The milkman used to arrive in a cart pulled by a horse...do you remember?  Probably my first encounter with a four-legged animal bigger than a dog.  As a small girl living beside a busy main road in the heart of a smoky northern town I can remember desperately wanting to be near the big russet-brown horse pulling along his cart filled with clanking tingling milk-bottles.  Back then it didn't seem in the least incongruous that a horse should be walking along tarmac roads, hemmed in on either side by buildings cheek-by-jowl with belching lorries and screeching machinery.  Horses were still a feature of the working day then.  There aren't many around any more. Not in the delivery business anyway, superseded by electric sparks, although I do get a thrill when a UPS vehicle drives up our avenue, only because it reminds me of New York,  that lovely brown colour with gold writing...mimicking the horse and the brass?

Photo: Courtesy/ http://www.britishdrivingsociety.co.uk/images/History%20gallery/pictorial_history.htm

At last it's time for 'Peonies' again!

........Extract from: Peonies

by Mary Oliver.

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,

 and softly,

and exclaiming of their dearness,

fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,

their eagerness

to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are

nothing, forever?

I'd just like to tell everyone who wrote to me with such encouragement in the last few weeks whilst I've been feeling particularly rough with M.E.  "You are ALL stars, it made such a difference reading your words!

Thank you. Thank you. x"

Hello everyone....I just wanted to thank you all for sending me LOVELY thoughts and well-wishes.  They made my heart sing! I keep hoping I've turned a corner only to discover, it was a mirage, that's the 'discombobulating' nature of M.E.

'...And it's (one step forward and two steps back)

This is all who are marching

(One step forward two steps back)

This is young and old

(One step forward two steps back)

Through the void of silence

You are not alone....'

Song,  'War at Home'  Lyrics by Josh Grobin and Dan Wilson 2010. 'Illuminations' cd.

Sorry to be away so long....

'Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot.

In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.'

-Oscar Wilde-

I've been feeling a bit rough the past couple of months.