Nil Desperandum

At breakfast, we were visited by the muntjac. Unamused, I stepped outside to protest. With a very brief three or four strides across the lawn, it leaped - in a single bound - the wall that separates us from our neighbour and made off. I estimate it is 1.2 metres high (above muntjack head-height), and a similar width. "Stone walls do not a prison make", I thought

"Nor iron bars a cage", the quote continues, but I realised I have (or had) no idea of its origin. Richard Lovelace, writing a love poem - which morphs into a statement of royalist devotion and political defiance - from a prison cell, in 1642, the very eve of the English Civil War. He was imprisoned because he presented a petition to parliament, opposing an act that excluded Anglican Bishops from serving in it. Very different times and contexts but, when he writes

"If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty."

it makes me think of Maya Angelou, expressing the same defiance

"Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise"

Once more, I had to devote time to ensuring that Melisseae Mansions is connected to the 21st century. The third 'wireless router' in six weeks. Hang on to that word 'wireless'. This blip comes to you courtesy of: a smartphone, a wifi link to a white box plugged in in the hall, a journey along the power cables up to a white box on the landing, a trip along an ethernet cable to the router, a hop up a DSL wire to a socket on the wall, a few hundred yards on copper cables to a green box near the Pear Tree inn, some minutely fine optical fibres to... I know not where - the cotton wool cloud that is the internet. I'm glad it reached you

I want to connect a device outside the house. While I was searching for a place where 60cm ironstone walls do not a prison make for wifi signal, MrsM pointed out more signs of spring