Stood rigidly to attention either side of the hearth, the two bronze fire-dogs had been struggling to maintain that British stiff upper lipidness, which up until earlier that evening had best befitted their station in life... indeed, for the last half hour at least had become brothers in arms to the dying embers filtering through the bars of the cast-iron grate, passing from the present here and now, having lost every thermal attribute necessary to sustain any further vestige of life... to the shortly forthcoming and being at oneness with the Universe... only to fall foul of the overflowing ash-pan below.  This premature cashing in of the coal fire's chips could only be attributed to the recent and prolonged thrashing from the Baronial poker... and a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the family retainer, whom it appeared, required spurring along in a like manner... and while unseen mechanisms were heard to be engaging, then resonating deep within the Hall... that unless summoned... and quickly, the housekeeper had little intention of making an appearance of her own choosing and re-stoke the Study fire while the BBC Home Service were airing 'Your 100 Best Tunes' on the wireless, leaving the heavily tarnished pendulum to continue measuring the hour.

     An indistinct mutter and snap of a closing door latch sounded in the immediate distance as the unhurried shuffle of domestic footsteps... not too dissimilar from those of Jacob Marley's spectral visitation to Scrooge... echoed ever closer along the ancient, oak panelled hallway without.  Their sudden cessation, allowing the housekeeper ingress to  the book lined Study, was by way of sporadic groans from unoiled hinges, door furniture that voiced the same overwhelming lack of attention as that of the fire-grate set in the wall opposite and presumably, from the same overwhelming lack of domestic servitude.
                                        
     "Had his Lordship rang...?" the Housekeeper wailed dolefully, giving her employer what might casually pass for a courteous bob... and in lieu no doubt, of Marley's rattling chains, padlocks and dusty ledgers... "and would there be anything further his Lordship required..." before she took her leave for the evening.  The notion of a sticky mint humbug warming the cockles of his ancient, aristocratic heart gave her pause for thought as she rummaged through her pinafore pockets, then thought better of it, after all, confectionary didn't grow on trees...  In bobbing a second time she noticed the malnourished, yet strangely twinkling coal-scuttle lounging over by the hearth, whose insubstantial contents had taken on an ethereal quality earlier that evening and had now transferred its undivided attention to the recently summoned Housekeeper, who was quite prepared to offer up a candle in supplication come next Evensong were she mistaken, but the coal-scuttle's twinkle bore every intimation of giving what appeared to be a very suggestive 'come-on' in return... and had been doing so since she first entered the room... 'and did she have any plans of her own that particular evening', the coal-scuttle twinkled suavely, 'perchance a leisurely stroll down by the old coal cellar steps...'  Now perhaps it was the lateness of the hour which had caused the Housekeeper's confusion that evening, or perhaps an over stretched imagination, brought on through domestic inactivity, but it wouldn't take a great deal to hazard that a lingering fondness for Gin and tonic played no small part towards her next curtsey, which she did, albeit unwittingly, in the unerring direction of the winking coal-scuttle.

     With the household keys as her badge-of-office, jangling defiantly from the chain around her waist, the housekeeper began inching back the same way she came, back towards the study door and freedom... and back into the welcoming arms of her 1/4 lb. bag of peppermint humbugs and the pint of best London Gin she'd had to relinquish prior to 'Songs of Praise...' and which was now to be found... should you happen to be an inquisitive fly on a particular piece of floral wallpaper... half-cut, locked arm in arm with the bottle of Indian tonic water and in the final, intoxicating throws of William Blake's, 'Jerusalem...' hic.

     "Ha-arrumph..." the elderly gentleman cleared his throat... "ah Gabby" he said, lowering his book and placing it face down upon the occasional table set beside him.  The flatulent groan of tired leather upholstery made itself heard above the steady monotony of the mantle-piece clock as he stood and chaffed his hands in the direction of the bereft fire, "Oh! I'm sorry your Lordship, then there was something...?" as she maintained her steady but relentless backwards retreat unabated, the double-barrelled bunch of keys taking up a strong rear-guard action and away from the well disposed coal scuttle... "and was his Lordship quite certain that he required the fire stoking at such a late hour..." she dared, "perhaps a nice warming glass of port and brandy instead" gesturing towards the salver, long since tarnished by the half hearted attentions of a proprietary metal polish... "and would he care for..." then thought better of offering to plump the chair cushions herself, having discovered Mort, the household mouser in the final stages of claiming them as his own, deftly rearranging the Victorian Plush with far more than any noble airs or graces.

     "Poor Mrs Alabaster, you will recall Sir, I'm sure..." a pained expression crossed the Housekeepers face as she collided with a corner of the Georgian writing bureau and bringing her to an abrupt halt... "her late Ladyships lady" she continued, indiscreetly rubbing her derriere, "whose services your Lordship dispensed with at the onset of last Winter, shortly after the funeral, God rest her late Ladyship... when you made her redundant... and how she's been unable to find a new situation ever since on account of her lumbago flaring up again, seeing as how it's been the coldest January in living memory", which in all likelihood meant since records began... "and SHE didn't have any coal either... or a roof over her head for all anyone cared... begging yer' pardon, yer' Lordship", letting her tongue slip as she attempted yet one more curtsey... "and it's wicked-cruel outside this time of year Sir, you wouldn't turn a dog out in it..." and how ordering the coal used to be Mrs Alabaster's responsibility...

     "Oh no, Sir", as she unsuccessfully stifled a hiccup...she would be only too delighted to rouse the Cook, especially after that dodgy piece of scrag-end they'd all had to suffer during Epiphany, but it was only last week that the Doctor had confined Cookie to bed with the croup... "as I'm sure your Lordship will recall..." as she attempted a double curtsey for effect, the despondent coal-scuttle now all but forgotten, "that below-stairs had been dining on pottage since a week Friday gone... and it tends to get a little moribund after almost a fortnight your Honour... and that Mrs Cotswold's rheumatism was still showing no signs of improvement either by the looks of things... and was having to visit the Chiropodist every fortnight for her bunions scraping... and how she's been advised to keep taking the embrocation as required".

     As a young woman, any disposition her grandmother may have had towards sobriety or moral virtue had quickly been prevailed upon by the former Master's son taking intimacy to the next level with the saucy Parlour Maid's good nature.   Shortly thereafter, having been obliged to marry the first available Gardener that came along, she was often heard to say "a bun in the oven's worth two in the bush" for it was with stories 'of such goings-on'  that made it abundantly clear to the Housekeeper, that it was far more than old age creeping up... and that if she didn't keep her wits wrapped tightly about her, as she threw a sideways glance at the winking philanderer... then who would.

     As for the Gardener, "well... he couldn't possibly manage the cellar steps at this late hour, yer' Lordship, wot' with the weather being the way it is right now Sir, seasonal... and him with his broken caliper... and bronchitis playing him up at every turn, even though his own ailing missus swore by a freshly grown rhubarb poultice first thing each morning", but oddly enough, "how it always seemed to work better if the young barmaid down in the village rubbed it on, especially around opening time..." even his brother, Mr Potts Senior, ever since their Dad passed away... "God rest his eternal soul", as she whirled, twice in as many seconds, a mystical finger in the air... had said how surprised he'd been to discover that it could be used as a ground mulch for seed-cucumbers... it was truly amazing how The Good Lord provided for the righteous... and even as she spoke, was working in mysterious ways, His Wonders to Behold... "Praised-Be-The-Lord".

     And how the entire household, with the possible exception of Mrs Alabaster, her late Ladyships lady, who doggedly refused to be evicted from her 'Grace n' Favour cottage...' the one with pretty red roses growing around the door, that despite a string of eviction notices from the apoplectic Estate manager... had noticed what a fine upstanding Gentleman his Lordship had steadfastly remained since her late Ladyships sudden demise... "God-rest-her-immortal-soul..." and may she allow herself to say, "how refreshing it was to have such a progressively minded and discerning employer such as his Lordship at the helm, one filled with patient understanding and commitment towards the entire household..." much like herself...

     Fearing an uncontrollable attack of the ague, which invariably took the form of a selfless and unstinting dereliction to duty and always flared up at the slightest suggestion of having to roll her sleeves up and do something... which incidentally, was the first mutual attraction by common consent to which her parents, some forty years earlier had discovered they both held in tandem... and "would his Lordship take exception..." feigning a sudden relapse as she gestured towards the nearest chair, were she to take the weight off her feet... she plonked herself solidly upon the Chippendale before his Lordship could decline... "perhaps a recuperative drop of brandy" she volunteered, "just for medicinal purposes", she swept her feet onto the footstool, then crossed them with a flourish that would have caused Cyrano de Bergerac to hang up his sword... "the good stuff, if his Lordship would be so kind, in the lead-crystal decanter... over in the corner by the potted plant", she caught sight of the adjacent cigarette box, also tarnished... "just to keep body and soul together, may it please 'Him upon High'..." and just long enough to brave the coal cellar steps and refill the amorous scuttle... "if only it were a little less chilly", she gave an affected cough... on account of her diphtheria acting up again, she felt sure that his Lordship understood...  Moving over to one of the book lined alcoves, the elderly Gentleman lifted several tomes from the shelves... 'My Life in Anthracite', an illustrated compendium' "to begin with, I think... followed by... hmm!" 'The History of Fossil-Fuels, a comprehensive study in twelve breath taking volumes' "and we'll take it from there" as he threw the first on the barely smouldering embers...

                                                      ­     ...   ...   ...**

a work in progress.                                                        ­                                                         1859

Make this want wither,
O Rain!

Dig a brook hither
In my vein,

And plant on either side
Of my pain -

Swaying thousands
Of bluebells.
LazharBouazzi (December 15, 2017)

Evening in her slippered feet
Approaches from the heat of day
Shadows in the molten light
Lengthen as they have their way

Silence in the hovered moment
Stillness in the mote of time,
The glow within a sunbeam's ray
Ensnares the warmth of joy as mine.

Drifting insects float on bye
Suspended in the evening light
Against the lace of silver birch
With gnarled trunk of speckled white.

In the dark  blue, far azure
A gosshawk glides on high, aloft
A predator surveying late
For living things in farmer's croft.

A waterfall of children's laughter
Cascades through a field of green,
Overtones of golden shadow
Fills the air with love unseen.

Earthworms in their darkened tombs
Are wriggling for the coming night,
Rabbits stretch and move to grazing
Anxious for the closing light.

The chill night air descends as dew
The picnickers depart the scene,
Starlings flock to perch and roost
Whilst velvet silence hangs serene

Vaulting high above the foothills
Crowned with purple alpenglow
Taranaki's snowclad grandeur
Last to see the day light go.

Contemplation be my friend
For deep within contentment's breast
The joy of living sings it's song
And sooths my happy soul to rest.

Marshalg
Taranaki Evensong
23 October 2010

He had been away. Just a few days, but long enough to feel coming home was necessary. He carried with him so many thoughts and plans, and the inevitable list had already formed itself. But the list was for Monday morning. He would enjoy now what he could of Sunday.

Everything can feel so different on a Sunday. Travel by train had been a relaxed affair for once, a hundred miles cross-country from the open skies of the Fens to the conurbations of South Yorkshire. Today, there was no urgency or deliberation. Passengers were families, groups of friends, sensible singles going home after the weekend away. No suits. He seemed the only one not fixated by a smart phone, tablet or computer. So he got to see the autumn skies, the mountain ranges of clouds, the vast fields, the still-harvesting. But his thoughts were full to the brim of traveling the previous November when together they had made a similar journey (though in reverse) under similar skies. They had escaped for two days one night into a time of being wholly together, inseparably together, joined in that joy of companionship that elated him to recall it. He was overcome with weakness in his body and a jolt of passion combined: to think of her quiet beauty, the tilt of her head, the brush of her hair against his cheek. He longed for her now to be in the seat opposite and to stroke the back of her calf with his foot, hold her small hand across the table, gaze and gaze again at her profile as she, always alert to every flicker of change, took in the passing landscape.

But these thoughts gradually subsided and he found himself recalling a poem he had commissioned. It was a text for a verse anthem, that so very English form beloved by cathedral and collegiate choral directors of the 16th C (and just that weekend he had been in such a building where this music had its home). He had been reading The Five Proofs for the Existence of God from the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, knowing this scholar to have been a cornerstone of the work of Umberto Eco, an author he admired. He had also set a poem that mentioned these Five Proofs, and had set this poem without knowing exactly what they were. He recalled its ending:

They sit by a lake where dead leaves
Float and apples lie on a table. She
ignores him and his folder of papers

but I found later the picture was called
‘In Love’, which coloured love sepia.
Later still, by the time I sat with you,

Watched your arm on the back of a chair
And your hand at rest while you told me
Of Aquinas and his proofs for the existence

Of God I realised love was not always
Sepia, that these hands held invisible
Keys, were pale because the mind was aflame.

He remembered then the challenge of reading Aquinas, this Dominican friar of the 13C. It had stretched him, and he thought of asking his wordsmith of thirty years, the mother of his daughters, to bring these arguments together in a poetic form for him to set to music. She had delivered such a poem and it took him some while to grasp it wholly. He wondered for a moment if he actually had grasped it. But there was this connection with the landscape he was passing through. She had mentioned this, and now he saw it for his own eyes. She had been to Ely for the day, to walk the length of the great Cathedral, to stare at and be amongst the visible past, the past of Aquinas. He remembered the first verse as only a composer can who has laboured over the scheme of words and rhythms:

The Argument from Motion

Everything in the world changes.
A meadow of skewbald horses grazes
Beneath a pair of flying swans
And the universe is different again.

And no sooner is potency reduced to act,
By a whisker’s twitch or a word,
A word, that potent gobbet of air
Than smiles and tears change places.

And everything has changed. Back
Go the tracks beyond seen convergence
To a great self-sufficient terminus
Which terminus we might call God.

And so it was in such a spirit of reflection that his journey passed. He had joined the Edinburgh express at Peterborough to travel north, and the landscape had subsided into a different caste, still rural, but different, the fields smaller, the horizon closer.

Alighting from the train in his home city on a Sunday afternoon the station and surrounding streets were quiet and the few people about were not walking purposefully, they strolled. He climbed the flights of stairs to his third floor studio, unlocked the door and immediately walked across the room to open the window. Seagulls were swooping and diving below him, feeding off the detritus of the previous night’s partying in the clubs and pubs that occupied the city centre, its main shopping area removed to a mall off kilter with the historic city and its public buildings. What shops there were stood empty, boarded up, permanently lease for sale.

Sitting at his desk he surveyed the paper trail of his work in progress. Once so organised, every sketch and plan properly labelled and paginated, he had regressed it seemed to filling pages of his favoured graph paper in a random fashion. Some idea for the probably distant future would find its way into the midst of present work, only (sometimes) a different ink showing this to be the case. Notes from a radio talk jostled with rhythmic abstracts. He realised this was perhaps indicative of his mental state, a state of transience, of uncertainty, a temporariness even.

He was probably too tired to work effectively now, just off the train, but the sense and the relative peacefulness that was Sunday was so seductive. He didn’t want to lose the potential this time afforded. This was why for so many years Sunday had often been such a productive day. If he went to meeting, if he cooked the tea, if he ironed the children’s school clothes for the week, there was this still space in the day. It represented a kind of ideal state in which to think and compose. Now these obligations were more flexible and different, Sunday had even more ‘still’ space, and it continued to cast its spell over him.

He put his latest sketches into a sequential form, editing on the computer then printing them out, listening acutely, wholly absorbed. Only a text message from his beloved (picking blackberries) brought him back to the time and day. There was a photo: a cluster of this dark, late summer fruit, ripe for picking framed against a tree and a white sky. Barely a week ago they had picked blackberries together with friends, children and dogs and he had watched her purposely pick this fruit without the awkwardness that so often accompanied bending over brambles. He wondered at her, constantly. How was this so? He imagined her now in her parents’ garden, a garden glowing in the late afternoon light, as she too would glow in that late-afternoon light . . . he bought himself back to the problem in hand. How to make the next move? There was a join to deal with. He was working with the seven metrics of traditional poetry as the basis for a rhythmic scheme. He was being tempted towards committing an idea to paper. He kept reminding himself of the music’s lie of the land, the effectiveness of it so far. It was still early days he thought to commit to something that would mark the piece out, produce a different quality, would declare the movement he was working on to be a certain shape.

And suddenly he was back on the train, looking at the passing landscape and the next verse of that Aquinas poem insisted itself upon him with its apt description and tantalising argument:

The Argument from Efficient Causality

We are crossing managed washlands.
Pochards so carefully coloured swim
Where cows ruminated last summer
In a landscape fruit of human agency.

And I think of the heavenly aboriginal
Agent of all our doings in this material
Playground of earth I can pick up,
Hold and crumble and cultivate

And air that is mine for the breathing
And the inhabited waters that cling
As if by magic to a sphere. What cause
Sustains the effects we live among?

For there is no smoke without fire
And as we sow, thus we reap. Nihil
Ex nihil, therefore something Is,
Some being we might call God.

So ‘nothing out of nothing, therefore something is’.  Outside in the city the Cathedral bells were ringing in Evensong. The sounds only audible on a Sunday when the traffic abated a little and the sounds in the street below were sporadic. He thought of going out into the Cathedral precinct and listening to the bells roll and rhythm their sequences, those Plain-Bob-Majors and Grand-Sire-Triples. But he knew that would further break the spell, the train of thought that lay about him.

He sketched the next section, confidently, and when he had finished felt he could do know more. There it was: a starting point for tomorrow. He could now go towards home, walk for a while in the park and enjoy the movements of the wind-tossed trees, the late roses, the geese on the lake. He would think about his various children in their various lives. He would think about the woman he loved, and would one day assuage what he knew was a loneliness he could not quench with any music, and though he tried daily with words, would not be assuaged.

June evening, mid-sigh,
she holds a finger to her
lips, then to the sky;
pools of sundown flood the fields.
She trusts the breeze to find him.

I want to talk to you in whispers
and the language of the leaves
pouring down in winter:
you are silent, like the autumn sky
all the clouds stalled in their paths
for the noon-time nap by the river.

Will you not sit down by my side?
The world is hurrying away
like the floating lights on waters;
I will make for you a tiara of
forgotten flowers, and a garland
of evening songs, and say
many stories of larks and lamps;

It is dusk, now but not here:
center of my world, my refuge,
I'll plant a kiss on your *****,
give me those mist-wet feet
let me shelter them to my heart
this warmth will redeem me

There was this time before the going home. The supers bowled off with cheery parents or elder brothers a good fortnight before the big day. There were lessons, but despite the best efforts of the staff who remained nobody could take this between time seriously. Mr Gayford for maths was hardly a substitute for Alfie's lively lessons. But Alfie we knew was climbing in the Alps this Christmas and would return with photos and tales that kept us enthralled despite the sums he invented - calculate the air pressure at 4107 metres on the Jungfrau. We all loved him with his self-raising Citroen Safari that smelt enticingly of Gitanes and that scent Claudia his girlfriend favoured. Oh Claudia, so wonderfully and exotically dressed, who seemed a world away from any boy's mother or sister.
 
Mornings were quite different. A later breakfast and then a two-hour practice with Dr. B . Hard work, with new music to learn. But the carols! Oh those sounds, and so different from what we sang all year. Boris Ord's Adam lay y bonden, Praetorius A Great and Mighty Wonder, Torches, In Dulce Jubilo. and as Advent progressed that magical verse anthem by Orlando Gibbons This is  the Record of John.
 
I was just eleven when Dr. B said, as we opened the music folder for the morning rehearsal, 'St Clair, Can you do this for us please?' Not so much a question as a command; you didn't say no to Dr. B. The introduction was well underway before I grasped it was to be me. How I stumbled through it that first time I don't know. I could never hear this piece without tears welling or indeed falling. ' Look Mog is getting tearful' said Richards the head chorister, and the little boys would snigger. And I would blush:  through my freckles to the roots of my auburn gold hair. Did nobody understand what this music did to me, what it said and expressed? At eleven I think I had began to know, and later when I heard it in Kings Chapel, and then conducted it variously to those bemused American students, listened to my gramophone recording, its affect always, always the same. I was experiencing truly what Vikram Seth has called an equal music, something so entirely right, a true conjunction of words and music, a coming together beyond anything as a composer I could ever imagine, a yardstick life-long; it became an acid test of sensitivity to my love of music and has been passed only four times by serious friends and lovers. To know me you must know and feel this music . . .
 
And so on the second Sunday of Advent at Evensong I sang this jewel, this precious flower of music's art. The candles flickered in Her Majesty's chapel and we stood for the anthem. The chamber ***** began its short introduction already weaving together the four-part texture - and then the first solo statement. This is the record of John when the Jews sent priest and Levites from Jerusalem . . . and then the tears fell and the music swam in front of me as though glazed in the candlelight.
 
Who art thou then? And he confessed and denied not, and said plainly, 'I am not the Christ'.
 
Oh that melisma on the 'I', that written out ornament, so emphatic, and expressing this truth with innocent authority. I sang it then as I hear it now. Nobody had to demonstrate and say 'Don't let it flow, let each note be separate, exact, purposeful'. So it was and ever shall be, Amen.
 
And they asked him, What art thou then? (Art thou Elias? x 2). And he said I am not. ( Art thou the prophet? x 2) And he said I am not.
 
The verse anthem is such a peculiar phenomenon of the English Reformation. Devised it is said to allow the hard-pressed choirmaster to train the main body of his singers in a short response, the soloist singing the hardest and most expressive music on his own: the verse. It is also so well suited to the English choral tradition with its Cantores and Decani ordering of voices. I was always a ‘Can’, even later when I joined the back row as a tenor.
 
Then they said unto him, What art thou? That we may give an answer unto them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? And he said I am the voice of him that cryeth in the wilderness. Make straight the way if the Lord.
 
And so I wonder still about the place of this text in the liturgy of Advent and why, cloaked in Gibbons’ music, it has remained affecting and necessary. And who is John? a prophet of the desert, the son of Elizabeth to whom Mary went to share the news of her pregnancy and whose own son quickened in her womb as she heard of her cousin Elizabeth's own miracle - a childless woman beyond childbearing age unexpectedly blessed and whose partner struck dumb for the duration of her confinement. Is it just another piece in the jigsaw of the Christmas story in which prophecy takes its part?
 
When I was eleven I thought to 'cry in the wilderness' meant exactly that - tears in a desert place. I learnt later that this was a man who stood apart, was different, a hippie dressed in the untreated skins of wild beasts, who lived amongst those who sought the wild places to mourn, to place themselves in a kind of quarantine after illness or bereavement, who then became wise, and who cried.
 
Such meditations seem appropriate to the season when there is so often the necessity of travel, much waiting about, the bearing down of the bleakness of winter time, though strung about with moments of delicious warmth when coming in from the cold as with the chair by the library fire I craved as a chorister to escape blissfully into fictioned lives and exotic places.
 
How these things touch us vividly throughout our lives; as we watch and wait and listen.

Make this want wither,
O Rain!

Dig a brook hither
In my vein,

And plant on either side
Of my pain

A score of dancing
Bluebells.
(C)LazharBouazi

Across the wetting lawn and down the darkening path
Through flower-fled weigela, hawthorn berry red
Comes dusk
Making a bed for night 'neath settled robin's wing
Pressing the back lit kitchen panes of ivy frame
Drawing me out in prayer, giving thanks that I came.

Where laburnum dreams of slumber and blackbirds notes
Lie low within the moss-green breeze-block walls
Of home
Strong sanctuary built beneath a cathedral sky
St Boniface, Tooting now to memory lost
Yet in this church of green there is Chalice and Host

Then darkness falls complete, robs the shadows power
Honeysuckle fills the air, incense for this time
And peace
Descends from the heavens so the owl becomes dove
Beyond street lamps are stars, night settles low and long
The spinning spheres have gathered, joined in Evensong.

My first memory of a loom was as a seven year old. I had been taken to visit this school my parents had so often spoken about and for which I had been carefully prepared. I had endured Mrs Martin's violin lessons every Saturday morning and could play after a fashion. She used to call me Tishee after a racehorse who used to stand with its legs crossed. But I could sing . . and I belonged to a family dynasty of choristers. So after a bout of auditions, to which both my mother and father accompanied me, I found myself entering the headmaster's house. And there in an immaculate room with a floor to ceiling window I saw my first Scandinavian furniture and what I now know to be a vertical rug and tapestry loom.
 
I had never seen anything so mysterious and beautiful. I realise now as I examine this memory it was not just this loom and the partially completed textile on its frame but the effect of the room it occupied and its aspect, the way the garden beyond the vast window invited itself into the interior space.
 
Biddy, as we boys called the headmaster's wife, was the most interesting woman I had ever met. I realise now how much she became my first model of womanhood. A graceful figure, bobbed hair, always simply dressed in a vivid coloured shirt of blue or red and a grey skirt, always walking purposefully, and when she spoke to you she acknowledged you as a real person, wholly, never as just a boy, but someone she gave her whole self to address. As I grew older she entered my dreams and even now her voice, that I came later to know as Varsity and Beneden bred, I can hear now. And she was a weaver.
 
Every afternoon she shut the door of her workroom with its large window and was not available, even to her beautiful children.
 
It was a year before I dared to talk to her about her loom. I remember her surprise. How lovely you should ask she said. Come after Evensong and I'll introduce you. And I went . .
 
It was May and she was wearing a grey smock that fell over slacks. She smelt like a forest in high summer, resinous. She wore sandals and a gentle smile. You may touch she said, and so I did, and as I did she quietly named the parts - the beater, the leashes, the warp, the reed. It was though I already knew these things but in another time and place. I was just renewing my acquaintance.
 
So, little by little, I would find myself sitting in the corner of Biddy's garden studio in the long summer afternoon's when my disappointing prowess on the cricket field allowed me freedom. I sat and watched and wondered. I imagined a day when I would have a room and a loom and wife like Biddy with whom I could talk about all those things I so wanted to share but had no one to share them with. This was before adoration became confused with ***, such a wonderful time in a boy's life.
 
As I sit at my loom in my studio high above a city street and my hands touch the yarn, pull the beater against the fell of this sample for my first  rug, place my stockinged foot on the outside treadle, I can almost sense the scent of Biddy Allen, feel her graceful presence, hear her Oxford voice and spirited laugh. For me she will always be a defining presence of the feminine and her long fingers on her loom conjure the essence of the making of beautiful things.

In a darkened church
hard by the dusky nave,
a brass lectern’s perched
with blue Chi-Rho engraved.

It faces to a reddened west,
its golden sheen aglow,
by light of candles blessed
as darkness ’round us grows.

Above the tall stone spires
dim stars come peeping out
to shine down on the quire
and the small knot of the devout.

We few sit as the gloom
grows deeper all around
and let ourselves be not consumed
by the chaos that abounds.

Once our Evensong is sung
for our time that slips us by,
a last brass bell is rung
as we hope for dawn’s reply.