Saturday 2 April 2016

A Cough in the Park


With the sun shining, the sky blue I took my cough across to the gardens to see some Spring.  This was the furthest I've roamed for weeks and it was a typical English Spring day, cold!  There was warmth in the air when the wind ceased but as it failed to cease much and blew from the east it hurled a chill at those fooled into thinking it was Summer.  When does Spring start and end I ask?  The official date appears to vary with metrologists and various others disputing what starts when.  I suppose in the UK it makes no difference anyway, it will not resemble a tropical land anytime soon.  
One thing that was clear was the Englishman's desperate desire to take his clothes off!  Not too bad today but all around I saw men and a few women in T-shirts when the weather was not yet warm enough for this, I helpfully coughed loudly in their direction to inform them of their next couple of weeks endurance test. 


Our cretinous leaders have pulled a great one this week.  Not that long ago they opposed tariffs on Chinese steel imports as George Osborne was desperate to get his hands on the Chinese cash, now said steel is flooding the market and 15,000 UK jobs will be lost.  Not only but also the steel produce still made in the UK will now have tariffs of around 42%  placed on it by the Chinese!
Selling the nation to the Chinese, Russians or Arabs of any type appeared to be a winner for George Osborne, now like almost everything else he touches it is falling apart.  Poor George his hopes of becoming Prime Minister are fading.

 
How nice to see the daffodils swaying in the wind today.  So many varieties of one flower were on view.  The council ones were darker and brighter than those planted long ago by the gardener in what once was a school garden but individual daffs seen in a variety of gardens had various shades of yellow.  None I suspect were similar to those seen by the poet that time up in the hills of the Lake District, those would be wild daffodils and not the type manipulated by green fingered peoples in greenhouses.  Such a variety of yellows, as indeed there were varieties of green to be seen.  Soon however the buds which have appeared will blossom and the world will smile once more.


"I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD"


          I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
          That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
          When all at once I saw a crowd,
          A host, of golden daffodils;
          Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
          Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

          Continuous as the stars that shine
          And twinkle on the milky way,
          They stretched in never-ending line
          Along the margin of a bay:                                  10
          Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
          Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

          The waves beside them danced; but they
          Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
          A poet could not but be gay,
          In such a jocund company:
          I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
          What wealth the show to me had brought:

          For oft, when on my couch I lie
          In vacant or in pensive mood,                               20
          They flash upon that inward eye
          Which is the bliss of solitude;
          And then my heart with pleasure fills,
          And dances with the daffodils.
                                                              1804.   William Wordsworth



7 comments:

carol in cairns said...

Pretty double colour of the jonquil? daff? whatever bulb growing flower that is ~ enjoy! because you would not see such blooms in a tropical climate if you were there. More fresh air and sunshine and another jacket and scarf are the doctor's orders.

Lee said...

The blooms are bloomin' beautiful.

The poem...equally beautiful...and appropriate.

Adullamite said...

Carol, Daffs I call them, but you have your own variety of colourful plant life.

Lee, Blooming good.

Jenny Woolf said...

These are just the kind of photos I like. I can never resist taking pictures of daffs. I just don't know why. When I was at art school I could never resist drawing them either (they're really hard). I obviously have some kind of an obsession and the top picture really pleased me.

The poor people in the park had read about London being hotter than Madrid this week. I know you're not in London but near enough for the doomed optimists. Although I was in Madrid 2 weeks ago and it was FREEZING! so as usual this is another Daily Mail type idiocy.

I wonder if anyone except George and his cronies felt OK about toadying to the Chinese. Will anyone have second thoughts about allowing them to design our nuclear facilities? I wonder. We could of course always take the view that they'd never do anything to harm our interests, or anything underhand, or that they would not want to offend us in any way by designing some little thing into it which means they can take the whole thing over if they feel like it later.

Don't get me started. I'll go now.

Kay G. said...

Love the daffs over there. We have the same ones here, we stole them from you!
I love the poem too, we had to memorize the first stanza in school but I also memorized the last one, since I liked it the best. (I suppose I could have tried to memorize the whole thing, but that is not how I roll.)

the fly in the web said...

What happened to the days when British ambassadors refused to kowtow to the Chinese....

Adullamite said...

Jenny, I reckon it is the bright yellow colour that does it with Daffs.
The yellow colour does it with George Osborn also, however Hinckley may never happen as the French side are pulling out.

Kay, I can imagine you stealing them from Eastbourne!!!

Fly, They stopped selling Opium.