Good Morning

Love the smell of coffee in the morning.

Relaxing, Radio and Books

Overcast morning but then the sun came out for awhile in the afternoon. Now it just as cloudy.

Anyway, taking the day off to relax as i am working tomorrow - yes a Sunday - to take advantage of the rail replacement bus service to Dover. I have one of these mobile shop visits and the store is open anyway,and forecast is for a sunny day.

Last night i watched the third episode of the new season of Agents of SHIELD , which is already proving itself to be an awesome show - and the previous night the first episode of the new series of The Flash. Of the two i found the former more exciting.


Been listening to quite alot of Radio 4 , esp The News quiz,The Moral Maze and The Life Scientific. Thanks  to coming42 for the DAB radio! And talking of BBC radio i found this book in Faversham for 25 pence along with another at a simulate price.



Tuesday we are having a pop-up kitchen midday for a free lunch - i am looking forward to that.

Well, cannot think of much else to say for the moment.

Just Wondering

What are your favourite activities during the week?

What is the best job you ever had?

Which are your 4 favourite fast foods?

31 Days Of Halloween #15

Have you ever used a crystal ball?




Have you ever cut out a pumpkin? Do you have pumpkin in recipes for this month?

Book 82 - Joan Didion "Run River"

Joan Didion "Run River" (Vintage)



This is Joan's first novel. She was only in her twenties when she wrote Run River, and it is a winner--stylish but never mannered , subdued, witty, assured, and filled with Valley (as in the Sacramento Valley) characters with whom Didion was rather obsessively in love.

Didion's sense of location and the specifics of the era is remarkable, so it takes little effort to be interested in the events, but set up as it is a framed story revolving around a murder, 20 years of backstory, and then the conclusion of the murder, she seems far too willing to make Run River an act of condemnation. I was given this paperback by my brother along with some of Didion's nonfiction works, and felt a little dismayed at first at my willingness to avoid reading the book. It's a feeling that goes away - the middle section of the book is filled with flawed, impish characters rendered in empathetic specifics, and is full of the humanely observed understatements that make Didion's best work so accessible (I am convinced no writer can devastate more with a seemingly average sentence - perfectly interrupted, of course). Still, returning to the murder at the end of the book, my reluctance returned, and I realised Didion's failure is to make the book a declaration of decay, to turn her events "tragic" (or, really, the stuff of nighttime soaps) in an attempt to critique the California pioneer identity. All this winds up doing is rendering the fates of her characters not all that important. Still, the book should be read for that glimmering centre of the book, a time when its characters flaws are rendered rich with empathy - its chapters detailing Martha, Everett's sister, as she (miserably) attempts to conquer heartbreak with pioneering audacity shows Didion's characters as fascinating idealists, endearing in their quixotic motionlessness.


For a first novel Run River is an extraordinary achievement.

Poems Of The Week

Two more English poets -

Be Still, My Soul, Be Still

Poem by Alfred Edward Housman


Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,-- call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.

Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.

Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.

Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation--
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?

Hawk Roosting

by Ted Hughes


I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

The Triquetra

Good Night

Hope you have a good sleep and not suffer insomnia/