60th birthday ruminations

It was a landmark day for me yesterday - my 60th birthday. Yes, I was born when King George VI was on the throne. In fact, I came into this world just one hour before the monarch officially opened the Festival of Britain at noon. Wikipedia describes the "Festival Style" as combining modernism with whimsy and Englishness. I leave it to others to judge if I fit in.

My cousin Jennifer marked the big occasion by sending me three packets of seeds and a recipe book from Limekilns Parish Church, a coastal village not far down the road from her home in Dunfermline. There are some seriously good cake recipes in there. Mmm...I'll be trying some soon. The seeds are also very welcome and I will be particularly interested in having a go at growing peppers.

Talking of seedlings, I'm pleased that my beetroot and courgettes have started to show. The beetroot was a spectacular failure when I transplanted the seedlings last year, but that was on the back patch where the sun don't shine. I shall choose somewhere else this time.

The garden is totally parched and a bit of dustbowl after weeks without rain, although they are telling us to expect showers by the end of the week. Let us hope so.

Sunday meditation

Time marches on and I am 58 today, a world away from the callow youth of 18 who left home in the south to go to university in Yorkshire. Since the start of this year I have been reading a poem a day, in an effort to understand and appreciate that most curious of literary forms. It still doesn't come easily or naturally to me, but I was particularly struck by a work called Leisure, written by W H Davies, who lived from 1871 to 1940 and is now best remembered as the author of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. If he is remembered at all, that is.

The opening lines of his poem go:

WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—

Davies's words have a particular resonance for me in my changed circumstances and present frame of mind and I remember them on this special day.