a holiday

'In the radiance and the silence, she ran on the vast expanse of hard, smooth sand, beside herself with joy. Ah, when you only have a holiday once in a while, what a happiness it is! Each golden minute had to be held and perfected before it was let go.' Dorothy Whipple High Wages

journey

The bags are packed, the car is piled high and we're off to France for our summer holiday.

See you soon x

teasing complexity

Whilst on holiday I finally shared this blog with mother, Hello! Whilst chatting on the 'phone mums mentioned how much she was enjoying Rose Tremain's Music and Silence. I knew there were a couple of quotes not yet used from this book, stored in my old quote books. So as a way of welcoming a new reader and of putting the old quotes previously stored on paper.

"As they part, both men reflect upon all that might have been said... and yet was not said; and this knowledge of what so often exists in the silences between words both haunts them and makes them marvel at the teasing complexity of all human discourse." Rose Tremain Music & Silence

said

Birdsong

'No child or future generation will ever know what this was like. They will never understand. When it is over we will go quietly among the living and we will not tell them. We will talk and sleep and go about our business like human beings. We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our hearts and no words will reach us.' Sebastian Faulks Birdsong

@
It doesn't seem quite right to be celebrating all the great literature about France without mentioning the wars. This passage spoke to me years ago when I read Birdsong. It speaks even more having been to Ypres on a freezing November weekend.