I found April in my arms

I was going to post the first couple of stanzas of TS Eliot's “The Wasteland” today, which begins “April is the cruellest month.” But then I came across this charming little thing by Ogden Nash. Of course to him April means Spring, but there's nothing here that couldn't also be found in the bosom of Autumn. This is “Always Marry an April Girl.” 

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

The last day of March and so the last day (at least in legend) of the breeding season of the hare, when they all go a little crazy. To mark the occasion, here's a snippet from the tea party where Alice meets a mad Hatter, a Dormouse, and a March Hare, and has a lesson in semantics.

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide [and said] “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”

“Come, we shall have some fun now!” thought Alice. “I'm glad they've begun asking riddles.—I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud.

“Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said the March Hare.

“Exactly so,” said Alice.

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.

“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, you know.”

“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that I see what I eat is the same thing as I eat what I see!”

“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that I like what I get is the same thing as I get what I like!”

“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that I breathe when I sleep is the same thing as I sleep when I breathe!”

“It IS the same thing with you,” said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much.

God be at mine end

This month Dr Patricia Brennan AM died of cancer at 66. She was best known for her advocacy of women’s ordination in the Anglican church, but she was also a practising forensic physician who specialised in the treatment of victims of sexual abuse, and who, with her husband, had been a missionary in Nigeria. Her death has gone relatively unnoticed (though you can listen to an interview here, and read an obituary here); I hope her tomb will not be entirely unvisited. Among the hymns she chose for her funeral was this brief but ample prayer: 

God be in my head, and in my understanding.
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking.
God be in my mouth and in my speaking.
God be in my heart, and in my thinking.
God be at mine end, and at my departing.

George Eliot on good and great

Further reflections on goodness and greatness led me to the magnificent concluding lines of Middlemarch, and the happily ever after of its heroine, Dorothea Brooke:

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Alarm bell Britain

Nick Clegg, UK's deputy PM, likes to talk about “alarm clock Britain” - a phrase that rings bells for our own PM. In this vision, Britons set their alarms in order to wake and work, to give their time in exchange for social capital, and selflessly do without the things that might otherwise have made life lovely, the things the government might otherwise have paid for.

As Cameron's cuts loom, alarm increases about the civil and social amenity they threaten. Scottish novelist AL Kennedy has a heartwarming and amusing blog at The Guardian, and her post on why arts funding shouldn't be cut should be read by everyone. It moved me to tears.