Some of my Poems

Plus the Vagaries of Poetry Publication

There have been many times over the last eight years when I've submitted a piece of poetry to a poetry magazine with glowing pride, in the belief that this was my best piece of work which would be accepted for sure. I guess you're anticipating my next sentence. Those much loved poems have a disappointing habit of being rejected. I accept that it is necessary to read magazines before submitting so that you get a feel for the kind of work they publish and I do that but still the rejections arrive in my inbox. 

On the plus side I have had twenty-four poems published during the last eight years, from 'Klezmer Men Dancing' in the 2018 'Jewish Literary Journal' to 'Mr Songwriter' appearing in next month's 'Allegro Poetry Magazine'. This will be the third poem that Allegro have published and you can view the previous two poems at this link: Allegro Poetry Magazine You can do a search on my name in the magazine.

Not all of my poems are music related. Some of my favourites have been ekphrastic, that is writing that reflects a piece of art or sculpture. I had loads of fun with my poem about the sculpture of a station master on the platform at Templecombe Station. It was published by the 'Ekphrastic Review' and, with permission from the three sculptures, Sioban Coppinger and Alec and Fiona Peever, and from the Friends of Templecombe Station (FoTS), they included a photograph of the statue. The Friends of Templcombe Station said they would post up a copy of the poem on their noticeboard. You can read the poem and see the photograph at this link: Ekphrastic Tempus Fugit

All writing is affected by personal experiences but my published poem that is the most autobiographical, and can still bring a tear to my eye, is The Passing of Time on Pedders Way. We used to regularly visit Blakeney in Norfolk and walk along a section of Pedders Way. As many of you may know, Mr A's eyesight has deteriorated and he can no longer drive. I have managed the drive to Blakeney once since they took his licence away, a final visit to say goodbye to a much loved holiday destination.

The poem was published in an online site called The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review which sadly no longer exists. I would therefore like to reproduce it below with many thanks to Steven Wittenberg Gordon for his kind words and for publishing the poem in his Winter 2021/22 edition. Below the poem is a very old photograph of me and our lovely old dog, Josh, on Pedders Way in 2003.

The Passing of Time on Peddars Way by Rosalind Adam

Clinking of masts undulate with the cries

of gulls, avocets and terns.

The sounds battle against the relentless

cheek-stinging gusts of wind.

Within sight of Blakeney we pause

at our favourite Norfolk spot.

Strange that the saltmarsh plants smell

less pungent than they once did.

I still have the photo taken of us at this spot,

both wearing waterproofs and sturdy boots,

standing beside the abandoned boat,

its blue paint crackling shabby-chic style.

Today its body is bare, its hull skeletal.

We hold hands as I falter on uneven ground

and I wipe away a tear passed off

as chafing from a North Sea gust.

The boat, me and Josh the dog on Pedders Way 2003

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. 

My Cat's Whiskers

I just have to share the news - which the cat owners among you probably know anyway - about cat bowls.  My recent purchase of a set of whisker friendly bowls have so far been a great success. It would seem that 21st century cats don't like their whiskers to be knocked by the side of a food bowl. These new bowls are shallow and wide and my girls love them. 

I've had cats all my life, from when I was a toddler to the present day with only the sad times between getting over a loss and heading for the rescue centre again. All my cats have come from a cat rescue centre.  I've never had any trouble with their feeding habits or, indeed, sociability... until Betty and Sophie arrived. 

I blogged about them in 2021. The rescue people assured us they were sisters and loved each other... wrong! To this day they will have a hissy fit if they pass too close and they have divided up the house. Betty has the conservatory, Sophie the living room. The dining area and kitchen are tolerated as shared feeding stations to be accessed when the area is vacant. They will never eat together!

Sophie on her striped chair in the living room and Betty in the conservatory.

Betty is rather overweight and tends to plod around. I do try to restrict her diet but she just eats her sister's food whenever I put her on rations. She will now allow me to stroke her when she's hungry. Any other time I'm likely to lose a hand, or at least a pint of blood. She is adorable in that 'only a mother would love her' kind of way.

Sophie will only eat dried food and is quite petite. She has benefitted the most from these new shallow bowls and it's a joy to watch her eating. She is much more loveable than Betty. I can tickle her ear and tummy with no fear of reprisals but if I try to pick her up then blood will be spilt for sure. The vet tells me that she has a heart murmur and possibly was born with it but I'm not going to subject her to tests, not while she is still performing zoomies up and down the stairs and in and out of rooms at record-breaking speed. 

With apologies to non-cat-lovers here are two more photographs of the girls:

Betty lounging in the conservatory

Sophie on a suitcase under the spare bed

Spring and new traditions

It's almost Spring... isn't it? So far this year the weather here has been grey and wet. At least we've had no floods... yet. Parts of Leicestershire have been under water for several weeks now. Is it climate change or is it the good old British weather? I don't know but I know that I need something to cheer me up, so I went into the garden early this morning and found a bed full of Hellebores. I took a photo of one. 

I love the way the petals show off such dainty spots, an artist's challenge if ever I saw one. 

So what has Spring got to offer? Lighter evenings and warmer days for a start. Mr A has not been able to work in his much loved garden lately and I've not been able to sit on my swing seat and watch him work! We used to have in depth discussions each Spring about which vegetables to grow for that year's harvest but not any more. Vegetables need such a lot of attention and it's time for a new tradition. We will discuss which flowers to order, plug plants to take the risk out of the seed sowing, and we will fill those beds with a mass of colour. There's too much grey out there.

Spring means that everything is beginning again, birds building nests, flowers preparing to dazzle but it's not all about looking forward. All that new life is tinged with sadness. It's so hard to accept that this Spring my sister won't be planting out her pots. My sister, who died last June, lived in an upstairs flat in Lyme Regis. She had no garden but the path beside her front door was packed each summer with all manner of flowers tumbling over the sides of pots. She spent hours each evening dead-heading and watering... until two years ago when her health deteriorated. I have a rose bush in our garden that she bought me for one of my big birthdays. It has the most amazing flowers every year and I have always sent her a photo of the first full bloom. This year I hope you will indulge me because I would like to post this year's rose photo on my blog. Like I said, it's time for new traditions. 

ABBA Voyage Show - a Trip to London

We’ve been to London to see ABBA Voyage, a digital, virtual performance by ABBA looking exactly as they did in the 1970s. It was strange seeing holograms of the four ABBA members on stage looking so young. At the end of the show they made an ‘appearance’… or rather a virtual appearance, looking like they do today. It was all very moving. 

Throughout the show they were accompanied by an extremely talented live band and an rather lively light show. The light show was so lively in fact, that I had to close my eyes for part of it as the strobe effect was too much for my ‘elderly’ eyes to cope with. There was plenty of singing along to songs we all knew and we even joined in with the arm waving.

The Arena was well organised and very welcoming from the minute we arrived. The photo on the right shows the brightly lit entrance:

Photography was, understandably, strictly forbidden once the show began but I managed to take one of the packed Arena before it started to try and give you a feel for the atmosphere:

We went down to London by train. This was not without its stresses. We ground to a halt somewhere near Harpenden and there we stayed for forty minutes. It would seem that someone had stolen leads from the signals on the track. It was a good job we’d given ourselves plenty of time.

We really splashed out on the day taking a taxi from St Pancras all the way to the Arena and back again after the show. It was a long (and expensive) drive but fascinating. It’s one thing seeing the names of places from the Monopoly Board on underground station signs. It’s quite another seeing them in real life. Being driven through the East End of London had an additional frisson for me. My Mum was born and grew up there and we drove along roads that she used to talk about.

Before getting the train home we treated ourselves to posh fish and chips in Searcys restaurant at St Pancras Station. An excellent end to a great day. Must admit though, it did knock me out just a bit. It took a few days of dossing in front of my iPad for me to recover.

Good Grief! The Comedian's a Bear!

I was listening to an old radio programme this week, Word of Mouth from February 2024. They were talking about things that families say, snippets and phrases that become original family sayings. I tried in vain to think of something original that my own family have created but ours all seem to be cliché phrases like, 'It's a bit black over Bill's mother's.' I'd love to know the derivation of that, who Bill is and why his mum always has storm clouds over her house. After much thought I came up with a few that I thought were originals but which turn out to be well-known phrases.

My mother-in-law was forever suspicious of new technology and her stock line was, 'We're getting far too clever by half.' She'd shake her head and fold her arms as she said it. She died many years ago but whenever we hear of a new technological development we chorus the words, 'We're getting far too clever.' Who knows, maybe we are getting far too clever.

When I was a child my mum would always say, 'It'll end in tears.' whenever I was too silly. Again, it's not original but I often hear her voice in my head, even now, if I get the giggles. That's rather sad but I know that Mum would never have meant to impose such a forever reaction on me.

I like to think that a phrase adopted by my son and myself is fairly original, even if we did copy it from a television show. The title of this blog may give you a clue. We were fanatical Muppet viewers and every time anyone said... and still to this day says... 'Good grief!' My son, me and family chant in chorus, 'The comedian's a bear. No he's a-not he's a-wearing a neck-a-tie!'

This is my only contribution to clichéd sayings. It's not very highbrow but it makes us laugh every time we say it and no, it doesn't end in tears. For those who have never seen the Muppets, it's a Fozzie the Bear joke. He was and still is my favourite Muppet character.

For those who are still wondering what on earth I'm talking about, here is the excerpt. It makes me laugh every time. Enjoy:    Muppet Show excerpt

The Train from Leicester to Manchester but…

…there is no train from Leicester to Manchester. 

The track is there but it ceased to be in service way back in the 1960s. The only way to get to Manchester by train these days is a tortuous challenge of timetable checks and clashes. 

We took on this very challenge last week to visit our lovely granddaughter and family. We declined the Birmingham option because it takes about an hour longer and we declined the Sheffield option which involves the Trans-Pennine Express as it is anything but express. We opted for Nuneaton but our connection was almost an hour late and the waiting room had an ‘Out of Order’ sign on the locked door. How can a waiting room be out of order? It was cold on that platform. There was an evil wind whipping at my ears no matter which part of the platform I paced along.  What a shame they haven't yet developed the technology so I could be like Captain Kirk in Star-Trek and cry, “Beam me up, Scotty!”

The Manchester train departs from platform 3 but platform 3 is the route taken by an almost continual barrage of non-stop bullet-like trains. The woman over the loudspeaker kept warning us to stand well clear and to hold onto bags and pushchairs. She wasn’t kidding. I could almost feel my hair tugging at the roots. How do they avoid daily or even hourly fatalities? There should be protective screens. They have them on the new London Underground lines... at least I think they do... but there was not a screen in sight at Nuneaton.

I tried to take photos of one of the offending high speed monsters but my phone couldn't cope wih the velocity so I've created a cartoon instead. 

Getting to Manchester by train was stressful but perhaps marginally better than the stress of me driving, Mind you, the sight of our granddaughter and husband waiting on the platform for us when we arrived made it all worth while.

My London Grip Poem...

...and some editing notes

London Grip New Poetry has been publishing a quarterly online magazine of new poetry for over ten years. It was last month that I heard from the editor to say that they would be publishing my poem, 'Driving Home from Work' in their Winter 2025 issue. A few of you messaged me to ask for the link on publication. I've attached the link below. 

It is a packed magazine and I'm sure you'll enjoy having a read through some of the other poems, but if you want to jump to mine first then click on my name in the list at the top of the site.

I had the idea for this poem a few years ago. I was driving home through Leicester when the traffic slowed near a small Tesco food store. The O in the Tesco sign was flashing... annoyingly flashing, yet no one else seemed to notice it. I reflected on my irritation. Maybe I'm obsessive compulsive, I thought. I mulled over what else irritated me. The poem emerged from those ruminations, but it was only recently that I retrieved it from the pending file, tightened it up and reworked a more satisfying conclusion. Writing is like that sometimes. It needs to sit in a computer file and settle before it can be completed.

I hope you enjoy reading it at London Grip New Poetry.

My Top 5 Motoring Moans...

...an excuse for a good grumble!

1 Too many cars: Is this simply because there are more people in the world and they all want to drive a car or is it caused by all the delivery vans cruising the streets with parcels or boxes of food? I don't know the answer.

2 Rush hour: Not so long ago there was a rush hour in the morning and another at teatime as people went to and from work. Now it feels as if we have a constant daily rush hour and yet since Covid there are many people who continue to work from home at least a few days a week. Makes no sense.

3 Roadworks and potholes: In our City it seems as if every other road has cones and barriers and copious diversion signs and yet there are still many potholes that threaten our cars' suspension systems. What are all the workmen doing?

4 Parking: When I was young Dad would park his car beside any kerb, even in the centre of town. Now street parking is almost impossible and paying to park is becoming more expensive by the month, or so it seems. It now costs £5 for three hours in the multi-storey car park in town and the local shopping areas have all put a charge on parking. No wonder local shops are struggling to survive. 

5 Delivery bikes and scooters: Only yesterday a young food delivery driver cut in front of me and several other cars on his bike as we were moving at a steady speed along a main road in town. Is delivering a pizza to someone more important than his life? And this doesn't only happen on the roads. I've almost been swept off my feet by electric scooter drivers while walking along the pavement. That's just plain rude!

End of grumble, but if you have any motoring moans that I haven't mentioned do please share.

The night AI freaked me out

There has been a lot of hype about AI recently. Some of it is bad with people predicting that AI will take over the world and we will become surplus to requirements. It's quite enough me worrying about things I can change. I'm afraid AI and world domination is not one of them.

On the plus side, AI helps people everyday with their report/essay/email writing and that can be useful, especially for those who have trouble expressing themselves in writing, but in order to do that AI has scanned all published work - and I mean all. It has scanned the entire contents of works from Shakespeare to Dickens to Enid Blyton... even to the words I'm typing on this screen right now. Here is proof if proof were needed:

Last night I conducted a little experiment. I asked AI if it could suggest new blog posts that I might write in the style of my existing blog posts. Literally within seconds it had produced a screen full of ideas. Its ideas were sorted into topic sections. Each section had a numbered list of suggested posts that were varied and, indeed, the kind of thing that I might write. It ended by asking if I would like it to produce a detailed weekly schedule of work for me to follow. At that point I closed it down. It totally freaked me out. 

The speed and accuracy of its response was not what I was expecting, but I can assure you that I will not be producing posts written by AI. Sometimes the content of my posts even surprises me, so I don't rate AI's chances of dong it. It might be able to replicate and reconstruct past ideas but it can't predict future thoughts, events or trips. 

Talking of future trips, I have to admit to being in something of a rut right now. Before she died my sister said, 'You won't forget me, will you?" I knew I never would and I told her as much, with great emphasis. What I didn't expect was the overwhelming feeling of loss that has, for want of a better phrase, stopped me in my tracks for the last five months. So I won't be writing about trips or holidays, not just yet, maybe next year.

On a more positive note, have you had any experiences with AI either positive or negative? I'd be fascinated to hear about them. I've changed the blog comment setting back to allowing anyone to post without me having to moderate. I know some people had problems with it, so please feel free to contribute to an AI discussion in the comment box below. Hope to hear from you soon.

Art reduce stress? Not the way I paint!

The other day I saw an article in the newspaper claiming that art can improve your mental health. It said that we should stand and gaze at a famous piece of art and take in every little detail. Over the years I’ve visited a number of the large art galleries in London and the main outcome was aching feet not reduced stress. Leicester can’t compete with London’s galleries but we do have the New Walk Museum which, in addition to dinosaur skeletons and Egyptian Mummies, has several rooms of artwork. I haven’t been for a while. I really must return and take note of my stress levels before and after the visit.

The article got me wondering about the mental health values of producing my own pieces of art. I’ve been going to weekly art classes at Leicester’s Adult Education Centre for years. I’ve tried all manner of genres, from water colour with pen and ink to experimental painting with acrylics. The most challenging was line drawing using a pen. We weren’t even allowed to sketch out a plan in pencil first – scary! Once I got over the fear of the white page, I found it quite liberating. 

This is a pen drawing I did from a photograph. I added water colour touches. Apologies if the lettering is incorrect and, as you can see, the angles are all wrong but once the pen line is made there's no going back:

My favourite genre is pencil sketching. I copied this boot from a book for beginner artists, pencil in one hand and rubber in the other:

On reflection, I’ve decided that producing my own pieces of art does very little for my mental health. It might even make me more stressed as I make too many mistakes. My paintings often end up a mass of muddy brown.

Going back to the newspaper article, it reminded me how much satisfaction I got from the module on ekphrastic writing which was part of my Creative Writing MA. I blogged about it in 2019 and explained how our amazing tutor, Jonathan Taylor, took us to the Museum, told us to find a piece of art that caught our eye and write either about what we saw or how it made us feel. I became fascinated by the German Expressionist Exhibition and have since returned a number of times to that gallery. I wrote a whole raft of poems inspired by those paintings.  Most have now been published in some form or another and so I’ve decided that the article is correct. Looking at those paintings in that exhibition helped my mental health in more ways than one. I even got paid for several of those poems.

Below is the link to the page in the Ekphrastic Review with my first published ekphrastic poem called Youth. 

Youth by Rosalind Adam

Mellow fruitfulness...

...or should that read 'Apple Glut'

Anyone fancy some apples? 

stewed apple? 

baked apple? 

apple crumble? 

If any locals are reading this then do please message me and I'll gladly bag some up for you... although you'll have to make your own crumble.

It was an incredibly dry summer but the September rains certainly made up for it. Our apple tree is still producing as you can see below... 

I dare say the first hard frost will put a stop to this year's apple production and yes, winter will soon be upon us, but there is something rather cosy about a sharp frost on a day when I don't have to go out and I can spend the time snuggling up by the fire reading, or writing, or more likely trying to beat Daughter at Wordle. We swap our results every day. I suspect she's doing it to keep my brain cells active. They say that as you get older you need to exercise your mind as well as your body. 

I'm working on the mind but I have to admit that the body is becoming a tad neglected. I used to go swimming but can't face that shivery getting-into-cold-water bit these days so I try to do a ten minute Youtube 'Exercise for the Older Woman' a few times a week and I occasionally do a lone dance when they play an old song on the radio. The beauty of lone dancing is you can be as daft as you like, arms waving, legs stomping...

Oh dear, am I turning into an old purple-wearing woman? Please don't reply to that. I already know the answer!

p.s. For anyone who doesn't know the purple reference, it's from the 'growing old disgracefully' type of poem called 'Warning' by Jenny Joseph which begins, 'When I am old I shall wear purple...'

I Remember…

I once declared that I was going to learn a poem a week to keep my brain active. (That was in my April 2019 post Learning Poetry by Heart) Well, that lasted all of two weeks, but I can still remember a few lines from the Shakespeare Sonnet that I so enthusiastically selected at the time… 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 

Thou art more lovely and more temperate. 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

That’s it! I can’t remember another word! 

In that 2019 post I included the first verse of one of my favourite poems from childhood, ‘I Remember I Remember’ by Thomas Hood. My Great Auntie Alice gave me a book full of his poems when I was young and that particular one lives on in my mind. I suspect it's because I’m so obsessed with nostalgia. He’s remembering the house where he was born. I can remember the house where I was born. It was a small terraced house. The front door opened on to a tiny lobby with a flight of stairs directly in front of it and the door to the living room and kitchen to the right. I remember feeling safe there, shut away from the big world outside.

Hood talks of the ‘little window where the sun came peeping in at morn’. I used to share a bedroom with my sister when I was very small but I clearly remember the day that Mum and Dad painted the tiny boxroom a pale yellow and told me that it was to be my very own bedroom. It too had a little window and the sun did indeed peep in at dawn. 

Further on in the poem Hood talks about ‘fir trees dark and high’. We had no trees in our tiny back yard and I don’t remember being able to see any trees from my bedroom window but I often thought about Hood’s fir trees. I loved the way he thought that their ‘slender tops were close against the sky’. When we moved into our present house about 30 years ago there were four huge fir trees in the garden. Some days I was convinced that their tops were leaning up against the sky. I loved those trees but sadly each of the four firs succumbed to old age, with bulges at branch joints and risks of collapse. They had to be removed. Nothing lasts forever

Great Auntie Alice is no longer with us, but she knew how much I loved that book. It was indeed a special present. At this point I would normally post up a photo of the book but sadly it too succumbed to age. The pages had long turned brown and they gradually disintegrated beyond repair. We had to put it into the recycling. Like I said, nothing lasts forever… except for that poem which I don’t think I will ever forget. You can read the whole poem on this Poetry Foundation link.

 

Monday evening is the start of Rosh Hashonah (the Jewish New Year).  

Last year I caught Covid the day before Rosh Hashonah. That was the start of a troubled year with worries, upheavals and health issues, not least for my lovely big sister who struggled with her health and died in June. 

I have the apple and honey ready for tomorrow evening. Here's hoping it will help us in our prayers for a sweet and fruitful year.  Would I be pushing it to also pray for peace in this troubled world of ours? Surely it's worth a try. 

To all those who celebrate it I wish you a Shana Tova, and a happy year ahead to everyone.

Have you got an accent?

Some people are convinced that they don’t speak with a regional accent, that they speak normally and it’s people from other areas who have accents. In fact, we all have a speech pattern that is influenced by our family and our local groupings. Even what we used to call ‘Queen’s English’ is itself an accent. Regional differences may have become ‘fudged around the edges’ due to wider travel and national television, but regional accents persist and, what’s more, they fascinate me. 

I love the poetic lilt of Wales. Their accent always makes me think of the TV programme ‘Ivor the Engine’. I could listen all day to the Liverpool scouse accent. It reminds me of 1960s Beatles mania, my favourite era. I love the Scottish accent which, when spoken slowly has a gentle lilt, but when spoken rapidly is, to my ear, incomprehensible in a way that makes me giggle – apologies to any Scottish visitors to this blog. 

For a comparatively small nation there are a surprisingly large number of regional variations. The Yorkshire and Lancashire accent each have their own distinctive sound, as do Devon and Cornwall. But it’s the East Midlands accent that I know best. I’ve lived all my life in Leicester and, although my parents were cockneys, I never picked up their lingo. ‘Ey up me duck’ might sound like a cliché but I grew up hearing that kind of talk, especially on Leicester Market where Mum and Dad had a stall and I spent a lot of time wandering round.

I’ve written a piece called ‘Me an’ me sis’. It’s not quite accurate in that neither of us actually spoke to the tramps but it’s the kind of thing I believe they would have said had we spoken to them, and in my memory there was a tramp in every doorway in 1950s Leicester. I hope you can manage to read it because I’ve tried to portray the language as we spoke it when we were young. Just in case you’re confused, frit means frightened and oakie is an ice cream.

Me an’ me sis

It were 1955 or thereabouts. Our mam would send us up town, me an’ me sis, runnin’ errands... or gerrin’ us out from under ‘er feet more like. She’d wave a finger at us an’ she’d say, ‘Now don’t you talk to no tramps!’ Our mam were frit o’ tramps but we weren’t frit. Them tramps were ok, just down on their luck like Old Stinky wi’ wild ‘air and dirty coat, a belt made o’ string tied round ‘is waist. Sometimes we’d stop and ‘ave a chat wi’ ‘im and ‘e’d tell us ‘ow he once fought in the war, 'ow ‘e’d ‘ad a gun, 'ow ‘e’d seen men die, just like the cowboys at the Pictures. Our mam gev us money for stuff like potatoes off the market, King Edwards cause they were the best, and she’d give us an extra sixpence for an oakey from the oakey man. We’d share it, taking it in turns to ‘ave a lick except me sis’d ‘ave the crunchy bit at the bottom, cause she were older 'an me.

Is there a regional phrase typical of where you live?