Beers & Books CCCXLIV – Emma

Emma

Jane Austen (16 December 1776 – 18 July 1817)

Beers & Books CCCXLIII – Jiří Mahen: The Moon

The Moon

Jiří Mahen (12 December 1882 – 22 May 1939)

Beers & Books CCCXLII – The Poems of Emily Dickinson

Bilingual delight.

Emily Dickinson (10 December 1830 – 15 May 1886)

Wolfram is back

Just in time for the start of the month, Wichtel Wolfram is back in No. 10.
He would even have moved in a night earlier, but unfortunately, as he wrote, he was unable to install his door, let alone make himself comfortable, as everything was clogged with toys, which he asked to be cleared away by the next evening.
Which of course happened immediately.

And so - "Hooray, hooray!" – Wolfram is back, writes that he is so pleased to be allowed by his boss to spend the pre-Christmas period with the same lovely family as last year, but asks for indulgence that everything still looks very much like a construction site. "I do suddenly feel very exhausted from all the lugging around and have to treat my self to a nap first."
However, he had already unwrapped a small gift – a Christmas calendar to listen to, on which a story is unlocked every day until 24 December.

First snow, late cranes

Opening my eyes yesterday morning,
first snow had been falling.

Few hours later I heard them singing.

But why would they fly northwards?!

Beers & Books CCCXL – In the Borderland

I'd suggest:
In the Borderland

Sherko Fatah * 28 November 1964

Beers & Books CCCXXXIX – Der kurze Sommer der Anarchie

Anarchy's brief summer:
the life and death of Buenaventura Durruti

 
Hans Magnus Enzensberger (11 November 1929 – 24 November 2022)

 

Beers & Books CCCXXXVIII – Never let me go

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro *8 November 1954

Beers & Books CCCXXXVII – German Autumn

German Autumn (1946)

Stig Dagerman (5 October 1923 – 4 November 1954)

Adios for a while

Surrounded by books
writing is nothing but joy.
And nights getting long.

Friday is Skyday

Same procedure as last week.

Laughing Lhursday*

Cat(s) as cat(s) can.

* [For first time visitors]:

Typo in the title?
Nah. It's just that I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

Beers & Books CCCXXXVI – Codename Adler

Code name Adler (Eagle)
Klaus Barbie and the Western secret services*

 
* Also highly recommended:
Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, which in 1988 won Marcel Ophuls the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature

In praise of ...

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbed
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rotted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.


My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy neat the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney

Friday is Skyday

Rain barrel fillers approaching

Laughing Lhursday*

The last visitor

* [For first time visitors]:

Typo in the title?
Nah. It's just that I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

 

Beers & Books CCCXXXV – Road to Brightcity

...

Máirtaín O'Cadhain (1906 – 18 October 1970)

Reconnaissance flight

On its way to the trout farm ...

Beers & Books CCCXXXIV – The Swan

The Swan

Guðbergur Bergsson (16 October 1932 – 4 September 2023)

Yummy

Courgettes, mangold, peppers.
And as there are still lots of tomatoes,
today we produced another ten jars each
of spice ketchup and curry ketchup.
Yummy.