure we fully believe you when you say you can often walk the three miles to Caterham and back". They have their ideas. Some of them are policy driven. No. All are. They do their best, I guess. But they find me difficult to fathom. I don't fit in a convenient box. It's not me. It's the way they are now. I haven't told him yet. That I set out on Friday to see what I could still do, if anything, and in four hours walked 13 miles. It wasn't terribly difficult. Persistent pains here and there. And yes. There was a mild sense of achievement even if there was the occasional human around.

"You have the ability to get on with everyone - or did". A few still think it. But no. People talk to me. I can talk with them. It's better in those brief moments that there isn't the insularity of a family or group but it's like being a journalist in a world which while it isn't always a war zone is often alien and even repugnant. Drivers especially. Those who hide in their cars and inadvertently become potential killers because they think they dissolve into their vehicles. "The royals are coming. Step into the wayside". They require of you that they pass. Otherwise there will be serious trouble. You will be the one to blame, especially if you are not the one to blame. And the law will fully agree, given the right money.

I had taken to walking the uphill footpath a few days earlier. 7am - to what they call a pond. I won't be churlish. Volunteers saved it and it is one of the few drops of water around. Someone has discarded a plastic thing beside it. A Buddha sitting on a globe. Being on its side, it unnerved me slightly in ways I couldn't describe but it was ordinary. The next day, I was almost back there. That is, I got as far as the pub nearby. There were plenty of people in the garden. Nearly every one had a dog. One person was great. An elderly woman who stretched through an impractical gap when there was an obvious path. She laughed and I laughed. Otherwise, I was in a world of four real ales, twittering birds so much prettier than they have ever been before, looking at the dogs and captivated by the warm dogs and feeling warm emotion towards the more human than human dogs, while a low level chilled tape of some scope took my mind off my irrelevance to the diners there. Al Green to something from this year that nodded to Crosby, Stills and Nash. Someone has to.

The twenty-something white man with dreadlocks was studiously cool in appearance. One knows the reality before any conversation. Most are more miserable than they have ever been. It is just that now they have a reasonable enough excuse. "Isn't it a lovely day?" Yes - but he was stuck in there. He longed to be somewhere else and do nothing. "That tape - I like it; it's chilled". Apparently if you hear it over and over again - and who the f--k knows what is on it because there is no track listing behind the bar, sorry mate - you might be able to like one song in five. Later, there was more openness. I had been seen speaking with his female boss, thereby removing any imaginary connotation which is as prevalent in this paranoid, liberal age as at any time. I knew where she was coming from. My working class accent, my swearing, my tattoo, my managerial skills. He's the sort to analyse. Which of these will bring out his superiority? Oh, nothing, at least on the surface. He speaks more to me than them and is probably alright. "How is vinyl night going?" "Oh that - it only started last week and it was just his Dad". I am welcome to bring up some to help get it going. I'm keen at first and now not so keen. Can see the pitfalls and fewer pluses.

But it did get me moving. It was on the basis of that "visit" that I did my walking half marathon on Friday. I'd got myself doing. Stop one - the golf course, a half decent coffee and the first of three very young women. Pleasant enough. Indifferent. Business like. She would let me in with shorts. One of two sixty-something men of the day who had chosen to find work in the absence of anything else checked the seat above a pond that calls itself a lake and decided that on balance the paint was dry. So much peace there. How could I not have noticed before the burial ground that led up to it? The ten who were in the hospital for the insane when it was there and whose bodies had been saved rather than merely lost. At the Harrow, a teenage woman in the garden as lovely as the one in the x-ray department, Monday, seemingly not afflicted by it all. Neither of us knew the time. She had arrived early and was waiting to work there. I was welcome to wait in the garden. Great. I come here from time to time so it is not as if I am an unknown. "Yes, I recognise you".

I didn't wait. We just chatted for ten minutes and then I made my way. Down the long hill with its underestimated gradient. Where the murderous movers in tin accentuate their presence on wheels just as they will do in houses and offices. Stilgoe's family home is there or thereabouts. Rhododendrons. Glorious rhododendrons in the gardens of mansion houses. Which one was his home and is now a home for autistic children? Not sure. That bridge over the M25. Helmeted cyclists flying over it, oblivious to its low fences. An easy escape for the unfeeling. On the other side, keep out signs, ostensibly for something electronic but shale could go there. Shale may well go there not that there is any official suggestion. And shortly beyond it, a red telephone box and a red post box alongside a very large mock tudor building and a couple of 21st C homes. Cosmetic? One probably was, one wasn't and three could have been. It hardly matters now. The authentic and inauthentic are indivisible when wealth has sold out to "designer" and thinks it has true meaning.

The William IV - the Willy for short. It's a memorable building, not that I look at it with any focussed idea or ability for description. It's nothing other than impression. I see it as like a wooden windmill without sails. It caught fire some years ago and has now been restored to house men with sticks. At its helm, a brusque individual of 50 odd years who may have seen too much in the Falklands. "There you are" he said to Old Joe. "I don't know why you sit in a corner as you have got up to five people to talk to". This was his greeting to me. It was ok, that talking across me because being no nonsense he was unable to be any different, but I asked for the direction to the garden. Once there, it too was ok. Nothing much there except a sense of being in the countryside and another tape playing very softly from the speaker. Lindisfarne's "Winter Song". Could I talk about Lindisfarne! And then James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend". But no. There was no point in that sort of discussion for they wouldn't actually know what they were playing and could never understand the need for conversation with a peculiar stranger. What I did take away from it and this happens a lot on a ramble is that no one in the real world wants the media of today. Their preferred backdrop is 1971 whatever their ages. It's barely noticed but that is where they are distantly burying themselves behind fronts. Interesting - well, it is to me in any case.

The third woman - the friendly one in the Whyte Harte with a nose ring - would not necessarily have got this point. She was biding her time for her three hour break so that she could smoke as many cigarettes as she could fit in during that period and also attend to her motorbike. The young man who was doing all of the work there with apparent pride looked a lot like Billy Bunter and was wearing a bow tie. Talk about chalk and cheese. They did a 75% decent burger and, love them, a not very good second of two for the day. Mainly, as mostly, it was water. The second sixty-something man was driving the taxi at Caterham once I had got back there. He had been made redundant. He'd walked his dog so many times afterwards that the dog was rebelling against her compulsory involvement in filling time. That guy was enjoying his job, had no problems with road rage and listened as I spoke about my Nan who he described as "a tough Bermondsey girl...you must have some stamina if you have done that today". Not quite right but I liked the way he bothered.

[cloughie]

Classic track, many thanks for posting it.

Yes, Hoagy a good songwriter and Matt was a very good singer, great timing and tuning at a time when the likes of Englebert Huperdinck strove for mediocrity and missed! Matt, like the Beatles, had the good fortune to have the great late George Martin as a producer.

[cloughie]

The best ever bus driver although it is "Born Free" for me and always will be.

Late May Ramblings

Two more days of may. I am asked where I am going to walk this time. "Nowhere - there will too many kids running around this week". But this is immediately checked - countered - by the realization I have fallen sloppily into the sort of adult response that isn't parental or maybe it especially is. I don't know. How could I? What I do know is that I have no problems with children. Not, at least, the sort of an age who would like Godstone zoo which I myself am currently missing. It's the modern parents around them who scare me to hell. Is this isolating? It shouldn't be. I am told by those in the know that this is also the opinion of modern parents about modern parents. They are unable to see themselves.

A week ago no one would have asked where I was walking. Medical tests a-plenty along with medical challenges. My own. Those close to me. It was for some time assumed that I would always be in bed. One GP, who actually I like, veers between a tone of "we think you are a hypochondriac" and "we are not sure we believe you when you say you can walk the three miles to Caterham and back as you say". They have their ideas. Some of them are policy driven. No. All are. They do their best, I guess. But they find me difficult to fathom. I don't fit in a convenient box. It's not me. It's the way they are now. I haven't told him yet. That I set out on Friday to see what I could still do, if anything, and in four hours walked 13 miles. It wasn't terribly difficult. Persistent pains here and there. And yes. There was a mild sense of achievement even if there was the occasional human around.

"You have the ability to get on with everyone - or did". A few still think it. Bt no. People talk to me. I can talk with them. It's better in those brief moments that there isn't the insularity of a family or group but it's like being a journalist in a world which while it isn't always a war zone is often alien and even repugnant. Drivers especially. Those who hide in their cars and inadvertently become potential killers because they think they dissolve into their vehicles. "The royals are coming. Step into the wayside". They require of you that they pass. Otherwise there will be serious trouble. You will be the one to blame, especially if you are not the one to blame. And the law will fully agree given the right money.

I had taken to walking the uphill footpath a few days earlier. 7am - to what they call a pond. I won't be churlish. Volunteers saved it and it is one of the few drops of water around. Someone has discarded a plastic thing beside it. A Buddha sitting on a globe. Being on its side, it unnerved me slightly in ways I couldn't describe but it was ordinary. The next day, I was almost back there. That is, I got as far as the pub nearby. There were plenty of people in the garden. Nearly every one had a dog. One person was great. An elderly woman who stretched through an impractical gap when there was an obvious path. She laughed and I laughed. Otherwise, I was in a world of four real ales, twittering birds so much prettier than they have ever been before, looking at the dogs and captivated by the warm dogs and feeling warm emotion towards the more human than human dogs, while a low level chilled tape of some scope took my mind off my irrelevance to the diners there. Al Green to something from this year that nodded to Crosby, Stills and Nash. Someone has to.

The twenty-something white man with dreadlocks was studiously cool in appearance. One knows the reality before any conversation. Most are more miserable than they have ever been. It is just that now they have a reasonable enough excuse. "Isn't it a lovely day?" Yes - but he was stuck in there. He longed to be somewhere else and do nothing. "That tape - I like it; it's chilled". Apparently if you hear it over and over again - and who the f--k knows what is on it because there is no track listing behind the bar - you might be able to like one in five. Later, there was more openness. I had been seen speaking with his female boss, thereby removing any imaginary connotation which is as prevalent in this paranoid, liberal age as at any time. I knew where she was coming from. My working class accent, my swearing, my tattoo, my managerial skills. He's the sort to analyse. Which of these will bring out his superiority? Oh, nothing, at least on the surface. He speaks more to me than them and he is probably alright. "How is vinyl night going?" "Oh that - it only started last week and then it was just his Dad". I am welcome to bring up some to help get it going. I'm keen at first and now not so keen. Can see the pitfalls and fewer pluses.

But it did get me moving. It was on the basis of that "visit" that I did my walking half marathon on Friday. I'd got myself doing. First stop - the golf course, a half decent coffee and the first of three of very young women. Pleasant enough. Indifferent. Business like. She would let me in with shorts. One of two sixty-something men of the day who had chosen to find work in the absence of anything else checked the seat above a pond that calls itself a lake and decided that on balance the paint was dry. So much peace there. How could I have not noticed before the burial ground that led up to it? The ten who were in the hospital for the insane when it was there and whose bodies had been saved rather than merely lost. At the Harrow, a teenage woman in the garden as lovely as the one in the x-ray department, seemingly not afflicted by it all. Neither of us knew the time. She had arrived early and was waiting to work there. I was welcome to wait in the garden. That's good. I come here from time to time so it is not as if I am an unknown. "Yes, I recognise you".

I didn't wait. We just chatted for ten minutes and then I made my way. Down the long hill with its underestimated gradient. Where the murderous movers in tin accentuate their presence on wheels just as they will do in houses and offices. Stilgoe's family home is there or thereabouts. Rhododendrons. Glorious rhododendrons in the gardens of mansion houses. Which one was his home and is now a home for autistic children? Not sure. That bridge over the M25. Helmeted cyclists flying over it, oblivious to its low fences. An easy escape for the unfeeling. On the other side, keep out signs, ostensibly for something electronic but shale could go there. Shale may well go there not that there is any official suggestion. And shortly beyond it, a red telephone box and a red post box alongside a very large mock tudor building and a couple of 21st homes. Cosmetic? One probably was, one wasn't and one could have been. Somehow it hardly matters now. The authentic and inauthentic are largely indivisible when wealth has sold out to designer and thinks it has true meaning.

The William IV - the Willy for short. It'ss a memorable building, not that I look at it with any idea other than impression. I see it as like a wooden windmill without sails. It caught fire some years ago and now houses men with sticks. At its helm, a brusque individual of 40 odd years who may have seen too much in the Falklands. "There you are" he said to Old Joe. "I don't know why you sit in a corner as you have got up to five people to talk to". This was his greeting to me. It was ok, that talking across me because being no nonsense he was unable to be any different, but I asked for the direction to the garden. Nothing much there except a sense of being in the countryside and another tape playing very softly from the speaker. Lindisfarne's "Winter Song". Could I talk about Lindisfarne. And then James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend". No, there was no point. There was no point in that sort of discussion for they wouldn't actually know what they were playing and could never understand the need for conversation with a peculiar stranger. What I did take away from it and this happens a lot on a ramble. No one in the real world wants the media of today. Their preferred backdrop is 1971 whatever their ages. It's barely noticed but that is where they are distantly burying themselves behind any front. Interesting - well, it is to me in any case.

You're a good wordsmith, Lat - ever written song lyrics?

[Lat-Literal]

You're a good wordsmith, Lat - ever written song lyrics?

Thank you ever so much cloughie. That's very kind of you. Songwriting, of course, requires succinctness - and it's not my forte. I've added a further paragraph to the section you have brought forward! I am a story teller - a teller of true stories - though I am not very good at it. I like other people who do that too. Just for the sake of it. I have never sought to achieve anything with it, ie publication. That would be far too formal and motivated for me and with the obvious risks of rejection. To try would also feel like losing something.

[cloughie]

Thank you ever so much cloughie. That's very kind of you. Songwriting, of course, requires succinctness - and it's not my forte. I've added a further paragraph to the section you have brought forward! I am a story teller - a teller of true stories - though I am not very good at it. I like other people who do that too. Just for the sake of it. I have never sought to achieve anything with it, ie publication. That would be far too formal and motivated for me and with the obvious risks of rejection. To try would also feel like losing something.

But it would be sharing it with others!

[Lat-Literal]

But it would be sharing it with others!

I share it with forum members who are interested. Those who aren't interested - that's fine too. I'm not for persuading. It floats more on the level of an invitation to contemplate. I cannot deny I appreciate positive feedback but that is about being able to see the positives in other people - the kindness - rather than seeing it as any statement on anything I say.

It is not holier than thou - or anything about endorsement.

I'm an unapologetic softy who, sadly, easily gets annoyed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb2Awn_dYTs

(Incidentally, my Tory MP - young, suburban and new in 2015 - has given me a personal assurance that he will vote against fox hunting so the outcome there is far from certain)