It has been a very sad day. Big Dana-Dog died this morning, peacefully in her sleep. I was stroking her because she was breathing strangely, and couldn’t believe it when she stopped breathing. I suppose if any death can be called good, then to die in her bed close to those she loved, was the best it could be.
The house seems very empty.
Thank you Dana for all the happy years.
Rest in peace.
Three bullfinches came to visit yesterday.
Something to thank God for.
I have been puzzling over a poem by Robert Francis. There’s not much to find about his life as he was a solitary person, only having success in publication later in life. But this one called Invitation has been haunting me. Perhaps it is because it feels as if there could be heavy snow.
You who have meant to come, come now
With strangeness on the morning snow
Before the early morning plow
Makes half the snowy strangeness go.
You who have meant to come, come now
When only your footprints will show,
Beofre one overburdened bough
Spills snow above on snow below.
You who were meant to come, come now.
If you were meant to come, you’ll know.
Today is Epiphany. Strange how the decorations come down just as the Kings arrive. I am trying to have an epiphany about RSS feeds; sadly, despite helpful hints from Gareth’s Blog on why they are important, I am still messing about with Firefox, Sage and Live Bookmark Feeds. I’ve reached the stage where I realise the difference it would make, but my head and the words are somehow incompatible. Never mind, I shall keep trying at intervals throughout the day.
It’s better than doing the hoovering!
Here is a handy hint on how to open a box of 24 diet cokes.
Don’t use a penknife.
Tesco are cashing in on the time of year and the propensity of half the nation to want to get fit and lose some of the festive pounds. They have even developed a diet and fitness website guaranteed to relieve you of £2.99 per week. Not content with cornering the food market and selling us the goodies, they now tell us how to lose the results of our over-indulgence and their over-advertising.
Having said that, I suppose this is the way the world is going. Online a lot of the time.
Well you see I am not very good at inserting pictures yet.
And this is the nearest I could get to pink for lovers of pink.
Every year people make resolutions then break them within a few days. I could go with the same old litany….lose weight, get fit, read more widely, write more….. For 2006 I should like to think less of self-improvement and more about entering into each moment of life in an authentic way. In part this was brought about by discovering the death clock. It is salutory to watch each second of one’s life expectancy tick away. Presumptious too, as well as a bit sad.
I’m not sure if this is just a tradition in the Roman Catholic church over the last few years, but it seems to be a laudable idea to have the first day of the new year designated a World Day of Peace. Pope Benedict XVII makes quite a meal of it, though I agree with his final point:
At the conclusion of this Message, I would like to address a particular word to all believers in Christ, inviting them once again to be attentive and generous disciples of the Lord. When we hear the Gospel, dear brothers and sisters, we learn to build peace on the truth of a daily life inspired by the commandment of love.
I suspect that most people of my age and generation spend the final hours of the old year thinking about people from days gone by. Today I am remembering my Mother’s ploy to get the Christmas spirit to last a bit longer. She taught me from a very young age to bother my Father for a “Ne’erday”. Being Scottish, she probably thought, gave her an advantage in that she could invent a tradition whereby she was given an extra gift at New Year. She added me on as a favour and to placate an intrigued child. But it was my Father who was at the receiving end of the bothering……or the giving, to be more exact. Only to be expected, I suppose, as he was the wage-earner in that immediate postwar time. As the years have gone by I have felt more and more guilty about it, as if I had connived in some sort of deception. In retrospect, I see that it was her way of staving off the homesickness and pain of living four hundred miles south of her roots. As for him….well, he indulged us both. And he tried to make her happy in a strange sort of way by observing Scottish New Year tradtions. Things like cleaning the house during the evening of Hogmanay, emptying out the ashes before “the bells”, first-footing (he was good at it because he had black hair), hammering on the doors and for once being welcoming to all and sundry. These were very much a part of my growing-up, long before they became more widely imported into English custom.
Forgive the ramblings…….I am going all Alan Bennett.
