From Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal, written in 1938:

Close and slow, summer is ending in Hampshire,
Ebbing away down ramps of shaven lawn where close-clipped yew
Insulates the lives of retired generals and admirals
And the spyglasses hung in the hall and the prayerbooks ready in the pew
And August going out to the tin trumpets of nasturtiums
And the sunflowers' Salvation Army blare of brass
And the spinster sitting in a deck-chair picking up stitches
Not raising her eyes to the noise of the 'planes that pass
Northward from Lee-on-Solent. Macrocarpa and cypress
And roses on a rustic trellis and mulberry trees
And bacon and eggs in a silver dish for breakfast
And all the inherited assets of bodily ease
And all the inherited worries, rheumatism and taxes
And whether Stella will marry and what to do with Dick...

But the final cure is not in [the psychoanalyst's] past-dissecting fingers
But in a future of action, the will and the fist
Of those who abjure the luxury of self-pity,
And prefer to risk a movement without being sure
If movement would be better or worse in a hundred
Years or a thousand when their heart is pure.
None of our hearts are pure, we always have mixed motives,
Are self deceivers, but the worst of all
Deceits is to murmur "Lord, I am not worthy"
And, lying easy, turn your face to the wall.
But may I cure that habit, look up and outwards
And may my feet follow my wider glance
First no doubt to stumble, then to walk with the others
And in the end -- with time and luck -- to dance.

What a mad week. I'm still trying to finish a project I'd hoped to deliver on Monday. (It's ahead of schedule, but the sooner it's out of my hair, the sooner I can focus on other things that will be due all too soon.)

Didn't make it to the Pink Trash Ball, but that was because the birthday dinner I hosted for a friend the previous night needed recoverin' from. From a conversation two days later:

The BYM (peering into liquor cabinet): Dude, that bottle of Bulleit's is done.

Me: No, it's not. There's one mouthful left and that's enough for a batch of bourbon balls.

The week's highlights included a long-overdue tete-a-tete with Joanne. It's always a pleasure to talk shop with her, and the other conversation topics included bunnies vs. vacuums, local chocolate and the chemistry of Canadian brands, and the Royal Navy planting trees selected by Darwin.

Also, there's some tennis tournament going on at the moment, and the French players are performing above expectations so far. Allez! (My running commentary's sequestered under a separate Twitter handle, both to avoid spamming the non-obsessed and to spare the copyediting/church crowd from the barrages of profanity and snark related to French headcases. [Did I mention that they're performing above par? There's no Frenchman ranked in the Top 10, and I'll be shocked to mes orteils if any of them reach the semis.])

When I stopped by my mom-in-law's house last week, she showed me some plants she'd gotten to grow:

From photoblogging

What's special about the vines: they're from some seeds she saved when she helped me clean out my mother's house two years ago.