WHITSUN WEDDINGS

I feel such a wimp! If my other illnesses were as bad as this,100% of the time , then coping with my other illnesses would be impossible. After 2 days Fiona's throat was hardly painful whilst my throat feels like it is lined with broken glass. It seems I can only eat soup and salad, even my beloved bread is off the menu. I have taken my morning medication and I am steadily drinking my way though a large mug of warm blackcurrant juice, not as effective as soup but I can't persuade myself to drink soup at 5am, it seems too weird.

Fiona was discussing fame the other day, the pointlessness of famous children of famous parents. I really think that the sooner they find their own way in the world the better. Fiona didn't ' mention her but I instantly thought of Paris Hilton who has the capacity to do so much good but does so little. I am tired of hearing about who Paris had had a fight with or who she is now friends with, I stopped worrying about that kind of thing when my girls left school.Perhaps that is why the general public have little sympathy for Paris at the moment.
And people who laud their good works for the public also p*ss me off, Sorry Madonna and Angelina but you come across as cold and publicity seeking.
Well that was a sickness agitated rant ..............sorry guys!
What about the Parable of the Widow's mite?
I may not be a Christian but that is definitely a good story with a moral for this day and age.

Anastasia arrived home yesterday with Dimitri, the first thing that Beauty said to Anastasia was HELLO ANASTASIA. Well we were all impressed but Anastasia was in raptures she was so pleased.Belle and Anastasia always worry that because they do not live at home that Beauty will not remeber them but sorry girls, no such luck. Beauty has a memory like an elephant and loves you to bits.The next thing that Beauty did was to take a box of Pringles to Anastasia and ask Anastasia to open them for her! You've just got to love the kid.

Next week is the Whitsun holidays so if Beauty is ill with this sore throat then she will not miss any school, Beauty seems to have missed so much school in the last few years because of coughs and colds and her infected hands.
Whenever I hear the word Whitsun ,I always think of the poem Whitsum Weddings by Philip Larkin, one of my favourite poems.

The Whitsun Weddings

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles island,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displace the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn't notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewelry-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochers that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafes
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed abroad: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots. and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
-An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl -and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Traveling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.