Farewell to Jean

I`ve been `on the road` again,  to Cirencester for the funeral of my dear old friend Jean.Dickinson, a friendship that has lasted for over fifty years.   It was a right good do. One becomes a connosisseur of the funeral at my age.  It was in the huge and beautiful Parish Church with some wonderful music and poetry   The Wake was in the church too, which is a good idea for all the oldies like me who were there.      There were friends from all through her life, many I had heard of but never met, which was very poignant.      I have been having vivid dreams about Jean for the last couple of weeks and she is just as she used to be before the wretched Alzheimers took hold which is so comforting.

On the way back, I called in at my dear Russian/Cornish friends in Winchester with their five children, two of whom were born at the Quaker Meeting House where I lived before i came to Ditchling.  The children speak perfect Russian as well as English.  I find this amazing.

i`m off to the Infants this afternoon. Another whole lot of new names to learn. I had two Rubies, one Hope and an Otis in my reading group last week. All the children and staff use first names only at the school, so I am called Vick.

poems on a plate.

Brother P is staying and brought me a new book by Billy Collins called The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems. So we are continuing our practice of poetry at breakfast. Such tender, moving and yet humorous poems, we both love them. I would like to meet Billy Collins as I feel I would have instant rapport with him. Also he sometimes writes about dogs and that gladdens my heart. In one, he works out that he is 420 in dog years which is an interesting thought, I suppose I would be 615.
P and I are just about to go on the Bloomsbury trail to Charleston, Rodmell and Berwick church all of which featured in the Life in Squares on the TV.   I have been round the houses before and they have excellent guides, but brother P hasn`t, so I will walk in the lovely gardens with B Wiggins, who I am glad to report has been a Good Dog lately so I have not had any further skirmishes with the Headmaster of Dumbrells Court.
I was a bit appalled by the TV version of Lady Chatterly`s Lover as the plot bore little resemblance to the book I remember furtively reading years ago, and what ridiculous hats Connie wore for walking in the woods!  
Brother P read somewhere that it would be am amazing experience to see the sunrise from the top of Ditchling Beacon so we both crawled out of bed at 5.30am and together with B.W, we drove up there,  but sadly it was a dire disappointment.    It was shrouded in mist and there was just a weak glow in the east.  Still we both felt invigorated by such an early start and were ready for a hearty breakfast, plus poems if course.