folklore – Page 2 – don't confuse the narrator

things forgotten

It’s quicker and easier to look things up online than in the weighty volumes of the Oxford Universal Dictionary over on the bookshelf, so I’ve just found the definition of “apostrophe” on dictionary .com and it pretty much sums up this blog:

a digression in the form of an address to someone not present […]

After all, you who are reading this are not present, and that first paragraph is itself a digression: I intended to start here at the Old School House –

– and continue by commenting that when I wrote yesterday’s post apostrophising and being (dia)critical of the local school leavers’ fête and the sad inadequacies of modern education, I had forgotten that my original idea was to write about St Swithin’s Day, which had passed unremarked the day before.
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monday

Wind paunches the belly
of a wifebeater;
blue-black denims drip.
The kitchen drain belches suds
and she ponders ironing
white collars.

Here in the UK, it’s not just an ordinary washing-day Monday, it’s a bank holiday. I don’t know if I’m allowed to call it May Day, or whether I have to use the more diffident Early May bank holiday.
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to every thing there is a season

We’ve had plenty of grey and wet weather recently, but very little that has been really wintery. On Tuesday afternoon it was utterly glorious, so I sneaked out for a walk in the park. I tried to make the most of the time by also making phone calls, including one to my aged mother, who reminded me that it was Candlemas. Perhaps I should have known: the snowdrops – also known as Candlemas bells – had already been in full flower for a week or more.

I am extraordinarily fortunate in that my mother is a fount of country lore and traditions. The older she gets, the more she seems to remember of things she learned as a child.
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after michaelmas

The Michaelmas daisies have been in flower for weeks, but that’s a poor excuse for having completely forgotten that it was Michaelmas – the Feast of St Michael and all Angels – on September 29th.
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