Category Archives: Mark’s words

A friend of Elaine’s (and mine) called unexpectedly on Sunday afternoon to retrieve some DVD’S lent to Elaine just prior to her going into the hospice. We chatted briefly whilst outside in the cold sunshine and it was later, after she left, that I started to think. Elaine would have been up to Bruce atContinue reading “SURVIVING THE STORMS.”

Do you have any rituals in your life that you feel compelled to carry out?  I don’t mean routines, they’re more in the nature of necessity and I’m not meaning habit here either. What I mean by rituals is the doing of something that is completely unnecessary to living but you carry out anyway, eitherContinue reading “RITUALS and the LAST TWO ROCKETS.”

This was originally intended to be part of a more general post but in the end I wanted to keep Christmas Day as compact and complete as possible, so it has become a blog in its own right. One of the things I had been dreading most was the coming of the first Christmas withoutContinue reading “A CHANGE OF DIRECTION.”

                             For Elaine my darling wife- 7.1 1955/5.1.2021.  In memory of just one of so many wonderful adventures together- Appledore, N.Devon England. We walked along the shore together Do you remember? The Burrows, We had it all almost to ourselves. The wide damp sand, the sea That house right on the cliffs edge, All oursContinue reading ”  ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD.”

                                                   A funny thing happened to me recently on my way into the kitchen. When I say funny I mean that in the sense of its strangeness, not its humour. It was early one evening, I’d had a shower popped on a t-shirt and some sweat pants and came downstairs. Sometime previously I had leftContinue reading ”              FRIENDS.”

What’s the most important measure of time? Days, years, decades maybe; perhaps hours or minutes? I think its smaller still, I think its seconds.  I could get anal here and go into hundredths or thousandths of a second, the world of grand prix drivers etc, but let’s stick with something familiar to us all andContinue reading “Seconds.”

                                      Christmas 2016. As I’ve mentioned before Elaine loved Christmas and the presents as much as anyone else. This Christmas however things were a little subdued as we were informed earlier in the year that the cancer was ‘out’ in her system and was now officially viewed as a terminal illness. There was no timescaleContinue reading “FIRSTS and LASTS.”

At heart Elaine was a true romantic and she was particularly in love with the Pre-Raphaelite times and works of Victorian Britain. The idea of billowing, flowing romance; of rhymeless poetry penned in meagre garrets by ailing consumptives, and exquisite artworks created on canvas by renegade artists; thumbing their noses at convention and society, whileContinue reading “Offerings”

Have you ever heard silence? No I mean it, think a little have you ever actually heard silence? Not just quiet, not the library hush, but total emphatic all encompassing, silence. The type of silence that seems to have an intelligence behind it; something thinking not just an absence of noise but something purposefully creating,Continue reading “Silence.”

One of Elaine’s greatest triumphs was her Vintage at the Village Hall fairs. They started with the idea of inviting regular buyers to our home, but in typical Elaine fashion, the idea grew and grew. The fairs were a success right from the start and they soon out-grew our local village hall, so Elaine foundContinue reading “SIGNS.”