måndag 21 maj 2012

Half-Past Bedtime

by H. H. Bashford is such a lovely story book that I’m sorry I don’t have any children in my immediate vicinity.
So far I’ve only read two of the stories, but it took only a few sentences before I fell in love with the book.
In the first story Marian is having tea with the bumpies.


"What are bumpies?" she said.

"My hat!" he gasped. "Haven't you ever heard of bumpies?"

Marian shook her head.

"Oh dear, oh dear!" he sighed. "Have you ever heard of angels?"

"Well, of course," said Marian. "Everybody's heard of angels."

"Well then, bumpies," said Mr Jugg, "are baby angels. They're called bumpies till they've learned to fly."
_ _ _

She introduced Marian to all the bumpies.

They gave her three cheers, and then went on with their tea, and soon Marian was having tea herself—such a tea as she had never had before, not even at her Uncle Joe's. There was bread and butter with bumpy jam on it and bumpy Devonshire cream on the top of the jam, and there was bumpy cake with bumpy cherries in it, and there were bumpy meringues, and there was bumpy honey.

"Why, it's just like a birthday tea!" said Marian.

"That's because it is one," said Mr Jugg. "Every tea's a birthday tea down here. There are so many bumpies, you see, that it's always somebody's birthday."


tisdag 1 maj 2012

May

 O month when they who love must love and wed!
 Were one to go to worlds where May is naught,
 And seek to tell the memories he had brought
 From earth of thee, what were most fitly said?
 I know not if the rosy showers shed
 From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought
 In fields, or if the robin's call be fraught
 The most with thy delight. Perhaps they read
 Thee best who in the ancient time did say
 Thou wert the sacred month unto the old:
 No blossom blooms upon thy brightest day
 So subtly sweet as memories which unfold
 In aged hearts which in thy sunshine lie,
 To sun themselves once more before they die.
From "A Calendar of Sonnets" by Helen Hunt Jackson