Picnic On The Grass

The latest Penguin Classics newsletter dropped into my mailbox this week, reminding me that "Picnic season has arrived. The countryside is alive with creaking hampers, popping Tupperware and clanking bottles. The usual rules of etiquette relax at a picnic, which allows for childish fun, young love and sometimes exquisite embarrassment."

It goes on to cite a series of literary picnics through the ages from Goldsmith's 'The Vicar of Wakefield', Jane Austen's 'Emma',  Tolstoy's 'Childhood' and Lewis Carroll's 'Alice...', to Joyce's 'Ulysses', even Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty Four' and Nabokov's 'Lolita'. 

I've read all of the above, and I must say those picnic episodes are not particularly firmly embedded in memory. So thank you, Penguin Classics, but I will be pursuing a more visual approach to the week's theme, taking Edouard Manet's famous 1863 composition 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' (Luncheon on the grass) as a starting point to examine, in pastiche art representations, how the world and picnicking have changed through the years.

the original Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, painting by Edouard Manet, 1863

Manet's painting was rejected by the Paris Salon which refused to show it at their annual summer exhibition at the Académie des Beaux-Arts on the grounds of poor taste. They called it "scandalous", a ruling that merely served to generate interest in the painter and his painting, which considerably enhanced Manet's reputation. 

Originally titled 'Le Bain' (The Bath), Manet's provocative composition went on to become both critically acclaimed and world famous among the ranks of impressionist paintings. Some even see it as the beginning of Modern Art. He rendered several copies of it. The original is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris but there is also a version in London's Courtauld Gallery if you're interested.

Of course, cars didn't exist when Manet painted his picnic tableau. In those days, journeys to the Bois de Boulogne, supposedly where his scene was set, would have been by horse-drawn carriage (not shown). The first automobiles didn't materialise until the tail-end of the 19th century. However, by the 1930s they were a fairly common sight and so Robert Doisneau who, along with Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the leading photographers of the inter-war years, was happy to feature a couple of cars in his witty 1936 photo-homage.

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, photograph by Robert Doisneau, 1936

No nudity this time, no lake and not a trace of bohemianism. Instead, a couple of happy and wholesome bourgeois families (with child) enjoying seemingly affluent times and a picnic of good wine, cheeses, bread and quiche on the grass in the woods near Paris. It is no coincidence that the car most obviously featured is a Renault, for among his other portfolio clients, Doisneau was the in-house photographer for the Renault car company. 

In hindsight, that image of peaceful prosperity and contentment gains a degree of ironic resonance for its naive innocence, given that within three years France and Europe would be plunged into the most destructive and terrible war. Doisneau unwittingly captured the calm before that storm.

After the war, Alain Jacquet (who had been born months before the outbreak of hostilities) emerged in the 1960s as a leading artist of the Nouvelle Figuration school in France, a movement that was allied to the US Pop Art brigade. Jacquet divided his time between New York and Paris and taught at the latter's École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. He was married to Sophie Matisse, great-granddaughter of the artist Henri Matisse.

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, painting by Alain Jacquet, 1964

Jacquet was well-known for using motifs from older, famous paintings as a starting point for his subversive creations. He is perhaps most famous for his 'camouflage' series of pop art depictions of Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus', but he also chose to paint a mid-20th century take on Manet's famous outdoor luncheon party. 

It is much more precisely mannered than many of his paintings, closely reproducing Manet's posing of the three figures in the foreground. Of course, they are by a swimming pool, a fake lake, and any trees are relegated to the background, for this industrial-era American Dream is an altogether more sterile pastoral. Does it help to know that the two men featured are the Italian painter Mario Schifano and the French art critic Pierre Restany? Possibly not. Just for the record, the woman is Restany's wife, Jeannine de Goldschmidt, and the girl on the far side of the pool is her sister. For the picnic there is fruit, a knife and bread, but no wine. That loaf of sliced bread is in a packet bearing Jacquet's name.

The artist was an habitué of the bohemian Chelsea Hotel during his early stays in New York and left the owner a copy of the painting as settlement for his hotel bill.

Manet's painting continued to intrigue and inspire artists well into the 21st century. There are many picnic parodies and pastiches out there, cartoons, collages, film clips, paintings, photographs, even sculpted recreations. It's probably the second most re-invented image after the Mona Lisa. 

What is the abiding attraction? Is it the incongruity of the clothed and the undressed? That's possibly the strongest trigger. As for what the various depictions tell us about how civilisation progresses, I found this final image, a photographic representation from the covid years, quite a telling and rather depressing take.

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, photograph by Le Tondeuse, 2020

It's almost a composite of 'Le déjeuner sur l'herbe' and the 'Birth of Venus' as Le Tondeuse (the lawnmower) presents a rather trashy take on theme. That's not much of a luncheon or picnic, mostly beer and coca cola and some cuts of cold meat. Two of the company are smoking and look bored, and two others are looking slightly uncomfortable, as if they are all trying to ignore the naked Venus posed behind them. Is this a picture of 21st century ennui and disconnection? At least there are trees. Thank goodness for the trees.

I really wanted to write a new poem to accompany today's blog but I'm down in London celebrating my oldest daughter's 40th birthday. We went to Vauxhall Park, though we didn't take a picnic. The ground is baked hard and the grass is a dried beige. So in lieu of something by me, here's another picnic poem by renowned American poet Amy Clampitt.  

A Hermit Thrush

Nothing's certain. Crossing, on this longest day,

the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up 

 the scree-slope of what at high tide 

will be again an island, 

 to where, a decade since well-being staked 

 the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us 

 back, year after year, lugging the 

 makings of another picnic— 

the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified 

fig newtons—there's no knowing what the slamming 

seas, the gales of yet another winter 

may have done. Still there, 

 the gust-beleaguered single spruce tree, 

 the ant-thronged, root-snelled moss, grass 

 and clover tuffet underneath it, 

 edges frazzled raw 

but, like our own prolonged attachment, holding. 

Whatever moral lesson might commend itself, 

there's no use drawing one, 

there's nothing here 

to seize on as exemplifying any so-called virtue 

(holding on despite adversity, perhaps) or 

any no-more-than-human tendency— 

stubborn adherence, say, 

to a wholly wrongheaded tenet. Though to 

hold on in any case means taking less and less 

for granted, some few things seem nearly 

certain, as that the longest day 

will come again, will seem to hold its breath, 

the months-long exhalation of diminishment 

again begin. Last night you woke me 

for a look at Jupiter, 

that vast cinder wheeled unblinking 

in a bath of galaxies. Watching, we traveled 

toward an apprehension all but impossible 

to be held onto— 

that no point is fixed, that there's no foothold 

but roams untethered save by such snells, 

such sailor's knots, such stays 

and guy wires as are 

mainly of our own devising. From such an 

empyrean, aloof seraphic mentors urge us 

to look down on all attachment, 

on any bonding, as 

in the end untenable. Base as it is, from 

year to year the earth's sore surface 

mends and rebinds itself, however 

and as best it can, with 

thread of cinquefoil, tendril of the magenta 

beach pea, trammel of bramble; with easings, 

mulchings, fragrances, the gray-green 

bayberry's cool poultice— 

and what can't finally be mended, the salt air 

proceeds to buff and rarefy: the lopped carnage 

of the seaward spruce clump weathers 

lustrous, to wood-silver. 

Little is certain, other than the tide that 

circumscribes us that still sets its term 

to every picnic—today we stayed too long 

again, and got our feet wet— 

and all attachment may prove at best, perhaps, 

a broken, a much-mended thing. Watching 

the longest day take cover under 

a monk's-cowl overcast, 

with thunder, rain and wind, then waiting, 

we drop everything to listen as a 

hermit thrush distills its fragmentary, 

hesitant, in the end 

unbroken music. From what source (beyond us, or 

the wells within?) such links perceived arrive— 

diminished sequences so uninsistingly 

not even human—there's 

hardly a vocabulary left to wonder, uncertain 

as we are of so much in this 

existence, this botched, cumbersome, much-mended,

not unsatisfactory thing.

                                                          Amy Clampitt (1920-1994(

a detail from Raphael's Judgement of Paris, 1510

By the way, even Manet's composition for 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' is based on a section in the bottom right hand quadrant of Raphael's 'Judgement Of Paris'. 

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Picnic Time For Teddy Bears

Back in December 2024 I wrote about the film ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ as my contribution to the ‘Disappearing Act’ theme. I mostly remembered the atmosphere it conjured up when I first saw it back in around 1976. Here’s the link: Disappearing Act

And today is the 10th July 2026 and I was surprised and very delighted to find that when I looked up information to get a start on this week’s theme of Picnic I found that it is actually ‘National Teddy Bear Picnic Day’. Apparently it is celebrated all round the world and especially in the woods near you and me.

The Teddy Bears' Picnic

I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here but if I asked you what sound would the BBC Radio Engineers have used in 1932 to test equipment? Well, they used a sound produced by a Henry Hall recording of especially good quality with a large tonal range. It was used for more than 30 years by BBC audio engineers (up until the early 1960s) to aurally assess the frequency response of audio equipment.

Well done to anyone who answers ‘The Teddy Bear’s Picnic’. I didn’t know.

But why are they Teddy Bears? It turns out that when U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt, was on a hunting trip in 1902 he refused to shoot a bear cub that had been tied up for him, deeming it unsportsmanlike. This act of compassion was widely publicized and inspired toy makers to create our first toy bears, naming them 'Teddy's bears' in his honour.

'Teddy' Roosevelt spares the bear

Anyway, back to the picnic bit. Not long after the above, in 1907, ‘The Teddy Bears' Picnic’ was composed as a melody by composer John Walter Bratton, and then lyrics were added in 1932 by songwriter Jimmy Kennedy. Kennedy lived at Staplegrove Elm and is buried in Staplegrove Church, in Taunton, Somerset. Local folklore has it that the small wooded area between the church and Staplegrove Scout Hut was the inspiration for his lyrics.

You would not believe the number of artists who have recorded both the melodic version and the vocal version. That first vocal version had Val Rosing singing Kennedy's lyrics. The song has been subsequently recorded by Bing Crosby, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Rosemary Clooney, Jerry Garcia, John Inman, Anne Murray, Bad Manners and Drastic Measures.

And that’s without references to it in popular culture. It appears briefly in the musical score by Robert Israel to accompany Buster Keaton's 1926 silent film The General, used as background music in the Looney Tunes cartoons, the song appears in the movie adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The song can be briefly heard in the 1968 Doctor Who episode The Invasion, Dad's Army uses the song in an episode from 1970 called The Big Parade. The Henry Hall version was featured in the Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective from 1986. It features in Peter Greenaway's 1986 film A Zed & Two Noughts and it is mentioned in Peaky Blinders.

Enough of lists.

I’ve had my bear since I don’t know when, his name is Stephen. He has just given me a bit of a rocket for suggesting earlier that he is a toy.

Not much of a choice for the poem of the week.

Jimmy Kennedy

The Teddy Bears’ Picnic

If you go down to the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise.
If you go down to the woods today
You'd better go in disguise.
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain,
Because today's the day
The teddy bears have their picnic.

Picnic time for teddy bears,
The little teddy bears
Are having a lovely time today.
Watch them, catch them unawares
And see them picnic on their holiday.
See them gaily gad about,
They love to play and shout,
They never have any cares.
At six o'clock their mummies and daddies
Will take them home to bed,
Because they're tired little teddy bears.

If you go down to the woods today
You'd better not go alone.
It's lovely down in the woods today
But safer to stay at home.
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain,
Because today's the day
The teddy bears have their picnic.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q (and Stephen).

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Picnic - Special Memories

This is it, that perfect summer picnic weather is here, and what are we doing? Complaining about the heat and how draining it is to feel constantly clammy. Yes, I’m guilty of moaning, too, but I’m trying to be positive and enjoy the sunshine that we spend more than half the year waiting for. Soon, the schools will break up and there will be a promised trip to the zoo for a certain grandson’s birthday treat and that will include a picnic.

I have fond memories of glorious Sunday afternoons as a child, on picnics with my family and their friends. We were all in the licenced trade and pubs closed on Sundays between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in those days. Most of us lived around the Morecambe and Lancaster area. Heysham was a popular place for us, or Crook ‘o Lune, Littledale, Glasson Dock. We would all meet up, men comparing cars while women set the food out. Sandwiches galore, potted meat, chicken paste, tinned salmon or cheese. Cake, biscuits and what we still call picky bits. Everyone brought something to share, and Nanna’s tablecloth would be used for the food. We sat on tartan car rugs, spread out round the tablecloth. Flasks of tea were poured into cups that were also lids. 

I had a bottle of diluted squash or cordial. Living in a pub, you’d expect me to have the choice of any soft drink, but that isn’t how it worked. I was rarely allowed anything fizzy, just the occasional blackcurrant and lemonade in a Babycham glass, with a cherry. I couldn’t have carried that in the car, not that it would last very long. At this point in my life, younger than seven, I was the only child and I’m sure everyone loved me. I’d share my time and affection between grandparents, and relatives. Aunty Beryl allowed me to explore her gold charm bracelet for hours on end – it would take so long to get round all the tiny charms. I would have books with me, colouring things and probably a couple of dolls. I was well-behaved. I don’t remember ever getting told off. Believe me, I would remember if I’d been in trouble. I was brought up with boundaries, and my mother had a look I wouldn’t want to see.

I don’t remember being bored, either. We lived in different times, but very happy ones. Just one thing, though; the horrible smell of tea or coffee in a flask was enough to put me off. A flask of hot water and sachets of ‘2in1’ Nescafe, these days.

Sometimes, I make a buffet on a summer’s day when the grandchildren are here. They call it ‘picnic tea’ which is an excellent description. They gather whatever they want to eat and take it to wherever they’d like to eat it, inside or outside and keep coming back for more. Children tucking into good food. It’s all this nanna needs.

My Haiku poem of long-gone days,

We knew how to spend
A lovely, sunny Sunday
All together, then.

With food a-plenty,
A family gathering,
Sitting on car rugs.

Salmon sandwiches,
Potted meat or chicken paste?
Sausage roll, pork pie?

Let’s see, who would like
An ice-cream at Glasson Dock?
And a look at boats?

The gang is all here,
Fun and laughter fills the air.
Making memories.

PMW 2026

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Dashboard

 

It is many years since I crashed my four or five year old face into the shiny dashboard of my father’s Jaguar Mk 2, I think it was. Cars, particularly Jaguars were Dad’s passion at that time and I was still in my ‘Go faster, Daddy!’ phase. No speed limit, no seat belts, and no fear, until he had to slam the brakes on that day. A bumped head, with a growing lump, loud crying from me and worries about ‘What will Mummy say?’ from him as he consoled me. He wasn’t driving fast at that moment. Something happened and he had to brake. It was before I started wearing glasses, luckily. We lived in Lancaster at the time and Sunday afternoons when our pubs closed between 2pm and 7pm, were family gathering times. Our family of licensees across Lancaster and Morecambe, regularly went out for a countryside picnic in a convoy to Crook O’ Lune, Caton or Hornby. Someone’s car would break down on the way home and all the men would be under the bonnet with calls of ‘Try it now!’ and ‘What’s on the dash?’

I took no notice of the dials and switches on the dashboard. All I knew was that some lit up and others didn’t, and there was a button to press to start the engine. It didn’t always work. Sometimes it made a slow, groaning sound and nothing happened until Dad, with much muttering, fixed it.

The dashboard started to make sense when I began driving and learnt basic car care from my dad. My first car was my beloved Austin A40. It was a gift from my dad and after the initial disappointment, which I kept to myself, I loved it to bits. I’d hoped for something more appealing, like a Mini, or a bright green Ford Capri. An Austin A40 didn’t offer much wow factor to a trendy seventeen year old. It was clean and tidy, had low mileage and was very reliable. The plastic dashboard had minimal things on it, very basic, but it had everything I needed.

Dad liked to tinker about with his cars. He wouldn’t get much joy these days with sealed units and computerised dashboards. Our car has all manner of things monitored. It tells us if a tyre has incorrect pressure. Dad would have relied on his eyes and checked them every week with the oil and water.

Dashboards have their place on everything, not just motor vehicles. Computers, mobile phones and household appliances. We had the misfortune to have two items reach the end of their useful lives within a week or two, and around Christmas when they are most needed. Our tumble dryer, after serving us well every winter for twenty-eight years, squeaked for the last time, then the twenty year old dishwasher released a puff of electrical smoke. Both have been replaced recently but what a search to find something suitable. I don’t want anything complicated, just something to do the job, and I don’t need anything connected to a phone app, though the new dryer has that facility, should I change my mind. Both appliances, nice and efficient, I must say, require ‘programming’ to turn them on, by going through the dashboard and clicking this and that. I’m used to simple things that turn on and off. I could choose how many minutes I wanted my old dryer to tumble. Now I have to program the new one, depending on fabric care and hope for the best. 

My Haiku,

The makers include
Instructions and warning lights
On everything now.

So complicated
With far too many features.
I prefer simple.

I don’t need an app,
Just ‘off and on, stop and go’
Suits me perfectly.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Gardens - Sanctuary Sometimes

How lovely it is to relax in the peace of a garden with a cup of tea and a good book. This desire doesn’t happen much in my easy-care outside space. It is pleasant enough, on a warm afternoon, to sit out by the flower beds and planters, admire the emerging seedlings, the fruits of my labour and settle for a quiet read. I have to choose my moment. We live in a busy neighbourhood, popular with families and there’s always someone having noisy work done. One day recently, hoping for a calm half hour, maybe longer, before children play out after school, I sat out there on our new garden bench. Within minutes, an electric lawnmower was started up close by. Not my lucky day. We have to live and let live, of course – or move to somewhere remote, north of the border – so headphones might become my new best friend for these occasional summer moments.

There is a walled garden in the grounds of the lodges where we like to stay in Dumfries & Galloway. We always go for a stroll and take an interest in what’s going on as we look round. We’ve watched it develop over many years and it is nice to follow the seasonal changes. On a sunny lunchtime last November, we enjoyed a picnic in a sheltered spot. Get the timing just right and there will be red kites circling above, coming to their feeding and conservation station nearby.

It was a warm summer day when we decided to go to Threaves Gardens in Castle Douglas. Dogs are not allowed, so we’d been denied this excursion for years. This time, it was just the two of us. Our beloved springer had gone over the rainbow bridge to doggy heaven and we were visiting new places. The gardens are beautiful and much bigger than we expected. We were as far from the shelter of the entrance gift shop and cafe as we could possibly be when the blue sky turned cloudy, quickly becoming dark, then a heavy downpour caught us, and others. We can’t rush so we just got wet. Another visit on a dry day would be good, to see what we had to miss out.

A poem from A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson, a favourite poetry book from my childhood,

The Flowers

All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener’s garters, Shepherd’s purse,
Bachelor’s buttons, Lady’s smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames—
These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people’s trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

                        Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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The Glittering Prize - Meaningful Things

I have some works of art in my house. Some are on display, others are stored for safe keeping. They are items made by my children and grandchildren, presented to me with love and received with great delight. Some are glittery and shiny, others are not, but to me these special gifts are treasured prizes which fill me with joy. Being a grandparent is a little easier than being a parent, I have found, as the grandchildren usually – not always – go home, and I don’t have full responsibility for making important decisions about them. My glittering prizes are the children themselves, though if there is something precious, it is the teaspoon fashioned from tinfoil by my son when we forgot to take one on a picnic. It has a space in my display cabinet of meaningful things.

I was watching and listening to Sir Keir Starmer’s speech on TV at the recent Labour party conference. I was horrified to see someone get to him and pour gloopy looking glitter over his head and shoulders. Luckily, it was harmless, but how on earth did he get through security? He could have had a knife, a gun, anything. For one tiny moment, as the person was removed and Sir Keir removed his jacket, I wondered if the whole thing had been staged. I soon dismissed that thought. Not a glittering prize but a worrying moment.

One of my favourite modern day poet / writers is Lemn Sissay, MBE, former Chancellor of Manchester University. In 2021 he was appointed OBE for services to literature and charity. Last year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is a trustee of the Foundlings Museum. Not bad going for someone who grew up in the care system, was treated unfairly by a family and repeated let down badly by social workers and social services at the time. He got justice eventually, but nothing could possibly compensate enough for his early life. Reading his memoir, ‘My Name Is Why’, broke my heart and I will salute his strength of character for evermore. He founded the charity Gold From the Stone Foundation which supports care leavers and every year provides Christmas dinners. His glittering prize is doing what he can to help others. Here is one of his quatrains,

‘How do you do it?’ said night.

‘How do you wake and shine?’

‘I keep it simple,’ said light.

‘One day at a time.’

Lemn Sissay  OBE, FRSL

  

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Miniature - Small and Perfectly Formed

I’ve been fascinated by my friend’s collection of dolls houses since I first saw them a few years ago. They take up the longest wall in one of her upstairs rooms. I think there are six of them, various sizes, set out on a deep shelf with drawers beneath. The drawers hold all the tiny bits and pieces not in use and items to make things or decorate with. Some of the houses have beautifully made gardens. There is a kitchen garden with vegetables growing perfectly. The inside of the houses are set out and decorated according to the time of year. It was summer one year when I was calling in to water plants and keep an eye on things while my friend was on holiday. The miniature street looked warm and sunny with open windows and a picnic on one of the lawns. I’ve seen it all decked out for Christmas, complete with tiny coloured lights and the whole thing looking splendid. It is a fabulous hobby and I used to fancy getting an Edwardian townhouse and setting it up in ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ style, or making an old-fashioned pub with a nod to my background.

The area I was keeping free for such a project became the ideal place to house the gerbils. We had two in an open fish tank filled with wood chippings, fluffy animal stuff like cotton wool and usually an empty loo roll or kitchen roll to play with. They liked running through them as if they were tunnels. When fed up with them, they ripped them into strips and added them to their nest. My children were still at primary school. The cats had gone to cat heaven, as had a couple of hamsters and we hadn’t yet introduced a family dog.

By the time the gerbils expired, so had some of my eyesight and twiddling with miniature furniture and tiny household items was beyond me. I was and still am interested in my friend’s hobby and I find pieces to gift her. One of the many Christmas trees is a present from me and we found some cakes and bakery things in a specialist shop while on one of our jaunts.

A special gift from my friend to me is something I will always treasure. She turned an ordinary shoebox into a miniature living room for me, putting in my favourite things, even a photo of my husband and I hanging on the wall. I was speechless at the time and I still love it as much as I did then. It is me. I think the knitting has fallen off the chair a few times over the years, but it’s fine, and the DVDs, CDs and books, she knows me so well.

Jane Eyre. Good choice. It would be that or Wuthering Heights, or Rebecca, but I’m glad she chose a Bronte for me. I’ve loved all of their books and I’ve been fortunate to enjoy many visits to Haworth Parsonage. One visit was in the summer of 2005. It was 150 years since Charlotte’s death and a special exhibition displayed some of her clothing and personal belongings. At only 4’6” tall and slim, she was very petite. Her outfits were almost miniature versions of her sisters’ attire. Her boots and bonnets, like those of a child’s. Luckily for me, the hand-written miniature books, at least some of them, were on show.

When the Brontes were children, their father, Rev. Patrick Bronte, gave them a box of wooden toy soldiers. Each child chose their own soldier, gave them names and made them into characters for what became the stories of Glasstown. The children branched out, Charlotte and Branwell wrote about Angria, and Emily and Anne wrote about Gondal. They wrote their stories in tiny script using fine nibs and magnifying glasses then made them into little books for the toy soldiers to hold. Not all have survived, but I’m glad for what has been saved.

I need another visit, when we can.

My poem,

Perched on the chilly window seat
She looked down, watching the mourners
Moving slowly with the coffin,
Listening to the solemn drum beat
For the second time that morning.
Squinting through the grey, wint'ry mist
Beyond the gravestones to the church
Her whispered prayer clouded the glass
And she drew a 'C' in her breath,
Just as Branwell beckoned her down
To write Angria's next chapter
For their soldier's miniature book.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading, stay safe, Pam x

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Journey - My Epic Travels

We are all on our journey of life. We may visit many places, some planned, some unexpected, taking the good with the bad because that’s how it has to be. We may stay put, allow our imagination to take us travelling and pretend we can survive at the bottom of the ocean cocooned in a submarine, safe from Covid 19. I’m not sure if that’s a dream or a nightmare.

Lockdown again, I’m isolating again and my planned trip to Dumfries & Galloway later this month has been rearranged for springtime. I’ll miss the pre-Christmas break which includes a special dinner in Kirkcudbright for my birthday, and the Christmas gift shopping which I like to do there. Meanwhile, as safe as I can be at home, I’ll look forward to next year, optimistic for better times ahead and maybe make the long journey to Orkney.

When our children were little, we had wonderful family holidays in Pembrokeshire. It took all day to get to our destination and the journey could be made tedious by excited kids driving each other mad.

“Will you tell her? She’s nipping me!”

“Mum, he’s put spit on my leg!”

And much wailing. This would be happening before we left the M55. Threats to return home might shut them up for a while.  We would leave the M6 at North Wales and take the scenic route to our first stop at Bala. There’s a lovely playground where we would have our picnic lunch and the children would have fun playing nicely together. Back on our way and they would hate each other again. Sometimes I would swap with the eldest and put him in the front. The youngest would not be nipping me. The long drive was worth it. We would stay two weeks and a bit more, and enjoy a great time.

Holidays when I was a child, were usually spent staying with seldom seen relatives. My aunt and uncle on my father’s side lived in London and other places in the south of England. The journey to get there would be epic and it was always night time when we arrived. Three things were likely to happen to make us late. Top of the list, somewhere in the midlands I would get travel sick. This definitely, always happened and my seaside bucket would miraculously appear. It didn’t make me feel better, but hopefully, the use of it would protect the leather upholstery of Dad’s Mark 2 Jaguar, or whichever model he had at the time.  We would become lost. These journeys were in the days before the motorways linked up, so we would be south, somewhere, following a map and some instructions of which way to go after we’d run out of M6 or M1. I seem to remember this happening around Banbury. My mother, attempting to keep spirits up and sickness down would have me and my sister singing ‘Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross’ and to look for the statue. I don’t think we ever saw it. Eventually, after my dad had opened the window to ask friendly pedestrians for directions, we would be doing a ‘U’ turn and getting back on our way. Then the car would break down. A cloud of steam would rise from the open bonnet. Dad would roll up his shirt sleeves, wait for the engine to cool – this took time – replenish the water in the radiator and hope it fixed it. He usually knew what to do, but if he was stumped, he would have to find a telephone box to call the AA out. We would arrive at our relatives after dark, hungry, tired and very happy to be made welcome. Happy family times.

Isle of Harris

I wrote this poem after a lengthy journey to the North West Scottish Highlands. The scenery was and is breathtakingly beautiful.

I’ll Take the High Road

Sun-yellow gorse meets a bright blue sky

Where mountains seem low and clouds are high.

Single track, crumbled edge, shared with sheep,

The drop is sharp, the climb is steep

Then dips to touch the shore of the loch

Where gentle waves lick tumbled rock.

Then swift ascent and a chance to pause,

Admire the view and brown-heather’d moors.

Mile after slate-grey mile and some more,

Then, at last, we reach our cottage door.

The road ends where the loch becomes sea,

Dolphins are playing and I feel free.

 

Pamela Winning

May 2014

Thanks for reading. Stay safe, Pam x

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Tracks - We'd Better Make Tracks

It is the moment I dislike the most. Our peaceful time in Scotland, staying in the quiet of a hidden-away lodge has reached an end. The car is packed for home. The rooms of our accommodation  are clean and tidy, we’ve checked and double-checked for anything forgotten and one of us says, ‘We’d better make tracks’.

The fact that we’ll be returning soon is of no consolation when the sadness of leaving has already taken hold.

I’ve been trying to find out where the term ‘making tracks’ originated and it is so frustrating not to discover a definitive answer. All I have found is a reference to early 1800s slang for running away in a hurry and leaving footprints. 

Quote -  “This nineteenth century American colloquialism was recorded by Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865) in his ‘Sam Slick’ papers, which originally appeared in a Nova Scotia weekly in 1836, as well as several earlier journals…”

I wanted to know why the saying is ‘making tracks’ when ‘following tracks’ seems to make more sense. I hoped to learn something more and I haven’t, so if any reader knows, please share with me.

‘We’d better make tracks’ was my father’s way of bringing a summer picnic to an end on a Sunday tea-time. Pubs were closed between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in those days. My family would get together and drive in convoy to a suitable destination to spend the afternoon, everyone bringing food to share. We were all based in Lancaster and Morecambe for a while and our outings were Crook O’ Lune, Littledale, Glasson Dock, Heysham and Ingleton Falls. I was aged four or five, the only child and got made a fuss of. Everyone was relaxed, life was simpler, or that’s how it looked to me. No one rushed. There would be glancing at wrist-watches and mutterings about getting back for opening time as thermos flasks and rugs were put away into car boots in a leisurely fashion.

Our first pub was in Manchester, close to Piccadilly railway station. I was too young to remember much about it, but I knew it was the Star and Garter on Fairfield Street and my walk to nursery with my father took us under a railway bridge. On a recent day at Manchester Christmas Markets with my friend, I suggested that we look at the pub, from the outside. Our train was taking us to Piccadilly so we weren’t going out of our way. I’m easily lost in a city without a coastline to guide me, so it was no surprise to find us following Fairfield Street in the wrong direction. We hadn’t gone too far, luckily. We strolled back and eventually reached the pub, took a few photos then went shopping. Later, waiting on Platform 14 for the train home, I was absent-mindedly gazing around when I realised that right in front of me, across the lower level train tracks, stood the Star and Garter. My friend and I laughed. We’d walked for ages looking for that.

Before long, it will be time for rest and recuperation in Dumfries & Galloway. The car will be packed, the house in good hands and I’ll be happy to say, ‘We’d better make tracks.’

 

I found this poem,

 

Flowered Tracks

 

The breeziness of gentle winds, leafs rustle as trees sway
Sunlight rays a partial light, that shine across the bay
Summers warmth an evening sky, are setting on the day
Dusk approaches through the trees, as the daylight goes away

Flowered tracks along the gorge, a gentle mountain breeze
Dusty valleys lead the way, past the old oak trees
Down to flowing waterfalls, the beauty that one sees
Flowered tracks floating beside, are following with ease

Deep inside the canyon walls, the water hits the stream
Shimmers from the waters edge, upon a golden gleam
The beauty of a secret place, waters merged with a sun beam
Is this a true reality, or flowered tracks last dream

Between the hills on golden ponds, lies colours of tracks flowers
Where the rocky crescent forms, and where the sunlight cowers
Moon light shadows visible, only after sunlight hours
The beauty of a litten dusk, the light the moon devours

A wolf howls above the rocks, high upon the glade
One heart beat I can hear, I am feeling so afraid
Full moons light upon my soul, the wolfs cursed life is paid
Wolf's blood bite on flowered tracks, a glistened moonlight trade

Wolfs eyes glare standing alone, no hunters and no packs
Were wolfs fangs on shadows moon, blood seeping through the cracks
A man once stood is now transformed, his humanity life lacks
The werewolf curse is fulfilled, complete on flowered tracks

 

Written by Kirk, from Hello Poetry.

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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