Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) - 'A Superscription'

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;

I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;

Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell

Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;

Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen

Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell

Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,

Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.

Mark me, how still I am I But should there dart

One moment through thy soul the soft surprise

Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,

Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart

Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart

Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

Agincourt

I have just discovered that one of my ancestors - John Bokenham of Norfolk - fought as a ' Man-at-arms' under Henry V at Agincourt in 1415 ... words fail me...

A 'Man-at-arms' was someone (either a Knight - or of much lower orders!) who was armour clad and had been taught to fight both on horse or on foot - in essence a Cavalryman.

Interestingly, the furthest back I had previously got on that family line was 1690 and all of them had seemed to be Wheelwrights and the such like. Even my uncle was a Blacksmith and Farrier and at the start of the Second World War had tried to enlist with Lord Lovat's Calvalry (Lovat Scouts)- only to be sent elsewhere!

Certainly 'The wheel turns'!

Even the Faerie came for a look

I found these toadstools in the garden this morning - and it seems as if even the Faerie was going over to look.

3d back?

Over the years my husband dug up many old bottles - from the footings dug on building sites he worked on years ago, and from an old rubbish dump revealed when so many of our old trees were uprooted in the 1987 hurricane. We have a number displayed in our house - including the 3 round bottomed bottles pictured above.

However, many were stored in open boxes in the eaves of our loft and we knew that it was time to sort them out.... so yesterday we washed them all and allowed them to dry in the warmth (heat!) of the garden, before packing them all safely away again in special storage boxes with lids.

We were going to try to sell them, but they are such a wonderful view into social history that we are not sure we can part with them yet.

For so many years extra money was levied on drinks in glass bottles, so that money used to be got back on empty bottles - the ultimate in encouraging recycling! originally it was about a farthing or a halfpenny, but when I was young it was 3d.

As kids we would knock on doors asking for their old bottles to get a bit of money - and if we found some discarded on the heath, that was an added bonus.