ABC Wednesday......

O is for Overcast........ views from my back garden half an hour ago. It's sunny but more rain is approaching.

It's hard to plan things at the moment. One day it's fine, the next we have downpours. Saturday was the warmest day of the year so far. Now it's cold and rainy again. See? How do you plan things? Yesterday wasn't so bad and I bought some herbs to plant out today. Looks like they'll be staying in pots for little longer!


O is for Overgrown.......Another snap from my garden half an hour ago! This is rosemary. I think it may be a little overgrown!

But why trim it back? All it will reveal is boring decking. I'd rather have the rosemary. Frogs hide under the lower branches sometimes. And when baby sparrows have first fledged, they snuggle in and hide here too, waiting for parents to return with food.

Sometimes part of the garden might look a little scruffy to human eyes, but these are the places nature likes best!

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For more info ABC Wednesday posts, go to Mrs Nesbitt's blog

where you will see a blogroll of those taking part.

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ABC Wednesday......

N is for National Day..

Today is St George's Day, the patron saint of England, and is England's National Day.


I don't have a St George's flag. I do know where a few are being flown today, but thanks to a horrible cold virus I'm not going anywhere today...

I do, though, have a few dragons. So here you are.This is a Chessell Pottery dragon called Wilbur. Chessell no longer exists so as dragons go, he is quite rare. This is called "Wilbur's First Flight". Ahhh....
These little ones are called Norbert. Both of them. So I call them Norbert 1 and Norbert 2.

Happy St George's Day, to anyone with any Englishness in them!

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For more info ABC Wednesday posts, go to Mrs Nesbitt's blog

where you will see a blogroll of those taking part.

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A New Look At Cats

Watch this.
Just do.
Watch it.
I don't care if it's 6 minutes long.
It'll be one of your best 6 minutes, I promise.
Oh, and watch out for the yodelling.

ABC Wednesday......

M is for MINSTEAD................

.......................and MAISY

MINSTEAD is one of the villages we visited when we were in the New Forest last week.
It's a tiny place.
But it had something in the graveyard that I wanted to see...

....so, up the hill to the church we went:

...see the double lych gate? Apparently they're very rare. The block in the centre of this one is a coffin rest. You rest the coffin there as you walk in either side....

Just inside the gate is half a yew tree. Really! It was very old, and split after a storm a few years ago. The parish voted to keep what was left. The resulting carcass effect is a rather eerie welcome....

We walked around to the back of the church, and here it is, what I came to see:

The grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
writer and creator of Sherlock Holmes.

STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
Arthur Conan Doyle
Knight
Patriot, physician & man of letters.
22 May 1859 - 17 July 1930
and his beloved wife
Jean Conan Doyle
reunited 27 June 1940

I love the way someone has left a pipe!The grave is near to a big oak tree:
In actual fact, he isn't buried here. This is his wife's grave. Arthur was not permitted to be buried in the main part of the graveyard because he was a Spiritualist. Instead, he is buried "on the outskirts of the graveyard". Hmmm...

Anyway. We turned to walk the other way back to the front of the church- because when I was little I was told that it is unlucky to walk anti-clockwise round a church- "Never go widdershins round a church" was the saying. But don't ask me where "widdershins" comes from!

On my way I spotted this unusual angel:It stood out to me because, although not overlarge, the figure was clinging to the back of the headstone. I've never seen this kind of memorial before. Angels usually kneel at the front or stand hugging a cross, or have their backs subsumed into the main headstone. This is different: meditative, thoughtful. Even a little playful.She is draping some roses over the stone.
I was moved, and wanted to know who had inspired this.....MAISY Elisabeth Smith.
She died at just 10 weeks old on 26th April 2000.

I wanted to take more photo's but something held me back from doing so. It seemed wrong.
The Conan-Doyle grave was different- maybe because he was famous. Or perhaps because that was longer ago. I didn't know Maisy's family. To take more pictures felt like a sneaky theft.

So instead I stood the flowers up that had toppled over. Tidied off a few dead leaves and read the inscription. When I got home, I was surprised to see that I hadn't even photographed that. But I do remember the gist of what it said: that Maisy had been so "loving and giving, and exactly what the world needed, but maybe Heaven needed her kind more, to help look after us all". I think that was it.

I felt uncomfortable beside the austere cross of the Conan Doyle grave. But I had to pull myself away from this one. It was starting to rain, my partner had started to walk back to the car, and maybe this interest in a grave was starting to look weird. So eventually I left Maisy and her angel behind.

It had been nice to see a more recent and more tender monument, seemingly beautifully indifferent to being in the shadow of an 800 year old building, its fractured yew and its more famous residents.

I don't have any faith to speak of any more. And that's another story. But like I recently read of Julian Barnes, "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him." ...I have to admit there was a sweetness around this little resting place. I left it with a lilt inside that returned now, just as I typed this. And I will remember it far longer than the more renowned grave by the impressive oak.

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By the way, I didn't think about using "M for Maisy" when I took the photo's. This only occurred to me the other day. I think if I had thought of it at the time it would have stopped me taking the pictures at all.

It seems her anniversary is coming round soon (26th). Spare some thoughts for Maisy and her family when it does, won't you?

*****

For more info ABC Wednesday posts, go to Mrs Nesbitt's blog

where you will see a blogroll of those taking part.

*****

ABC Wednesday......

L is for LATE.....

and LYMINGTON

...and LOW.....

I was away last Wednesday.
My partner & I went off to the New Forest for a few days.
Hence the late posting for "L".

So here we go.....
...some cobblestones from Lymington, one of the places we visited...
....first looking uphill...
then pointing the camera straight down:

and some LOBSTER POTS from LYMINGTON HARBOUR

The harbour was cold but busy and refreshing....

But despite LONG walks through beautiful scenery,I began to sink LOWER
and LOWER.......till on Friday I was Lower than I have been in a very long time.

Regular observers of this blog will know a little about how Bi-polar disorder affects my life.
Friday was a Low day.

In Medieval times there was an instrument of torture called The Rack.
Your ankles were fixed at one end, your wrists at the other.
Wheels were turned and your wrists and ankles were pulled in opposite directions.
You were stretched, tendons torn, sinews breaking, limb from limb.

Imagine a rack in your head.
The inner workings of your head are fixed to it.
And stretched.
All at once your mental strings are plucked, punished and pulled.

In the end I was hitting my head with my hands.
Crying.
I wanted to bang my head against the wall.
My partner stopped me.

A few Little blue pills.
A Long sleep.

It's Sunday.

I'm surfacing.......

....back to Life....but for how Long?

*****

For more info ABC Wednesday posts, go to Mrs Nesbitt's blog

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ABC Wednesday......

K is for Kit....

Here is my bear, Bob, in his Gillingham FC kit.When Bob wore this kit last season, Gillingham won. He therefore surmised that it was lucky and so refused to change out of it. Over the next few weeks, Gills got 6 wins in a row and were saved from risk of relegation.

Obviously, removal of such a lucky kit was a big event and so was caught on video:

-And that video took about 140 photo's to make, so I claim the biggest photo post!!!!

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For more ABC Wednesday posts, go to Mrs Nesbitt's blog, and check the comments on her ABC post..... the other participants are leaving their links there!

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