Personal Columns – Page 2 – For the fainthearted . . .

No longer a race for space

‘US Moon Mission runs into technical hitch’ says a BBC headline this evening.

To be honest, the entire space exploration enterprise seems to have hit the buffers fifty years ago. My boyhood self would have been very disappointed, space intrigued me.

It was maybe 1967; much earlier, and the moment would have been beyond memory; much later, and the occasion would not have have assumed the aura it still possesses.

My aunt, uncle and cousins were coming home on a visit – from Canada. In 1967, air travel was expensive, …

Poached

‘Poached.’

I assume it is Hiberno-English, or perhaps just part of the vernacular of farming life in rural Ireland.

‘Poached,’ describes the areas around gateways to fields and water troughs during wet times of the year. Anyone wintering out livestock will be familiar with grass that has been poached. Green pasture transformed to deep, clagging mud by the heavy tread of cattle.

The first time I heard a farmer declare that he could not turn out cows onto the fresh grass of spring because the ground was so wet that …

Drinking tea

Does one drink tea in the way that one might eat chocolate? As a comfort, as a distraction? Perhaps.

Sitting drinking a mug of tea, slow, reflective music played on the radio. It seems that it was by a German composer called Nils Frahm. It was almost minimalist, the silences between notes as important as the sound between the silences.

It was music without memories, music into which one might escape from the array of images that are evoked by much of the music played.

To escape for a few …

The face of Vincent

Sitting on a bench in the park at Auvers-sur-Oise yesterday, I pondered the face of the statue of Vincent van Gogh. Walking through Giverny this afternoon, there was a sense of how different were Vincent and Monet.

There is an episode of the Eleventh Doctor Who when the Doctor, with his companion Amy, encounter Vincent. In a moving moment, the Doctor transports Vincent to an art gallery in the 21st Century so that the troubled artist can eavesdrop on the words of art lovers who are enjoying the brilliance of …

Imagining a day in the garden

There is no more cheering sight in springtime than the racks filled with packets of garden seeds that appear in shops. The seedsmen know the value of colour and the seed packets are a bright display amongst much that is mundane in hardware shops. Vegetable pictures are as attractive as those of flowers. Packets for artichokes are as striking as those for azaleas, those for zucchini as pleasing as the packets for zinnia.

When I was a child, the seed packets represented happy times. Dad would plant the back garden …

A jacket with memories

‘Sir, you are looking very bright today.’

‘It’s summer,’ I said, ‘I have switched to summer uniform.’

Linen jackets have been procured in various charity shops, they are part of a rotation that includes a jacket with particular memories

It was a jacket that was banned when I lived in Dublin before. ‘You look like a farmer heading to the mart.’

While this did not feel an uncomplimentary comment, it seemed a reason to bar the wearing of the checked-patterned fawn-coloured jacket with its bright yellow lining when going to …