Power Cut

We had a power cut yesterday morning. Ailz rang the supplier to ask what was going on and they said it was pre-scheduled and we ought to have received notification. Well, we hadn't. They said, Whoops, sorry, and we'll send you some money to make it better.

If we'd received notification we could have made preparations. As it was we had to drive into Paddock Wood to buy hot drinks.

One of the worst thing about a power cut is my mother's stair lift left starts beeping and there's no way- short of employing a sledge hammer- of getting it to shut up. 

Grant Me The Carving Of My Name

I caught the replay of Richard's interment. Like everything else in the sequence of ritual it was more or less note perfect. I particularly approved the opening hymn- words by GK. Chesterton, music by Anon as arranged by Vaughan Williams: they couldn't have chosen better.

O God of earth and altar
Bow down and hear our cry
Our earthly rulers falter
Our people drift and die...

Talking about appropriate words,there was a poem written for the occasion by Carol Ann Duffy. I haven't been much of a fan of her work- but this was magic. They had Benedict Cumberbatch read it. He turns out to be distantly related to the Plantagenets- though   by now I suspect everyone in England is-  apart, of course, from the current royals.

There's been a lot of media hostility to what Leicester has laid on.The Mail sneers, the Guardian blusters. It baffles me. All I can think  of while breasting the foam is, "Have they no poetry in their souls?"