March 30, 2005

• THE CLOWNE ON TOUR.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Woodstock.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  In a week when I’ve gotten my first American book published, and in a week where I have been updating my bizarre Surname lists, despite sneering guest-book comments…and in the first week I am in serious gear about going to Texas, one would think I’d have enough on my plate without taking my blog for a tour.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I’ll post a LINK about Bleinheim Palace as it’s the park and not the palace and gardens I’m off to visit.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I have been here five times, all with kids. I have seen the house, the secret gardens, the butterfly museum, the little railway, the maze and everything else, but I have never toured the large park. I know that Autumn would be more romantic with fancy-coloured trees and delicious mushrooms, but I felt I wanted to come here today. (One of my photos -link-)
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I have photos but my scanner isn’t working, got one somewhere on my site, have to find it.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  A couple of addiums: Colin Dextor’s first Inspector Morse book was called “Last Bus to Woodstock”, and when there was a pop festival inside Bleinheim Park, it was billed as “The OTHER Woodstock”.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Woodstock itself is a quiet typical English large village with it’s thatched cottages, pubs, old tea “shoppes”, and gift shops. It is very expensive to buy into. Woodstock has a dullish museum and not a much better church, though I might have felt down when I visited both.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  To come here alone might at least give me a good monoblog of sorts. The main street has it’s stocks and it’s lynch-gate, but is spoilt by also being one giant car park. Now I am not anti-car, but this is absurd, fumes and slamming car doors can’t be very poetical.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  It’s six quid to look around the park but once an Oxford reporter told me that the park itself is free to journos so I took my lifelong press-card with me. It costs me nothing to update, and being poor I see no reason to pay such a bossy entrance price, I wonder if American parks charge high entrance fees,
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I’m in, and I ignore the castle area and walk stright into sheep-land.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I walk into a pine-wood, I find a quail feather (if I run out of biros it’ll be very handy!) The wood is split into two, on the outside are firs with pine-cones everywhere, inside are newly budding oaks and elms and chestnut trees. This is where mushrooms will sprout in autumn, that is on those parts not covered by nettles.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I do not linger long in the woods, just stay long enough to soak it in for my poems, especially for a Sophie poem.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  In a poem called “Culver Cliff” I mentioned the Duke of Yarborough’s monument in the Isle of Wight, here I am by the Duke of Marlborough’s monument, but it’s too open for romance.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I just manage to cock my screwed leg over an electric sheep fence. Geese and moorhens are on the massive lake (too big to see the far side, though it is rain-misty). There is nothing like water to calm the nostrils. It might be the womb, the everlasting desire, that men have more than women, the desire to get back inside their mothers… or it might be the blame of William Wordsworth, but water is calming.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I write two Sophie Lucy Morgan poems, but as neither is about this, I’ll put them into the present LP blog.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  It might be the end of March but the grass is still covered by brown dead leaves.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Been in the Gardens for over two hours, not wrote much but had a great walk. It’s only the third time I’ve used my card since I “retired”, better not take it to Texas, they might demand a visa!
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Into Old Woodstock, (map) and there is a zebra crossing with belisha-beacons LINK, something one no longer see in cities. I turn off to walk alongside the River Glyme and it’s water meadows. The Glyme is more of a babbling brook than a river in reality. A sign: Danger, Hidden Ponds. I close my eyes on a bench, there are planes flying into Kidlington (Oxford) Airport, two miles down the road, then the now heavy rain is
  

  
  

  splashing in my face, other noises include the wind, geese, pigeons, and of course traffic, but the main sound is water going down a weir.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  What better place to end the journy with a sorjoin in the 14th Century old coaching inn “The Duke of Marlborough”. A lovely pocketty old building.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  On THE SARAHS’ site The Goliaths are taking on religion, trying to get an intelligent quote that could change their life for ever.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  The Clowne from Clown.
  

  
  

   

  
  

  Three_Headed_Sarahs Where their sons, after ignorance from a Christian and rudeness from a Muslim have joined Zen Buddaism to the ff % 243 religion of the Goddess of the Egg. (Don’t read unless you are nuts!)

  
  

   

  
  

  LordPineapple with three poems “by” Sophie, two wrote at Blenheim Park (though not about the park.)
  

  
  

   

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Link to my NEW book http://www.cafepress.com/assortedfruits

  • 9:31 am
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