We shall grow older and our hair turn from darkness to light, yet our same heart is in there beating its melody every second.  Beating, beating, bathing our brain that's keeping some of us sane and able to perform intricate tasks.  Instructing our limbs, nerves and organs and at the merest hint of a thought from us, our brains can conjure up a picture of a person, a place, a painting.  I am thinking of a painting.  The Fighting Temeraire, by Turner, a painting I had on my bedroom wall when I was thirteen.There was something in that painting that made me feel calm.  Maybe it was the great ghostly ship smoothly emerging from the mist accompanied by the vibrant tugboat in the glory of a golden sunset.  Turner referred to this painting as "My Darling" and apparently refused to sell it.  I still love it!

To S,  Forty-Four Years Friends.

Searching for signs to follow
In fog
I have groped by pits and snares,
My many wild words mirrored
Chambers of a cold eternity.
But look now-
Utterly unsummoned comes tripping along
My longest friend.
She gazes into my eyes
Finds in them no premonition of a tear,
But only kisses, smiles
And every easy laugh.

Friday morning's still seem more exciting to me somehow even though I've retired now.  Maybe today it's the Autumn sunshine streaming through the blinds lighting up the minute diamonds of condensation or the shifting shadows and sunlight dancing lazily upon the glass.  I can't quite catch the real reason why Friday seems to hold promise for me still.  Is it so ingrained upon us that the week-end means no work for the next two days?
I am so lucky, I can listen to the clock alarm trill every morning if I want to, reach for my book and tea-cup or simply relish in my thoughts of daylight hours to be filled how e're I wish.

Wood pigeons calling to the cool blue morning, church bells tolling 7.30,
an early laugh from one lone magpie.  Skywards... air is crisp and clearly blue.
Flowery china with hot black tea and John Betjeman.

Business Girls

From the geyser ventilators
Autumn winds are blowing down
On a thousand business women
Having baths in Camden Town

Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,
Steam's escaping here and there,
Morning trains through Camden cutting
Shake the Crescent and the Square.

Early nip of changeful autumn,
Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors,
At the back precarious bathrooms
Jutting out from upper floors;

And behind their frail partitions
Business women lie and soak,
Seeing through the draughty skylight
Flying clouds and railway smoke.

Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones,
Lap your loneliness in heat.
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
Trolley-bus and windy street!

Sir John Betjeman

Sixty-five thousand questions.  Who are we? Who am I, pinned down by this mysterious illness that fluctuates and dies down, flares-up and disables, makes me feel like a kaleidoscope - a myriad different colours that change shape at every move and shake.

I remember the smell of freesia as I sat in the wedding-car in my bridal veil and dress. The perfume filled the car...creamy white Freesia and Stephanotis. Where did the time go, forty two Autumns ago?  All the heart-beats, all the breaths, a thousand kisses deep.  Dear JM, where are you now?  Among the stars, gone too soon.

'Ciao, un grosso bacione'.