Monday 25 May 2015

The Pennine Way and sharp observation from Dorothy Wordsworth

Up north walk (the briefest) part of the Pennine Way. This would really be a long distance trek to reckon with: only really fun if you were very fit ... but perhaps that applies to all long distance walks.
Back home find a long forgotten copy of Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals - so sharp and strange.
On Thursday 2 June 1802 her brother William came across a woman named Aggy Fisher, walking to attend a dying baby in the village.

She said there were many heavier crosses to bear than the death of an infant: "There was a woman in this vale who buried 4 grown up children in one year, and I have heard her say when many years were gone by that she had more pleasure in thinking of those 4 than of her living Children, for as Children get up and have families of their own their duty to their parents 'wears out and weakens'. She could trip lightly by the graves of those who died when they were young, with a light step, as she went to Church on a Sunday."


Reading and watching

  • Foot by Foot to Santiago de Compostela/Judy Foot
  • The Testament of Mary with Fiona Shaw at the Barbican
  • The Testament of Mary/Colm Toibin
  • Schwanengesang/Schubert - Tony Spence
  • Journals/Robert Falcon Scott
  • Fugitive Pieces/Ann Michaels
  • Unless/Carol Shields
  • Faust/Royal Opera House
  • The Art of Travel/Alain de Botton
  • Mad Men Series 6
  • A Week at The Airport/Alain de Botton
  • The Railway Man/Eric Lomax
  • Bright Lights, Big City/Jay McInerney
  • Stones of Venice/John Ruskin
  • The Sea, the Sea/Iris Murdoch
  • Childe Harold/Lord Byron
  • All The Pretty Horses/Cormac McCarthy
  • Extreme Rambling/Mark Thomas
  • Story of my Life/Jay McInerney
  • Venice Observed/Mary McCarthy