Stan and his sweet blonde girlfriend Anne were studying government data on inflation.He wanted to give a lecture for senior citizens.

Why are you wearing those smart wool trousers and black tights,darling? he enquired kindly.

Well,it’s the the fashion dear heart, and more modest than a mini skirt for if I bend over I’m protected.Her answer seemed ludicrous With her sweet bosom,hips and tight clothing it was hard for Anne to give any semblance of modesty.

Wouldn’t a maxi skirt be modest?I saw some in Marks last week.I bought one for Mary

Do you often buy her clothes? Annie asked with surprise.

She used to do it once  …. but she stopped because she’s hopeless at dressing.She’d go out in pyjamas left to herself

Well,silk jim jams are the summer fashion this year.

Can I have some,please? miaowed   the cat,Emily.

You already have some silk nightgowns…

Do you really buy nightgowns for the cat?asked Anne incredulously

Well she sleeps with me now you know,as I like to hear someone breathing at night.Mary  is downstairs studying algebra.She only needs three hours sleep.And she has no interest in loving me.It’s a puzzle how she bore our two daughters Lyra and Desiree.She says she found them under a gooseberry bush, but they look very like Bill Clinton.

Was Bill fond of gooseberry bushes too?They have big thorns.

He would not let a few thorns put him off…he’s a very tough man.

What about goats’ horns.. would they put him off? Or Matterhorns?

Let’s get back to statistics,my beloved,Stan murmured foolishly

I’ll just boil the kettle,my lambkin

I prefer boiling  the water 

Stan  was famed for his wacky sense of humor………….amongst the friends of theirs who all taught maths or played cricket for England.Annie  walked away looking charming in her black wool city shorts with shiny patent leather boots.Her chest distracted him as she wore only a yellow vest.

Have you not got a cardigan ,darling,he whispered shyly.

No,the moths ate it but I’m going shopping later she muttered

.I hope you’ll wear a coat.You might catch a chill,he said anxiously

Fret not,,I’ll drive down.Annie screamed
.You are 55 now you know…you are not a girl.Modesty is a wise trait for mature ladies. Modesty………I gave that up years ago.I dress how I feel.

Well,you make me want a feel.Suddenly the leg fell of his chair and it collapsed tossing him onto the floor
,As he lay there he muttered sarcastically,

I blame those trousers of yours! Call 999.

She tore off her trousers to reveal some black silky lace flowered underwear

Is that better? she enquired chastely .

I suggest you get tested forAsperger’s syndrome,he shouted petulantly

I have enough trouble with Tourette’s she whispered tenderly.It makes me say bad words…………..

I’ve never heard you.What sort of words?

Like, “Be off,you silly twit.”

That sounds funny to me.he responded sweetly.

Can you tell me some more bad words?

No I can’t,you dolt!

Why not,my angel?

Well,isn’t this a family friendly web site?

Nowadays,what does family mean?Two ladies who love one another and their child fathered by the cat.

I never knew it was the cat.I’ve often wondered about that.Emily purred happily as she was hoping to have kittens soon with her boyfriend Emile who was in the garden.

Look it’s tea time.I hear Mary ‘s bike.Get up off the floor and get a hammer I can mend that chair.

Wow,you are so clever……we men are unneeded now! Stan informed her ironically.

Don’t be silly.I love you,the dearest.Thanks you so much…it’s good to hear those sweet words.  meant I want the dearest maxi skirt as a reward,she said saucily.

Women,Stan thought wryly. Can’t live with them;can’t live without them.Go and put on your nightdress Emily.Warm up the bed.I’m having an early night.

Quick,get up.Mary  is here.she’ll imagine the worst if she sees you on the floor

,I know what you do on that rug,you little minx! t was Mary who had crept in in her bare feet.Look at you,no shoes!How vulgar.You look like a fraction!

Better than looking like a decimal!

Now,said Stan,have a cup of tea and then we can have a sit down on the rug and study algebra and geometry.

What a nice man he is!Why is Annie so keen on decimals see my next instalment… when I can carry on again

The branches are  graceful like my hair when it needs cutting

They’re moving in the wind  as if to indicate .. they do not like roots

The wind has no rhythm  it’s not regular

And so the leaves like fronds move in irregular motion

Clouds are white again but don’t look settled.

I suppose good Friday is an uneasy day even for non-believers.

It is rather startling that some Jewish peasant man is still remembered after 2024 years.

There must have been something different about him.

He knew what we should do but we don’t know how to become capable of doing it.

And the land is ridden with warfare and death

A cruel .. a very cruel development where children die and there is no water to drink

But no one will get in and now the Jews of Israel have become like people everywhere

Too much affected by politics and corrupt politicians

I suppose we didn’t think a Jewish state would be like this.

But what could it be like?

It seems like you’ve got to fight and even to kill just to preserve your own safety and how safe is it really?

Children having  nightmares with no secure base,

With no security attachment

With no good enough mother

Lost in transitional space.

After all it’s meant to be transitional.

Either go mad or kill somebody or drive them mad.

Doesn’t seem to be much peace around at the moment

At this moment in time

At the time of which we speak

At the precise hour of 3 p.m. when Jesus died on the cross

Was that the moment in time which. nobody registered

He could have fallen from the sky and nobody would have noticed.

I think someone did once but the shepherds kept on looking after the lambskin

Some might be waking up by a nuclear bomb

I think I can see one coming

Mary stood in the kitchen wondering why the floor was so dirty.It looked as of a plant pot had fallen over and flung its compost wildly outwards.Emile was standing on his
hind legs pretending he could dance.
Emile, did you knock over a pot,Mary cried?
I’ve never seen a plant pot here, he replied honestly with a hint of dramatic irony
Oh,well.I’ll make some tea,Mary murmured loudly as of dropping a hint to her late husband,Stan.
She was wearing a red fleece dressing gown and slippers as she ran upstairs
to read the Sun.
Suddenly, before she got to the top, her doorbell rang
In ran Dave, the bisexual paramedic, wearing his new dress and top hat
What’s wrong,Mary asked petulantly?
I was just passing and thought I heard a strange noise.His nose dripped like a tap with no washer
Have you got a cold,Emile asked?
Yes, but I am not selling it
Do people sell illnesses?
Yes, some buy polio germs and send tbem with Xmas Cards
To whom, asked Annie, who was in the porch shivering
Their enemies., of course
Well, after Brexit we might all be paralysed as half wanted to leave and half didn’t
Since the average reading age in Britain is 9 years most of us could not understand the information we were given.To read The Guardian you need a reading age of 14.
That explains a lot,said Mary morosely.How can I teach non linear algebra to people who can’t even read the Wailing Nail?
It sounds like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem
A nail is not a wall, said Emile furtively.
Annie was wearing some shortie pajamas with cats printed all over
which went well with her amber eyes and long nails,
Can I borrow some Weetabix, she asked Mary? I’ll return it
Please don’t, Mary cried in horror.I have 3 packs of Weetabix Protein here
Do you eat them often,Annie teased her?
As often as possible!
Dave was washing Emile’s feet to practise for Maundy Thursday.
Are you Jesus, he asked Dave?
How can I be Jesus and Dave the paramedic at the same time?
Well, if you believe in the Trinity I see no problem
Emile, you are so clever.Noone would believe a cat was so brilliant
Well,said Emile, maybe I am not just a cat,; his amber eyes turned cerulean blue with joy

I blundered rightlyl and out loud

When giving lectures, paying bills

When at a seance I met my host

Kissing on the windowsill

We ate a steak, and a cream tea

Making love by memory

His family were  well endiwed

And yet  he never made a will

And every day he burned the toas

My tranquilizers made me  chill

The cakes were faked beside the sea

While we made love on the TV

I lead my pupils with heads bowed

Beneath the red brick cotton mill

And so it was we saw the ghosts

And spirits wrote with their long quills.

Beneath the cake, we saw frogs freeze

Cats enchanted by the trees.

Thank you very much to all my readers and friends here

I can’t tell you how much it means to me while I’m going through these difficult times to have people reading my  offerings.

I’ve just had the physiotherapist here and despite having rheumatoid arthritis and various other health problems she is very impressed by how strong I am

And I am surprised because I’ve not been doing a lot of exercise and have not been walking about outdoors for two months. So I am puzzled. But I do know that at one time I was very deficient in vitamin d and it was only when I got put on some massive doses that I was able to learn to walk again.

And that makes me think about an article recently in the guardian newspaper saying that the number of people being taken to hospital in in Britain because of vitamin deficiencies has risen a lot in the last year.

Wherever you are please try to eat a good diet and do whatever exercise you can because we’re all need each other and we may not see each other but we’re interacting online and in other ways and I’d like to pass on this useful information.

And if for some reason you have to stop leading a normal life don’t doubt that you can start again if you are determined and if you can get help from physiotherapists and other people

https://www.writerscookbook.com/different-forms-of-poetry/

Strange how many random heaps of clothes and other oddments

Turn into a sinister hiding place for something feared yet unknown

Why is it so, why not a hope of joy if something magnificent hiding?

I do not know I cannot tell you

There’s always a fear that the mother you’re looking for is a black witch with fangs

Yet you can’t give up hope.

And yet there is fear

So do not criticize my house when you visit me because you do not know the terrors I live with

you do not know how brave I am to be alive

Living with these monstrous possibilities.

Like how a bedroom in the dark becomes a stage for terror or horror

And the creaks on the staircase terrify you as you go to sleep bringing you up after the deepness into a startled alertness.

Something is coming slowly and surely for you and you will not survive

Yet in the daytime we go on living as if everything is normal

This is normal

I must be vigilant because somewhere sometimes some day the monster will return

I must not be taken by surprise again.

Even the faces of loved ones can turn evil in the night in the darkness and we have to cling to the end of the bed and keep breathing until the dawn breaks

And it’s so late in this midwinter seaso

how darkness fells us

How the uncertain sun rises reluctantly into the new year

And we hope for something good

Surrender to the chaos

For me, the thing that keeps the overwhelm at bay most of the time is not to be organised – I just prioritise what is important and wing it! Gone are the days of batch cooking, constant cleaning, organising and planning; I no longer have the energy. The house is a mess most days, but my kids are clean, fed and prioritised. Me-time is back, whether it’s with a nap, binge-watching TV or taking a walk in nature. I’ve learned to surrender to the chaos and enjoy what really matters. Sarah Ryan, Cork, Ireland

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jan/01/make-a-much-shorter-to-do-list-15-quick-simple-ways-to-avoid-overwhelm?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

The Pilchards.23,Sweetnames AvenueKnittinghamNear Nottingham.England

Dear Jane

Hope you are keeping well in this unusually cold spring weather.Stan has had flu.It made him so bad tempered and waspishthat I took up the Duraglit polish and got him to polish all the brass,except the front door knob, as that doesn’t come off.Mind you,it made the bedroom smell odd… a mistake,perhaps…so I sprinkled lavender oil around.He seems to get thinner and I seem to get fatter.So our average w eight remains constant.What a relief.I’d like to be weighed as a married woman.Can you believe this..I’ve got chilblains! It’s those dratted blood vessels of mine.Still,I polished some old plum colored leather and wear them in the house.We seem to be doing polishing frequently here.. boots,furniture,apples.How is your new book “Nonsense:A.N.Whitehead and Lewis Carroll” coming on?Hope it’s progressing….to a nonsensical ending.I’ve got a new book of poetry coming out in April[from Polar bears publishers]It’s called,”An unpolished performance.”My fourth book on Wittgenstein’s cats is almost finished.And the publishers can’t wait for the photographs…I’ll get a friend to do those for me!!It gives me a change from all that polishing.I’ve begun to talk to myself out loud…. in the street.Just seeing if I can still do my old Lancashire accent.I suppose it might worry people but no one has said anything as yet.They may be afraid.”That which is unsaid can,nevertheless,still be heard.Stan is still involved romantically with Anne, our next door neighbor.I can’t blame him as chilblains and Wittgenstein not very romantic.When I think of how we used to be,it makes me smile and feel sadness too.I wonder if I can find someone new for a romance,myself… someone with Asperger’s syndromepossibly…as I’ve just been diagnosed.It’s quite common in mathematicians.It may be anadvantage in concentrating a lotI need a boyfriend with weak eyes as my clothes are all full of moth holesand I’m damned if I’m going to buy new ones.I can’t see well enough to darn but I’ve sewn the holes up neatly thusgiving a strange pleated effect to my clothes.On my merino wool knitted trousers, one hole was right on the ass.It looks now as if I’ve been shot in the rear…but I can’t see it.So it does not exist.Sometimes in the past I would iron on those motifs likebutterflies…butI think it would look odd having a butterfly just there…. or indeedanything else like wild rose.I could make a little sign saying”Keep clear,from my rear.This is a hole where a moth scored a goal.”Still,not many people are going to look there now I hope….I seem to have stopped knitting but am still drawing.Meantime I’ve just ironed some of my winter clothes as it’s still chilly..and am planning to iron all my pink and blue knickers nowas I believe it kills any germs left when you wash at 30 deg.I got those colours in case I shouldchange sex or is it gender?I wonder if I should iron the sheets?Could I do it while they are on the bed?I don’t wash them much as it wears them out and me too.I am going to take up baking again because Stan is getting so thin.I fancy a Russian cheesecake as it had a lot of protein in it.I have a genuine Russian cookbook and also am waiting for a delivery of aJewish cookery book as I have lost mine..no it fell down onto my head last week.God only knows where that came from.but I believe there were good cheesecakes as Jewish cooking has much incommon with Russian,perhaps because once many Jews lived in Russia.I justmade friends with one here….he is charming and like me he hates golf.I have got almost all the Penguin cookery books ever printed but mislaid afew.In fact it’s quite hard to get into the kitchenwith all these books on the shelves.And a little food.I was comforted to read that the parent’s of John Burra,the artist,had books piled every where in their large house….and he was very untidy too.So all I need is talent and practice and I’ll be an artist.After all,anyone can be untidy but not everyone will practice their Art.I’d like to practice the arts of love.They say you should love your neighbor as yourself,but personally I prefer the neighbor or even the milkman to myself.Meanwhile I’m happy with Emile our catand my 500 photos of Wittgenstein.I shall make Stan a lemon sponge pudding.That is the love he wants…Food.”If music be the food of love I’ll cohabit with a pure white dove.
And while he coos and sings for me.
I’ll try not to :fall out of the tree,
Get stung by a bee,
Have psychotherapy
Make more enemies,
Let my thought free,
Hurt my knee.
Let moths frighten me.Well,time for some tea.Now Jane, please write to me soon.I love to see your so strangely beautiful handwritingand to hear about Whitehead and Cambridge and all the weird dons.I hope it’s not too damp and cold there near that river.Keep warm and make a note of any intriguing happenings to relate to me.And anything beautiful you can see or hear.I hope Edward is writingregularly..where is he doing his research now… did you say Stanford?Maybe you should install Skype..then again,perhaps not as you would have towash your hair too much… and comb it too…perhaps we could wear wigs.Do write soon,Love always,Mary.

 
I wish I were an apple I wish I were an apple
and you were eating me
I’d like to make you happy
As you sat by this tree.
I wish I were a blackbird
So I could sing for you.
I’d like to make you cheerful
And stop you feeling blue.
I wish I were the sun
So I cold warm your frozen heart.
And then your heart would melt for me
And you would be less tart.
I wish I were the moon
so I could protect you all night long.
But being only me may I
Present you with this song?Why 1.Why is denim now a sign of conformity not rebellion?
2.Where are the best jeans from?
3.Should you wear “double denim”?
4. Why is denim too hot for summer and too cold for winter and yet we wear it anyway?
5.Why don’t most people wear winter coats nowadays?
6.Why are the shops so hot they make one feel sick
7.How shopping makes me feel sick and other ways of saving money.
8.Why did the Russians have the best novelists?
9.Is 8. true?
10.Is life worthwhile?
11.What does 10.mean
12.Who can come up with the best ideas for small talk?
13.Food processors…are they a good thing to own?
14.Did you see the second version of Dr Zhivago?
15.Why is Russian Orthodox liturgy so moving?
16.Have you been to Walsingham?
17.Do you like day trips on a coach?
18.Why is fish and chips our national dish.
19.Why is roast beef our national dish.
20.Do other nations have fish and chips?
21 Is rapeseed oil any use for chip frying?
22.What an odd name rapeseed is.
23.Did Einstein eat chips?
24.Is your skin sensitive?
25.Why do women wear deodorants but men don’t usually bother?
25.Do you need suncream in the winter?
26.How many grains of sand are there on Brighton beach?
27.Why is the sea at Hythe sometimes teal
28.Why are the Saxon cliffs in Kent a mile from the sea?
29.Can the Kent authorities move the cliffs back near the sea again.
30 Isn’t it odd that the railway line runs at the bottom of the cliffs near Folkstone as the tide might come up
as a train goes by?
31,Is this small talk?

I muttered as I spoke out loud

I wrote my diary, made my will

Then more than once the oak tree bowed

Unto the red brick cotton mill

Singing as I walked along

I lured the men folk from their dogs

I wonder if my acts were wrong

I sat down on the oak tree log.

Should we do what others want?

Should we please ourselves alone?

Should the foxes mankind Hunt

Kill us with a brick or stone?

Who should make the laws we keep

And who should try the criminal?

Do not let this harm your sleep

Or masquerade as liminal

I wonder lightly as I dream

Do not awake me with a scream

This year is perfect, it’s sublime

I offer you my words and rhymes

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/childrens-article/different-types-of-poetry-for-kids

After Edna had gone home,her neighbours Mary and Annie had to vacuum the carpet where Edna had knocked over a box of biscuits of a crumbly nature and then trodden on them
Edna is hard to relate to,said Annie warmly
I wonder if she will get easier as time goes on?
You mean you are going to ask her again?
I’ve not decided,Mary told her.It is a lot of effort in winter.
Suppose she asks us over to her place,Annie wondered
We’ll have to see how we feel.I suppose it would be interesting to look at her furniture and see if she has lots of books,Mary said
If we go and borrow a book, don’t pencil in your comments down the side of the page
As if I would! Mary said indignantly.I only do that to my own
Just sayin’ ,Annie replied
Did you like her purple coat?
I think it doesn’t go with red hair but who cares? I’d wear yellow even if I looked sick
That seem stupid,Mary cried anxiously
In the dark of winter it means drivers can see you.
I suppose so.. yes, quite a wise idea.But one rarely sees a yellow coat in a shop.
I think you can get them in shops that sell sailing gear,Annie mumbled
Since we are right in the middle of England, there are none here.We’ll have to go to
Orford,Mary warned her
Where’s that,Annie asked?
Not far from Aldeburgh,Mary said knowingly
It’s too far to go in a day in winter,Annie decided
How many miles is it?
About 159.468 each way
That is 319.435 miles altogether
So if we go at 60 mph it takes 5.3333 hours
And at 50 mph it takes 6.4 hours
40 mph would be 8 hours
10 mph would take 32 hours
2 mph would be 160 hours

Stop, stop!

at 0.5 mph I tbink it’s 640 hours

Well that is that.We can’t go it would be nearly 24 days nonstop or 48 if we stopped for sleep daily

Just get a black coat and wear a yellow hat

We must face up to things or lose our heads

Why  have eyes and act as if we are blind

That is what I thought the parson said

When I heard my body turned to lead

An accidental change made by design

We must face up to things or lose our heads

Without a head where would we put our minds?

That is what I thought the parson said

I lost my glasses lying on your bed

Were they stolen by a man malign?

We must face up to things or lose our heads

I saw God in the hallway looking red

He lost his son and so  cut short his reign

Love is what I thought the parson said.

There is no part of life without its pain

I often. wonder why god gave us brains

We must face up to things while we have heads

Love is always better live or dead

Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
Tinged with grey from lack of proper care,
While from the Channel sing the dread foghorns

Sailors in the night long for new dawn
Fear boats of refugees may still sail there
Snow clouds hang like canopies well torn

A dinghy holds the Saviour lately born
There is no space on earth safe from great fear
From the Channel sigh the families drowned

From maternal space, Jesu is torn
His father holds his arms around those dear
Snow clouds hang, are lacy wings no more

The hearts of British ” natives” have turned sour
Into Jesu’s side we thrust our spears
Tune the channel.Requiems need scores

All lives now, and all of time is here
Do not mistake the song of silent choirs.
Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
While in the Channel, stuttering are the horn

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n23/tom-paulin/entrepreneurship

“Hughes’s prose in his letters is always urgent and compulsive, but there are moments of tender observation, as in a letter to Edna Wholey in 1950, where he says he

heard a commotion in the hedge, and after a while, out trundled a hedgehog, merry as you like, and obviously out for a good time. I thought he might make a jolly companion for an evening so I brought him in. After a while I noticed he had disappeared and later heard a noise just like the sobbing of a little child, but very faint, and it continued for long enough. I traced it to a pile of boxes, and there was my comrade, with his nose pressed in a pool of tears, and his face all wet, and snivelling and snuffling his heart out. I could have kissed him for compassion. I don’t know why I’m so sympathetic towards hedgehogs.

Such moments are like dummy runs for poems, and they remind us of the animist tenderness in Hughes’s writing, a tenderness that plays against his celebration of feral power. It’s like the last line of a short early poem ‘Snowdrop’ – ‘Her pale head heavy as metal’ – where nature and human artifice come gently together.

Inevitably, though, it is biographical interest that these letters stimulate. We catch Hughes’s early undergraduate life at Cambridge in 1952, when, writing to his sister, Olwyn, he says that sometimes he thinks Cambridge is ‘wonderful’, at others ‘a ditch full of clear cold water where all the frogs have died. It is a bird without feathers; a purse without money; an old dry apple, or the gutters run pure claret.’ This sounds very like Lawrence, except for the balancing, divided attitude. Hughes, it’s clear, is the most important writer to emerge from English Nonconformism since Lawrence. Like him Hughes writes to the moment with a voracious intensity. Yet in an unusually assured comment on the Anglican Swift (he was only 22) he tells Olwyn that Swift is the ‘only stylist’. Swift’s excellence is a talent for ‘clarity simplicity and power’ (note the lack of commas as in ‘mud water fire and air’). Swift’s writing is ‘the bedrock from which every writer must start’.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-britons-poetry-writeapoemaboutbrexit_n_576f87dae4b0dbb1bbbad011

The bus was cancelled so we had to walk
They blamed Eastern Europe   for the pain
I listened to the idle,foolish thought
I fear  it’s Jesus crucified  again.

Is that leap unjustified, my friends?
It seems God’s punishment will never end
He made us  leave the Garden of Delight
Even though we’re English and quite white
We blamed the blacks and women  and the Jews
Yet mother’s breast was emptied and abject
Look upon the world we may have wrecked
Get to work and sweat and toil  all day
Mathematics, war and bombs  shall prey
To gain salvation we must  love and work
Life is hard and often it will hurt
Acceptance is  survival   and remorse
Jesus came  without the use of force

I didn’t know I’d love you
With both my heart and mind
Every love is different
Each is a special kind

I didn’t know I’d miss you
In quite the way I do.
For we can’t feel emotion
Before its time is due.

Yet all human lovers
Must part and go their ways.
Some may die and fall to dust
Some may go astray.

I didn’t know I’d miss you
With all my tender heart.
But .as we’re made of fragile flesh.
We all must sadly part.

I should be grateful
For being found and known.
I wish you were still sitting here.
And I were not alone.

When we feel so lonely
No-one else will do.
It’s not that I’m just lonely.
I’m lonely, just for you.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-difference-between-officious-and-official

Only learn nonsense if it’s written by Lewis Carroll

When we were at school some of us came across a little geometry probably concerning triangles squares circles etc and I learned something valuable not from the teacher but from the other girls when we were 16 years old.

We had spent a long time studying Pythagoras’ theorem

And when we sat our O level exam  one of the questions was to prove Pythagorasy theorem for which they kindly provided a triangle

The triangle had three points labeled A,B,C.

So I thought that’s an easy question when you spent probably two or four weeks studying this theorem

After the examination was over I was talking to some of my friends and one of them said to me I couldn’t prove pythagoas theorem.

Because in the textbook it was labeled

X,Y,Z

Maybe I was naive to think that the proof did not depend on the letters that we used to denote the points of the triangle.

This was the A stream in a  convent grammar school.

So everybody must have had an IQ above 120 if that means anything which I don’t believe it does by the way. IQ is not really very significant or importance which is fortunate because the last time I did a test I got 65 when a hundred is the average.

I think I must be an imbecile how amazing this i managed to get a degree

If several girls { probably more than half the class} were not able to answer the question because they had learnt the answer by memory they did nothing to understand what they were doing.

Furthermore they didn’t know that was not the right way to learn. They believed studying was memorizing passages which were nonsense to them or proofs which were nonsense.

So it just makes me wonder just how useful education is to most of us

Maybe there’s a problem about dealing with the abstract rather than the concrete.

I never taught geometry so I don’t know what it’s like but I would have thought it’s important to get across to the children or the students that this theorem does not depend on the name you gift the points of the triangle.

It seems obvious to me but perhaps I’m not like other people but I really don’t believe that…… I think people don’t realize that it ought to  make sense and if it doesn’t make sense they have to ask the teacher to explain it again

I have taught at Oxford I have taught at a  polytechnic and I did not find many students who were unable to learn mathematics if it was presented in a sensible way. Even in people who had not done O levels or A levels

But it’s worth remembering that even the cleverest children find geometry quite difficult and do not grasp what is important about it.

And it is not just geometry that they are learning by heart in a meaningless manner I think it was apply to a lot of what they learn.

And so it must be that learning and study can be very destructive to the mind. It’s just a way of keeping adolescents off the streets

Never learn nonsense by heart unless it is written by Lewis Carroll

It is not good to learn parrot fashion or to memorize proofs that you don’t understand

So if anyone in your family asks you for help with their homework try to see whether they understand the general principle behind it do not help them to learn proofs by heart when they have no idea what it’s about at all.

I can’t really see why we spent five years in my school to reach the peak of Pythagoras’s theorem

No ok I understand why it takes five years to do o level at arithmetics containing six wonderful things as compound interest and percentages; how could that take five years?

It goes to show that school is a prison in a way to keep children under control.

I recollect that I had done o level arithmetic by the edge of 11 in the primary school working at my own pace.

I’m going to spend 5 years learning it all again

Yes compound interest is quite difficult but if you get a job on your earning money and you want to save you will learn about interest very quickly when you really need to and if you don’t need to it’s very  tedious

Next time, who invented the straight line?

A symbol is a well in which we dig.

To find the holy water we desire.

The light is not apparent at the start

  The  work the heat. the force and then the fire…

We do not have the light to act as guide

Stumbling down the darkness like the mad

And when we stop and stare in our dismay

We do not find  the light for we are sad.

Yet despair itself has merit,makes us pause

The slowing of the mind the heart,the blood

Helps us see the light that  we will praise

Paradoxes, opposites and shades.

Help us learn the world and sing its prayers.

http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/

Extract

Poetry: full of his nature and his visions

Fresh from school and in his early twenties now, I was full of thought, often very abstract thought, longing all the while to be full of images, because I had gone to the art school instead of a university.”—from his memoir Four Years (1887-1891) (1921). The Yeats were now living in London in Bedford Park where Yeats’ aesthetic sensibility was oftentimes offended by the ubiquitous red brick, however their home was the lively gathering place for their many writer and artist friends to discuss politics, religion, literature, and art. Around this time Yeats met George Bernard Shaw and William Ernest Henley, editor of London’s The National Observer who became a friend and mentor. He also met many of the other up-and-coming authors and poets of his generation and writes of one in his memoir “My first meeting with Oscar Wilde was an astonishment. I never before heard a man talking with perfect sentences, as if he had written them all over night with labour and yet all spontaneous.”(ibid). In the year 1890 he and Ernest Rhys founded the London-based Rhymers Club. Yeats’ pre-Raphaelite inspired The Wanderings of Usheen [Oisin] and other Poems was published in 1889, which included “The Ballad of Moll Magee”, the traditional Irish song “Down By The Salley Gardens” and “The Stolen Child”.

Yeats was often homesick for Ireland, of which his poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” was one of the results,

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Though he visited Sligo almost every summer, he also kept a busy schedule in London: when he was not attending lectures or meetings with the Club, he spent time in the British Museum of Natural History doing research for such collaborations as Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), Irish Fairy Tales (1892), and A Book of Irish Verse (1895). He was often shy around women but made the acquaintance of many who became friends including poet Katharine Tynan (1861-1931) and Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891), founder of the Theosophical Society of which Yeats joined in 1888. A year later he met his muse and source of unrequited love; poet, feminist, actress, and revolutionary Maud Gonne (1865-1953).

The Abbey Theatre and Beyond

In 1894 Yeats met friend and patron Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) of Coole Park and thus began their involvement with The Irish Literary Theatre which was founded in 1899 in Dublin. (It would become the Abbey Theatre in 1904). As its chief playwright, one of the first plays to be performed there was Yeats’ Cathleen ni Houlihan, with Gonne in the title role. The Abbey Theatre, also known as the National Theatre of Ireland, opened in December of 1904 and became the flagship for leading Irish playwrights and actors. Yeats’ On Baile’s Strand was one of its first productions. Of his many dramatic and successful works to follow, The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894) and The King’s Threshold (1904) are among his best known. When Synge died in 1909 Yeats helped to finish his manuscript for Deirdre of the Sorrows. In 1911 the Abbey Theatre embarked on a tour of the United States.

As a successful poet and playwright now, in 1903 Yeats went on his first lecture tour of the United States, and again in 1914, 1920, and 1932. Yeats and his sisters started the Cuala Press in 1904, which would print over seventy titles by such authors as Ezra Pound, Rabindranath Tagore, Elizabeth Bowen, Jack and John Yeats, and Patrick Kavanagh, before it closed in 1946. At the age of forty-six, in 1911, Yeats met Georgie (George) Hyde Lees (1892-1968) and they married on 20 October, 1917. They had two children; Anne (born 1919) and for whom he wrote “A Prayer for My Daughter”;

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Michael was born on 22 August 1921, for whom Yeats wrote “A Prayer for My Son”;

Bid a strong ghost stand at the head
That my Michael may sleep sound,
Nor cry, nor turn in the bed
Till his morning meal come round;
And may departing twilight keep
All dread afar till morning’s back.

I get out my sewing gear
In the quiet times of life,
When I need to mend the tears,
Torn by stress and strife.

I hold my soul so carefully
And gaze at every part.
I hope that light will come to me
As I wonder how to start,

.I take my needle out
With love thread through its heart,
I scrutinize each inch.
And then I start to stitch.

In the quietness of the night
You heal me all the time
You talk to me in dreams
And I write them down in rhymes.

Another day will come
And more fractures form.
That’s all part of life
Strife ,and mend, and strife.

Keep that cocoon whole,
Till the soul’s completely there.
Then through its love-sewn folds
A butterfly will flare.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/16/how-to-have-better-arguments-social-media-politics-conflict

When a debate becomes volatile and dysfunctional, it’s often because someone in the conversation feels they are not getting the face they deserve. This helps to explain the pervasiveness of bad temper on social media, which can sometimes feel like a status competition in which the currency is attention. On Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, anyone can get likes, retweets or new followers – in theory. But although there are exceptions, it is actually very hard for people who are not already celebrities to build a following. Gulled by the promise of high status, users then get angry when status is denied. Social media appears to give everyone an equal chance of being heard. In reality, it is geared to reward a tiny minority with massive amounts of attention, while the majority has very little. The system is rigged.

The places in between were much too wide

Yet i struggled on until I found

The touch of love, the hands that touched my sides ll

Across the floors the feet of dancers glide

All the time our feet must touch the ground

The spaces in between where much too wide

The touch of love the hands that held my sides

Was this why Jesus was at last betrayed

And in the distance I could hear sweet sounds

The place is in between were much too wide.

And then my feelings rose like one great tide

The suchness of your love, oh hands oh sides

And so onto the crucifix we’re bound

To live with love and pain and to be found

The places in between we’re not too wide

I felt your arms around me side to side