Wednesday 27 November 2019

the book thief



yes he might look adorable but Rocket has turned into a book thief.


When no one is looking (obviously) he jumps onto the table and steals what he can. As it's usually books on the table it is books that he steals. That would be fine if he read them but instead he chews them. I once started a list of things he had chewed with sending him a bill in mind - like my computer charger (£25) a boot (just one mind) (£40) rolling pin (£3.50) I could go on...... but the other day I had been reading a new book I was very excited about called The Dictionary of English Field Names. (second hand £15.) What poetry was in those pages. Cat's Brain Coppice, Dancer's Meadow, Full Belly Dale, Mare's Nest Meadow . I could go on .....
Anyway Rocket ate the lot. Almost worse because it wasn't mine - he ate my friend's copy of Cold Comfort Farm.


The other week on a wet windy dark night I went to put the ducks away in the old wendy house and bending down smashed my head into the top of the door frame. Concussion was diagnosed and I have now put a notice on the door to remind me -saying - DUCK.


 Now winter is upon us the hedgehogs are coming in fast and furious to the wildlife hospital. These are ones too small to hibernate and get through the winter. There is not one that looks the same - they all have slightly different faces  and they are all completely adorable.


 Here are some digital illustrations that Chloe has been doing of most of the gang. You can have your own pet drawn too - contact her on @drawmelikethat. drawmelikethat@gmail.com



 Pocket - usually captured asleep but who at least doesn't eat any books- has offered this gem for the post this month.
To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.
Oh - I said - you've been studying Monet?
He opened one eye, looked at me and said "and you are?....."



 Pixie's piece of interesting information apart from the fact you'd never catch her eating a book is that up to 50 books can be made from one tree. So by the last count Rocket has eaten half a tree at least.








The Trees are Down

—and he cried with a loud voice:
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees—
(Revelation)
They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.
For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,
The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,
With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.

I remember one evening of a long past Spring
Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive.
I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,
But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.

The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough
   On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,
             Green and high
             And lonely against the sky.
                   (Down now!—)
             And but for that,   
             If an old dead rat
Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again.

It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;
These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:
When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away
Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.

It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;
Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,   
             In the March wind, the May breeze,
In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas.
             There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;
             They must have heard the sparrows flying,   
And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying—
             But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:
             ‘Hurt not the trees.’