Little Red Riding Hood

Tags

acrylic painting, fairy tale, grandmother, Little Red Riding Hood, visiting the elderly

Acrylic painting by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Hannah More (1745-1833)

Tags

anti-slavery, bas bleu, Belmont, Blagdon, Clapham set, Cowslip Green, Fishponds, Hannah More, Mendip Hills, nervous breakdown, philanthropist, religious tracts, Tyntesfield, Walpole

Hannah More by Pickersgill

A quennet for a woman who made a fortune with her pen:

 

fourth daughter   Gloucestershire born   Mendip Hills

poetic landscape

religious tracts   pastoral plays   Sunday education

nervous collapse

‘strange affair’    Bleeding Rock   jilted female

small annuity

bas bleu

Blagdon cottage

Clapham Sect

petticoat bishop

Cowslip Green

anti-slavery

bold philanthropist

strange plays   female education    pastoral landscape

religious rock.

 

 

Children’s Sculpture at Kingham

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children's art, Cotswolds art, Kingham Lodge, plastic bottles, re-cycling, Sculpture, sculpture in the garden

Made by children from Bledington School, from plastic bottles.

French Parenting: Carousel Decoration

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carousels, child supervision, French fairground rides, health and safety, parental advice, Parenting

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Pick up!

Tags

anti-social behaviour, dog walkers, environmental care, fouling, poo bags

Seen on one of my walks last week. Take note, poo-ligans!

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Teach Me To Number My Days

Tags

insight, Isolation, meditation, pandemic, questioning, self-analysis

Image: Abacus HB Wikipedia

Weirdly I wrote this in 2019, before the pandemic. It seems appropriate now…

TEACH

Life has many lessons: what have I learned?

Maybe I should not have stayed in teaching.

Who was doing the teaching anyway?

And can one really teach old dogs new tricks?

 

ME

Too much of my life has been about me.

You might be a much better focus now.

Yesterday’s me is different from today’s.

You are a different companion too.

 

TO NUMBER

 

I decided to try and work it out.

Crusoe should have had a calculator!

They say that age is only a number.

Twenty four thousand days I have wasted.

 

MY DAYS

 

I seek forgiveness for those I have spent

in self-serving; not in others’ service.

Often I did not stand up; be counted,

but I reach out to you through poetry.

 

TEACH ME TO NUMBER MY DAYS

 

Numbering can be about gratitude –

that we are here, albeit so briefly.

Rossetti enumerated her love.

Noah counted pairs solicitously.

 

 

We count the minutes on The Doomsday Clock:

to reach midnight, we only count to two.

Teach me to number all the days I’ve left,

thus I will eke out all my time with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good Friday by John Donne

Tags

crucifixion, Good Friday, John Donne, Metaphysical poets, salvation, St Paul’s Cathedral, the cross

John Donne’s monument in St Paul’s Cathedral ( in his shroud)

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

 

By John Donne

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,

The intelligence that moves, devotion is,

And as the other Spheares, by being growne

Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,

And being by others hurried every day,

Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:

Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit

For their first mover, and are whirld by it.

Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West

This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.

There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,

And by that setting endlesse day beget;

But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,

Sinne had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see

That spectacle of too much weight for mee.

Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;

What a death were it then to see God dye?

It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,

It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.

Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,

And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?

Could I behold that endlesse height which is

Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,

Humbled below us? or that blood which is

The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,

Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne

By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?

If on these things I durst not looke, durst I

Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,

Who was Gods partner here, and furnish’d thus

Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?

Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,

They’are present yet unto my memory,

For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards mee,

O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;

I turne my backe to thee, but to receive

Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.

O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,

Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,

Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,

That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face.

 

Exhortation

Tags

exhortation, love thy neighbour, Scottish Makar, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Scottish poet, Ten Commandments, William Dunbar

William Dunbar 15th century Scottish poet. 

Photo by Stephen C Dickson (Wikimedia)

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

 

To God be humble,

to thy friend be kind

and with thy neighbour, gladly lend and borrow;

his chance tonight,

it may be thine tomorrow.

Social Distancing (Alpaca style)

Tags

alpacas, coronavirus, social distancing

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

You Want Rembrandt – You Got Rembrandt!

Tags

Ashmolean, portraits, Rembrandt, Young Rembrandt

From the recent Young Rembrandt Exhibition.  Photos by Candia.