Sunday 13th March

Strange week so far. My wife aged another year this week...well I suppose the aging was dispersed throughout the year, but the formal day of accounting occurred this week. I can't say that she looks any older to me -- pretty much still the woman I married some 18 years ago. Probably like most people, I don't take much notice of incremental changes but get a sudden shock of realisation at particular times when you wonder where 18 years went.

Then there were the appalling images of the situation in Japan. On television, I watched a tsunami rip through a city - with liners, boats, lorries, cars, roofs of large buildings surfing the crest of the wave. That was pretty freaky. I saw cars trying to outrun the tsunami, like one of those reality cop shows you get on television where you know the criminals will eventually be caught after a thrilling chase.

As I watched the events unfold, I couldn't help remembering the lines of a poem by A. E. Housman that I read in my youth - called 'On Wenlock Edge'. Here it is:

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

Pessimistic huh? Rest easy with your own mortality folks - we are all destined to be ashes soon enough : )