St. Paddy, Rain and A Gap in the Hedge.

Happy St Paddy's Day of yesterday! This is the cake I made for a party of some of the other Irish around here.  We talked of Irish things, like which is the best island to visit off West Cork, and  which is your favourite RTE fails collection on Youtube (this is mine)   Little K suggested sprinkling gold around the leprechaun and giving him a bottle by his side, a suggestion which suited him very well.   Her dad talked of a road sign he had spotted on a road trip across the country to Dublin, which flashed past his car window on a dark and rainy road.  It said :  "DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE EXCEPT - "  

I can't help wondering what the final word was - do you?  

This story reminded me somehow of Lewis Carroll's song for Humpty Dumpty, which also ends in mid phrase, and is equally puzzling.  Carroll had some Irish connections and, even though his ancestors were almost entirely from the North of England, his work sometimes seems more Irish than not to me.  

But for me the late Spike Milligan has the most typically Irish approach to comedy; it's quirky, unexpected and iconoclastic, as well as just plain mad.  

Spike  had always fancied having the words "I told you I was ill" carved on his tombstone. But he died in Winchelsea, in East Sussex, just south of London, where jokes on tombstones were frowned upon. And this is what happened. 

I know I've been quiet for a while. In fact, my last post was just before Christmas, and around that time I had a mysterious and crippling bout of pain which seems to have been arthritis.  I've known I had arthritis for decades; it came on when I was quite young. But it had never hurt much. Then an awful pain came like a bolt from the blue and I even had to eat my meals standing up because it hurt my hip so much to sit down, although thankfully I could lie down to sleep. The only thing that helped was exercise, but it certainly was painful and needed some strong painkillers. 

The pain gradually went off and now I'm able to sleep without pain medication again. And I hope it doesn't come back.

Like many other parts of the world, England has had a wet and warm spring.  When we went to Suffolk a couple of weeks ago,  quite a bit of the landscape was under water. We still had a good time - we nearly always do - and I took this photo on a typical bike ride as evening came on. And yes, that's a very large puddle, not a lake. 

We also visited one of our favourite Suffolk ponds, which has been created in the shape of a huge eye that stares out into the heavens. It is usually a wonderful sight, and normally you see the outline and the iris quite clearly as you peep across through the hedge.  But this time the rainwater had blurred the  eye, and its tears had flowed out so far that you'd hardly have known it was an eye at all.  We will be back to see it again in dryer weather! 

Still, our trip coincided with more sun than they'd had all month, and so we also took the chance to visit Holton Pits.  This was until recently an abandoned quarry which was all set to be snapped up for light industrial warehouses. But then the local community decided to take a hand.  Read their story here.    I contributed to their appeal, so of course I went to look at the place.  I was delighted with it and its twenty acres will be a place to return to as the seasons change.   Overgrown quarries can be almost magical sometimes, and this one was no exception.  Even at midday in bright sun, this corner seemed full of suggestions and shadows. 

And as usual there were strange old cottages to see as we cycled along the narrow lanes and through rather deserted old towns.  I wonder what it's like in that room above the archway, don't you? Perhaps you have to crawl through on your hands and knees...?

And it was grand coming across Framlingham Castle, such a surprising thing to see through a gap in the hedge when cycling down a quiet lane. 

And now it's nearly Easter. I can't believe a quarter of the year is gone already.    What have you done in 2024 so far?