A very strange thing happened the other evening.  We were just sitting down to dinner with candles lit and ruby red wine when we both heard a tinkling rill of bells.  Neither of us spoke until we heard a second rill.  It was just as though someone had picked up the bowl of silver bells I have standing in the hall and shaken it.... twice.
"Did you hear bells?" I asked.
"I did, I was just about to ask you if you heard them too."
One cat was sitting upon the window-sill behind my chair looking into the deep dark garden outside, the other was actually out there in the darkness.  So who or what rang the bells?

Do Angels Laugh (Nonet)

What is the sound of angel laughter?
Does it shiver like windblown leaves?
Does it ring out like church bells?
Tinkle like fine crystal?
Echo in the wind?
Float like a mist?
Glissando
Like heart's
Joy?


Mary Naylor

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/do-angels-laugh-nonet/

Love...love...LOVE this!!

Alas....the first video of this song, the one filmed in Hebden Bridge, England was taken off presumably copyright restrictions. Also I don't know how to delete it, so I've put on the original song with a different film of the north of England instead.

When I was born we used to live in a big house.  Not as big as the one in my header, I don't want to give the idea that we were landed gentry, but in comparison to houses around, it was big.  It didn't stand in rolling hills or fields though, it was in the heart of a smoky industrial metropolis, where fogs descended regularly so thickly you literally couldn't see the person standing a foot away from you.  A mile and a half behind the house, beyond a wood-merchants yard where the ringing sound of a massive saw mingled with the fragrance of wood sap, was the Manchester Ship Canal.  When the fog came down you could hear the melancholy sound of fog-horns from  ocean-going ships as they sailed between  factories lining the canal banks.  I was born four years after World War two ended, there were still ration-books, and the National Health Service was just a year and a month old. Our house belonged to my Grandfather who owned a plumbing business and my Father was secretary administrator, sitting at a desk just like this one in 'the office', what wouldn't I give to know what happened to that desk.  Every morning he would wrestle with its roll-top that never ran smoothly and then sit in his swivel chair to smoke his first cigarette of many.

Photo: 'Homes and Antiques' January 2011

'When they ask to see your gods

your book of prayers

show them lines

drawn delicately with veins

on the underside of a bird's wing

tell them you believe 

in giant sycamores mottled 

and stark against a winter sky

and in nights so frozen

stars crack open spilling

streams of molten ice to earth

and tell them how you drink

a holy wine of honeysuckle

on a warm spring day

and or the softness

of your mother who never taught you

death was life's reward

but who believed in the earth

and the sun

and a million, million light years

of being'

-J.L.Stanley.

Via: http://sea-angels.blogspot.com/

      http://intothewoode.blogspot.com/

      http://paper-roads.blogspot.com/    (I have searched for information as to J.L.Stanley, writer, all I can find of her is:
                                                                                  http://jlstanley.livejournal.com/ )

Midnight New Year's Eve

Standing at my window to close the blinds at just past midnight I watched a million jewelled fireworks sparkle and jostle into the sky lighting the darkness. Crackling and snapping, banging and clapping they welcomed the New Year and sent the Old Year running into the past.  A lull - occasional bursts of crimson and golden sparkling showers lit up the skyline, then I stood transfixed as it seemed to me hundreds of Fire-Lanterns rose above the rooftops and the hills.  Silent as the wishes they bore they floated in glowing abundance, carrying the whispered hopes of their protagonists upwards to the heavens and a hopeful future of health, love, happiness and peace...please God.
"Ah...if wishes were horses,
Beggars would ride!"

'Lily Lily Rose'
by, John Singer Sargent,
tate.org.uk

Long Ago -

Was it yesterday we learnt it?

In a dream,

In a dream where the whispering wind was ever warm,

And the seasons changed.

Were there snowdrops in the gardens?

Yes,

We picked them,

 White, like angel's breath.

Whilst soft mosses drenched the beech boles

To a hue most brilliant green.

Were there melodies?

Like our lives, played in lilting themes,

Carrying both hearts dreaming

Beating to the same love as before,

The kisses were not tremulous,but knowing,

And the earth stood still beneath our ever dancing feet -

Wishing you all a wonderfully peaceful and healthy  2011!

The beginning of a new decade!