One of the best things this year have been the begonias in the hanging baskets.
I’m not certain, but I think there are male and female flowers. Because some are big and blousy and the others are smaller and more simple. Whichever they are, they have been beautiful this year. The colours are subtle and amazing. They have also lasted a long time. I’ve only had to dead head them a few times. I’m hoping the weather does not get cold too soon so I can enjoy them for a few weeks longer.
He was stern, bearded, he was a patriarch and knew it. He had always been strict with the women and girls in the village. They could come and go, but were not allowed to go to lessons, while the boys had schooling, and of course the best food and clothes.
Nothing would change his mind, that was how things were and that was how it would always be.
His daughter, turning ten years old, looked up to him. But she was clever. Too bright for washing clothes till her hands went red, too clever for feeding the chickens or wringing their necks and plucking them when the time came. She could do everything girls five years older than her were capable of. She stitched and sewed, she span wool. She was useful and her father knew it.
‘father’ she would ask. ‘Why is the sky blue? How old is the world?’ Or ‘why are the clouds that shape?’ One day she even asked why the moon waxed and wained. Her father would just say ‘none of your nonsense my girl’ or ‘get back to your laundering’. The daughter turned round sadly and carried on with her chores.
For two years this carried on, until one day the father became ill, he took to his bed, and despite his wife’s care he only grew worse. His eyes were closed when his daughter bought his supper to him one evening. She spooned some broth into his mouth, he retched, but she persevered. Little by little he supped the food. Later she came to check on him and he seemed a little better.
A week later he was sitting up in bed. His daughter came into the room and he held her hand as she gave him more broth. ‘what’s in this food’ he asked ‘it tastes strange, bitter’ ‘just herbs’ she said.
When he had fully recovered the father asked his wife what she had used to make the broth, ‘it wasn’t me’ she said. ‘Daughter talked to the old women, she made the broth after speaking to them’.
Later he talked to his daughter ‘how did you know how to cure me?’ ‘I asked questions like I always do’ she said.
Finally his mind changed. ‘you will go to school my girl, if you can learn such things off old women, I want to know what you can learn in class’.
The daughter started school and after four years she was taken into college. Finally she was trained as an apothecary. From then on the father insisted all the children, girls as well as boys, should be taught.
I wwas just told about this talk by Sir Ken Robinson in a Ted Talk conference about education in 2006. I had never heard about him before and I’ve only ever seen a few Ted talks but he makes a really good argument about how children lose their creativity because of the way schools are run. I urge you to watch.
And January sea, up in North Wales. Wide views looking far away to the Snowdonia range of mountains. How I miss driving along the A55 west, climbing past Chester and Queensferry. Then coming out high above Prestatyn and Rhyl, looking over to the mountains. Swooping down the road to St Asaph, then right over the flat ground towards the coast. I first saw that view when I was about ten or eleven when we took a coach trip to a caravan park near Rhyl. I remember catching a crab on the beach and putting it in my plastic bucket. The crab crawled out and nipped my toe when I put my shoe on in the morning.
We were at the back of the caravan site where the trains from Chester raced past on their way to the station. Holidays were walking along the back and paddling in the sea. Collecting razor shells and other classic shell type shells (still don’t know what they are called), strange how a single view of the sea can drag up so many memories.
It’s been about six weeks now since I think I hurt my shoulder. The doctors agreed I needed physios they sent me a letter to book an appointment. But there are no appointments. I’m still in pain and no further forward. I wonder if things will ever get back to normal (shoulder and life). I think it’s partly to do with tension. I haven’t got depressed but I seem to always be hunching my shoulders up. I might try and get to yoga again if it starts up again.
When I think about it though I can manage, I have been managing. What about all the people who never get treatment. Who live in poverty in rich and poor countries where health treatment is based on expensive insurance that doesn’t cover existing health issues. I know how lucky I am.
Our boy cat likes to sleep anywhere enclosed, like boxes or behind curtains, when he got in the old washing basket where we keep shopping bags, that was OK… That was in the quiet of the bathroom. But hubby wants a shower so he’s bought the cat and the basket into the living room so the cat doesn’t get wet! He was fast asleep so had one huge yawn, not he’s curled up and gone back to sleep! (the cat not hubby!)
The storm has been winding round our house all day. Trees bending, wind moaning through the gap in our badly sealed kitchen window. Gusts over 50 miles an hour. The fence is collapsing, the hanging baskets are skittering about, too heavy to take down from their brackets. I will wait and see what damage results from the storm. Meanwhile its blowing across the whole country, an unusually low pressure system for this time of year is tearing at the leaves on the trees. There will be trees blown over, heavy seas, gusting winds. Not fit for man or dog! Torrential rain falling and flooding towns and villages. Not fun. X
Mallaband-Brown 