When Bertie met Toffer
Toffer and Bertie Reminisce
Bertie & Toffer
Aldith and Bernard have been friends with Bobby and Diddley for a long time. They knew me as Bobby’s bear who sat on the sofa with the children’s bears and didn’t do much. But thought a lot. When I started the blog I told them all about it. (more…)
Laurie Lee Poetry Posts
The Laurie Lee Wildlife Walk – The Poetry Posts
Following last week’s description of the walk, Bobby and I thought you might like to read the actual poems on the posts. Some of them with a view across the valley behind them. Some with a sunset. So, here they are in all their glory. Immortalised across the valley in which they were written. Many years, I gather, before real fame came to Laurie Lee with “Cider with Rosie”. They are in the order in which we started the walk from the Woolpack …
Painswick from Swift’s Hill
Laurie Lee
The Laurie Lee Wildlife Walk.
Up, up, up we climbed Swifts Hill. It was a glorious 23rd August 2016. The sun shone towards Stroud and the black mountains of Wales beyond. Down below nothing had really changed in Slad. The school that Diddley and Laurie Lee many years apart had gone to is still there. A private house now. The church where Laurie is buried. And the Woolpack where we have all drunk at Laurie Lee’s bar including Laurie himself. (more…)
The Old Lady
“Please sir .. Have you got some change for a cup of coffee?”
The Old Lady & Me.
Bobby was sitting under a large umbrella in a pavement café in Spitalfields. Breakfast a pint of milk and a punnet of strawberries. Watching the world go by in the gentle rain. A relief for many after the heatwave. (more…)
September 1954
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air… .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr
September
September: Bobby’s Favourite Month.
Bertie…….. September has always been Bobby’s favourite month of the year. For many reasons, to be shared with you this September over the next couple of weeks. It is a month of change. Summer drawing to a close. The promise of autumn and winter to come. A time when our wildlife prepares for winter either by staying and adapting or migrating.
The countryside on sunny days in particular can be full of delicious smells of ripening blackberries, and nature’s bounty before it closes for winter. The sun is getting lower in the sky. The mists of autumn are just round the corner. If you are lucky its a time for beautiful sunsets. And sunrises as below on Skomer Island.
Dreaming
I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart so long.
If we are in each other’s dreams we can be together all the time.
Winnie the Pooh
“Innocence”
HRH the Countess of Wessex’s dream is an important one. She seeks to protect children from the many dangers that they now face via the Internet. “The Internet can offer great benefits, but it is imperative that we shelter the most precious thing we have, our children, from the online presences that threaten to destroy their innocence and happiness. These online dangers are as real as any physical ones and it is our duty to shield young people and keep their dreams safe”. (more…)
Frank Mansell
Frank Mansell.
It’s the twenty-third of August 2016. Bobby and I are sitting at the Laurie Lee bar in the Woolpack pub at Slad in Gloucestershire. Him talking to anyone who will listen. Me thinking about Frank Mansell. A poet and close friend of Diddley’s.
Frank Mansell, Poet
She grew up and went to her first school in Slad. A beautiful village in a valley near Stroud, made famous by Laurie Lee’s iconic book “Cider With Rosie”. His autobiographical story of growing up in a disappearing world. Where the traditional village life of centuries was being lost to the march of progress. Particularly the motor car. (more…)
Dream Island
“Dream Island”
Do you have a special place? Somewhere away from home that transcends all others. Somewhere that despite the wonders of the world you may have seen always draws you back. Time after time. Year after year. A place where whatever the weather, the season, or your circumstances seems to hold out a welcome that envelops your consciousness. A very personal experience that others may not see the same way. If you have you are very, very lucky. Bobby has in Pembrokeshire, West Wales.
Bertie on Dream Island
Britain’s only coastal national park. A coast path of 186 miles through the most glorious coastal scenery imaginable. St Brides Bay. St Davids. The list goes on. Bobby first went there in 1986 and was confronted by a horizontal driven sea mist so dense you could hardly see a thing. The following day the mist was still there. Come the third day to the same view it would have been easy to say. “Lets go home. This is awful”. But he persevered. Later that day driving down to where the sea should have been the sky suddenly lifted. The sun tried to break through. Leaving a strange beautiful vista where land, sea and sky melted into one translucent picture where across the middle the islands were strung out like a string of pearls. Thirty years later he has never seen that view again. (more…)
Welcome to Mindfully Bertie
This is a preview of what is to come and, hopefully, amuse you. A smile is all I ask of you.
My name is Bertie. I am a teddy bear.
I do think a lot as many bears do and have done in the past. Some far more famous than I. My best friend is Bobby Ballcock. A larger than life character who tends to talk a lot. Everybody says so. Together we hope to bring you a ray of sunshine through a mixture of adventuring, laughing, crying, naturing, thinking, remembering. (more…)