Word From Wormingford
Ronald Blythe spends some time messing about in boats TO THE Stour, to launch the John Constable, a fine barge, or lighter, on a fine day, the populace watching, the sun shining, and a young man in danger as in The Leaping Horse. I have been listening to Pepys on the radio, of course. But the replica [...]
In May time, Ronald Blythe’s thoughts turn to dancing THE white cat is given to loftiness in her advancing years, sitting high up in fruit trees, and on the ledge of a Tudor chimney, purring away, looking down on us, bursting with achievement. As is the late and lovely spring. Never such a rush of flowers, such [...]
Ronald Blythe takes time off to enjoy a picnic with the birds “WE WILL have breakfast with the nightingales,” Romane announced; so off we drove through the waking town. Except for us, everyone was going to school or to work. The suburbs ended abruptly; then came a kind of overture to the marshes and rivulets, [...]
Ronald Blythe finds much that is relevant in an Austen heroine AS THE countryside swarms up, and as folly in its many disguises preoccupies the nation, let us re-read Jane Austen. And particularly Emma. Emma Woodhouse, you will recall, was “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition”, and “seemed to unite some [...]
Continue reading about Word from Wormingford – 19 April 2013
Ronald Blythe is on duty in the garden – and in the house THERE is quite a lot of noise about silence at the moment. Quietness suits me better. Silence cuts out the wind in the plum trees, Mozart, etc. Is quietness the diminutive of silence? Not to me. It is too great for that. [...]
Continue reading about Word from Wormingford – 12 April 2013
Ronald Blythe finds plenty to think about in the Easter liturgy IN THE old liturgy, there are readings for Monday and Tuesday in Easter Week, then a great jump to the First Sunday, the content of these readings being more than enough for any Christian to contemplate. Their stories are filled with physicality, of eating [...]
Ronald Blythe spends time in the Oxford of Lewis Carroll OXFORD in the rain. The cobbles shine; the colleges have emptied. But the city is full for the Literary Festival. From my window at Christ Church, I am able to look into Alice’s garden. Japanese tourists pass by in scores and dozens, each group holding [...]
Continue reading about Word from Wormingford – 28 March 2013
Ronald Blythe dons a cap, and rakes and sweeps in the garden BIG, handsome birds – green woodpeckers, collared doves -bounce around. The wind is sharp, and there is water, water everywhere. It glitters over the pastures, and makes the thinnest of March ice. Passiontide is inescapable. Passiontide, with its painful, yet sumptuous, hymns and [...]
Continue reading about Word from Wormingford – 22 March 2013
Ronald Blythe listens to a reading of a Walt Whitman poem A PAIR of jays, dressed to the nines, swing warily from the holly bush – although the whole village knows that the white cat has never caught a thing in her life, being sloth incarnate. Yet the fine birds look down on my feast [...]
Continue reading about Word from Wormingford – 15 March 2013
Ronald Blythe is taken on a drive, and feels a spring gladness WE VERGE on Lent 3. David and I bump along the valley floor in his Land Rover. Ploughs are out everywhere; the gulls are spoilt for choice. Owing to the rain, nothing could be done until today. The sodden months passed one by one, [...]
