A 1950s English lesson

English was my favourite subject at school. Every Thursday a whole afternoon was devoted to it. We always began with silent reading while the teacher heard that week’s readers. I used to lose myself in Enid Blyton books, the ones about the famous five and the secret seven, where children explored and solved mysteries, a million miles away from my life. 

I loved composition writing, or story writing as they call it these days. Even now I can remember writing about a haunted clock and scaring myself so much that the hairs prickled up on my arms as I was writing it. 

Sometimes our teacher read poetry to us, about daffodils or boys on burning decks. My favourite poem was about a donkey called Nicholas Nye. It made me cry every time I thought about poor Nicholas Nye. I used to think about him a lot. I was a bit of a softie… I still am a bit of a softie when it comes to animals. 

I even enjoyed grammar, all those doing words and naming words. I still have a fascination for such word lists and love the podcast called Word Matters presented by a team from the US Merriam-Webster dictionary. They only produced about a hundred podcasts and I often re-play them. 

Handwriting in those books with special blue and red guidelines was tedious especially as we had to use old fashioned pens. These were just a wooden handle and a metal nib. The teacher would fill up a pot in the ink well on each desk with runny blue ink that always ended up all over my fingers and sometimes on my clothes too.

The best bit of the afternoon was the story just before home time. I remember our teacher reading all the Dr Doolittle books and all the Worsel Gummidge books, a chapter a week. This was before they were ever made into films or seen on TV so we could let our imaginations run wild. 

I may be wrong but I suspect English isn’t taught in such a holistic way these days. The UK National Curriculum changed many things and not necessarily for the better. 

Love you, big sis

I can’t believe it’s a year ago today that my lovely sister, Hilary Rifka, died. 

I know she wouldn’t want me to continue being this sad so I shall try to remember the good times when she was a mischievous, music loving, dancing, giggling big sis. 

Every year I used to send her a photo of a rose from the bush she once bought me. This year I’m posting it here instead.

Love you big sis 💕

The day the Rev. Kate Bottley had us howling...

...with laughter

It never sounds inviting, going for lunch with hundreds of women in an echoey hall on the other side of town, a hall with little fresh air and even less elbow room. And yet that is what we did yesterday and I have to say it was well worth the effort.

We were at the Annual LOROS Ladies Luncheon at Leicester's Winstanley House Hotel. LOROS is Leicester's hospice. Together with a group of friends I've been to quite a few of their events. The hospice has a special place in our hearts, especially after they took such care of a dear friend in her last weeks. They do it with warmth and compassion. It's a great shame that they've had to close part of the hospice due to lack of funding so this annual event is really important for them. 

It was a lovely day which began with a stroll round the statutory myriad of stalls selling everything from jewellery to paintings of jungle animals, but what made the day extra special was the guest speaker. They've had some cracking good speakers in the past but this year's was truly phenomenal. I've been to many dinners with guest speakers but this was the first time the speaker visited every table during the lunch - and there were a lot of tables. After lunch we were treated to an hour of hilarity, with anecdotes of warmth, humour, even some tinged with sadness. The Rev. Kate Bottley didn't hold back. From her first step onto the stage she had us hanging on her every word. When she finally finished her talk she whipped off her shoes, declared her feet were killing her and left the stage to ear-busting applause.

What an event and well done to Kate Bottley.

The Rev in full flow

A chair battle

How antibiotics led to a battle for the best chair in the house.

April has passed in a fug of antibiotics - three different lots to be precise. The GP called it a deep-seated UTI. In other words, I've had burning wee and the first two lots of drugs wouldn't shift it! It looks like the final course has done the job but this leads us on to the chair battle.

I normally love curling up on one of our two soft, squidgy sofas but in view of the above I just couldn't get comfortable. What I needed was a firm chair with a high back and lumber support, exactly like the striped chair in the corner that Sophie-the-cat claimed as her own soon after she arrived here. 

Yesterday I invaded her territory. I cleaned the cat fur off and took residence. Oh, the relief, proper support for my back and an instant easing of other symptoms that I don't need to mention again but were eluded to in the first paragraph.

The only uncomfortable outcome was an entire evening of this...

Yes, I know... she'll get used to it!

p.s. Betty-the-cat wants you to know that she's a good girl unlike her sister... 

but she does occasionally tell fibs!

A Prayer for Peace

I've hesitated for several days before writing this post. For the first time in my life I'm frightened because I'm Jewish. I don't understand why there is so much hatred in the world. In 2019 I wrote a blog post called 'Passover - a Hope for Peace'. I expressed the wish for humans to stop causing pain and misery to other humans. Well, that didn't work. Things have taken a turn for the worse. The world is far more consumed with violence now than it was seven years ago.

The Jewish Passover, which starts this evening, should be a time for positive thinking and hopes for a peaceful life ahead. It's when we remember how the Israelites were held hostage by Pharoah and made to work as slaves. We remember how Pharoah finally released them only to change his mind and chase after them.  We eat matzo (unlevened bread) for eight days to represent the time they spent in the desert with only bread that had baked on their backs as they fled. The festival often coincides with Easter because Jesus was Jewish and the Last Supper was the first night of Passover.

This year's Passover is fraught with concerns. The London police have increased their patrols and there will be drones overhead. The threat to Jewish people is high even though we are ordinary people going about our lives in an ordinary way. I'm only glad my Mother didn't live to see this. She lived through the rise of the Nazis and the possibility of that happening again always made her shudder. She truly believed it never would... but now I fear that it has.  Below is a plaque from our synagogue commemorating the six million Jews who died under the Nazi regime.

Yes, that does say SIX MILLION!

Sadly I have had to set the comments on this post to 'moderation only', so if you'd like to respond, there will be a delay before it appears. Whatever your beliefs, have a relaxing Bank Holiday weekend.

I called this post 'A Prayer for Peace' and here is my prayer: 

I pray with all my heart that we will soon see a more harmonious world, a world where everyone is free to pray and live as they choose and where we all have only smiles and kindness to offer to our neighbours. Amen

 

My Therapy Bear

I have resurrected and reworked a poem posted on this blog over ten years ago. Apologies for repetition but it feels like an appropriate time to repost this. 

My Therapy Bear

It’s ok to chat with my cats, so I’ve heard
and I know that my cats can hear every word
but I'd much rather talk with inanimate things
like my teddy, whose stuffing is held in with string.

I can tell that my cats don't care much about me
unless I'm preparing their breakfast or tea.

My teddy, however, absorbs all I say.
He collects up my words in his kapok each day.

My teddy bear holds all my wishes and thoughts.
He knows all my hopes, all those demons I’ve fought.
Don't tell me he's only a toy. Can't you see,

he’s the one true custodian of all that is me.

My poem in Allegro Poetry Magazine

A big thank you to Allegro Poetry Magazine for publishing my poem in their March 2026 issue. The magazine displays the poetry in a list and I'm sure you'll enjoy reading the various poems sitting above mine, but if you want to go straight to my work, you need to either do a search using my name Rosalind, or scroll down about three-quarters of the way through the list.

The poem is called A Chat with Marguerite Patten. It was originally called A Chat with Florence Greenberg, a Jewish cookery book writer from the 1950s/60s, but I wasn't sure people would know who she was, so I tweaked it just a bit before submitting it. 

The magazine can be viewed at the following link:  Allegro Poetry Magazine

The poem was inspired by an online poetry workshop that I attended several years ago. We were asked to find something that meant a lot to us and then write down a conversation that we might have with that object. What I love about those kinds of workshops is that my mind always seems to produce words that I didn't know were there.