If I make my aim now - if I ask myself what it is I want to complete before the next 365 days are over - then I'll be that much more likely to finish the job.
Friday 31 December 2010
Monday 20 December 2010
minus 8
As if to rebuff my intrusion into the sacred stillness without, the changing face of the Google Gadget now shows a mere minus eight (Celsius) .. ..
minus 12
The little Google Gadget in the corner of my screen tells me the temperature outside is "minus twelve degrees celsius". I find it hard to believe. I am content to note the positive shewn on the Kodak Photographic thermometre pinned to the wall. The mercury there is steady at the thick line and larger figures (from the turnover time) confirming the equivalence of the 'old' 68F with the 'new' 20C. In my undergraduate days in this city there was a popular song in the Hit Parade - four different commercial recordings all out and selling well! - "Baby, it's cold outside". I have no pressing need to emerge and see for myself.
I shall remain in my eyrie.
Content ..
I shall remain in my eyrie.
Content ..
Saturday 18 December 2010
Thursday 16 December 2010
Tuesday 14 December 2010
Monday 13 December 2010
Sunday 12 December 2010
Saturday 11 December 2010
Friday 10 December 2010
from Ghent to Aix
Robert Browning
How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix
I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
‘Good speed!’ cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
‘Speed!’ echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast. It's the rhythm that's stuck in my mind since my months in the Mercers' School during the dying days of the nineteen thirties. I may not have remembered the name of the poet. I may have reversed the route of the riders - but the rhythm is still there. Especially the second line I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; Not much of the poetry we went through at school remains in my mind. Something about the Lady of Shallot. Young Lochinvar coming out of the west. If I should die, think only this of me. It was as if The War was only just before my time. There were uncles who had dug trenches on the Western Front. Another who served at Gallipoli. When the resumption of War loomed in 1938, the spirit of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori was still very tangibly surrounding us. An aunt in the City of the Angels sent us the comic section of the Los Angeles Examiner every week. I was struck by the front page banner. "What fools these mortals be" - Puck. francis cameron, oxford, 10 december 2010
abdication 1936 december 10
10 december 1936. I remember it well. There had even been talk of the country becoming a republic. In my youthful ignorance (I was only nine years old!) I was heard to say “In that case, one day I could be President.” What a hope. Little did I know what kind of a game politics is
When it came to it, we were at the annual Christmas Fair and Sale of Work for the Pitt Street Settlement in Peckham. The man responsible for the Settlement was my proGodfather, Captain C Lisle Watson. I believe he was also one of the Clerks at the House of Commons. He’d lost a leg in the War (1914 to 1918) but this didn’t seem to deter him in any way. (In 1939 he was promoted to Major and resumed active service as an Army Welfare Officer for South London.)
On that evening, 10 December 1936, someone brought in a wireless set and stood it on the front edge of the stage. A hush descended on the crowd in the hall. We heard the man who was no longer King tell us how he had given up the throne in order to be with the woman he loved.
What a different world it was then. Edward VIII wanted to marry Wallis Simpson. ‘They’, the Establishment, wouldn’t let him. Horror of horrors! Mrs Simpson was an American, she was divorced, and her last husband was still living. The Establishment could never allow a woman like that to be Queen.
From time to time in one or other of the ‘recent past’ programmes so popular these days, we hear again the recorded voice of Edward conveying his sorrow to those who had once been his people. It always brings a lump to my throat.
francis cameron, oxford, 10 december 2010
Monday 6 December 2010
Sunday 5 December 2010
Saturday 4 December 2010
tomorrow and tomorrow and .. ..
Today I stand on the eve of my 83rd birthday. I never expected to live so long. When I was a little boy I wondered if I could possibly live to see the new century in the year 2000. I was well aware of the biblical imperative ‘the days of man are but threescore years and ten’. We had been educated to take that literally. Come the end of 1999 I would be seventy-two. Was it possible I could last so long?
Yes it was and I did. And maybe I’ll go on for a bit longer. Provided there’s something interesting to keep me occupied.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been reorganising the photographs on my computer’s hard drive. There are more than 7000 frames there – and probably at least an equal number waiting to be transferred to electronic form. The digital images of the past ten years are encouraging. I had thought but little had been accomplished but when I came to examine the visual record I was touched by the great number of those who have befriended me. I drove my car far and wide; have spoken at a more than satisfactory number of meetings; written a fair number of articles and reviews; enjoyed to the full the phenomena of Pagan camps. Life has been good.
In term time I am often to be found on the premises of the Oxford Union Society where, inter alia, I serve as a senior member of the library committee. In the Members’ bar I have been known to read the Tarot cards now and again. I feel free to quote from Leviticus ‘Thou shalt not cut thy hair nor trim thy beard’ though I really need no such injunction and my flourishing of the text dates from years after I ceased attending my hairdresser in the Turl. Nor do my feet wear ought but sandals – save when thoughts of ice underfoot prompt me to venture out more protectively shod.
I am going to try to write a book about my life. I am all too aware of what I came back to do this time and why I was born where I was and into that particular family.
From my infant years onward I was involved with music until I retired from the profession in 1995. And for most of my life I was a church organist and choirmaster. I’m tempted to wax lyrical about a double helix of music and religion. But I won’t.
I must write about my experiencing the certainties of Spiritualism. How I put that firmly aside when I enrolled into the comfort of the Latin-speaking catholic church. How my completely unexpected exit Road to Damascus was a narrow winding track through the volcanic jungle of an island in the South Pacific. And how the visitor from the house next door, one evening in the suburb of Rozelle (the year was 1974) pointed me to a shining pathway back to the world between the worlds where we are at one with our goddesses and our gods.
vita scribenda est
francis cameron, oxford, 4 december 2010
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