Poem of the Week

Crossing The Bar
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness or farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Mole Back

So I finally got hold of the Adrian Mole (see earlier, and earlier still), then read it in one sitting.  And I still laughed out loud at the school trip entry (when Adrian's class is taken to the BM). 

And I was pleased to see that he also turned up in last Saturday's prize cryptic in the Guardian.

On Nunhead Reservoir

Poem of the Week

Gabriel Grub's Song
Charles Dickens

Brave lodgings for one, brave lodgings for one,
A few feet of cold earth, when life is done;
A stone at the head, a stone at the feet;
A rich, juicy meal for the worms to eat;
Rank grass overhead, and damp clay around,
Brave lodging for one, these, in holy ground!

Dickens in Nunhead

Today there is a lot happening to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.  So it is only reasonable that the Trees Around Nunhead does its bit, by remembering the great man's love affair with Nelly Ternan, who lived at Windsor Lodge in Linden Grove.

He seemed to have used the name Charles Tringham, (a pseudonym he used elsewhere).

Claire Tomalin, writing about the affair refers to it as then “being still a pleasant, open rural area” and cites a contemporary: “There is not in the immediate neighbourhood of London a more agreeable country then  Peckham Rye, Nunhead and adjacent localities”.

So not that much has changed, then.

Frozen Angel, Nunhead Cemetry

Last Night's Snow

Nunhead, along with other parts of the country, I suppose, was inundated last night...