megustaleer
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Posts posted by megustaleer
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Good to see you here, Mister Hg. I will look out for your book reviews, they are always interesting.
I have often been temped to read a particular book on the basis of your review. Or was until the list got longer than I could catch up with!
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13 hours ago, lunababymoonchild said:
I took that to be self-penned.
Presumably, but it would be good if that was made clear
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Author?
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1 hour ago, Hux said:
The 🧡 is there but when I press it, a box comes up saying: ❕ Sorry, there was a problem reacting to this content.
And me.
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On 29/01/2022 at 11:16 AM, megustaleer said:
BGO is still struggling on, but there are still only a few remaining members posting with any sort of regularity. The admin who attempted a rescue is still minded to continue, but how the situation can be improved is beyond me. I expect I will be one of the few who remain until the end.
Bookgroup Online has reached the end of the road and will close on June 6th.
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I presume I came across Noddy first, as my early reading days were well before they drew the attention of the PC police. However,I have no memory of actually reading them.
I think the first Enid Blyton I recall, possibly at aged about seven, was the Faraway Tree trilogy: The Magic Wood, The Faraway Tree and The Folk of The Faraway Tree.
They were not my books, but belonged to my best friend, so were probably my first experience of talking about books with another reader and started me on a life-long involvement with reading groups.
I still remember with fondness the inhabitants of these books, Moon-Face, Silky the fairy, The Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot, and many others.
Thanks to Suzanne for starting this thread and bringing back memories of a very happy period of my childhood.
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There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
There Will Come Soft Rains - Sara Teasdale
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St George was out walking
He met a dragon on a hill,
It was wise and wonderful
Too glorious to kill
It slept amongst the wild thyme
Where the oxlips and violets grow
Its skin was a luminous fire
That made the English landscape glow
Its tears were England’s crystal rivers
Its breath the mist on England’s moors
Its larder was England’s orchards,
Its house was without doors
St George was in awe of it
It was a thing apart
He hid the sleeping dragon
Inside every English heart
So on this day let’s celebrate
England’s valleys full of light,
The green fire of the landscape
Lakes shivering with delight
Let’s celebrate St George’s Day,
The dragon in repose;
The brilliant lark ascending,
The yew, the oak, the rose
The True Dragon - Brian Patten
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Between the brown hands of a server-lad
The silver cross was offered to be kissed.
The men came up, lugubrious, but not sad,
And knelt reluctantly, half-prejudiced.
(And kissing, kissed the emblem of a creed.)
Then mourning women knelt; meek mouths they had,
(And kissed the Body of the Christ indeed.)
Young children came, with eager lips and glad.
(These kissed a silver doll, immensely bright.)
Then I, too, knelt before that acolyte.
Above the crucifix I bent my head:
The Christ was thin, and cold, and very dead:
And yet I bowed, yea, kissed - my lips did cling.
(I kissed the warm live hand that held the thing.)Maundy Thursday - Wilfred Owen -
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.The Enkindled Spring - D.H. Lawrence
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One for St Patrick's Day
When things go wrong and will not come right
Though you do the best you can
When life looks black as the hour of night
A pint of plain is your only man
When money's tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran
When all you have is a heap of debt
A pint of plain is your only man
When health is bad and your heart feels strange
And your face is pale and wan
When doctors say you need a change
A pint of plain is your only man
When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan
When hunger grows as your meals are rare
A pint of plain is your only man
In time of trouble and lousy strife
You have still got a darling plan
You still can turn to a brighter life
A pint of plain is your only man
The Workman’s Friend - Flann O’Brien
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And one for Shrove Tuesday, by Christina Rossetti:
Mix a pancake,
Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan;
Fry the pancake,
Toss the pancake—
Catch it if you can.
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A bit of Dylan Thomas for St David's Day
Here In This SpringHere in this spring, stars float along the void;
Here in this ornamental winter
Down pelts the naked weather;
This summer buries a spring bird.
Symbols are selected from the years'
Slow rounding of four seasons' coasts,
In autumn teach three seasons' fires
And four birds' notes.
I should tell summer from the trees, the worms
Tell, if at all, the winter's storms
Or the funeral of the sun;
I should learn spring by the cuckooing,
And the slug should teach me destruction.
A worm tells summer better than the clock,
The slug's a living calendar of days;
What shall it tell me if a timeless insect
Says the world wears away? -
A few days late with this, but for those with leftover haggis still to eat, here are the first three stanzas of the traditional Burns Night greeting on its arrival at the table
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!Address To A Haggis - Robert Burns
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On 26/01/2022 at 8:24 PM, ~Andrea~ said:
This is great news (I'm sorry I'm so behind the curve by the way - I really must up my game visiting and posting here) however as others have said, I hope you will all still come to visit/join in here too!
BGO is still struggling on, but there are still only a few remaining members posting with any sort of regularity. The admin who attempted a rescue is still minded to continue, but how the situation can be improved is beyond me. I expect I will be one of the few who remain until the end.
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Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.Alfred, Lord Tennyson - 'Ring Out, Wild Bells'
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All my undone actions wander
naked across the calendar,
a band of skinny hunter-gatherers,
blown snow scattered here and there,
stumbling toward a future
folded in the New Year I secure
with a pushpin: January’s picture
a painting from the 17th century,
a still life: Skull and mirror,
spilled coin purse and a flower.
December 31st - Richard Hoffman
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BC : AD by U.A. Fanthorpe
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect.
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
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Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock
'Now they are all on their knees.'
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
'Come, see the oxen kneel.'
IN the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know
I should g with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
The Oxen - Thomas Hardy
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There have been so many poems written to celebrate Christmas, and so little opportunity to share them. Here is a thread for sharing your favourite seasonal poems (Advent and Christmas now, obviously, but poems for other seasons as the calendar prompts us)
As we are now in Advent and public places are now, or about to be, gaily decorated in anticipation of Christmas, I give you the seasonally appropriate first half of Christmas by John Betjeman
The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.
The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.
Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.
And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.
As we are now in Advent and public places are now, or about to be, gaily decorated, I give you the seasonally appropriate first half of Christmas by John Betjeman
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Louder than gulls the little children scream
Whom fathers haul into the jovial foam;
But others fearlessly rush in, breast high,
Laughing the salty water from their mouthes--
Heroes of the nursery.
The horny boatman, who has seen whales
And flying fishes, who has sailed as far
As Demerara and the Ivory Coast,
Will warn them, when they crowd to hear his tales,
That every ocean smells of tar.The Beach - Robert Graves -
**The Harvest Moon
It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
Of Nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
Only the empty nests are left behind,
And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.
The Harvest Moon - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Do you mean Lady Audley's Secret, the C19 novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon?
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We had Kuku Sabzi, which is an Iranian dish, made (In the recipe I have) of Swiss chard, leeks, an abundance of soft herbs - today it was parsley, dill, chives, tarragon and mint - and eggs. Cooked like a frittata, but it has a greater proportion of filling to egg than usual in a frittata. Served with flatbreads, and a tomato and cucumber salad, and followed with a rhubarb crumble.
Chard, herbs, tomatoes, cucumber & rhubarb all home grown. My leeks are a late variety, so not ready for pulling yet.
Winter is coming
in Christmas and Winter Holidays
Posted
4th booster?
I had my spring booster, and the winter booster is not starting until next week - when were the other two?
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Christmas catalogues now arriving, got my first a fortnight ago and a couple more since.