Mr and Mrs Andrews

Holidays are over now and we are about to enter the SUMMER term! Ha! They've forecast a fantastically hot week coming up so that's exciting especially as we have completely run out of logs (as well as hay). We went up to the National Gallery to get warm where this painting of Thomas Gainsborough's is. The poet Paul Durcan has produced a great book called Give Me Your Hand, inspired by the paintings in the National Gallery. This poem of his, related to the painting of Mr and Mrs Andrews, always makes me laugh.

Mr and Mrs Andrews

Mr and Mrs Andrews 

Tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet,

Twitter-twitter-twitter-twitter-twitter-twitter-twitter.

Boo-boo-boo-boo-boo-boo-boo

He is sulking because he wants his din-dins.

Fanning myself in the Suffolk desert

I mince round a corner of horizon

And there midst all that silly sand

Is a wrought -iron garden seat

Peeking out of an old oak tree,

Stooks, sheepies, poppy

And, choreographed on seat,

Oneself.

The sort of dream out of which stuff is made.

Oneself

In most a la modish blue frock,

Pink high heel slippers,

Floppy hat,

And, lounging up against rail of seat

Like a skimpy stag against its scratching post,

One's very own chap,

A spaniel in his parts

Sniffing,

Taking time off from his economics lectures

Or his ballet classes or whatever.

Bobsie Andrews and Me:

We two drips together dripping.

I murder him

With his own gun.

The nice thing is that the neighbours

Think it an accident.

I think my feeling was that I did not really want

To have to share the landscape.

It is a rather fetching landscape

In spite of all that suffocation

And I think I will rather enjoy it on my own

for the next fifty years

And not spoil it with children and inheritance

And all that sort of thing.

Fetch.

Couldn't resist putting up these pics of this time last year when Spring was so hot and things came up early. Even the bluebells were before their time and you can just see some at the edge of the field. At the moment they are still hugging the ground in the woods and the wild garlic just unfurling their bright green leaves. Fabulous in a salad or in a home made pesto instead of using basil leaves.

So if the forecast is correct I predict the humming of bees and the roaring of lawnmowers. May be my ducks will start laying their eggs again. They've considered it too cold.

Harry

Trude

And here is Pixie - wondering what on earth  I am doing sitting on a bench in an a la modish blue frock with a gun in my hand.