The rain is falling, wetting my face like a squeezed-out flannel, but I am in the open, looking down below. Behind me is the last “folly” (see profile pic in comments section) built in the UK, in 1935. It is (shades of reporter’s-law here!) closed. From the top you can see the Uffington White Horse. I am looking down the sloping fields where autumn leaves stick in the muddy grass like people drowning after falling off The Titantic. (If this was for a newspaper, I would never get away with THAT one!).
Rain or no rain, I’m having a picnic. There is something about being alone, I always wished to be alone, Greta Garbo had nothing on me. I loved my family and my few friends, but I was happy being alone. This could be a natural male desire, as in crowds the old impulses rise, to fear other men, to love the women, to be careful not to walk into infants, all produces stress and has perhaps done so since the caveman era.
Anyway, here I am among the fircones, the blackberries, and of course the drizzle. The latter turning from wind-wet hatching to a spluttering drizzle that is ruining the page of my page-a-day diary. Great notebooks these are, with their own index and brought each Easter at considerably less than half-price from an old mate who is the manager of the diary-making firm.
Sheltering under a hawthorn tree (I can tell by the seeds), I realise I have to give up this reportage and head back down into the small friendly town.
I stop at the Folly pub and drink a pint of West Berkshire Brewery malt.
End of the sojourn, after which it was the usual, library, fish n chip shop, and so on. The one big interest in the town is one of the poet laureattes came from here, building himself the large manor house behind the church.
Henry James Pye was no Wordsworth. Sir Walter Scott summed the man up as “respectable in all except his comtemptible prolificy”. King George lll penned “What? Why? Why more Pye?” and the nursery rhyme “Sing a song of sixpence” was a satire on both the man and his style of verse.
(From) Faringdon Hill by Henry Robert Pye.
No steep accent* we scale with feverish soil,
No rocks alarm us, and no mountains foil.
But as we gently tread the rising green
And large and more large extends the spacious scene.
Till on the verdant top our labour crow’d,
The horizon is our only bound we vow’d.
(* ascend)
—
Terry Cuthbert.
Comments (19)
In my opinion, there is nothing on earth better than being alone.
Hello and hello, it’s so nice to meet this way, Xanga buddies and friends from around the world, a typewriter key away.
I have a lot of alone time and I value it as I can be very productive. On the other hand, I find great satisfaction in being alone but with my favorite counterpart, my husband. We can be alone together and be very productive and it is not nearly as “lonesome”. I have spent way too many hours by myself.
The world is so unceasingly amazine, her past and her present and the introduction to me of “the White Horse” was so very welcome. It is so hard to imagine what people were capable of with so crude of tools and to see something of this size worked out and lasting is a story worth hearing. Thanks for that view of something I would not have heard of otherwise.
Back to being alone, your picnic related as a wonderful experience. To pack a little lunch, walk out to view wonders man made or natural, feel the sun warm on your back or feel the drizzle of rain while shuffling thru the leaves, this all is a marvelous time. I am looking out my door as I type and I see the sun shining here but I see your story passing before my eyes as I look out and it’s a good view.
In actuality, I liked the addition of the writing of Henry James Pye. He may have been no Wordsworth but he was no less than what we are here in Xanga and I liked what you relayed that he wrote. Maybe I am more accepting of the less than spectacularly famous.
I presume this was the English bit you wanted me to see .I have seen the white horse, I see at the top you say you will end up as a worm , no need, be cremated then you will be ash. I did not understand about what you wrote on Coal Miners Daughters site aS I DIDN’T SEE IT. i SHOULD KEEP MY NOSE OUT OF AMERICAN POLITICS IT ANNOYS THE BUSH SUPPORTERS WHAT AMAZES ME IS THAT ANY CAN STILL WANT HIM.. Anyway I am finished talking about politics, it is a touchy subject, and I cannot, nor do I wish to influence anybody. I have never been to this site, do you write on them all everyday. Cheers Marj
NO PICNICS HRER>>>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I do understand what you are saying but I’m afraid describing meeting your maker as meeting the bucket isnt my style. So I suppose I will just be my old boring self!
I was raised on the Beach Boys. My mom used to love them so I heard them alot growing up. I got my daughter a CD so I could introduce her to them. Now she plays them all of the time. SURF’S UP!
thanks for the invite Terry.. feeling a bit down today.
i know the importance of being alone. only too well.
take care.
fircones, blackberries and drizzle — sounds like a pastry shop -sweet- it is lovely over here.
Great post! Witty and informative.
Peace.
PS: I’ll be posting something new in the next 24 hours. I haven’t looked through my notebooks to pick something out yet as my dad is worsening, and I have spent half of today at the hospital where one of my cousins (Plunkett side of the family) was suddenly admitted last night. It seems that Bill (my cousin) has suffered a brain aneurysm. They just took him off life support, and we’re expecting him to die in the next few short hours.
It seems the dark stormy clouds of life are pouring down with death for my family at this moment. I wonder… if bad things usually come in three’s, who’s next to die? Could it be me?
Peace.
yea. ur so right. i find it very hard to love. as you can tell. i cant even love my mother much. i love her for the point that she is my mother. but beyond that. i dont. its different. i dont believe in love beyond that. or in hate. there to pure of emotions. ones that we dont really know.
I still love the Beach Boys.
this is a refreshing sort of trip you’ve shared with us on here… being alone in places as you’re depicting is less burdensome
)
Hi Clowne!
A picnic in the rain. Sounds refreshing.
DUDE I’M SO CONFUUZED!!!! but thanx for the compliment on my poetry… poetry is what keeps me living man!
PINEAPPLE…I CATCH UP LATER…I THNK I SAID THIS ABOUT A WEEK OR SO AGO…I AM TIRED IN MY WINGS…MY EYES ARE BURNED…A BABY DRAGON IS PULLING THIS PLUG EVERYTIME I GET ON///IF THERE IS ONE DISCIPLE…PLEASE…LET HIM SHOW SHEW HIMSELF
TOODLES
BECKON CALL..I AM SIGNING OFF NOW SICK AND EVEN MORE TIRED OF DRAGON BREATH…
I’ve been there to the Vale of the White Horse …some years ago, but I expect it’s much the same. By the way I found a lovely painting of a pinapple in a book of chinese art. It described it as a complex fruit…I immediatly thought of you!
who are you and why did you do this to me…please answer….i suspect you are splintered and I do noy appreciate it…beck
This is EXACTLY why he was known as the Mad King George. Who doen’t want more pie?
I think apple pie is my favorite and I also like to eat it alone. Or maybe with ice cream.
Pete
PINEAPPLE…sometimes,mmost times,I DDO NOT understand you…I have tried…tralking is rhymes all of the time…is CONFUSION…you know what they say about CONFUSION…..
blessings…beckon call