Tuesday Doodle.

So, are you just loving the Winter Olympics? Now we’ve got ourselves over the controversy of holding them in that nasty Russia. Thing is you always enjoy them better the better you do – you as a nation – so now it’s just like our summer Olympics – our as a nation – we are on the medal table and in Winter terms we are doing so well, the Olympic spirit has continued to flow since 2012. Long may it continue I say! While the Olympics are on I always wish there was more of each of the individual sports shown so we didn’t have to play catch up every four years but 48 hours after it’s all over and the Olympic flame starts its way to Rio it won’t be an issue. It will be forgotten for another four years!

Billy Collins, it’s ok if you’ve never heard of him! He was American poet Laureate 2001 – 2003, I’ve just discovered this poem of his called Consolation.

Consolation

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna. 

That, of course could almost be written by any traveler whose plans are cancelled. I personally wouldn’t be at all surprised if those of you who know me could see me writing something like that, if it happened to me!!

Meanwhile I’ve had a busy week – moving one of the Wilko crew from one house to another, a task that over the years, to be fair we have had quite a bit of experience at, one way or another. However this was possibly the most difficult…. Ever.For no particular reason, I have to say, you can perm any combination from the following list : Four children between ages of 2 and 9, decorating as much of the new house before the move and stripping walls of ancient wallpaper in some cases twice. A family funeral right in the middle, half term kids holidays, prominent crew member only able to get one 12 hour shift off, an oversized sofa that nearly got chain sawed to get in the new house, constant cold, rainy, wintry weather and that is just the start!! However most of it is done and the lord above only knows how we all made it. Yes it is very much an ongoing project but great efforts all round…. So far1 (Sofa?!!) Well done Wilko/Corbett crew!!  

By the way have you seen the Lego Movieyet?