If you came this way in may time...

you would find the hedges white again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness

Little Gidding Part II | on the home strait now!

I'm no longer surprised by the strange synchronicity of the echo between lines I am currently learning in these poems and events in life (though I have some vague memory from Richard Dawkins along the lines of 'there's no such thing as coincidence/coincidences happen all the time/they're only significant when we choose to notice them'. Hm, spoil sport).

Had a good talk on the phone about the poems and difficult pronunciations with Mrs A on the train between Birmingham and Bromsgrove, with some technical issues:

me: are you there still? we might get cut off, I seem to be in a tunnel
LONG SILENCE, emerge from tunnel which was only a bridge
me [perplexed, check phone, call still seems to be open]: look, are you there?
Mrs A: YES. But there was a long silence...
me: BECAUSE I WAS WAITING FOR YOU TO SPEAK

gah

later:

me: why do you keep cutting me off when I call you back?
Mrs A: well, If you call me back and my phone is aleady open I don't know what to do
me: so you shut it?
Mrs A: Yes, but what should I do?
me [exasperated]: PRESS THE GREEN BUTTON. I can't believe you don't know how to answer your phone.
Mrs A [disgruntled]: Look, it's a miracle I've got this far
me [laughing]: Sorry, yes, I never thought to see the day you'd send a text message
Mrs A: Yes well it did take me forever [pause then, scandalised] Did you know S [similarly non-technical friend] has only just found the punctuation button on her phone?...

And we're back to punctuation AGAIN.

I begin to wonder if we've ever had a conversation which is NOT about language...

"She must learn to OBEY her mother"

(So said the little bird, listening in the tree)