Liebster Award

From Counter Cultural Father and Eccles.

11 fun facts.

1 My birthday is on Christmas Day.


2 I have crazy wallpaper round my fireplace.

3 I like growing stuff and then cooking with it. When all is said and done I am two generations away from subsistence farming in the Co Kerry. Not too many tomatoes there, more beef and dairy farming.





4 I like it when people are witty and funny, which is one reason I enjoy teaching in a boys' school.

5 I once spent an afternoon sitting in Trafalgar Square with a school friend singing along to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture recorded the previous evening at a school concert on her dictaphone, whilst Paxman's bashed a massive dent out of the bell of my horn that happened when I fainted and smashed it in an orchestra rehearsal the morning of said concert. (Still played the last movement of Strauss 1 and accompanied her in Kreisler's Praeludium und Allegro.)

6 A little boy asked me in front of a class this year if I went to the school. No?

7 A boy from school once gave me his seat on the Tube, which elicited some strange looks as I don't wear a badge announcing that I teach where he goes to school.

8 When I went to see the Teresa Carreña Youth Orch with some boys, I caught one of the trackie tops they were throwing into the audience during their encores. They were brilliant. Normally, I hate sitting behind the horn section of an orchestra. They were superb. I gave the trackie top to a boy, of course.

9 I have a 98 year old trinational -born in Argentina, of Irish parents and married a Frenchman in 1938- Great Aunt, living in Paris, who worked for Time Magazine after she was widowed in 1951 and needed to support herself and three children. She was skiing well into her 70s.

10 My Grandmother should have been a buyer for a West End store.

11 My other Grandmother was WI county president for Caernarvonshire in the 1960s. ( Feel very afraid.)

Ben's questions

What inspired the title of your blog?
My Dad likes bara brith.

Why should people read your blog?
I don't think anyone should read it. It's just here if you want to.

What is your personal favourite post on your blog?
The post I wrote before the Rome blognic.

What has been the most popular (most viewed) post on your blog?
The picture of delphiniums.

Which post on your blog has attracted most comments?
The one on Introits last Sept, I think, though several were just my replies, so that probably doesn't count.

What other hobbies or interests (beyond blogging) are you prepared to admit to?
Gardening in the summer, baking all year round, swimming, walking, going to N Wales. Making plum jam when next door's tree obliges.

What are your hopes for the new pontificate?
That people will shut up whinging, get on with whatever they are supposed to be doing and see what they might learn from Pope Francis, even if he isn't a wax work of what they think the Pope should be. ( Do you detect a note of irritation? I hope so. Some of what has been written on the Catholic blogosphere in the last couple of weeks is utterly disgraceful.)

Where is your favourite place of pilgrimage, and why?
The Miraculous Medal Shrine on the rue du Bac.
Our Lady appeared there.
I got my present job on 8th Dec.
I like old fashioned Catholic piety a lot and it's filled with lots of good people.
I spend all day surrounded by heaps of energetic teenage boys playing musical instruments and asking me questions and I'm very happy to be almost silent during the holidays.



Who is your favourite spiritual author, and why?
Dunno.

Which of these questions did you fid it most difficult to answer?
See previous.

Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?
I've never been a member of any political party and will most likely be spoiling my ballot paper at the next General Election as there are now no parties who even vaguely have anything to do with anything I think is important. I wrote, 'none of the above, ' across my ballot paper at the last Local Election.

If you are the blogger not yet included in all this, here are the questions to copy.

What inspired the title of your blog?
Why should people read your blog?
What is your personal favourite post on your blog?
What has been the most popular (most viewed) post on your blog?
Which post on your blog has attracted most comments?
What other hobbies or interests (beyond blogging) are you prepared to admit to?
What are your hopes for the new pontificate?
Where is your favourite place of pilgrimage, and why?
Who is your favourite spiritual author, and why?
Which of these questions did you fid it most difficult to answer?
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?

Alternatively and noting the change to Roman numerals - a traddie meme, I fear...

The Eccles questions and a Lobster.




(i) Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
What's summer?

(ii) How many roads must a man walk down?
In some snowy parts of the British Isles at the mo, all of them.

(iii) How long is a piece of string?
A light inextensible string, a stretchy one in a question using Hooke's Law or some garden twine?

(iv) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who indeed. Can't get the staff these days.

(v) Why did the chicken cross the road?
It was sunnier or shadier on the other side.

(vi) Who is the fairest of them all?
Need to go to the rue du Bac for the answer.

(vii) What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
Check out Purcell Dido and Aeneas

"Take a boozy short leave of your nymphs on the shore, / And silence their mourning / With vows of returning / But never intending to visit them more."

(viii) To be or not to be?
To be.

(ix) How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck if a wood-chuck
could chuck wood?
I have sung that song and I don't remember the answer.

(x) Where did you get that hat?
Monsoon.

(xi) What's in a name?
To quote Sondheim in West Side Story

The most beautiful sound I ever heard:
Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria . . .
All the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word . .
Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria . . .
Maria!
I've just met a girl named Maria,
And suddenly that name
Will never be the same
To me.
Maria!
I've just kissed a girl named Maria,
And suddenly I've found
How wonderful a sound
Can be!
Maria!
Say it loud and there's music playing,
Say it soft and it's almost like praying.

Maria,
I'll never stop saying Maria!

The most beautiful sound I ever heard.
Maria.

And Eccles's questions if you fancy a puzzle.

(i) Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
(ii) How many roads must a man walk down?
(iii) How long is a piece of string?
(iv) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
(v) Why did the chicken cross the road?
(vi) Who is the fairest of them all?
(vii) What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
(viii) To be or not to be?
(ix) How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck if a wood-chuck
could chuck wood?
(x) Where did you get that hat?
(xi) What's in a name?