Spring Is In The Air

WARNING

by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick the flowers in other peoples gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickle for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.

LOVLIEST OF TREES

by A E Houseman

Lovliest of trees, the Cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me 50 more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

SO WHAT IS LOVE

by Maria Lovell

So what is love? If thou wouldst know

The heart alone can tell:

Two minds but with a single thought,

Two hearts that beat as one.

And whence comes love? Like morning bright

Love comes without thy call.

And how dies love? A spirit bright,

Love never dies at all.

CODE POEM FOR THE FRENCH RESISTANCE

By Leo Marks

The life that I have is all that I have,

And the life that I have is yours.

The love that I have for the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have,

Yet death will be but a pause,

For the peace of my years in the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.

An edited version of:

“BREAKING UP”

by Betty Bendell

It is the last day of term, the sun is shining and I sit down to aquiet cup of tea feeling modestly pleased with myself. This Easter we are going to have fun. I have laid in supplies of paste, scrapbooks and coloured pencils. On fine days there will be informative country walks.We will bake cakes and have picnics. In preparation for all the house is swept, the garden is weeded and even the ironing and mending are under control.

My neighbour drops in to share these last few minutes of gracious living but already she has a hunted look. She knows there will soon be a knock on her door – well, more of a crash really – and her three ‘extroverts’ (to put it mildly) and then my daughter will arrive home. Another school holiday will have begun.

“Stand by for blast off” she mutters as she scurries away next door.

The thud comes just as I am putting away the teacups.

“Hurry up Mum,” pipes a tiny breathless voice through the letter box

“I’m dropping things and I want to go to the toilet and I’m thirsty.”

I open the door and several enormous poster paintings flurry in. One seems to be of a large potato impaled on a bunch of twigs but I see it is entitled ‘Mummy’. A shoe bag catches me a blow on the shin. My daughter streaks away upstairs shedding hair ribbons, and things made from egg boxes. Can this be the sweet, shining creature I waved ‘goodbye’ to only this morning. I empty the shoe bag out onto the hall floor, experience has taught me to make a careful study of its contents right away. Last term we had P B Taylors gym shoes, twenty seven screwed up handkerchiefs, three assorted left handed mittens and the dustiest pair of PE knickers you have ever seen in your life.

Various crumpled typed notes are pressed into my hands as she dives for the kitchen tap“These are important….Can I get changed?…. Can I wear my shorts?….Sarah’s wearing her shorts….Can I get my bike out?…….Where’s the tent? ……”

“Thank you…. You may…..Yes…..Is she?…..No!…..Upstairs.” I shout while sorting the notes. Normally an expert in slow motion my daughter is now springing outside in shorts and T shirt. It is April, there is a chill wind blowing.

“Mummy can I get the sprinkler out - can Sarah come to play – what’s for tea?”

“Oh well,” I say to my neighbour an hour or so later, leaning over the fence and watching someone else’s child digging up her peonies, “At least the sun is shining and they are out in the fresh air.”

“Are they” she says giving me a startled glance “They told me they were going to play in your house”.

“Anna!” I call sternly from the foot of the stairs. I watch bemused as seven….eight….nine children come thundering downstairs followed by my daughter wearing her newly washed bedspread, my high-heel shoes and an expression midway between ‘expansive hostess’ and ‘but they are nothing to do with me Mummy’.

“Oh look, there’s the ice-cream man!” informs an older boy pointedly.

“Out!” That ghastly van comes every day of the holidays and I know what I’m in for if I weaken now.

Broodingly I clump upstairs.Can this really be me? It is barely three hours since the holidays began and I am already a broken woman. Half heartedly I begin to straighten Anna’s room. I am suddenly startled to see a small face peering out from under the bed. He is very grubby, about three years old and a complete stranger. He begins to cry.

“Come on out, whoever you are” I say gently but with a defeated sigh “Let’s go and buy ourselves an ice cream”.

Excerpt from:

“THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS”

by Kenneth Grahame

The mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters, then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said “Bother!” and “Oh Blow!” and also “Hang spring-cleaning!” and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.

Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered, in his case, to the gravelled carriage drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and scraped and scratched again, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself “Up we go! Up we go!” till at last, POP, his snout came out into the sunlight and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

“This is fine!” he said to himself, “This is better than whitewashing!”

The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in for so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping on all four legs at once, in the joy of living, and the delight of spring without the cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow.

It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting – everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And, instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering “Whitewash” he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much the resting yourself as to see all the other fellows busy working!

He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before – this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver – glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and babble. The mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated.

By the side of the river he trotted, as one trots when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound with exciting stories. He sat at last on the bank, while the river still chatted on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.

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