Wireless

I'm reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in Italian on my kindle. I figured it would be complicated enough but not too difficult since it is aimed at middle-range children, and so it has proved. One of the most powerful memories of my childhood is coming home from school in winter with my brother and sister, lighting the fire to warm a freezing house, and settling down to listen to CS Lewis on the radio. Children's Hour, it was. No television then. Oh, the magic of it! We were rivetted to the wireless, barely breathing as we followed the four children on their adventures. I hope some of the magic will still be there, but in Italian. Yesterday I went to see Angels in America, live from the National Theatre, about the AIDS crisis as it unfolded in America. It is a very powerful play, not very comfortable viewing, over four hours long. The cinema was nearly empty, and I had the back 10 rows to myself. Several people left after the first act which lasted for nearly two hours. I'm glad I went, but the waste of lives as the powers that be hedged and shirked and buried their heads in the sand was very upsetting and frustrating to be reminded of.

Hugo still has a whiff of cow dung about him, but I have to confess that I rather like it. You can keep your pig and your chicken output, in fact the farther away from me the better, but who could object to cow and horse? I blame it on a near-lifelong rural or semi-rural existence, and a game we used to play as children in Craigie's field in Ireland called "Nelson's Good Eye". It helped us build up strong immunities.

I weeded around the pond yesterday, gently hoeing the earth where it has become flattened and baked by the sun. So after the heavy rain last night I shouldn't have been surprised to see that the pond water is now completely opaque for the first time this summer. All that run-off loose earth. I only knew there had been a storm because the two girls in the filling station where I went to get my paper this morning were chatting about it. "We was flooded down Parham way this mornin'" said one. "You could scare get along the road that was so deep in water." "I never heard no storm," responded the other one, leaning on the counter with bleary eyes and propping her head on her arms. "I had a right old night in the pub and can't even remember gettin' to bed. That didn't have no effect on me then, that didn't." I was with the second girl, though I hadn't had a right old night. Glass of Sauvignon with my chicken, that was all. And I had the window wide open too. Come to think of it I did hear the wisteria cracking against the glass, and I cursed the two fat near-fledgling wood pigeons which are still there overspilling the nest right under my bedroom, stopping me trimming the long tendrils back. Get you gone, I cry silently, but every morning when I peer down at them and they look up at me with frightened eyes, my heart melts. Stupid creatures. But still creatures.