u3a

A good day today - cold, though not frosty, and with a fair amount of sunshine. Spent some time this morning bringing the last of the branches from my tree pruning job up to house level - these will be cut up and end up in the wood burner.  Printed out some poems to read out at the u3a Poetry Group meeting this afternoon.

Didn’t have much chance for a Blip as the sun leaves our part of the town quite early. I grabbed this picture of a Scots Pine growing on a rise not far from our house while I was waiting for a lift to the u3a.

Had a good poetry meeting, though I was slightly miffed after reading out one of my favourite poems - ‘Futility’ by Cecil Roberts. Someone commented that he sounded gay, and the only other man in the group looked him up and proudly announced that he was gay. As somebody else said ‘So what!’ Quite right - many of the well-known war poets were said to be gay, among them Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney, Charles Sorley and even Rupert Brooke. I prefer to enjoy the poem regardless of the sexuality of the author. Both Cecil Roberts and Wilfred Owen wrote First World War poems name ‘Futility’ - you can see them both here.  https://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.com/2019/06/futility-poems-by-wilfred-owen-and.html

Cecil Roberts might be unknown to many, but personally I prefer his poem to that of Wilfred Owen’s!  I like him as an author generally and have around 55 of his books.

Quote of the Day: ‘War is a man's game ... the killing machine has a gender and it is male.’ - Virginia Woolf.