Friday again

Dear Diary,

Thursday morning

I am waking up, listening to the radio and I hear the talk is of the benefits of sleep. I love my bed, I daren’t go near it during the day or I am tempted to get in it. But come the night-time, night owl that I am, I don't want to waste a moment and so I delay going to bed for as long as possible. Of course I suffer for it the next day and all the following days which, if I continue the pattern, the suffering builds up until I am exhausted.

According to the guy on the radio, whoever he is, none of us are getting enough sleep and we are all suffering from anxieties, tension and low cognitive function. So the Irish are right then when they say sleep is the answer to most problems. I must admit I feel (and at my age look!) a whole lot better if I go to bed early. Early for me being ten or eleven o’clock Very early is 9 o’clock.

*

Three wishes time.
Fairy godmother, I wish I didn’t have such busy dreams. I wish for good weather for a friend who is off to the Dordogne on Friday. Showers are forecast for every day; I hope they have got it wrong for her sake. I think too of all those folk who are suffering in hospital, or undergoing painful treatment. I have a couple of friends in that situation.

*



I am collecting my favourite films as they come to mind. So far I have:

Anything with Robert Mitchum in
The Railway Children
Lady and the Tramp (original version)
Beautiful Mind
Fahrenheit 9/11
Brief Encounter
The Snowman
Dead Poet’s Society
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Love Actually
Pretty Woman
The Remains of the Day
Notting Hill
Local Hero
You’ve got Mail
American Beauty
The English Patient
Bridget Jones Diary
The Green Mile
Shrek
Field of Dreams
Iris
Whistle down the Wind
Calendar Girls
Rabbit Proof Fence
The Quiet Man
Ryan’s Daughter
Ladies in Lavender

I have changed my book choice for the book group to read in September as the library service can’t get any copies of Kaye Gibbon’s Charms for the Easy Life. If you have a copy they are selling at very high prices secondhand! I have chosen one of my other favourites instead which is Unless, the last book written by the Canadian author, the late Carol Shields. In 2002 it was short listed for the Orange prize and to my mind it should have won. Shields was one of my favourite writers and when she died it was such a loss to the literary scene. But there are still many other good Canadian and American authors.

*

My dinner guest list is almost ready. Is there a limit on numbers? Perhaps we could have several sittings on different days. It would be fun dividing the guests up into groups wouldn’t it?

Here’s mine, not complete yet.

Spike Milligan
Tony Benn
Nelson Mandela
(my three heroes)
The Dalai Lama
Mary Robinson, ex-president of Ireland
Eric Clapton
Robin Williams
Peter Ustinov
Princess Diana
Jo Brand
Alan Titchmarsh
Richard Branson
J K Rowling
Roald Dahl

I’m a bit low on females which is worrying. I will put my thinking cap on and try and think of a few more.

Of course you all know who will be cooking - JC!

*

A favourite poem of mine by Irish poet Padraic Colum 1881-

Old Woman of the Roads



O, to have a little house!

To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods against the fire,
The pile of turf against the wall!
To have a clock with weights and chains
And pendulum swinging up and down!
A dresser filled with shining delph,
Speckled and white and blue and brown!
I could be busy all the day
Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
And fixing on their shelf again
My white and blue and speckled store!
I could be quiet there at night
Beside the fire and by myself,
Sure of a bed and loth to leave
The ticking clock and the shining delph!
Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,
And roads where there's never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!
And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house - a house of my own
Out of the wind's and the rain's way.

Padraic Colum



Before I sign off,

Carol Shields wrote the book Unless when she knew she was terminally ill. There is a wonderful George Eliot quote at the beginning which is very ‘deep.’ yet somehow so comforting.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
GEORGE ELIOT

I’ll leave you to think about that one.

Bye for now,
Caitx