26 Tuesday Nov 2019
Posted in History, Literature, Nature, Personal, Poetry, Psychology, Social Comment
Photo of kanji by Jmettlen on Wikimedia Commons
Even our friends’ graves
will one day be ploughed over.
Grief diminishes
through time and we smile once more.
Calligraphy on
headstones will be eroded.
The deceased’s peers die;
his name is then forgotten.
The pines which are deemed to live
for a thousand years
are, in actual fact, chopped down –
disrespectfully,
or just pragmatically,
according to how life’s viewed.
13 Wednesday Nov 2019
a recent exhibition at The Weston Library, Oxford.
26 Saturday Oct 2019
Posted in art, Arts, History, Literature, Nostalgia, Personal, Photography, Sculpture, Theatre
like Patience on a monument. (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Act 2)
Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart
24 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in Environment, Literature, Nature, Nostalgia, Personal, Photography, Poetry, Summer
hath all too short a day.
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart. Words by Shakespeare – sort of…
16 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in Autumn, Literature, Nature, Nostalgia, Personal, Photography, Sport
Twenty First Century Izaak Walton by Candia Dixon-Stuart
13 Tuesday Aug 2019
Posted in Literature, Personal, Photography, Sculpture, Supernatural
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart
25 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in art, Film, Humour, Literature, Personal, Photography, Sculpture
Have just finished watching Catch 22, so here are some more male
torsos for you
Original painting by Candia Dixon-Stuart.
Photgraphic images also by C D-S
All Rights Reserved.
07 Sunday Jul 2019
Posted in art, Film, Literature, mythology, Photography, television
Tags
Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart of the fireplace in Chavenage,
Gloucestershire. (Don’t even want to mention the Poldark
connection!)
04 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in Education, Family, History, Literature, Nostalgia, Personal, Philosophy, Photography, Psychology, Social Comment
Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart All Rights Reserved
He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears: Michel de
Montaigne
or, as my granny used to admonish: If ye fear a fear, it’ll come
upon you.
I doubt she had read Montaigne, but folk wisdom is
watered-down philosophy and not always diluted!
31 Friday May 2019
Posted in Community, History, Literature, Nature, Nostalgia, Poetry, Social Comment, Writing
Tags
Adlestrop, chicory, Edward Thomas, Evenlode, Gloucestershire, Jane Austen, Napoleonic Wars, Syrian refugees, wistaria
Adlestrop Church
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart
The Post Office is closed; a flyer pokes
out of a letter-box; thin rivulet
trickles down a bridleway, aiming for
the Evenlode. A profusion of blue
chicory shivers in the breeze. The church,
sanctified by its topiary cross –
reminiscent of Jane Austen’s necklet
which she wore as she left the rectory
on merciful missions to village poor –
stood firm during Napoleonic Wars.
Its roof vault is as azure as that sky
the poet contemplated on his brief halt,
when his depression lifted on hearing
birdsong, which trilled above the hiss of steam.
From trenches, could he see that cloudless square?
When someone failed to set the station clock,
did Time itself revolt at what would come?
Could we also be on the brink of war?
Yet pale Wisteria seems to conquer
fear and heraldic tulips blazon hope.
A yellow poster in the bus shelter
promises that all money raised
from a talk on Edward Thomas will fund
Syrian refugees – will help those ‘wontedly,‘
or wantonly, driven out of their homes.
Who will attend? Some wealthy weekenders?
Thomas never actually made it here,
although his spirit is ubiquitous.
Pervasive silence invites us to pause,
in the name of Poetry and Beauty,
before all clocks are permanently stopped
and there are no more birds in Gloucestershire.
