Marvel my birthday away

Marvel my birthday away To Crawley on Thursday and Friday by bike and train through thundery weather to work with Paul Grosvenor on processing multi-policy pension claims. Then cross-country by train on Friday evening to Reading, whence John Scholes & I hid out downriver on his boat to start drafting our contemplated book on APL.

  These were the woods the river and the sea
      Where a boy
    In the listening summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
    And the mystery
      Sang alive
  Still in the water and the singingbirds.

Great weekend: lazy reaches of the green Thames; hours sitting feet-up on the bow gunwhale, talking; hours bent over our keyboards; the return trip upriver, me half-naked at the helm in the September sunshine while John worked out his draft on handling RGB colour triples.

Then a train to Paddington and the climb home through St John's Wood. Miki disappeared into the kitchen and I was relaxing after a shower when the phone rang. It was Miki, asking if I could come up to Parliament Hill, just above the house.

  And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
  joy of the long dead child sang burning
      In the sun.

Parliament Hill overlooks the City, the Docklands and the Thames Valley. Miki was seated on one of the benches, in front of our picnic table with candle, silver, napkins, champagne flutes and a bottle of French poo. She served a melon and bacon salad, grilled venison and a marmalade & apple pudding and we watched the Thames Festival fireworks spouting from the City.

    O may my heart’s truth
      Still be sung
  On this high hill in a year’s turning.

Posted by SJT at September 18, 2006 09:29 AM