The planes go over our house on busy times like this weekend, a bank holiday in England. The flight path is changed I presume for the abundance of extra excursion planes joining a holding pattern.  As they go over the house they are gradually loosing height  and banking over to the right.  In the distance, their wing lights twinkle and the sound of their engines alters, each time it puts me into the aircraft amongst the passengers.  Strapped into our seats anticipating the landing, some of us looking forward to sleeping in our own beds, meeting up once more with relatives and friends perhaps waiting for us now in the arrival hall, others sad that their holiday is over and they must return to the daily grind. At that moment cabin lights dim, a few nervous coughs join the murmur of voices, the cry of an infant wails out as air-pressure pains our ears, there is the rumble and roar and rush of air outside as the pilot throttles back, engines roaring as we hurtle along the runway.  That optimum moment when just for a split second I would think,
"We're not going to stop!"
Everything green and concrete rushing past at incredible speed, until the feeling of gravity thrusts in and the plane cruises to a gradual halt.  Cabin lights flicker up and one of the crew presses the intercom ping and a voice reminds us all, to,
 'Please remain seated until the plane comes to a stop.'
How many times have I been there in the past?
Returning to Manchester where it would invariably elicit a comment over the intercom from the pilot, his voice brighter, more free now that the danger of the landing is over, telling us the air temperature outside and almost always adding...."And it's raining!".

It's drizzly in the North today, wet roofs and pavements.. what's new?  It's Manchester in August in the suburbs.  Well, we're all used to it I suppose, some would say resigned, to wearing woollies in the summer and having an umbrella somewhere handy.  I'm struggling with withdrawal symptoms from a recently prescribed pill that my body decided it didn't like one little bit, so threw a big wobbly.  The GP said stop taking it.  Just like that, when on the instruction blurb it said, 'On no account stop taking this pill, always taper off over a series of weeks.'  However she said, to go on taking it means certain death..... Cheery thought that!
I think of myself now as being like a typewriter.  Well to be specific, my best friend's typewriter, back in the days well before computers, when we used to type spreadsheets on great big hulking machines in the office where we worked.  Her machine was totally temperamental, it knew when someone other than S was using it and it would go out of alignment, every time.  So I think of myself as 'out of alignment' presently.

Hello everyone, I'm really sorry not to have posted for ages now, it's just that I've not been at all well. However I am keeping positive and I do hope to be back
reading your lovely blogs once more very soon!
I hope you won't run off anywhere before that day arrives!  :))

Love and hugs,
Jane

As some of you already know I don't go out very often now, so my mind often turns to memories and remembrances.

 When my eldest daughter was small we lived in Scotland in a huge white painted farmhouse called Yonderton at the top of a long tree-lined lane.  To the left of the house stood a byre where the farmer who rented Yonderton to us kept a special cow or two.  They looked like Jersey cows to me, because their faces were soft and expressive and their hide was that wonderful honey brown shade, but being a city-bred person I probably guessed incorrectly, maybe they were just being fattened for market, a horrid thought.   'S' and I visited them often because they didn't seem to be put out into the fields, spending long days in the cowshed with only the light from the wedged open doorway and the tall sash window which was permenantly dropped open, the top over the bottom leaving a big opening to capture the sweet Scottish airs.  One morning we made our usual visit and my attention was quickly caught by a small blue fluttering bird trapped in the crevice between the two window panes.  It was too high to reach from the inside of the shed so we made our way around the front to see if I could reach it from there.  I didn't have a ladder and I'm not sure what I must have used to stand on after all the years spanning between then and now, but somehow I managed to climb up precariously, and reach down between the two panes to rescue what I now realised was a baby swallow.  This tiny blue-blue beating heart settled for a few seconds upon my outstretched palm before suddenly taking flight up up and away.  This then became my regular rescue-mission throughout the summer, as the swallow babies learnt to navigate through the opening without first having to stop on that dangerous perch atop the two sashes.  I remember I felt so privileged to be able to hold those feathers of midnight-blue lightening for a second or two, before they took off to practise more aerial gymnastics throughout those days of summer skies long gone.                                          

Swallows.  by Leonora Speyrt,  from:- 'A Canopic Jar'         Illustration: Hector Giacomelli,'With the Birds' via: archive.org

They dip their wings in the sunset,

They dash against the air 

As if to break themselves upon its stillness:

In every movement, too swift to count,

Is a revelry of indecision, 

A furtive delight in trees they do not desire

And in grasses that shall not know their weight.

They hover and lean toward the meadow

With little edged cries;

And then,

As if frightened at the earth's nearness,

They seek the high austerity of evening sky

And swirl into its depth.

                
                       You are the future, the red sky before sunrise over the fields of time.....

                            -Rainer Maria Rilke-

It's actually sunny today.  A weak winter sunshine but damp and cold .  In the suburbs the roads and roofs still wet, glisten, and drivers scrabble overhead to pull down sun-visors against dazzling beams slanting low in the sky.  Saturday afternoon is quiet here, apart from the dog living next door who barks in his boredom, having been left behind.  The postman delivered his letters and the dog hates the postman.  If I look through the side windows of our house I can just see into the bay of the semi next door.  There sits the dog on the sofa neatly pushed into the recess of the window, his shiny black nose pushed up against the glass and the offending letter lately delivered lies crumpled on the back of the window ledge, I hope they discover it.
The radio plays in our sunny conservatory here, Beethoven's, Fur Elize.


I was 23 when my Dad died.  He was five years younger than I am now, 42 years have gone by I think of him nearly every day, I have a photograph of him next to me here, by the computer.  When I was very small my Nannie, Dad's mother lived in a house about an hour away in a different Northern town.  I think I mentioned before somewhere she was a teacher and the house was full of books. There were soft carpets and oak doors with brass handles, a big clock that chimed the hours and a piano.  One afternoon I was allowed to sit on the piano stool and tinkle-plonk the keys.  There had been a piano at home, in the big house, but when we moved to a smaller terraced property following the collapse of my Grand-dad's business there wasn't any room for it, so it was hacked to pieces and the beautiful wood made into a bookcase.  There was only me and my Dad in the room that afternoon, the others were busy in the kitchen from whence came delicious smells, my Nannie probably basting the leg of lamb for dinner.  He sat quietly reading the paper, a broadsheet.  Always a broadsheet, so big that he had to hold his arms high to read it.
"Can you play the piano properly Daddie?"
The newspaper rustled and cracked as he neatly folded it down, and he looked across at me and smiled.  Rising he moved to sit beside me on the stool and softly began to play ever so quietly Fur Elize.  No music sheet, he must have memorized it.

Painting: Poul Friis Nybo  (1869-1929)  Danish painter studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.