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Edith Sitwell is Blakeian. Her poems, like the Prophetic Books, are mythological, bardic, circling- like jazz- round certain ideas/images/words: They are profound and gorgeous- and they've dropped right out of favour.

They didn't jive with the kitchen-sinkery of the later 20th century. Nobody's fault, just a ripple in the history of taste. I think they will come back.

They should.

I'm working- slowly and with attention- through a collection she put together at the end of World War Two. It's called The Song of the Cold.

And in the poem titled "Eurydice" there's a line I have loved ever since I first came across it fifty years ago and have quoted in sermons and conversations and blogs. I knew it was hers but not where it came from and am thrilled to have finally pinned it down. It goes, "Love is not changed by death and nothing is lost, and all in the end is harvest."

Five pictures

1. The Maestro

2. What took you so long?

3. Starlet

4. Two WiseMen

5. Man of the Moment

There has been scaffolding in the courtyard of the Meeting House for as long as we've been going there- which is two years now. This week it was removed- and the coutyard looks bare without it. Also shabby. The scaffolding was so in-your-face that you hardly noticed how the metal window frames were rusting and garden furniture decaying. Mind you, the building as a whole- inside even more than out- needs refurbishing and redecorating. We have a lot of jobs in hand but, as always with Quakers, things are moving ever so slowly....

I turned off the computer, got up from the desk- and found I was groping my way in the dark. The cat was at my feet, but I couldn't see him; and only knew he was there because he was talking to me. It was 8.30 p.m.

I know that Autumn has been creeping up on us. I've been ticking off the signs: a fallen leaf blowing in through the door, the dying off of the Michaelmas daisies, a friend serving up an apple and blackberry crumble made from fruit picked in her garden- but yesterday evening it felt like it had jumped out of a cupboard at me and gone "Boo!"

The Little Theatre in Seaford was built as a Christian Science church. The Christian Scientists sold it to the theatre people for £1,000 in 1954.

The Quakers hire it for £15 an hour.

The auditorium is a square box, painted a deep, dark red- like an abatoir. Yesterday was a hot, airless day and it was stuffy in there even with the big, old-fashioned ceiling fans going round and round.

The Seaford Quakers had laid on a huge spread so we hadn't needed to to bring a pic-nic lunch and we just added our bread and humus and fizzy pop to the total.

During one of the breaks I walked to the beach- only a minute away. There was a breeze down there and very nice it was- coming from the direction of Seaford Head, the spectacular chalk cliff that hems in the town to the East.

I noted that the Little Theatre's next production will be A Dolls' House. An ambitious choice for amateurs, no?

There was a chap from Hove who had chosen the area Meeting as his first experience of Quakerism- and he was asking questions. "So is Quaker worship the same as meditation," he asked. "Sort of," I said. But Sally from Hastings said, "Not exactly," "In meditation you aim to empty your mind. In Quaker worship you leave the mind open and hope something good will be decanted into it." (My words because I forget hers- but that was the sense of them.) Ach! There is still so much about Quakerism I haven't grasped yet.....

The final event of the day was a workshop which involved a bit of role-play and an old, old chap objected. "The early Quakers condemned play-acting as a kind of dishonesty" he said, "We should never pretend to be sombody we aren't so I think this exercise is unQuakerish." This is the first time I've heard a modern Quaker come on like a 17th century Puritan. My gorge rose and I wanted to stand up and say, "I have three words for you- Dame Judy Dench"- but that would have been even more unQuakerish so I held my tongue.

And today we're off to Seaford- on the far side of Beachy Head- for the Sussex East Area Meeting. SEAM for short- an acronym with unexplored potential.

Seaford Quakers don't have a house of their own but meet in The Little Theatre- a building I'm curious to see the insides of. Elisa will drive and we're providing a pic-nic.

When I started out in Quakerism I had no concern except for our own Eastbourne Meeting, but as time goes by I find my loyalties expanding. Now I also care about Sussex East. If this process continues I may eventually find myself caring about Quakerism on the national and even international level....

I don't feel evangelical about Quakerism, but do think we have something to offer- a tradition and an ethos- and should be trying to remain a Presence. And to remain a Presence there need to be a reasonable number of us, operating out of identifiable premises.

Please, Friends, let's not retreat any further!

We were down at the Meeting House for half the morning, waiting for a scaffolding tower to be delivered. I went for a wander while Ailz stayed in position. I had a picture to be framed- but when I got to the framing shop it had a notice o the door saying it had ceased trading on the first of the month. To cover my disappintment I carried on up the road to Camilla's fabulous second hand bookshop by the town hall and bought an Edith Sitwell first edition and a collection of translations from the medieval German of the poems of Walter Von Vogelweide, the minnesinger, published in 1896 (with illustrations.) I think I like Sitwell. I know I like Von Vogelweide.....

The tower, when it arrived, was packed in pieces in it's own little pushcart. It'll be needed by the person who'll be installing our new hearing loop on Monday....

We went for lunch at the Pasargad, the Persian restaurant that has replaced the Dom- where we used to host the Death Cafe. It's very good.

Five more pix....

1. Out of the Body

2. Welcome (With this and the next one I got a little assistance from Rembrandt.....)

3. Sideways Glance

4. "My Madness is Love for Humanity"

5. In the Basilica

A woman dropped by the Meeting House yesterday morning- and joined us for worship- because she'd been reading a novel about Quakers by Tracey Chevalier and wanted to find out more. "You've come to the right shop," I said...

Trish and I were talking on Sunday and saying we needed to do all we could to keep our Meeting Houses open. There are several reasons for this but one of them is so there are identifiable places where we can be contacted and talked to and our ethos and spirituality sampled. Sure, you can find out about Quakers online, but it's not the same.

One of the Meeting Houses in our area is in danger of shutting down. I'm told it has an active membership of six. The building is a mid-20th century chapel purchased from a noncomformist congregation that couldn't sustain itself. Trish was saying we ought to get out more and visit the other Quaker Meetings- in particular the ones that are struggling. I agree....

I like sunny days- but prefer to observe them from the shade. I have never wanted to sunbathe.

T.E, Lawrence continues to criss-cross the Arabian desert on his camel. It gets hot down there. He talks about temperatures on 140 F. And says things like, "the heat was like an iron mask over the face" Or was it a "steel mask" ? For some reason "steel mask" sound the hotter of the two. Does steel have a higher melting point than iron? Seems like it might have.

Anyway yesterday was hot. We got to eat our very nice lunch on a patio that thrusts out onto the beach. I could have wished the parasol had been larger. Later we sat out on the promenade across from a band of elderly amateurs with ukes who were playing hits from the 50's- my very least favourite decade of popular music. What I wanted to know was why they weren't playing George Formby? (I like George Formby.) Perhaps its because his tunes are virtuoso stuff....

"Haven't you forgotten something?" said Ailz, first thing this morning.

Erm....

"It's our 33rd anniversary," she prompted.

(Which means it's also her birthday)

"Have we really had Marlowe that long?" I said.

( I know, weak joke- but at least it had the merit of being off the cuff)

"Seems like it," she said

We've travelled a far piece in those 33 years. Near the beginning we were the youngish couple with nine cats. Ailz says eight but they came and went so fast it was hard to keep the count straight. (We acted as a sort of clearing house for cats that needed adopting.) Then we were witches and a wee bit notorious. Then we kept rabbits. Then we moved to Kent and played at being landed gentry. And now we're Quakers and living by the seaside. Yes, a far piece....

The birthday, btw, is Ailz's 70th. She's been ribbing me and all our mates who are slightly over seventy that she's a decade younger than us, Well, she won't be able to do that any more....

I dreamed I was having difficulties with a wife (not Ailz and not my first wife entirely) and was telling myself I mustn't be egotistical or self-assertive and- in particular- there were certain things I absolutely shouldn't say- and then I said them.

Odi and Ben went home. It had been a flying visit.....

Judy has written a story set in Australia and commissioned a real life Australian to test its idioms. The real life Australian said a lot of Judy's slang was out of date. But that's the nature of slang, ain't it! Every generation asserts itself against the one before by rejecting its cant and substituting its own. I love slang. Especially outmoded slang. There's a poem by Henley (a translation of one of Villon's ballades) written in the thieves argot of his day which is an absolute tour do force.
I don't- as a rule- post other people's poems but this is out of copyright and deserves to be better known. I won't offer a complete translation. I couldn't. But "booze and the blowens cop the lot" means the same as the lines from the folk song that go, "I wasted all my tin/ On the ladies drinking gin..."

Villon's Straight Tip To all Cross Coves

"Tout aux tavernes et aux filles."

Suppose you screeve? or go cheap-jack?

Or fake the broads? or fig a nag?

Or thimble-rig? or knap a yack?

Or pitch a snide? or smash a rag?

Suppose you duff? or nose and lag?

Or get the straight, and land your pot?

How do you melt the multy swag?

Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

Fiddle, or fence, or mace, or mack;

Or moskeneer, or flash the drag;

Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack;

Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag;

Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag;

Rattle the tats, or mark the spot;

You can not bank a single stag;

Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

Suppose you try a different tack,
And on the square you flash your flag?

At penny-a-lining make your whack,

Or with the mummers mug and gag?

For nix, for nix the dibbs you bag!

At any graft, no matter what,

Your merry goblins soon stravag:

Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

THE MORAL

It's up the spout and Charley Wag

With wipes and tickers and what not.

Until the squeezer nips your scrag,

Booze and the blowens cop the lot.

Jean and I went and sat in the courtyard to eat our lunch in a rare moment when the sun came out. Everybody else stayed indoors. "Wimps" I thought.

We were celebrating Ailz's 70th and George Fox's 400th. It went well. There was bunting, there was cake.

I was in outward facing mode all day long- first at the Meeting House then with two pairs of visitors. The first two were Bea and Tanya who came down from Tonbridge on Bea's motorbike; they used to be my mother's carers. The second pair were Odi and Ben, who have spent the night here- having been up in London most of the day, going wild at the Notting Hill carnival....

I grew up unsociable but these days I can slip into sociability without effort. I'm not shy any more. I enjoy going Rah, rah, rah but am always happy to stop....

I dreamed my grandfather had written me a letter. It was an open letter- printed in a theatre programme. He said he had been to watch Tom Cruise starring in a West End play, spoke about how someone had complimented himself and my father on being so up to date (a judgement from which I demurred) and concluded by telling me I should drink and smoke- especially cigars- but only in moderation.

In a second dream the BBC had allowed Stephen Moffat to air an episode of Dr Who that they had suppressed earlier, in which the Doctor gets to meet "God"- a kindly forgetful old gent who has stepped back from creation, devolving power to his lieutenants. A debate was going on as to whether it would have had more of an impact if the episode had been transmitted when first conceived....

I woke from a dream in which I/we- the number of persons involved was unclear- was/were helping children escape from people traffikers in a vast, dusty Central American city. The leaders of our enterprise were a couple of middle-aged bearded mime artists. At one point the children were advised to go spend the night near "the fridge" because it would be cooler. Don't ask me what the "fridge" was. At another time a woman who was in cahoots with the traffikers recognised us and went off to tell them where we were. We could hear her- many streets away- ringing their doorbell and speaking to them and I thought, be shouldn't be able to hear any of that above the noise of the city but, after all, this is only a movie. After the incident with the woman we left the city centre and went and hid in an open space where there were tall stands of something like pampas grass....

These windy, rainy, seaside days take me back to my grandparents' bungalow on a windy, rainy hill outside Rottingdean. It had a view of the sea and my grandfather used to take us for long walks on the golf course which we accessed via the garden gate at the back of the house. He told me that the bigger dents in the hillside were caused by Nazi flying bombs. I don't know whether this was true but I don't see why not. I used to stand at the top of these hollows, fling out my arms as if shot- and roll to the bottom. If I did this too often I felt queasy for the rest of the day.

People who lived in Rottingdean:

1. My grandparents

2. Sir Edward Burne-Jones the painter. "Ned" to his friends and family

3. Rudyard Kipling

4. Enid Bagnold, author of National Velvet and the Chalk Garden

5. The Copper family, folk singing dynasty.

If one walked to the golf course's furthest Eastern boundary one got a fine view over Roedean, the famous girls school. In later years I used to wish the Roedean girls would come and walk on the golf course too so I could get pally with them. On a fine day the sea from this viewpoint was streaked with emerald green and Tyrrian puple. In the rough grass bordering a chalk path here I once trod on a dead frog- and it gave me the horrors.

A leaf just blew in through the open patio door. I suppose that's autumn's way of announcing itself.....

Not that it's really autumn yet. Most everything is still green. When I was a kid we took our seaside holidays in September- so I've always been inclined to regard September as a summer month.

And it's not even September yet....

But the sky is grey, the wind is blowing hard- in gusts. The wooden fence is shaking....

Back in the day, when I was operating as a vicar in a former mill town called Royton a parishoner once asked me who my hero was. I've never been much of a one for heroes, but I searched my mental files and told him- "Ian Botham"- who was at the time the wonder-boy of English cricket. This took him aback; he was expecting me to say Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul II or someone else of that kidney.

"And who is your hero?" I thought it only polite to ask in reply and he said, "My vicar", meaning me. But that's another story....

The thing is I dreamed about Ian Botham last night. He was still playing Test Cricket at an advanced age- and seemed like an awfully nice bloke. He had curly hair and his face was all wrinkly and I thought he looked very much like my idea of Don Quixote.....

These are a little different. More than usually colourful. My pictures are generally on the sober side and I wanted a change.

1. Astral Body

2. So Here I Am Again

3. Ancestral Spirits

4. Hybrid

A £50 note came into our possession yesterday. Ailz is going to pay it into the bank because, she says, there are so many forgeries out there the shops won't accept them.

I'm not sure I've ever handled a £50 note before- at least not one of the modern plastic ones.

The verso has a portrait of Alan Turing with the prophetic message, "This is only a foretaste of what is to come and only the shadow of what is to be."

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poliphilo

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Rusting....Decaying....

Boo!

At The Little Theatre

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