AUTOBIOGRAPHY : FOUR

1948 : 3 photographs

 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY : THREE

THREE.
My mother entered me in a "Beautiful Baby" competition at the local summer fete. I was six months old. The judges, failing to notice the crusty cradle-cap,under my neatly arranged, fair hair, awarded me first prize! "You were so beautiful, you should have been the girl of the family," my aunt would say in later years. And also that, "Your mother was so happy, anyone would think SHE had won first prize."
Well, in a way, my mother had. And she took me to a photographic studio in town, to record the occasion.
My mother also wrote to Margaret Brady of "HEALTH FOR ALL" magazine at this time, for a remedy for the cradle-cap. Almond milk was suggested as an alternative to regular feeds - maybe the breast milk was too rich for me...and to drink a lot of water before breastfeeding...and not to drink milk herself at this time. It worked.

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY : ONE & TWO

ONE.
I like it that my date-of-birth resembles an arithmetical progression. It's easy to remember. ONE. TWO. FOUR. EIGHT. = 1st February 1948 = 1/2/48.

TWO.

The day i was born, in Peartree Nursing Home, Bitterne, three thousand miles away, my cousin, Rosy, was being born in Alexandria. I've always liked it that i have a twin cousin. We now live ten thousand miles apart. i would have last seen her in 1952 - sixty-one years ago! Occasionally i get some news.

 

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(to be continued)

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Bernard Hemensley/Goldy Hermitage @ Poetry & Ideas

poetry & ideas

Snow in from the south. Here in the south, spring-buds nipped by Siberian winds. Below freezing. i have struggled thru a night of nausea, a spinning room, and perversely, heat-stroke in this unheated home....At 4 the snow was falling as a sort of slush and the road was clear....At 5, a hot, sweet drink of chicory with soya was the ultimate in pleasure, reassurance and relief....Around 6, it was more light than dark - snow-glow...and the radio dj played "Midnight in Moscow"...

View : out front

View : out back

Golden GOJI Hermitage @ 7
11 March 2013
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Reflected light, from a cloud-covered sky, that is not black enough to suppress this songbird's entreaty to the heavens, for dawn not to break just yet...Then, a blackbird, in my mind's-eye, releases a few notes into this morning's dark, and cares not for a listener...It is a song, sung in not-knowing...i open my arms, eyes, ears and heart to the silence that ensues...i am engulfed in a silence that does not know...

First "frog" sounds, at four this March morning, spring from the old pond - a "voice" of ecstacy, in the soft rain, falling on everything, as i pad bare-foot to catch a glimpse, of what is truly, a toad. But it IS now Spring...it IS now Spring...and i feel its sounds and stirrings in warm rain on my skin, when it is impossible to sleep... impossible to sleep...