Last day of April 2013

I haven't written anything in April so far, until today. Spring has been so very late in arriving. The silver birch leaves are usually out by the middle of the month. They are only just beginning to show their translucent green. As I took these photos today in the sunshine with the birds now busy nest building it felt so very good.    

Celandines.

Leaves just beginning to unfurl on the  silver birch 

Roses and wallflowers beginning to grow
 after a long hard winter. 

Miniature plum tree has now got some blossom.

Easter Day. March 31st 2013

I am sitting here with a cup of coffee in my "glamorous granny" mug (!) (anything less than glamorous is what I see in the mirror!)

The sun is pouring in through the bedroom window out of a cloudless blue sky, on a freezing cold day. 

The cat is washing  himself in a patch of warm sunshine at the corner of the bed. 

The birds are singing,  and it is Easter Day! 

The shout goes out through out the world 

"Christ has died, 

Christ is Risen,

Christ will come again!" 

Today in church we will celebrate His Resurrection. One of my favourite days of the year. A time of hope. 

   

Summerhouse Saturday 30th March 2013

Yesterday, we went for our usual walk and found, inspite of being buried under 10cms of snow, which then froze, and lasted for days, the crocus flowers still managed to survive the battering.

There they were at the side of the little road, cheerful, and opening up in the sunshine.

      I began to feel, maybe, (just maybe?) winter could be losing it's iron grip. 

  

In that sheltered spot the sun was warm on our faces, the wind did not bite to the core and I began to believe that slowly and surely, the Spring was advancing......

Crocus flowers by the side of the road.  

 


































Just as Wordsworth wrote,

"My heart leaps up

When I behold a rainbow in the sky"

So my heart gladdens at these now tangible signs of a new season finally approaching and hints, miniscule, of warmer days.

The tension of the winter begins to unwind as the sun warms our skin again. Like a coiled spring relaxing. 

I sat in the summer house for a short time in the afternoon, with a cup of tea, and could feel a hint of better days on the horizon, at long last. 

I suppose having lived with leaden skies and frozen earth for what seems like so long this winter, anything that points to a change is seized upon to give us hope! 

     Yes, we still have extremely cold nights and frosty mornings, but the sun is gaining strength at long last. 

Tomorrow is the start of a new month. April. 

  A bittersweet month for us. A month of new beginnings, lighter evenings, plants and trees bursting into new life, and what would have been our oldest son's 37th birthday on the 23rd. 

But, today is Easter Day, and we know we will see him again sometime. Our "sure and certain hope in the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ" 

And tomorrow we are going to see our two lovely grandchildren, and our younger son and his wife. 

Happy Easter everyone!  

Supper with friends in Holy Week

On Wednesday evening our group of friends gathered at one of our homes together, to share a meal with reflections on Holy Week.
The preparations were carefully made and earlier hubby and I arrived to assist in the final parts in readiness for the others.
The table had already been beautifully laid, with a lot of thoughtfulness and care.
Spring flowers in small vases.
A candle at each place setting.
A small printed individual card with a beautiful photo, and the word, "Hope" written on the reverse.
A little Lindt chocolate rabbit to take home.
The glasses sparkled in the lights.
It was truly beautiful.

A simple "Order of service" setting out readings and a prayer.

In the kitchen, a leg of lamb had been roasted, and the smells wafted through the rooms.
We shared pitta bread, and tortilla wraps, in a nod to the Jewish tradition of unleavened bread at the Passover.
Various hummus dips, and couscous, fillings for the wraps, a bowl of salad, and some red wine.

Assembling round the table, a prayer was read for the lighting of the candles. Again, a Jewish tradition.
Two large ones were lit first, and then we each passed a taper round lighting our own individual tealights.

We shared a piece of bread together, passing it round the table after the Prayer for the Breaking of Bread.
"This is My Body, broken for you,
Do this in remembrance of Me"

A glass of wine was then poured.
We passed that round to each other after the words
"This is my Blood shed for you,
Drink this in remembrance of Me,
And be thankful."

The lamb was carved and shared, and we had a very special evening.
Not without it's hilarity!
But that's what friends are for.....laughing and crying together, sharing each others joys and sorrows. Encouraging each other.

Before the pudding was served, the tale was told of how, shortly after hubby and I arrived, there was a loud "OH NO!" from the kitchen. Not knowing what disaster had befallen our lovely hostess,  we went to see what had occurred.......
  She was baking 8 apples, sprinkled with spices, raisins, and sugar in a ceramic dish in the oven, the aroma was mouthwatering............
As she opened the door to take a peek, she could see that the apples had each exploded!
There were bits of them stuck to the walls inside!
But it wasn't a write off.
My hubby took out the tray from underneath the ceramic dish, which was splattered with soft cooked apple, and got a spoon.....................
The verdict, "Absolutely delicious", as he scraped apple from the tray and ate it!

The bulk of the apples was intact, and so the ceramic dish with the remains of the exploded apples was brought to the table and served out into individual dishes and topped with a choice of cream or ice-cream.
What more could you possibly want!
So we finished the meal, sharing the wine, and enjoying the ebb and flow of conversation.

Then hubby noticed he had accidentally set fire to his "Order of service" sheet! A slightly charred edge resulted! Not before it caused a lot of amusement.
It is not the first time he has managed to set fire to a menu!
Note to me:
"Make sure he does not have a piece of paper anywhere near a candle at a meal in future!"

 But as we left on an extremely cold frosty night, we all agreed it had been a very special evening.

Today is Good Friday. The beginning of Easter weekend.
We are going to church this afternoon to a service of reflection on the Crucifixion, and all that Jesus  suffered for us.

"Thine be the Glory
Risen, Conquering Son!
Endless is the Victory,
Thou o'er Death has won!"

         
  
       
      







                

Easter March 2013

Easter March 2013

                                                    Crucified
                                                         Laid behind a stone
                                                         You lived to die
                                                         Rejected and alone
                                                         Like a rose
                                                         Trampled on the ground
                                                         You took the fall
                                                         And thought of me
                                                         Above all
                          Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed for us.                                        

                                          I Corinthians 5 v 7

March 2013

Spot the difference in the two pictures of the climbing hydrangea , taken a year apart. Last March was the third warmest on record. So what happened this year?

The jet stream. apparently. 

It is stuck South of the British Isles, so we are trapped in an area dominated by high pressure, freezing cold endless weather, and still very little sign of the real spring. The warmer weather is stuck tantalizingly out of reach. 

This weekend we change the clocks, moving them forward one hour for the commencement of REAL spring. What a joke! We still have snow on the ground and yet more Arctic temperatures for the foreseeable future..........sigh............        

March 2012
I saw a pair of blackbirds mating on our garage roof in the snow the other day! Their internal clocks have been triggered, lack of spring or not.
The wood pigeons are billing and cooing in wintry conditions, the males bobbing their heads up and down in the funny courtship ritual that is unique to them. Chasing away other males who make an approach. But I reckon their nests may need thermal linings!
My daffodils have been struggling to flower, and although I have seen them in bloom in other places, I am still waiting for their buds to unfurl.
Some of them having been flattened by the frost and weight of snow.  

28th March 2013

Forsythia March 2013

Forsythia March 2012

Meantime, I am slowly beginning to feel more like me. A lovely meal last night shared with friends at one of their homes.
That will be the subject of another post!
Watch this space........ 

March 23rd 2013 Officially Spring! But maybe, by the 31st ,the coldest March since 1962!

A day of  more snow, 7.15am - 7.20pm.

On the 23rd March last year, 2012, we were basking in temperatures well above seasonal averages. Glorious wall-to-wall sunshine and Spring arriving earlier than usual. 

    This year the winter has been hanging on with a vengeance! 

I for one long for the return of blue skies and warmer air. 

7.30am. View from bedroom window. 

The whole country has suffered terrible snowfalls, gale force winds, power lines down, flooding, and icy blasts of Arctic winds. 

We shiver and slither along. 

    Not me, unfortunately this past week, I have been confined to the house with yet another virus, a trip to the doctor's, my hubby having to take me. 

Night's without sleep, because of breathing problems........ok I'm indulging in a big MOAN! 

But it makes me feel a bit better for that, so we'll gloss over the rest.

Once more,as I'm now confined to the spare room at night, or hubby would not be able to sleep, I have a catalogue of gadgets to keep me going through the small hours. And a small dispensary of stuff from the chemist!

Laptop, in case I feel like taking my mind off coughing, to watch tv programmes on i-player. 

i-Pod for talking books or just soothing sounds of the sea, and my treasured mini digital radio, so I can listen to various programmes whilst trying to drift off into the Land of Nod.  

2.30pm. View from bedroom window

It is amazing how many people are up in the night. They text in to radio programmes about all kinds of things. 

And as I look out of my window, if I get up to  make a foray down to the kitchen to replenish a flask of hot water, I have noticed that  there are a few houses where there is a light on show all night. Usually a small upstairs landing  window. Lights in the dark are comforting. 

So my routine this past week hasn't really varied. I don't remember the first few days anyway!  

    
 But, by this evening, I have felt more like writing here again......so things are looking up!
I am beginning to feel the urge to escape the confines of the house. So made a mini bid for freedom, about 7.10pm. (I know it wasn't perhaps the best choice, but I just wanted to smell some fresh air, no matter how cold!) I took my camera and wrapped up like a yeti, to walk down the garden path.
It felt so good!
Snow, for all we are detesting the weather, is beautiful as well as lethal.
I took these photos of the silent evidence.       

7.15pm

 And yet, I know, as I have known all this past week, that at 4.45am, (yes, so early!) the birds are beginning their Spring songs. They sing on in the cold, ice and snow, and gladden my heart.
At least they know, that we reached the Spring Equinox this week, and at that paradigm shift they begin their annual rituals of territorial songs, and courtship.  

7.18pm

7.20pm

 So, as we shiver and wait, surely, surely, it cannot "always be winter and never spring" to  misquote CS Lewis's " It is always winter and never Christmas"  in Narnia.
Meantime, we wait..................

The Beatles "Please, Please Me." 50 years old on 11th February 2013

I was just 15 years old in the February of 1963. We had passed through one of the hardest winters in decades. January was the coldest month of the 20th century, at that time. 

February came in with more snow, and a 36 hour blizzard which affected most parts of the country. It drifted in the gale force winds, and I can still remember that the snow completely covered up the side door of my grandmother's house. It had formed a snow "bank" as the wind blew on that side.  

The front door was passable. 

The road outside was impassable except for a track which people had made down the middle. 

As I looked at it, it seemed like undulating waves of the sea which had frozen white. 

Drift after drift, after drift, rippling towards me as I walked in the single pathway up the hill. The deepest parts of these drifts were almost 5 feet in height. The shallowest, like the dip in the waves, being knee deep. 

I have no idea who cleared the snow to make a passage possible.      

Into all this mayhem of a winter, came an explosion on the music scene which changed four young men almost overnight. 

The Beatles recorded  their album "Please, Please Me." at the Abbey Road studios in London, in just 12 hours. 

And it catapulted them into fame.

My own personal LP  Now 50 years old!

It was absolutely brilliant being a teenager at that time. The "Liverpool Sound" was everywhere, making the city fashionable, with it's "Cavern Club"
I bought the LP and still have it today, along with "With The Beatles."
Everywhere there was Beatles music coming from the radio and they appeared on TV. WE were all glued to the spot!
Other groups began to emerge "Gerry and the Pacemakers", " The Hollies", "The Searchers", we couldn't get enough of them!
Our small town boasted an excellent dance hall, and I saw The Hollies, and Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas perform live. It was great to be on the dance floor to such great sounds!

I went to see "Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders", and on one bizarre occasion we spotted "The Animals" when one of them had come out of one of our local shops. This was just before they became very famous.

It put the North of England very much on the map! A lot of the new groups were from Liverpool and Manchester.     

    I was studying music as one of my GCSE exams, and I learned a lot about the Dominant 7th chords that the Beatles used! (Obviously not the only chords they used, but it was such a radically different sound then, to anything else we had heard.).       

Snow in February 1963, Burnley, Lancashire 

  We danced to their music at parties,and on the sleeve of the LP is a stiletto heel mark where I  had accidentally stepped on to the cover. Thankfully the LP was not inside!
Looking again at some of the chart topping songs of that year, brings back so many memories.
I sang Skeeter Davis' song "The End of the World" at one of our Grammar School concerts in the summer.
The whole presentation being directed and performed without any staff help. Including a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury". I and several of my musical friends were in the chorus.
       We did however, have our very own brilliant musician called Johnnie Iveson, who played as his first instrument, a trombone. So he and several others put together a band for the occasion, which was a great hit.
He went on to make a name for himself in London circles, becoming principal trombonist with the  Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1965. I attach a link to his profile.

                http://www.brasswindpublications.co.uk/acatalog/Iveson.html

As I read the list below, of the UK hits, it transports me back to that brilliant time when, like the Shadows instrumental, it was fantastic to simply "Dance On" !!
How the music stays in your head!!
My dad was asked one day, as he went into his office in Manchester,

"How come you are singing "She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!" ?

"How on Earth do you know the words?"

So he replied:
"I have two daughters at home.......and it is played constantly!"

Not such an old "fuddy duddy" hey!
 

Some of the chart songs of 1963.

03 Jan	Cliff Richard and The Shadows	The Next Time / Bachelor Boy
24 Jan	Shadows	Dance On
31 Jan	Jet Harris and Tony Meehan	Diamonds
21 Feb	Frank Ifield	Wayward Wind
14 Mar	Cliff Richard and The Shadows	Summer Holiday
29 Mar	Shadows	Foot Tapper
11 Apr	Gerry and The Pacemakers	How Do You Do It?
02 May	Beatles	From Me To You
20 Jun	Gerry and The Pacemakers	I Like It
18 Jul	Frank Ifield	Confessin' (That I Love You)
01 Aug	Elvis Presley	(You're The) Devil In Disguise
08 Aug	Searchers	Sweets For My Sweet
22 Aug	Billy J Kramer and The Dakotas	Bad To Me
12 Sep	Beatles	She Loves You
10 Oct	Brian Poole and The Tremeloes	Do You Love Me
31 Oct	Gerry and The Pacemakers	You'll Never Walk Alone
12 Dec	Beatles	I Want To Hold Your Hand

February! A week of birthdays!

               A Week of Birthdays!                                     

Birthday bouquet.

The first week of February begins for us in a rash of birthdays. Three in quick succession before we reach February 8th.
There has been a sense of week long celebrations beginning with mine on the 4th. It was an extra special day, as we went to see our new granddaughter. She was born before the expected date of 7th, which would have meant one more event to cram into the first eight days!
  Libby Joanna made her entrance into the world in a precipitate hurry on 30th January. A sister for   Samuel.
The next birthday was on the 6th, our friend Rosie. More cake and presents enjoyed with friends that evening.
Stephen's came next on the 8th and we spent the day having lunch with one friend by the side of a roaring log fire at a country pub nearby. In the evening, a lovely dinner spent in the company of another couple of close friends.
   
So much for thinking maybe I would join "Weight Watchers"!!
How is it whenever I think about it, I just gravitate to all the food that should be "forbidden" !!!
Naughty but nice!

Well, it WAS all our birthdays!

At the end of the week on Saturday I found myself with a group of friends (organised by my hubby) making a clay sheep in a craft session.

Can you hear the concentration! 

We all enjoyed it very much, and await the sheep back from the kiln in around 15 days time.

We were guided by the artist who had set up the workshop.
Afterwards, our group went for more lovely food and nibbles, and a glass or two of red wine, at Rosie's house. Although the nibbles in themselves were fairly substantial. (I think I have said before that our friends do not do things by halves!)

Substantial nibbles!!

                                   The end of a thoroughly enjoyable week!

All we are waiting for now as February is passing by, are more signs that spring may be fighting it's way in!
This winter has seemed long. Today it is very wet, and hasn't really become properly daylight. Grey, dull and very cold. Cosy indoors.
I finish with a poem from my favourite poet, Edward Thomas, as already, inspite of the weather, the rooks are beginning to build their nests in their familiar colonies. And the blackbird has begun to sing his sweet song early in the morning.




"Thaw" by Edward Thomas

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass. 

Baa...aaa..rmy. (Before kiln firing)