Life in Poetry reading, writing, reflecting

Life in Poetry reading, writing, reflecting
April showers bring May flowers

Saturday, 13 April 2019

⌗AtoZ challenge, April 13th 2019, letter L

Here is my contribution to the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !

I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWriMo ! So the challenge is
twofold !!
Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.


Thanks to Arlee Bird for hosting this challenge. We are nearly half-way there.
If you would like to know more  go here


L is for LONDON.


My eldest daughter lives and works in London at Be at One Cocktail Bar, Spitafields Market. On the weekend of the 26th-29th April, we are flying to visit her. The whole family is coming, even her Nana who is taking the Eurostar from Paris.

                          We have a very busy schedule. Algae Wrap Friday morning, in the afternoon visiting the London Times, curtesy of my good friend Russel Herneman, once flash-fiction writer, now award-winning Cartoonist. Friday evening, we girls are going out to a show : the Phantom of the Opera. We are musicals' fans and especially Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice aficionados . I saw Jesus Christ Superstar, the film, in 1974. My sister bought the record soon after and I have been listening to them ever since. My girls caught the bug. We saw EVITA, on stage in London in 2006, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Coat  in 2010 in Bournemouth ( I had already seen it back in 1976 or '77, in Poole). My children are hooked, they have seen the films too and enjoy listening to the music and singing along.
                          Saturday, the adventure continues, more packed than ever ! The Tate (old) in the morning. We have never been, although I have seen several Turners at exhibitions in Paris : my wooden desktop is covered with a Turner painting in the form of a puzzle under glass, that my husband and I completed when we lived in Barcelona. Then we have to rush to the Globe Theatre : I thought we'd take the boat to Banks. At 2.30 Henry IV, Part I starts. The girls didn't want to sit, on wooden benches, through a Shakespeare play for three hours, so only my husband, my son and I have tickets.



King Lear, 2007 with Sir Ian McKellen and The Merchant of Venice, 2006 with F. Murray Abraham


King John, 2013 with Pippa Nixon, as the Bastard (Rosalind in As You Like It, 2014)


                           I have been enjoying live performances of The Bard all my life it seems. One of the first was Henry V in Stratford in 1978. I also remember seeing As You Like It at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1987, I took my future husband and a Business school friend to A Midsummer's Night Dream in Regent's Park, magical. Since 2006 I have been enjoying yearly sprees to Stratford-upon-Avon. I attend a seminar with talks, voice classes, Q&A with actors and Directors, but most importantly 3 to 4 live performances. Some plays from the Canon still elude me, others I have seen several times: Royal Shakespeare Company and at times international theatre companies. It has been my breath of fresh air, my week away from home, a time to muse and write, an opportunity to visit my Auntie Ann and her husband Ron, my English golf partner/mentor.
                        In the evening, we will be at the Old Vic for Arthur Miller's All My Sons. My mother, son and husband will accompany me. The girls will go out on the town ! I remember seeing Murder at the Vicarage in the late ' 70s but it wasn't at the Old Vic, my mother tells me.
                               
                             Sunday morning, the National Portrait Gallery awaits. The magnificent 'political' paintings of Queen Elizabeth I, the first ' propaganda ' art, and to show my children the historical portraits. Full house for this outing. Lunch ' sur le pouce ', as we say in French. In the afternoon we'll laze around and visit my daughter's apartment for tea, and meet her Australian boyfriend. Birthday dinner at a laid-back Italian of her choosing, then onto drinks at Be at One Cocktail Bar. The night : the sky's the limit !

                              All good things must come to an end eventually. My mother has her train at one on Monday; our flight is only at 6 p.m. 
My A to Z will lag a bit behind but who's counting !

©susanbauryrouchard



National Gallery and Big Ben, July 2016



My favourite Turner

Thank you for reading. If you would like to share your thoughts, please comment below
and I will be sure to reply. Have a nice ' L ' day. Brilliant sunshine here in Toulouse. Birthday Lunch on the terrace/garden at the VIRGIL restaurant in Fenouillet (Toulouse), Michelin and Gault et Millau guides.

Friday, 12 April 2019

⌗AtoZ challenge, April 12th, letter K

Here is my contribution to the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !

I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWrite ! So the challenge is
twofold !!
Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.



If you would like to know more, and maybe join in the future  go here


K is for Kathleen ARTER

                            Kathleen is the name of my big sister, who died in 2011.
But she was named after  my mother's mother Kathleen ARTER, from Yorkshire, born 12th December 1901. She grew up just outside of Malton, East of York, on the road to Scarborough, on the North Sea.  My great-grandfather, Charles Arter was a coachman and gate-keeper.
                            Kathleen Arter's mother was Ada Arter, born Clarke. My grandmother had many
brothers and sisters. I remember two mostly: Nelly and Edward. When we were little, my sister and I used to spend a month in the summer in Bournemouth, where my mother was born and raised. A few times we visited Aunt Nelly, as she was called, in Yorkshire. I remember her Yorkshire teas fondly : cucumber sandwiches and all sorts of cakes and buns. A real High tea !

                              In 1993, just after I married, I took a trip to Yorkshire and met up with both Aunt Nelly and Uncle Edward who were still alive, but very old. They both lived in their own homes though and were fairly fit. Kathleen Arter, my grandmother had died young, in 1969, at age 68. We were living in New York (Staten Island) at the time and she had visited us with my grandfather the year before. I do have a few memories, kept up thanks to photographs. I remember playing in her garden on the swing and she used to cuddle me a lot. My sister had many recollections and she was sorely affected by her death.

                               Kathleen Arter lived with her family in the lodge of a Manor House. Uncle Edward's son Peter took us there in 1993, but unfortunately I haven't got a picture on paper, only in my mind.
                               One day, when Kathleen was small, her father Charles went out early, as was his custom, to hunt in the nearby woods, part of the domaine. There were probably hare, small deer and also pheasants. He never came back. The alarm was raised. They searched high and low but never found a body. There were marshes in the area and they supposed he was probably swallowed whole. When I tell this story to my children, my husband jokes and says that Charles Arter abducted and moved to Australia where he had a whole new family ! That's just darn cruel, I say, to smear his memory like that ! I don't think my mother appreciates either...

                               Anyway, here Ada was, with a flock of small children, no husband, no place to live and no means. She had to work to make ends meet but I don't know what she did, maybe she took in laundry.
                                Kathleen Arter moved to the South as soon as she could and started working at Woolworths in Bournemouth as a shop clerk. She met my grandfather Albert Dunckley in Bournemouth. Albert was from Hackney, East London and an electrician. His father had a shop in Hackney, repairing wheels, bicycles and then the first cars.
                                Albert was four years younger than Kathleen, so she lied about her age, saying that she was born on 12th December 1905. Nobody ever found out in our family until her death in 1969, when going through her things, Albert found her passport and looked at the dates. It was a shock for her husband, Patricia (my mother) and her little sister Ann (may she rest in peace).
                                Patricia Baury, my mother, will be 87 this year and still going strong but she lost her mother when she was only 37, her husband Jean-Louis Baury, when she was 73 and her eldest daughter, the second Kathleen,  at age 79. She has me...and I'm not going anywhere ! And her three grandchildren, mine.  

©susanbauryrouchard



On the Yorkshire coast, Whitby, 2016.


Thank you for reading. If you would like to share your thoughts, please comment below
and I will be sure to reply. Have a nice ' K ' day. Brilliant sunshine here in Toulouse. Not a cloud in the sky. Warmer too, laundry drying outside on the terrace.


Thursday, 11 April 2019

⌗AtoZ challenge, April 11th 2019, letter J

Here is my contribution to the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !

I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWrite ! So the challenge is
twofold !!
Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.


If you would like to know more  go here

J is for  JAM

It's my Birthday on Saturday and I'm going to make a cake.
A raspberry jam sponge with whipped cream.


Put the kettle on to boil.
As soon as the bird whistles,
pour into a large glass bowl.
Place the cake basin on top.
So the base heats with the steam.

My mother stopped doing this.
Now she wonders
why her sponge doesn't rise
light and fluffy ! She has forgotten
her own lessons, Nana's recipe.

Measure out the sugar : 3 oz.
Dump it in the bottom, swoosh.
The same amount for the flour.
Break an egg and beat it up
with the sugar, snug in the warmth.

Another, then another. Three,
three, three, easy as pie.
Beat till bubbles bob
on the surface. It makes a racket.
You gotta do what you gotta do.

Sieve the flour, sprinkle, falling
snow. Fold in. Gentle, soft.
do not offend the bubbles.
Butter the round half tins.
Ripple the mixture back and forth.

An equal amount in both.
Stick in a scorching oven.
Quarter of an hour, risen,
light brown. " Lick the bowl ? "
You holler, up the stairs.
Patter of feet, smacking of lips.

Proceed with the rest of your life,
while the sponge halves cool.
Have a nap in the spring sun.
Slice the two pieces out,
thanks to the built-in device.

Whip the cream, whole fat.
Spread the raspberry jam.
Dollop the whipped. Sandwich.
Sprinkle with icing sugar.
Decorate with fresh strawberries.

If you're not born in July !
Decorate with the fitting
number of candles, or not !
A sugared message, Happy Birthday.
Easter chicks and eggs.

©susanbauryrouchard


A Children's story : It's my Birthday and I'm going to make a cake, by Helen Oxenbury    , Walker Books Ltd, Abbey Broadcast Communications plc
go here

and another one of my favourites : Surprise, Surprise by Michael Foreman. The video is unavailable online, but for the references to the book,
go here

It's about a little panda who wants to make a surprise for his mother's birthday. And what a surprise !

Alice's third Birthday, 18/4

Thank you for reading. If you would like to share your thoughts, please comment below
and I will be sure to reply. Have a nice ' J ' day. Raining today, here in Toulouse. Thunder storm yesterday evening with a magnificient rainbow against a prune sky as the setting sun peeped under the clouds.



Wednesday, 10 April 2019

⌗AtoZ challenge, April 10th, letter I

Here is my contribution to the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !

I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWrite ! So the challenge is
twofold !!
Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.




If you would like to know more about this challenge and maybe participate in the future
go here


I is for

INDIGO

a Poem inspired by Joan Baez's song Forever Young, originally sung by Bob Dylan.


May your skies always be blue.
May your heart always be strong.
And may the wild violets always bloom
underneath your window.

May the bamboo always grow.
May the panda always thrive.
And may the spring always flow
into your open hands.

May the wind always rise.
May the sail always swell.
And may the waves always push
your boat to a haven.

May the lion always roar.
May the robin always sing.
And may the rain always patter
onto your Indigo tree.

©susanbauryrouchard

for the song Forever Young, go here

Indigo plant     picture.

To know more about the Indigo plant  go here


Carnaval Limoux, March 2019.



In my garden, March 2019.


Thank you for reading. If you would like to share your thoughts, please comment below

and I will be sure to reply. Have a nice ' I ' day. Sunny again today, here in Toulouse, some rain in the night, a slight drizzle this morning, bath mats drying in the breeze. April showers bring May flowers ! Still the Iris and Roses to flower.

Tuesday, 9 April 2019

⌗AtoZ challenge, April 9th, letter H

Here is my contribution to the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !
I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWrite ! So the challenge is twofold !!



Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.




If you would like to know more go here


H is for HEAVEN


                       Heaven was in Corsica, August 1985 on the GR 20. (chemin de grande randonnée)
Hiking all day, 20kg on my back, all my earthly possessions; bathing in waterfall pools; sampling freshly-made cheese from a stone hut while teasing the goats; sleeping under the stars in a warm sleeping bag and survival foil; waking up to first light, or in the dark, to the snuffling of a wild pig searching for food that they couldn't find because we had stored it all up in a tree.



Paglia Orba
                       



                      Heaven is feeling the wind on my face, listening to the rush of water on the hull, the tingling of the halyard against the mast, the flutter of the spinnaker as it rose towards the sky; navigating with the sweep of the lighthouses, gazing up at the Big Dipper and a zillion constellations; steadying the wheel, taut in my grip. Mistress of the seas.
(the Mediterranean between Menton and Cavalaire-sur-Mer, July 1982)


                       Heaven is building sandcastles, digging holes on Alum Chine beach; sitting on the sand, legs outstretched, expectant, as the ripple of the dying waves lap at our toes or suddenly smack us in the face: stinging throat and eyes, spitting spume; playing in Robert Louis Stevenson's playground while reading his poems; devouring watercress and egg on wholewheat. cream jam donuts or the occasional hot-dog with sauerkraut; strolling on the Purbeck cliffs in the sunny breeze, up and down, up and down; pausing to behold Old Harry Rocks or Durdle Door and taking a nip in the icy water while the gulls bob on the swell.
(Bournemouth, Poole and the Purbecks with my children: 1997, '99, 2002, 06, 2010, 16. Just as I enjoyed them from 1965 to 1986, every summer.)









Dorset thatched cottage, 1997


Alice & me, 1999


Paul, 2002


Compton Acres, 2010


                      Heaven is lounging on the sofa with my son watching the delicious but sometimes hard lives of the cats of Istanbul, on Sunday evening: 'Kedi'. Sipping Wei ßbier with lemon and taking delight in an almond and raspberry tart.

textandphotos©susanbauryrouchard

Kedi go here

I'm in Heaven, Fred Astaire

And just for fun

Thank you for reading. If you would like to share your thoughts, please comment below
and I will be sure to reply. Have a nice 'H' day. Sunny again today, here in Toulouse, some buoyante clouds, rain last night, but warmer than yesterday .

Monday, 8 April 2019

⌗AtoZ challenge, April 8th 2019, letter G

Here is my contribution to the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !
I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWrite ! So the challenge is twofold !!

Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.





G for GLEE

                                 I have been following an American TV series for about 6 months, now, called GLEE. (recommended by my two daughters Alice and Emma). It's about a High School Glee Club, a Choir club. They participate in a Show Choir Competition every year and are not allowed to perform outside Mc Kinley High for money otherwise they are disqualified. There must be at least 12 members from the school and there are three steps : sectionals, regionals and nationals. Their repertoire includes old-time musicals, modern artists, classical crooners, Blues' artists and modern musicals. Their performances are always song and dance. The series also covers the lives of the members in and out of High School : their loves, fears, frustrations, ambitions...the pain of growing up !

The first season sees the re-introduction of a Glee Club at McKinley High (Lima, Ohio) after an undefined period of having ceased to exist from lack of funding and interest. William Schuester, the school's Spanish Teacher, wishes to revive it having dabbled in show choir when at High School himself but having failed to succeed as a professional Broadway artist. The students who sign up are all considered misfits by their peers and need to be coerced into joining the Glee Club because of its unpopularity. members of Glee are regularly "slushied". A bright red slushy is thrown in their face usually accompanied by the catch name "loo.....ooooser !"

Anyway, I'm completely hooked. I love all the characters, the singers, the dancers, the performances, the music...But I particularly have fun with Sue Sylvester, the 'villain', played by Jane Lynch whom you might know as the schizophrenic mother of genius agent Dr. Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds.

©susanbauryrouchard

here are extracts.

from GLEE,  go here

and here, Season 5, episode 3 on
and here



two from Criminal Minds, showing Jane Lynch's acting skills in a very different registrar.



To know more about GLEE and its actors/actresses


ENJOY.

Personnally, I find the whole thing very GLEEFUL ! And look forward to watching my next episode in bed, on my iPad, after work, e-mails, social networking, just before reading a good book and falling asleep. Sweet Dreams Glee brings, as Yoda would say !

Thank you for reading. If you would like to share your thoughts, please comment below
and I will be sure to reply. Have a nice 'G' day. Sunny again today,  here in Toulouse, some cloud cover, rain forecast for later in the afternoon-night, but still cooler than we had in March. While writing I'm listening to Gershwin and now Louis Armstrong, Mack the Knife.





Saturday, 6 April 2019

⌗AtoZ Challenge, April 6th. letter F

Here is my contribution to the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !
I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWrite ! So the challenge is twofold !!

Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.







My contribution today is F for Fantasy. An anticipation story written in 2011for Mslexia. Theme 2021.

Mathilda

“Stop fidgeting and listen !”
The old old man glared at the youngest of the dark round heads gathered around his wicker chair. Beneath the stern look that darted from his eye, shimmered a benevolent gleam. He had seen it all, he had survived 2097, yes he had. On the top of the mountain, a young, young man in sandalled feet and draped shoulders, he had been an engineer on the Huma-Terra project.
He had seen the crevasses split the earth's crust, zigzagging on the screen: Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai, LA, Calcutta. Through the smoked bay window he had seen the giant wave crash at the foot of Kilimanjaro.
“The animals had fled days ago, you see. The cheetahs, leopards and lions had escaped towards Mount Kenya. The elephants had filed up Kilimanjaro. The flamingos had taken off in a cloud of flapping pink and pedalling stick legs, no-one knows where to.”
Peter raised his forehead to the sky and squinting at the sun, tried to imagine a vessel-shaped storm cloud pulsating with the curious birds he had only seen on the archive pad.
“ Once the waters had finally receded, a colony of fuchsia flamingos was spotted on Table Mountain ! ” the ancient man gazed over the hair of his audience, his mind wandering. “ That was in 2120, but I'm getting ahead of myself. ”
A few of the boys shifted on their silk cushions. One of the girls, Mathilda, pulled at her pigtail and sucked on her teeth : “ suurrp ”.
2
“ I met May, your great-great-grandma in Megêve in November, plus-thirteen. The Kilimanjaro survivors flew to the Alps in the Huma 1, the first solar-powered air glider. The Mediterranean then stretched from Mount Kenya right up to the foothills of Mont Blanc. ”
“ Was she pretty ? ” Mathilda asked, surprising herself with her own boldness.
“ Like a prairie in the wind, golden locks on speckled wheat skin...She was as light and fresh as I am dark and oily like slick fuel. ”
“ What is fuel ? ” interrupted Peter, perplexed. “ I haven't seen that word in the archive. ”
“ Ah! That's because we wanted to forget about it. The Devil's substance, the curse....More about that another time, ” the ancient survivor snapped impatiently. His eyebrows notched up and stuck V-shaped, his lips tightened, a lead bar.
“ May was part of the Mont Blanc project. She had witnessed a river of cows gushing past boulders and screeching crows beating around the peaks. She told me of a blazing horizon in the far distance to the west where the volcanoes of the Central Plateau were erupting. We travelled there a few years later, together, and trod on a sea of caked lava, cars melted to metal plates frozen in the mud. There were no survivors. We will probably find the inhabitants of these buried towns and villages a thousand years from now, standing petrified, eerie statues, in their homes like in Pompeii. ”
Cows, volcanoes, lava, cars, Pompeii. A lot of words of which Peter could not grasp the meaning. He opened his mouth to ask but then shut it again. A vibrant gong had sounded above the wooded porches. Then a tune tinkling from a triangle. They say a large clock-tower in England used to chime the same melody everyday at twelve o'clock noon.

3

“ That's enough for today. Time for potato pulling. Up, up, Samantha will be waiting for you... ”
The wise African settled back down into his wicker chair and laid his neck on the headrest, a firm canvas pillow embroidered with a large-tusked elephant pulling a wooden plough.
Peter, Mathilda, Sarah and the rest of the twenty boys and girls skipped down the porch steps and ran along the dirt path to the potato field. Their arms brushed against umbrella-like green-brown banana leaves; the stem of fruit, a black eye seemed to record their progress.
Peter ran ahead, jumping from side to side over the potholes in the path, slithering on damp grass like the snow-boarder he had seen on the pad, down the slopes. The other children attempted unsuccessfully to keep up. They were nowhere close to having Peter's agility and stamina. Mathilda brought up the rear, idly skipping along, dreaming of May and imagining her own wedding in an ivory dress with frills round the shoulders. She had seen a picture of a princess who had lived over a hundred years before the cataclysm and who died in a tragic accident. A sad, sad story which brought wells of tears to her eyes every time she saw the pictures on the pad.
“ There you are Mathilda, I had almost given up on you!Lost in your dreams again,” Samantha wagged a finger and then pointed to the last row of dark earth.
“ Sorry ” Mathilda whispered as she took up her spade and bucket.
The air filled with a tune of scrapings and thudding as each child dug the earth and dropped the potatoes into their buckets. As the rhythm intensified, there rose a melody, a deep-throated song that stretched back through the wakes of time.

4

Another day, sun beating my brow.
We dig, we delve, bend and bask't
Oh ! The earth is hard but my life is sweet.
Tonight we'll gather round the fire.
We stand upright on our two feet.
Hewella, wangole, wangole.
Hewella, bandome, bandome.

Peter was already seated at the long wooden table in the shade of the vine trestles, nails clean and face eager, when Mathilda having at last finished her row stepped onto the large porch. Samantha bustled the children together and one by one they filed along the table to their chairs.
“ Boiled carrots and beans with sautéed grasshoppers today, ” announced Peter, who could always be relied upon to keep up with the week's menu.
Once everyone had their helping, the children awaited Samantha's signal.
“ We give thanks to Mother Earth for providing. Tuck in. ”
Sarah chatted to Mathilda between mouthfuls.
“ What are you doing this afternoon ? I'm going fishing with Auntie Grace. The river is swollen with fish. Pike, minnow and trout. Then we'll smoke and salt them. The minnows we'll pickle. It might rain round four o'clock and Auntie Grace promised us a rainbow, a full arc over the hills. ”
Mathilda munched the insect legs, then swallowed.
“ I found an e-book Emma, by a woman called Jane Austen, written ages ago. I think I'll sit under the gum tree and read it. ”

5

“ You're so lazy Mathilda. There's work to be done. You know, 'for the communal good' ” she added, ironically quoting the words with her fingertips as she'd seen Samantha doing.
Mathilda looked at Sarah's face with sad puppy eyes and sighed. After their bananas for dessert, the boys and girls lined up to stack their plates on the wooden counter. The five girls and boys who had dishwashing duty slipped behind it. Mathilda quickly slunk towards the library to borrow an e-pad, vibrating, shivering in anticipation at her stolen afternoon on the hillside devouring Emma. At 5 o'clock ironing duty was on her schedule : sheets ! No way of sneaking out of that one. She could be sure that Amy would hound her down by a quarter to.
The path up the slope was steep. Moist blades of grass caught in her sandals cooling her toes. Wild flowers, lady's smock and meadow sweet tickled the back of her shins. Snug under the gum tree, Mathilda closed her eyes to the wind in her face and thought about the words she had just read : ' the cold, however was severe; and by the time the second carriage was in motion, a few flakes of snow were finding their way down, and the sky had the appearance of being so overcharged as to want only a milder air to produce a very white world in a very short time.' 1Mathilda had read about snow and seen pictures of blanketed landscapes but couldn't grasp the panorama evoked by Jane Austen's words. She tried to imagine England and winter in December. Here in Eastern Africa snow rarely fell. Sometimes you woke up to a white-topped Kilimanjaro but only great-great grandfather Joseph had stood in a crisp January morning and caught snowflakes on his tongue among the wooded fields of Europe. In the book, Emma and her father Mr Woodhouse would have
6

thought nothing of falling flakes among the meadows. The wonder and delights of winter magic were not foreign to them; a lost world that Mathilda could only dream of. She would never see England. There was nothing left : a few dried-up, weather-beaten peaks, barren lakes in the North and unwholesome marshes in the South. They say the ruins of the once big city of London lay under twenty feet of salt water; St Paul's dome, a cracked green globe, sometimes reverberating a glint of weak sunlight. Mathilda, however, wished to be able to sit on a window bench in one of Jane Austen's cottages and watch spring blossoms float feather like to the ground. Or to curl up on a woven rug by the hearth of a stately home with colonnades and listen to the conversation of her own two parents discussing matchmaking between respectable men and women of the county or the success of the latest ball at the Manor House. Mathilda sighed.
All of a sudden a pitter-patter could be heard on the leaves of the gum tree and a wonderful clear rainbow arched over the hills below Mathilda. She plunged once more into Emma's intrigues. Life did seem complicated in 1800. Four hundred years, however, hadn't changed human nature much. Mathilda knew whom she must avoid and whom she could trust. Sarah was always amiable but was she really a friend ? She often reproached Mathilda her whims. How would Sarah react if they were ever in a tight spot ? Peter could be counted on to provide you with information and would be practical and clear-headed in the face of danger. Mathilda liked Amy, the chore coordinator. She was strict but fair and never beat about the bush when things needed to be done. At the same time Amy was full of stories about her grandmother and the way she went about domestic tasks. A leader in the colony, who had established the round of duties, she had kept alive the songs and nursery rhymes to which rhythm the tedious work had pulsated.
7

Hickory dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
Hickory dickory dock

Amy said the clock was a tall wooden box called a grandfather clock with a moon face and metal hands travelling round numbers : twelve at the top and six at the bottom. Peter had made a drawing and shown the other children while they were at their studies : playing a game of calculus with pencil and paper; counting beads on an Asian wooden contraption. Mathilda sometimes felt the world that was no more must have been decidedly strange. Even Jane Austen would have been out of her depth.
A soft tread on the path behind a boulder woke Mathilda from her speculations. She whipped her head round in time to see Amy's dark closely knitted braids appear through the gum tree's leaves.
“ There you are ! Four forty-five, sheet time, ” she declared.
Mathilda smiled, folded her pad and sprang up. She squinted into the infinite sky and breathed in the immense landscape below, the yellow plains of Masaï Mara glowing in the setting sun. Her soul lifted from her melancholy. She followed Amy down through the shivering tall grass and they picked up an old tune :

He has the whole world in his hands
He has the whole world in his hands
He has the whole world in his hands
He has the whole world in his hands

1Emma, Jane Austen, chapter thirteen.



©susanbauryrouchard