I thought I’d start with this as my Monday song…
It’s not very Monday, since it’s about Friday, but there you go. Meh.
It reminds me how much I loved The Cure when I was about 12 or 13. I was all about Depeche Mode and The Cure, Talking Heads, Echo and the Bunnymen and such. These were my big four. I bought a postcard of the single cover for Boys Don’t Cry from Affleck’s Palace and stuck it to my second year rough book. I just have to hear that guitar from Boys Don’t Cry and it takes me to a whole different world. It’s funny – I watched an episode of Criminal Minds that said whatever we were listening to at 13-14 is the most seminal music to us. I think at that time, I was a very alternative little Bowie/Cure/DM/TH/Echo girl. So big love to the pre-teen me who was finding her way listening to Black Celebration and The Game and Hunky Dory. I still have a soft spot for sad looking men with back-combed hair.
I also love that this morning it was -4 and it felt warm. There has been a distinct sound of dripping all day and I’m hoping, hoping, hoping that, pretty as this weather is, it’s going to warm up. Looking at the weather report, though, that time seems like a long time away. I usually look at Météo France, if only to pooh-pooh their weather report. Last year, they predicted rain for virtually every single one of the drought days from March to August. Not entirely sure I trust their snow prediction. XC weather are usually more reliable, plus I like their colour coded chart – it’s all greens after tonight – above freezing. That’s all to love. Monday might be blue, but Tuesday is green. Friday is dark green, and that is all good.
So… what else am I loving?
Loving the Moll barking at snowmen. I forgot how much snowmen freak her out. She had a proper bark at the one Jake built in the garden.
Loving the Popper learning to play with a bone.
Loving my nights cuddled up with Monsieur Noireau and Mademoiselle Tilly-Woo.
Loving my friends especially those who send me knitted chicks and teapots.
Loving the chickens coming out to play, even if they only go two metres out.
Loving Skype and Verbal Planet. I never thought I’d enjoy teaching adult English as foreign language, but I really am. Conversational English is where it’s at for me right now! I could safely park myself in front of the computer and go for hours talking to people from all over the world.
I’m also feeling the need to share a poem, which you can read to yourself in the style of Pam Ayres if you like. My friend Joanne made this suggestion and I think it’s rather marvellous, because I love a bit of poetry. If you don’t know Pam (and you will, if you are English and over a certain age), look her up on Youtube. I like her because she wrote a very good poem about battery hens. From henceforth, my Much Love Mondays will now not only have a song and a picture, as they have been doing over progressive posts, but also Pam Ayres Poetry Corner. I feel I’ve turned a corner in my life.
Today’s poem is Emily Brontë. She was 30 when she died. I’ve not even found my voice yet and I’m 9 years older than she was when she died.
No Coward Soul is Mine.
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven’s glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life–that in me has rest,
As I–undying Life–have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as wither’d weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine Infinity;
So surely anchor’d on
The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou were left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou–Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
What with not having a coward soul and having an unconquerable soul, I think I’ve had a bit of a theme going across these last two weeks. Maybe it’s the cold and snow that brings it out in me. I promise something a little more light in my Pam Ayres Corner next week. Perhaps Carl Sandburg, maybe Walt Whitman. Will update with a Much Love picture later… too tired for art right now!
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