FiftyFive ~ # 16

My friend H. showed me her Living Lowry picture this week - it is Alexandra Palace but Lowry it is indeed and I Iove it, just as i love to see snippets of other people's lives and I am stealing the picture - well borrowing really. But now time is pressing and i must run to other places so I will just post this for now - oh and this song cos i like it and it has the best first line ever - full of hope, which is the best way to travel - methinks:

FiftyFive ~ # 15 @ 4pm

With my glasses, hat and smile askew the world looks slightly different. Though the snow is familiar the greybeard (3 days and growing) blends in nicely with the whiteness, though its not keeping my chin any warmer. Its been an odd day thus far for I have been writing but even as I stop for lunch everything seems incomplete - I am Aristophanes' decentred man, in my bits and scattered around the garden. But isn't work ever thus - unless you are building a wall or paitning a door (or learning to spell) we are forever tweaking and re-writing and correcting and thinking and then vacuuming the floor - for prevarication is sometimes the only cure. It has now been snowing solid since I woke at 5.30am and perhaps long before that too. And though it is wet snow it is piling up and will freeze come 4pm - which is now and the temperature has definately dropped. So I have put the fire on and hopefully these will be the last of the winter pictures. And then I will need some mood music and a laptop to work on and the cold can go the way of ghosts. Mary Black might help - just once in a very blue moon:

FiftyFive ~ # 15 @ 6.30am

From the sublime to the downright silly. Yesterday I posted a picture in the sun and the day before a sunny picture in the hope that we had turned the corner and had begun looking towards spring. It was not to be - it is snowing again and getting to be a little tiresome. Though I have to admit the garden is very beautiful again. Dressed in its winter glory, still bathed in darkness yet juxtaposing the whiteness of the snow in perfect contrast to bring out the blue that is the dawning sky. And so for the last hour (it is 6.30 am) I have been sitting in my kitchen watching it fall while writing and thinking and musing while the house sleeps on. The school sent a txt (isn't new technology great) to say its closed - yippee, snowballs, snowmen, sledging... ah the folly of youth. And then I remember what this blog is about - for it is not youth but a reflection on having reached FiftyFive and I remember Sandy Denny singing this song, which I absolutely adore and it does seem to ring the FiftyFive bell, who knows where the time goes - though sung by the wonderful Kate Rusby:

And then I couldn't decide whether to post Sandy Denny's version - a little rough in the recording but her voice is so wonderful and tragic for she lived such a short life:

FiftyFive ~ # 14

January is the month of decisions, is it not. Like for example, getting rid of the Christmas version of the blog to bring it back to the crisp whiteness. And to clearing the decks of last year's papers and entrails. But it never seems to happen like that and stuff lingers, hangs around, stubbornly refusing to be shifted. So with plans for the New Year well in place, new books to write and papers to edit and articles to write I should be surfing the keyboard. But I am not, the dreaded lurgy lingers still and there is still tidying to be done. And then there is the Icarus dilemma. At this time of year we crave flight, the soaring to new heights, with new promise and renewed hopes while still being shackled to King Minos' wrath for allowing Ariadne to assist Theseus. Though our esteemed Poet Laureate may have it differently in this (not her best poem) Mrs Icarus

I’m not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he’s a total, utter, absolute Grade A pillock.

Though, in the Brueghel spirit, why is Carol Anne Duffy's Mrs Icarus standing watching while the men are working - does she expects him to fall, no matter how hard he tries to impress he will always be her pillock. And despite her efforts to love him he has his grand schemes. But its a terribly weighted poem, surely. She the bedrock, the solid equal in the face of Icarus' grand schemes - and I guess me reading standing up doesn't impress either. Which I guess is the point of the poem, not great for either sex methinks, for it suggests the poor plight of men all over the world, we are born to it (grand schemes/grand failure) so I guess we should just admit that we spend our lives like birds, preening our mating feathers, showing off in front of other would be suitors, looking to impress, not knowing that all the time she was already trying to treat us as equals in the nest; and when the time comes they too would fly with us. Actually, though, that is me trying to rescue her poem which could only have been written by a woman who doesn't seem to have much time for men at all. For surely not all flights of male fancy result in failure and sometimes we are only a short step away from the top of the hillock as opposed to being a pillock - and it need not just be men who take the step. Time for the Sisters of Mercy, methinks:

FiftyFive ~ # 13

Sometimes the email inbox sends me a treat, its not a chocolate bar or a glass of Claret but sometimes it has the same effect and today I was sent some Australian culture. This picture, "House With Native Tree" by Howard Arkley for a start, simple and effective and look at the colours which I adore. This i would hang in my study at home, for it would fit there perfectly and I could watch it from my winter perch, as I try to keep warm and remember that the sun is just around the corner. But this music arrived at the same time too and I have never come across Archie Roach, though I wish I had because I love this song - and he is being accompanied by the wonderful David Bridie on piano and Helen Mountfort on cello. Both from the band My Friend The Chocolate Cake - which is surely a great name for a very good band indeed. And then it brings something home - how small the world has become when we can all tap into each other's culture without having to do as we did in the past - conquer and steal and colonise - which are all bad things in their own way. Surely this picture and song are reasons why we should give the Elgin Marbles back. I send both out into the ether with a "chorus of smiles" which is a new phrase I have learned and learned to love too - and my ears and eyes are open for everything new the world can send me in 2010 - and I will definately be looking for more Archie Roach.

FiftyFive ~ # 12

The BBC are broadcasting Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pgyd8

and its such a great story from a master storyteller and with Dirk Bogarde and Diana Rigg in the production how could it go wrong - I love it. I also like this picture that accompanies the details on the BBC website. There is something splendid about her coldness and that jagged piece of ice she holds so menacingly. And yet the tale of innocence and of experience is a familiar reminder of the world's responsibility to the very young - and not so young, didn't the grandmother repeat, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3)... I will say more about this but my man flu has rendered me fug laden and dim of wit and words - alas. But happy new year - 2010 has a good feel to it already...