Tag Archives: Canada

The Knell of Parting Day

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A knell is the sound of a bell rung solemnly. I checked it up before using it. What I don’t know is how you toll a bell solemnly. You just pull a rope don’t you. The solemnity is in the timing of the successive rings, I would have thought, not in the quality of a single ring. Anyway, that’s my thought on it.

Whilst looking at Gray’s Elegy and picking it over for a quote, I noticed that he composed it by reusing some lines for another poem he had tried to write. I’m glad to find it’s not just me that treats old and unsuccessful poems as raw material for new ones.

Where does all the time go? Twilight has arrived, the sky is holding just a hint of colour behind a veil of grey cloud and it is time to eat and change pace.

That’s probably what I miss most about Julia not being here, Well that and there seems to be more washing up to do. And no tea appears magically by my elbow as I write. However, without her there is definitely no change of pace. I get up. I do what I like. I watch what I like on TV. Nobody wakes me up to tell me to stop snoring. And then it’s time for bed.

She, meanwhile, has been to a baseball game and is currently at a Mother’s Day BBQ celebration hosted by the family of Number One Son’s partner.  They are spit roasting a whole pig. Canadian BBQs are very different to the ones we have in Nottingham.

I’m back from eating now. Quiche and salad, in case you were wondering. The same quiche and almost the same salad as I had yesterday. No, I haven’t developed a sudden love of salad, but we had it in the fridge and I hate wasting food. I am also pretty sure I would hate dying, so it’s probably time to start eating a healthier diet.

Tomorrow I will, I think, start with cereal and fruit. Lunch? It’s definitely time to get round to that mushroom soup. Evening meal is fish finger sandwiches. They are the ones that are marketed as containing Omega 3 and being good for you. This time next year it will be something else that is good for me, so I will just have to read the internet and try to keep up. I’m eating more sandwiches and fewer vegetables now that Julia isn’t here.

Day 164

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Committee Meeting of the Numismatic Society of Nottingham tonight, one of the easiest Committee meetings I have ever been to. No arguments, no jobs to do, no changes to be made. It’s all quite relaxing.

I could say the same for the day at work too. Everything just seemed to go smoothly and fall into place.

It’s hard to say much about a day when things go well.

Then one of the members said: “It’s the longest day next week.”

So soon? It’s only just been Spring.

That’s the problem with the years, no sooner do we get to the time of lilac and laburnum, than everything begins to become unravelled. The lilacs die, the longest day looms and suddenly we are sliding into winter. Autumn can be nice at times, but it’s little comfort when you know that winter, the season of aching joints, is just around the corner.

I’m afraid that I’m rapidly running out of energy tonight, having already fallen asleep at the keyboard once already, so am not sure I’m going to make my 250 word target.

And having said that, I find myself browsing the Test score, with a certain amount of satisfaction, when I should be going to bed. Not that it really matters. England has a proven talent, in all sports, for throwing away a good position and snatching our traditional defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s almost a national sport in its own right.

It’s very easy to lose focus on the internet and end up reading something you hadn’t planned.

Top photo is two idiots with their mother. Bottom photo is mother and younger idiot by the Robin Hood statue. Is this my contribution to the future of the world?

Somehow, he looks very Canadian. All he needs is a check shirt . . .