<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moving Again<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Those who know us won\u2019t be surprised to learn that we have been busy organising a move from Bridgnorth to Kinver. This is mostly the result of Vic\u2019s temporary loss of mobility over the past 2 or 3 years. Although she is now almost \u201cback to normal\u201d as far as walking and gardening are concerned – back to her famous \u2018Duracell Bunny\u2019 levels of non-stop energy! \u2013 we find increasingly that the difficult parking situation here in Friar’s Street, together with its steep flights of steps – to be a warning that our little house perched on its sandstone bluff would not be a suitable abode in which to grow old. As well as the physical difficulties of, for instance, heaving loads of shopping up to our front door from various (often forgotten) parking places, both of us feel that we are also beginning to suffer from mental lapses \u2013 problems of short term memory like placing car keys in the fridge or cracking eggs into a teapot, for instance \u2013 that bode uneasily for the future. We will be moving to Kinver primarily to be much nearer to our daughter Amy and her lovely family who will hopefully \u201ckeep an eye\u201d on our increasingly senile maunderings. I am sad to be leaving Bridgnorth \u2013 just the right size of town, not too big but with an infinite variety of habitats, from the doctors and solicitors of High Town\u2019s posh Castle Street to the estates and light industry of Low Town. An amazing cross section of history is represented in Bridgnorth, from the marauding Viking incursion over Danesford to the incomplete demolition of the castle during the so-called \u2018Civil\u2019 War to its present various post-industrial aftermaths. Mostly it is the friendliness and good humour of its citizens that, dour and shy myself, I shall miss. We will find ourselves moving into what I would once have considered as a snooty youth to be a nightmare clich\u00e9 of a building \u2013 a late 20th<\/sup> century suburban bungalow. Our new bungalow (I notice that bungalow owners enjoy repeating the word \u2018bungalow\u2019 \u2013 for its connotations of bourgeois comfort perhaps?), our new bungalow does have at least six parking spaces, or so the brochure boasts. It also boasts \u201cattractive front and rear gardens\u201d. No doubt Vic will work her green-fingered magic to transform the back “lawn” from what it is now \u2013 a scruffy playground with trampoline for small boy and dog \u2013 into an Eden rampant with lush horticulture. It is, as bungalow owners proudly say, \u201chandy for the shops\u201d. No doubt our Kinver bungalow will eventually provide the same variety of experiences and stimuli and that, in time, most human contexts will discover. The alternative would be to surrender to the kind of \u201csheltered accommodation\u201d that Messrs McCartney and Stoneheart recently showed us around. Pride of tour was given to the faintly pee-scented Residents\u2019 Lounge where a variety of \u201csingsongs and get-togethers\u201d take place every weekend. (A visiting conjurer had just been to entertain them \u2013 a \u201csurprise\u201d playing card was still stuck to the ceiling). It was the kind of Home where Vic was assured that, yes, she would be welcomed onto the advisory gardening committee but inmates were not encouraged to do any actual gardening. You can probably tell that I am beginning to feel the kinds of unsettled emotions that moving again will bring to the fore. Having travelled so far from my natal place, a small maternity hut in darkest West Africa, and having moved more or less randomly so often since then, I do wonder if that old truism about people who are rooted in a particular place being generally more contented than the peripatetic rest of us may in fact be true? I recently attended the funeral of a friend who truly did live and die in the same house in which he was born ; I have to report that he did appear to be among the happiest and \u201cbest adjusted\u201d of mortals. Meanwhile like a vulnerable hermit crab I scuttle forth to find my next approximately suitable shell-ter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you know the poem \u201cWhen first I came \u201d by Edward Thomas? I think it perhaps sums up some of my on-the-point-of-moving-yet-again sense of anticipated disappointment. I have cut the last verse, which has always puzzled, but here are the first 5 verses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n When first I came here I had hope<\/strong> –<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat Moving Again Those who know us won\u2019t be surprised to learn that we have been busy organising a move from Bridgnorth to Kinver. This is mostly the result of Vic\u2019s temporary loss of mobility over the past 2 or 3 years. Although she is now almost \u201cback to normal\u201d as far as walking and gardening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":538,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
My heart\u00a0at the\u00a0sight\u00a0of the tall\u00a0slope
Of\u00a0grass and yews, as if my feet
Only by\u00a0scaling\u00a0its steps\u00a0of\u00a0chalk
Would see\u00a0something\u00a0no\u00a0other\u00a0hill
Ever disclosed. And now I walk
Down it the last time.\u00a0 Never\u00a0will
My\u00a0heart beat so\u00a0again\u00a0at\u00a0sight
Of any hill\u00a0although\u00a0as fair
And loftier. For\u00a0infinite
The change, late unperceived, this year,
The twelfth, suddenly,\u00a0shows\u00a0me plain.
Hope now,–not\u00a0health\u00a0nor cheerfulness,
Since they can come and go again,
As\u00a0often\u00a0one\u00a0brief\u00a0hour witnesses,–
Just hope has gone forever.\u00a0 Perhaps
I may love\u00a0other\u00a0hills yet more
Than this: the future\u00a0and the maps
Hide\u00a0something\u00a0I was\u00a0waiting\u00a0for…?
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"