The Ingleheart Singers met in the conference room at the Blue Bar again this week so we were singing with a view of the sea. We are so lucky! We sang March of the Women this afternoon to mark International Women’s day, to remember those who won the vote for women.
The altos
Porthtowan beach after singing
Our eldest daughter came for the day as it was her birthday last week. We had a lovely walk on the beach at Perranporth, spotting lots of natural treasures on the sand and then enjoying a pie followed by cheesecake for her birthday meal. It’s always a joy to have her visiting.
Click on any of the photos for a proper big version.
Chicken, mushroom, lentil and sweetcorn pie
Lime Cheesecake
“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”Maya Angelou
We are just back from seeing the brilliant White Horse by o-region  at our local theatre – an entrancing performance with live music, puppetry, film and story telling. It’s written and directed by Simon Harvey, based on Michael Morpurgo’s White Horse & Other Stories. As the Radio 4 Today programme said a week ago when interviewing Michael Morpurgo and Simon Harvey about their show, “It’s being premièred in the West End (in Redruth!)”. They plan on taking it on tour next year so find it if you can. 
Today at Suitcase Singers’ weekly rehearsal, a representative came from Georgia’s Voice, the local charity we have been supporting this year, to collect a cheque for ÂŁ1630. Do click the red link to read about the wonderful work they do.. 
It’s World Book Day
I first read this poem in October 2023 and the poet, Danusha Laméris , kindly gave me permission to use it then. Here it is again, and, I feel, needed even more now as we support each other through these very difficult times. 
Happy St Piran’s day to all those around the world who love our bit of the UK!
Daffodils for St Piran’s Day
The new mural in town was ‘opened’ on Saturday when we held our St Piran celebrations.
What a beautiful day in every way! The sun shone and the sky was blue. I met friends at Community Roots where we potted on lots of celery and celeriac, admired our growing tomato plants and laughed along with the team. Later I visited the Contraptions exhibition, we met two enthusiastic young gardeners, a friend called round with some books to swap and finally I made pancakes, both savoury stuffed and, to finish, CrĂŞpes Suzettes.
Salad leaves
Baby tomatoes, many varieties
We have a couple of Esther Smith’s pieces – I love her work. 
The last remnants of the pancake batter made a rather pretty lacy pancake pattern. 
Please share this as far and as wide as you cane – anybody may use it – publish it, print it – all I ask is that you use the whole poem, for the story is true and entire as of itself. Christy Moore reads a shortened version in his latest album and does it beautifully.Sunflowers,Ukraine, Spring 2022A shaky phone-cam logged it all, and soThe whole world sees a peasant woman,Old, afraid, and finding strangers in her land,Do what the poor will always doFor strangers: she ignores the guns and standsFour square furious, shaking with both fearAnd anger, facing the danger; such a smallOld woman with a giant rage,Gone to a far place way beyond her fear.She offers them a gift with angry, quivering hands,A little babusya facing up to titans, trolls:Young soldiers with their AKs and their bandoliers,Their flak-jackets, their goggles and grenades,Their wire cutters, their killing knives, their trenching spades,Their helmets and their gibbering headsets.She holds out to them a welcoming gift: handfuls,Fistfuls of sunflower seeds, those little podsOf grace and greeting. For it is the wayWith peasant people everywhere on EarthWith strangers, travellers, even in this day of days;For those who have the least will always give the most.But the seeds come wrapped in shells of poison words –Barbed words, and in a voice that spits she says,“Here, keep them in your pockets boys so, whenWe bury you in our good soil, sunflowers will climbFrom out your graves toward the blue sky of the truth:Here take them, they are fat and sweet and good,Harvested last year from my own blessed fieldsWith these two hands in long, hard hours.And take them with my curse so that the flowers,When they grow tall, will be a monument toThe babies you erased with breast milk on their lips,The old people whose stories you cut shortThat yet had years to come; the familiesTo whom the word “home” is an empty word,A hopeless noun, a room in which echoes of lossWill canon off the walls for years.These seedsWill be a living monument to cities, townsAnd villages you ground to dust. The flowersWill stretch their golden faces to the skyLike children watching summer clouds sail by,Smiling through the sunlit hours.But in the night their nodding heads will whisperSoftly to the wind,Here lie the murderersThat came out of the East, unwelcome and unasked,Midwives of madness, followingA flag of lies. Now wrapped in that same flagOf lies they lie themselves in the rich earth,Our roots are bound about their bonesThey are their winding sheets, their shrouds,Those cheated boys, and mercenariesWho raped and killed, and in their turn were killed.Deep down in this gold ocean, this great yellow seaOf flowers they sleep, wait out infinity’s hours,The pawns, the murdering toolsOf madmen and of doctrines spawnedIn secret rooms and deepDark vaults, cursed now for all eternity.And so the flowers will drop their seedsEach year so those who come to seeThe everlasting fields, will readPerennial the petals’ legends carved out here.Stronger than granite, more mightyAnd more beautiful than polished marble.These sunflowers will tell the worldHow your young lives were squandered hereWasted on our sweet, rich soil made richer by your fleshAnd bones. Then your poor weeping mothersWill come throughout the hollow yearsTo water with their burning salty tearsThe endless fields of yellow flower heads,That reach to the horizon, a golden seaUnder an endless, clear blue sky,Their faces turning ever to the sun.”
Mike Harding
– from the book The Lonely Zoroastrian.
Last night my lovely Mr S spotted the tiniest sliver of the new moon, above it Venus and below a richly red sunset sky and I caught the photo with the better of my two cameras.
Friends came for soupy lunch today before we went together to see the live streaming of Macbeth by the Donmar Warehouse. It was absolutely brilliant! Catch it if you can.
Leek and Potato Soup with some of the last leeks from our allotment.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer gave me permission some time ago to post her lovely poems as long as I credit her properly. This one seems so particularly apt after the last few days.
Hope by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer University of Arizona Poetry Center. Thank you for this one.
Happy St David’s Day to all the Welsh and those with Welsh heritage like me and my siblings. I love Daffodils in all their guises so here they are to mark the day.
Before The Ingleheart Singers started the day off with a rousing round of some of our Cornish repertoire, a choir friend took this photo of me with Max, our lovely Town Crier, in his wonderful Story Coat that regular readers will know all about. Check here if you’d like to know more.
Here is the Happiness Calendar for March on this, the first day of Spring.
Commentator Award
