Monday, July 14, 2008

14th July

On the terrace, after breakfast

Sun warming my left side, skylark, coffee cooling,
buzz of insects, sparrows chirrup, a sow thistle flowering neatly in the wall.

I examine my legs, in detail, with acceptance.

A burst of scolding in Thai from next door,
in which I catch the word 'mama'; its object cries
in frustration, soon stops.

Sky hydrangea blue, paws plod on gravel.

Why do I think I should be doing something else,
or making more of this than this?

~~~


Abram Darby's looking very lovely.

~~~

They're making a film of 'The Vintner's Luck', which I'm looking forward to. It can't be as good as the book, which is a must if you like wine, history and angels, or all three, or even if you don't, and far better to my mind than anything I've read by Joanne Harris, whose work's far better known and more marketed, but it's by the director of 'Whale Rider', and shot by someone who did 'Lord of the Rings', and they've apparently roped off huge tracts of Burgundy to do it, so it should be fairly luscious.

~~~

We've been stopped in our tracks in a concreting project; we mixed and mixed on Saturday until we ran out of cement, then couldn't go and get any more today when we remembered it was Fête nationale. I suggested we go and storm the gates of Gamm Vert and liberate the sole bag of cement on the premises, but we decided against, and have spent the day so far reading, writing, painting(or watching DVDs about painting anyway), wandering round the garden with a camera, listening to Handel and generally slobbing about. I'm supposed to be making lemon cake to take to our friends' who have a nearly front row seat in their garden to watch the fireworks so we tend to invite ourselves there. The swallows who have decided to nest in our garage since Tom took the door off are perhaps happier. They'd built about three inches of nest, but our noisy concreting activities and coming and going seemed to have put them off, but they were back this morning. They don't have to worry about public holidays disrupting their supply of mud, they sow not neither do they reap...

"What's Africa like then?" "Dunno, never been."

Happy Bastille Day.

14 comments:

QP said...

What an agréable sketch of your holiday morning. Replace sparrows with wrens, Spanish with Thai, remove the one, and it could pass for a Texas holiday morning.

Anonymous said...

Yes, lovely tidbits of your day! So many phrases make me pause, like 'Sky hydrangea blue', suddenly remembering the wonderful 'Whale Rider', curiousity about what kind of painting, the swallows that we had in a garage years ago... thanks Lucy!

Jen said...

I enjoyed sharing that snippet of your Bastille Day, thank you. 'Tis also my son's birthday today. The Elizabeth Knox book looks heavenly. Good old Amazon... well, I deserve a treat - it's Bastille Day after all!

Rosie said...

Abram Darby is gorgeous indeed, and reminds me of jimmy's jam making orgy of this afternoon...apricot...enjoy the fireworks...I am too lazy!

vicki johnson said...

What a delightful post!

Pamela Terry and Edward said...

Lovely blog!

Avus said...

I really enjoyed this little meditation.
As to "Abram Darby" wasn't he one of the original ironmasters at Ironbridge, Shropshire?

Lucy said...

Thank you!
qp - the Thai is probably a little more unusualin these parts than Spanish in yours, but the Dutch bulb grower next door has a Thai wife!

ML - Tom is doing some watercolour, I am trying to do a w/colour pencil painting about toads! I'm not sure if the swallows will return, it's a rather sad and difficult situation...

Spiral - go on, treat yourself, they had Marketplace copies for a penny... hope your son had a good birthday!

Rosie - yum! AD is quite apricot, though fades to a somewhat buff pink, quite subtle. The fireworks were good, it's better to watch them from D and J's than hang around for hours sur place, though we miss the lower down ones.

Z - thank you!
Pamela and co - thanks, I like yours too!

Avus - yes, he was, and I think it's a fairly old rose that was named after him. He got a bit sickly looking because we weren't ruthless enough about pruning, but is having a good year now.

Anonymous said...

I like the opening poem quite a lot.

Lucy said...

Dave, thanks, you snuck in there!

Funny, I thought about your 'poems and poem-like things' tag in relation to it, that it was probably more of a 'poem-like thing' than a poem!

herhimnbryn said...

Sounds like a good day. Love the birds on the roof.

meggie said...

Love this post.
I have never been to Africa, either.

leslee said...

Enjoyed this post, too. The poem, the photo, the reminder of Whale Rider. I hope the movie is good, too. I've become reflexively skeptical too when I hear they're making a movie of a book I've liked.

Elizabeth said...

How nice to have a hoiday to relax.
Here in America, all the stores are open and we would have been "accomplishing" something...how sad. This past
4th of July, we spent the afternoon at a friend's farm...what a lovely way to jut BE.
Blessings, E