A Poem by Kingsley Amis

I am still browsing the Kingsley Amis biography (by Zachary Leader), and found this poem - untitled, undated, and unpublished until after his death.

Things tell less and less
The news impersonal
And from afar; no book
Worth wrenching off the shelf
Liquor brings dizziness
And food discomfort; all
Music sounds thin and tired,
And what picture could earn a look?
The self drowses in the self
Beyond hope of a visitor.
Desire and those desired
Fade, and no matter:
Memories in decay
Annihilate the day.

There once was an answer:
Up at the stroke of seven,
A turn round the garden
(Breathing deep and slow),
Then work, never mind what,
How small, provided that
It serves another's good.

But once is long ago
And, tell me, how could
Such an answer be less than wrong,
Be right all along?

Vain echoes, desist.

Clearly, Amis was not young when he wrote this. When he was young he seemed to have everything "the world" can offer.  Yet, in the end, what does it all amount to?

There is a comparison here, with King Solomon, who really did have everything the world can offer - and who was inspired to write the most beautiful poem in the world, "The Song of Solomon".

But he was also inspired to write Ecclesiastes,   And he too found that in the end, its all vanity, all futile.  How can it be otherwise when we are cut off from our Creator, Jehovah, our Source of life?

But Solomon was also inspired to write this:

"Remember, then, your Grand Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of distress come and the years arrive when you will say: “I have no pleasure in them”;  before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the downpour;  in the day when the guards of the house become shaky, and the strong men stoop over, and the women quit grinding because they have become few, and the ladies looking out the windows find it dark;  when the doors to the street have been closed, when the sound of the grinding mill becomes low, when one gets up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song grow faint.  Also, one is afraid of heights, and there are terrors in the street. And the almond tree blossoms, and the grasshopper drags itself along, and the caper berry bursts, because man is walking to his lasting house and the mourners walk about in the street; before the silver cord is removed, and the golden bowl is crushed, and the jar at the spring is broken, and the waterwheel for the cistern is crushed.  Then the dust returns to the earth, just as it was, and the spirit returns to the true God who gave it.

“The greatest futility!” says the congregator. “Everything is futile.”

Not only had the congregator become wise but he continually taught the people what he knew, and he pondered and made a thorough search in order to compile many proverbs.  The congregator sought to find delightful words and to record accurate words of truth.

The words of the wise are like oxgoads, and their collected sayings are like firmly embedded nails; they have been given from one shepherd.  As for anything besides these, my son, be warned: To the making of many books there is no end, and much devotion to them is wearisome to the flesh.

The conclusion of the matter, everything having been heard, is: Fear the true God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole obligation of man. For the true God will judge every deed, including every hidden thing, as to whether it is good or bad."

(Ecclesiastes 12)

Our life will not be futile if we fear the true God and keep his commandments.   If we do, then we have the prospect of everlasting life in the restored earthly Paradise ahead of us.   And more joy, and more meaning, than we can now imagine.

Friday night and Saturday have been painful - right shoulder frozen with pain, and it makes me realise how crippled I am in my left arm and shoulder. I am so limited in what I can do with the left arm, that I can't give the right arm the rest it needs to recover.

Well - what a pickle we, the damaged children of disobedient Adam, are in.  Solomon, being inspired, said it all perfectly. And Kingsley Amis expressed it well too.  And so would I, if I were up to it, poetically speaking.

 And now I have just had to contact the young sister I usually chauffeur to the Hall to warn her I won't be able to drive today.  Fortunately it is a sunny day, and the walk to the Kingdom Hall is along the seaside, so I hope, being young, she will enjoy it.

Heartbreak (and a Flare-up Right Shoulder)

Natural History Museum, London

Its the good shoulder too. I am in trouble and probably in for a night of pain.

When we set off for London this morning, on our annual trip to see the Wildlife Photography Exhibition at the Natural History Museum, my shoulder was hurting.  I took maximum pain relief and hoped for the best.  But I am now in a lot of pain.  And deeply upset by one of the photographs, of a sun-bear in Indonesia, begging for help from its cage - imploring.

The photographer reports that when the "Keeper" came along, the bear began to scream terribly. And she soon saw why.  That caged bear is, as far as I know, being tormented now.   It asked for help and none came.

This is a very very upsetting, heartbreaking link:
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-a-sun-bear-behind-bars.html

I am praying to Jehovah to help - and am going to try and write to the Indonesian Embassy.

I feel heartbroken and can't stop wondering about what the little bear is going through as I type.

The Exhibition was wonderful too.   And I realise that publicising these things is about all we can do.

How much, how desperately, all the earthly creation needs the loving rule of the Kingdom of God.

And Jean and me are supposed to be out telling others about the Kingdom tomorrow - but I have had to ring both her and Jacks to warn them that I may be out of action. At the moment I will not be able to get undressed and into my jim-jams without the Captain's help, so driving is out of the question.

Had a lovely day yesterday working with another sister - we were assigned a territory right by our flats, so she came back and had some lunch with me.   Veggie soup, of course, and coffee and choccie biccies.  Though I had my breakfast instead as I hadn't had time to eat it in the morning.

It is a very hot at the moment. Summer has arrived.

The Selectivety of Sharks

Having had a long and hot morning yesterday on the doors with the valiant Jean, I came back, passing Captain Butterfly, laden with sandwiches and a camera at every corner, heading out into the wilds of Sussex to chase the incoming butterfly herds, had some lunch (veg curry with lentil crisps - don't ask) and found myself dozing in front of "Sharks Over Miami" or "Miami Shark Attack" or some such title.

A swarm of lethal primeval sharks had been brought up from the depths by a tsunami - the old fashioned kind, a single wall of water - hitting the coast of, well, Miami I guess. 

And I noticed that there are a few advantages to being middle-aged not to say elderly. The sharks were only interested in attacking young ladies in skimpy bikinis.  Likewise the tsunami. It didn't seem that bothered about anyone else.   So I am thinking I could probably swim safely, and slowly, off the Miami shores, in my flowery bathing cossie.  The sharks wouldn't even notice me - nor it seems would the tsunami, should another one come along.

Though does the Japanese Whaling Fleet ever turn up off Miami... ?    perhaps I should stay out of the water, just in case. 

I hope Dorothy is safely back on South Island now, tired, but happy. She goes back to Winter of course.   Two of the coldest places I have ever been are South Island in Autumn/Winter and Amsterdam in the middle of Winter.

And I am remembering now how beautiful Amsterdam was covered in snow.   We wandered along the canals, stopping to eat those little hot waffles - Poffeln(?) - in warm canalside cafes.

We were talking about our travels in our expat days while Dorothy was here, and I think we all agreed that one of the hottest places we had ever been was Oman.

The Captain and I were a bit predatory and shark-ish ourselves last night, as he brought home a packet of fish and chips, which we shared for our supper.

The older I get, the worse I feel about eating all these lovely animals and fish. And I long for the time the Kingdom of God is restored - and we can all swim happily among the sharks. They will have nothing to fear from us, we will have nothing to fear from them.

Dorothy of South Island - and Tony Harrison

Its shaping up for a busy weekend. Dorothy arrives lunchtime today, to stop for a night en route to... I have lost track of her immense travels... but somewhere exciting... possibly to visit new granddaughter, somewhere on the Continent.   I am taking Jean out this morning - we hope to be delivering more Invites.  Then tomorrow afternoon after Dorothy has left, there is a "do" on at Jane's.  I am taking wine.  But won't be drinking it myself as I shall be the designated driver for Jean and me.

Yesterday was busy too.   Out on the Field Service in the morning, doing returns. Then a big shop in the afternoon, for both us and Jacks. She can't even get to the corner shop at the moment.

Then cleaning out the fridge, and sorting out my bathroom for Dorothy. Went to bed exhausted.  Not that it takes much these days.  And then couldn't sleep...

Its now late Saturday morning.  We had a good morning on the doors and now await Dorothy  Jacks will join us tonight for a chicken dinner, IF she feels equal to an outing.

I have got out my book of Tony Harrison poems - have been sharing a couple on the internet.  In my far off Uni days he was the Poetry Fellow.  To me, fresh from my Convent school, he was a very glamorous figure, and I never dared actually speak to him, but I went to his readings and have been a fan of his poetry ever since.

So here is a small Tony Harrison:

Social Mobility

Ah, the proved advantages of scholarship!
Whereas his dad took cold tea for his snap,
he slaves at nuances, knows at just one sip
Chateau Lafite from Chateau Neuf du Pape.

Another title for this poem could be "The Wisdom of The World"

A Charm of Birds

Long-tailed Tit, Aegithalos caudatus

I couldn't find a photo in the Captain's gallery that exactly fitted the line "a charm of birds" from the poem below. But I did find a picture of a bird of great charm.

We visited some secondhand bookshops on our Cornish trip and I found an anthology called "More Poetry Please!" - popular poems from the BBC Radio 4 programme.

These are poems us members of the public like, not necessarily the ones academics like. And I found some old favourites and this poem, which was worth buying the book for.


GOING FOR THE MILK
by Mary Webb

Going for the milk-
A toddling child with skin like curds,
On a May morning in a charm of birds.

Going for the milk
With laughing, teasing lads, at seventeen,
With rosy cheeks and breast as soft as silk -
Eh! What a mort of years between!

Going for the milk
Through my Jim's garden, past the bush o' balm,
With my first baby sleeping on my arm.

Its fifty year, come Easter, since that day;
The work'us ward is cold, my eyes be dim;
Never no more I'll go the flowery way,
Fetching the milk.  I drink the pauper's skim,
And mind me of those summer days, and Jim
Telling me as my breast was soft as silk -
And that first day I missed to fetch the milk.


Mary Webb's masterpiece is surely her novel "Gone to Earth".    In it she asks the questions too, though she does not know the answers.     This poem is a little masterpiece as well.

She saw and loved the beauty of the creation - loved it with all her heart - wrote about it, praised it.  This poem, with its charm of birds, praises it.   But it asks the questions too.   Why is life so short? And why is the world so full of cruelty and injustice?

I hope that when the time comes, Jehovah will wake her from the dreamless sleep of death and she will see this lovely earth again.  And this time, all cruelty, all injustice will have gone.  Under the loving rule of the Kingdom of God, the peace of Eden will prevail earthwide,

Its raining this morning and I have not gone out on the preaching work. I hope to get out the next 3 days though...

Love Never Fails

I sent the Alfred Wallis Labrador card to Darren.  He kind of makes Labrador look like Cornwall, which I love, and after all they are both of a wild rocky coastline nature.

It was the meeting Thursday night, and I am glad to get back into my routine. Where would I be without this steady loving wise programme of teaching?   A sheep without a shepherd.

Jean and I plan to go out on Saturday - we will meet at the Hall as we begin to issue the invitations for the 2019 District Convention.

This year the theme is "LOVE NEVER FAILS"!

Jehovah, our Creator, IS love. And all the advice, all the teaching at the 3 day convention will be from Jehovah's inspired word, as He is the very source of love and wisdom.

The Conventions will be held worldwide - so I hope you will be getting your own invitations in time. Please do drop in.

Its now Sunday, and Jean and I had a lovely morning on Saturday delivering Invites. We we were allocated half of a road full of houses with such pretty front gardens. And every single time we found someone in, we go a very warm welcome, big smiles, and glad acceptance of the Invite!

It was wonderful - and I almost found myself wondering if Jehovah was giving Jean who is so frail now some extra encouragement.    One front garden was a wildflower meadow behind its hedge.  Perfect for insects.  I said to the friendly gentleman who opened the door and took an Invite that Chris Packham (of Springwatch, which has just finished) would say it was a "Top garden".

Jackie came for supper Saturday night - a fun evening as it always is with Jacks - and I managed a simalcrum of a roast chicken dinner, not quite up to my old standards, but definitely acceptable, and Jacks ate every scrap, which was encouraging.  Well, except for half a new potato.

I even managed roast potatoes but they were a little on the overcooked side.  They are the sort of thing that are never very satisfactory in restaurants as they need to be served the moment they are cooked - or overcooked in this case.

We have quite a busy time coming up - Dorothy next weekend, plus a little get together of the congregation family - the continuing Memorial invitation campaign, and goodness knows what in the way of medical stuff as my test results start to come in.

So as its now Monday, I really ought to get this blog done, dusted and posted.

The House at Pooh Corner

We visited another house of my childhood on our holiday last week - The House at Pooh Corner - where we spent our earliest holidays in the 1950s.  I  think my granny sold it by the mid 50s and we stopped going to Cornwall.  .

I can remember nothing at all about the house itself, because all we  (us children, my siblings, cousins) wanted was to get outside, to run down the sandy path the beach.   The splendid beach. And, in the 1950s, the empty beach.  When I saw the sandy path with its snails, and the drifts of Thrift, I felt that the holiday had really begun. But I do remember the garden, which in those days was quite overgrown, as the house was empty most of the year.  It had steep steps down to the road, on which adders used to bask in the morning sun.

But somehow lots of uncles, aunts, cousins fitted in.  My granny never came down that I can remember.  I have a vague memory of a room filled with heavy brown furniture.  And I think that the dressing table in our bedroom here that was once my Great-Aunt Hilda's was in one of the bedrooms at Pooh Corner.

I also think that it was our grandad who gave the house its name, when he bought it back in the 30s, but I can't confirm that. There are so few of us left now who remember those days.  Maybe only me?


Wednesday morning was sunny, the afternoon rainy.  I went to see Maggie, having arranged to meet another sister there, but we found out she had been admitted to hospital. We hope to find out more at the Hall tonight, and see if we can arrange a visit.    Anyway, I was invited back for a cup of tea and a chat, which was nice - then I shopped, and posted the letter and card to Ken. 

There is so much I need to get on with - plus I hope to be back to the door to door Kingdom preaching work Friday and Saturday - but I feel terminally tired.

When I was talking to my sister yesterday she was saying how tiring she finds going on holiday now, the packing, getting the house ready, all the stress and tension of it.    And I wonder how much of an actual holiday our Cornish trips were for my parents. But us children loved them, and have some golden memories.

A Farewell to Cornwall

sunset over Penzance

We got back from a week in Cornwall Saturday afternoon, and I am very tired indeed.  We stayed in Penzance, high up with a terrific view of the harbour.

But I think it will be my last trip there - this side of Armageddon.   I can no longer cope with the terrain.  For example, the house we booked for the week was lovely.  It was high up in Penzance, with the splendid views across the harbour as mentioned, plus a charming cottage garden at the back, crammed with flowers, but it had very very steep steps, front and back.  And I was conscious that if I had a violent arthritis flare up the day we were due to leave, I would not be able to get out of there.

Will Cornwall still be here after Armageddon, all that lovely wild coast?  I ask because when Noah and his family came out of the Ark, the world they stepped out into would have been very different.

Well, who knows?  I just hope we are all there to find out.

And what I do know, as Jehovah has promised it, is that there is more happiness here ahead for us right here on the earth than we can now imagine.

I forced myself to go to the meeting yesterday, and am so glad I did.  But did little else.  Had a long chat with Bea of the North, and have been in email correspondence with my siblings, as I closed a circle by going back and visiting one of the houses of my childhood, the house my granny owned in the 1950s, and where I spent my earliest seaside holidays.

We sent the photos we took of the house to the family.  There are only a few of us left now who remember The House at Pooh Corner.

It set the standard of seaside for me. And I plan to blog about it with one of the Captain's lovely photos attached.

As we parked in the carpark, a large van drew up and loads of small children with surfboards and pink buckets and spades tumbled out and ran for the beach. They couldn't wait.

And I remembered the young Mrs.Captain who could not wait to get to the beach either.  But it did remind me that my past is as remote and ancient to these children as the high Victorian age was to me.

Kingsley Amis

I've just finished Zachary Leader's biography of Kingsley Amis.  It is no way a cheerful book, but it is an absorbing read.   I had read Elizabeth Jane Howard's "Slipstream" - she was Kingsley's second wife.   And I think I may have mentioned his poem Camberwell Beauty before in my blog.

It is about his first wife, who he left for Elizabeth Jane Howard.    Though that is rather a simplified way of putting it.   And looking this up reminds me that he called the poem "Instead of an Epilogue", not "Camberwell Beauty".  But of course, it is not about the butterfly, it is about his first wife Hilly, which is why it is dedicated "To H."


          Instead of an Epilogue

To H.

I.

In 1932 when I was ten
In my grandmother's garden in Camberwell
I saw a Camberwell Beauty butterfly
Sitting on a clump of Michaelmas daisies.
I recognised it because I'd seen a picture
Showing its brownish wings with creamy edges
In a boy's paper or on a cigarette-card
Earlier that week.  And I remember thinking,
What else would you expect?  Everyone knows
Camberwell Beauties come from Camberwell;
That's why they're called that.  Yes, I was ten.

II.

In 1940 when I was eighteen
In Marlborough, going out one winter's morning
To walk to school, I saw that every twig,
Every leaf in the vicar's privet hedge
And every stalk and stem was covered in
A thin layer of ice as clear as glass
Because the rain had frozen as it landed.
The sun shone and the trees and shrubs shone back
Like pale flames with orange and green sparkles.
Freak weather conditions, people said,
And one was always hearing about them.

III.

In '46 when I was twenty-four
I met someone harmless, someone defenceless,
But till then whole, unadapted within;
Awkward, gentle, healthy, straight-backed,
Who spoke to say something, laughed when amused;
If things went wrong, feared she might be at fault,
Whose eye I could have met for ever then,
Oh yes, and who was also beautiful.
Well, that was much as women were meant to be,
I thought, and set about looking further.
How can we tell, with nothing to compare?

Kingsley Amis


Its seems clear he loved both his wives.   But...   we, the damaged children of Adam, are so lost when we do not anchor ourselves to our Creator's moral standards.  We bob about, driven by the currents of the world and our own imperfection, doing terrible damage to ourselves and to each other.

We, the Captain and I, were listening to the D-Day experiences on the radio this morning. Terrible damage, Very very sad.  But I am glad they are recording the experiences of those who were part of it, as soon there will be no-one left who was alive during those war years. I am past my three score years and ten and am a child of the post-war baby boom era.   Soon there will be no-one left even to remember the immediate post-war, the bomb sites and the food rationing.

Memories fade and become distorted. And they become spun to political agendas.  But Jehovah's memory does not fade, it remains clear, true and undistorted. So there is the hope for the dead, that they are remembered by their Creator, and that he will wake them from the dreamless sleep of death when the time comes.

MayDay, M'Aidez

And I do need help, a rescue from this awful skin condition that is attacking me. I am covered with raw red weals, and feel quite sick and shaky.  I have had a biopsy, and hope and pray that they will find out what is causing this - and that its treatable. 

If it does prove to be the arthritis medication, I will have to come off it. Which will leave me housebound.  But, maybe at my age, oh dear... I have to remind myself that, in my seventies, its all borrowed time.   And that, no matter how much I long to be young and fit again, I would not go back at any price, unless I could go back knowing then what I know now.

Which in fact is what the Bible promises when it assures us that the meek (those meek towards their Creator) will inherit "the earth".  Only it will be a return to the life and fitness that we, the damaged children of Adam have never had, never known.

Oh, and an extra complication, it is within the bounds of possibilities that the cause of all this may be that I have developed coelaic disease, which is going to cause immense complications, as I will therefore have to avoid all coeliac - or possibly I mean gluten.  Now I am already diabetic and have to avoid most of the fruit and carbs/carbs and fruit that I lived on before.

What does that leave?   Tapwater?  If I then develop an allergy to that, this blog will not be continuing for a lot longer.  And its going to save the poor battered NHS a fortune.

 I am just reading Zachary Leader's bio of Kingsley Amis.  Not very cheering.  Interesting though. And I have  always been a fan of his poetry - not so much his novels, though they can be very funny.

It - all biographies - remind me that we - the children of Adam - really are "sheep without a shepherd" - lost and in great danger.  And that there is no lasting happiness for anyone cut off from our Creator, as we are now.

Jesus said:  "I am the fine shepherd; the fine shepherd surrenders his life in behalf of the sheep. 1The hired man, who is not a shepherd and to whom the sheep do not belong, sees the wolf coming and abandons the sheep and flees—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them—  because he is a hired man and does not care for the sheep.  I am the fine shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me,  just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I surrender my life in behalf of the sheep." - John 10:11-15

Yes.   Among Jehovah's congregated people I can hear and be guided by the voice of the fine shepherd. And I hope more and more people will come to know that.

There is more happiness ahead for us, right here on the earth, than we can now imagine.