An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield
by John Betjeman
High dormers are rising
So sharp and surprising,
And ponticum edges
The driveways of gravel;
Stone houses from ledges
Look down on ravines.
The vision can travel
From gable to gable,
Italianate mansion
And turretted stable,
A sylvan expansion
So varied and jolly
Where laurel and holly
Commingle their greens.
Serene on a Sunday
The sun glitters hotly
O'er mills that on Monday
With engines will hum.
By tramway excursion
To Dore and to Totley
In search of diversion
The millworkers come;
But in our arboreta
The sounds are discreeter
Of shoes upon stone -
The worshippers wending
To welcoming chapel,
Companioned or lone;
And over a pew there
See loveliness lean,
As Eve shows her apple
Through rich bombazine;
What love is born new there
In blushing eighteen!
Your prospects will please her,
The iron-king's daughter,
Up here on Broomhill;
Strange Hallamshire, County
Of dearth and of bounty,
Of brown tumbling water
And furnace and mill.
Your own Ebenezer
Looks down from his height
On back street and alley
And chemical valley
Laid out in the light;
On ugly and pretty
Where industry thrives
In this hill-shadowed city
Of razors and knives.
So sharp and surprising,
And ponticum edges
The driveways of gravel;
Stone houses from ledges
Look down on ravines.
The vision can travel
From gable to gable,
Italianate mansion
And turretted stable,
A sylvan expansion
So varied and jolly
Where laurel and holly
Commingle their greens.
Serene on a Sunday
The sun glitters hotly
O'er mills that on Monday
With engines will hum.
By tramway excursion
To Dore and to Totley
In search of diversion
The millworkers come;
But in our arboreta
The sounds are discreeter
Of shoes upon stone -
The worshippers wending
To welcoming chapel,
Companioned or lone;
And over a pew there
See loveliness lean,
As Eve shows her apple
Through rich bombazine;
What love is born new there
In blushing eighteen!
Your prospects will please her,
The iron-king's daughter,
Up here on Broomhill;
Strange Hallamshire, County
Of dearth and of bounty,
Of brown tumbling water
And furnace and mill.
Your own Ebenezer
Looks down from his height
On back street and alley
And chemical valley
Laid out in the light;
On ugly and pretty
Where industry thrives
In this hill-shadowed city
Of razors and knives.
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/john_betjeman/poems/837
I grew up in Broomhill, in the hill-shadowed city of razors and knives, a long long time ago.
Or was it only yesterday? I love John Betjeman's re-creation of it. How good he was at capturing place.
I have blogged about this before, but my hometown has been on my mind because, ever since our medical troubles earlier this year, I have been wondering if we should not move back there. I have been looking at house prices and wondering if we could afford to return. However, we love our retirement by the sea. We love sitting out on the balcony watching the sea come and go and the moon on the water.
Do we even have the energy to do it again, if we decide we want to? Nute has very kindly said we can move into the bungalow with her if we do, thus avoiding the hassle of trying to buy and sell at the same time. We could sell our flat here, move up North, and start to look for something. It would also mean we could buy at auction, if the right thing came up.
But... Col absolutely does not want to leave our lovely flat - and we are both very happy here. What to do? I need to pray about this, to ask Jehovah what would be the best thing. Because He knows, and I don't.
MABLE is on again this weekend, schedule here:
The videos will remain up on Youtube, and also there is a competition you can enter. I am hoping to pop in to all of the weekend sessions and have a chat. You are so welcome to join us. I don't know if I might even get a mention in this one: 16:00 BST: SPOTLIGHT on Science Fiction (59 minutes)
Though I am not a SciFi Writer. One of the stories in Umbrellas is ostensibly about a Martian (it's really about my own feelings of being on an alien planet for much of the time, especially at parties). And one of my characters in Disraeli Hall is kidnapped by aliens and taken off to the Planet Betelgeuse. However, his experience only occupies a few lines of text and is of no importance at all re the plot and its central mystery.
I would have liked to call the book A Present From Betelgeuse (as my kidnapped character brought a present back with him, a genuine space artefact) but I couldn't as then it would have been classified and sold as SciFi, and it isn't. Not at all. If I had to describe it, I would say it was a post-modern take on Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, as that sounds rather clever. Just don't ask me what it means.
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