The Friday Five - Films

This week I'm looking at 5 favourite films or movies. It was hard to choose but in making my choices I have tried to choose a varied selection rather than films from the same genre. Enjoy!

The List

The Detail 

Les Choristes

Dont't be put off by the fact that this is in French, the story tells itself and the music is beautiful. I'm not a huge fan of watching with subtitles but this film really changed my mind.

Thank You for Smoking 

A really black comedy - but oh so funny

It Happened One Night

Old but gold, the best Romcom ever from 1934, staring Claudette Colbert and Clarke Gable

Morris: a Life with Bells on

A mocumentary about extreme Morris Dancing in Dorset and LA - not to be missed - really!

The Shawshank Redemption

A wonderful film but so powerful that I have only been able to watch it once unlike all the other selections that I have viewed several times.

Earth, Sea and Sky

Yesterday we set out for a walk from Colwell Bay to Fort Victoria - a pleasant walk that doesn’t involve driving to get to it but not normally especially exciting! - little did we know what was in store! I started off by taking some nature photos in the hedgerow as we walked up the lane. 

Then we carried on to the high view point on the walk where we found a  number of people with binoculars and serious cameras. They told us three of the huge America’s Cup J Class yachts were doing a round the Island race. It seemed they were still quite a long way away so we decided to push on to Fort Victoria, another great viewpoint. No J class there either but a lot more to see as there were flotillas of boats out to see these magnificent boats come by. There is also ice cream which may have played a small part in our decision not to wait for the yachts at the view point. An added bonus was that I bumped into an old colleague that I hadn’t seen for several years.

After watching the shipping for a while and still no J Class we decided to head for home and were amazingly lucky in that just as we reached the viewpoint on the way back the first of these magnificent boats came round the headland - certainly a walk to remember!

The Friday Five - Poems

I love poetry though I don’t spend anything like as much time as I would like reading it. So it was interesting that when I thought of choosing five of my favorite poems for this blog post my heart went straight back to a little anthology called ‘a Pageant of Modern Verse’ that I studied at school for my ‘O’ levels. There were just so many great poems in this small volume and even looking just a this book it was hard to choose only five poems.

When I consider my choices I think what comes across is the sense of rhythm  and the wonderful use of language used by these five very different poets. I hope you enjoy my selection and it would be great if you could post about your favorite poets in the comments section

The List

1. ‘Journey of the Magi’ T.S. Eliot
2. ‘Tarantella’ Hilaire Belloc
3. ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ W.B. Yeats
4. ‘On the Coast of Coromandel’ Observe Sitwell
5. ‘Snake’ D.H. Lawrence 

The Detail

The first

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

The second

Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark veranda)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the din?
And the hip! hop! hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the swirl and the twirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of the clapper to the spin
Out and in--
And the ting, tong, tang of the guitar!
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?

Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar;
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground,
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far waterfall like doom. 

The third

The fourth

On the coast of Coromandel, 

Dance they to the tune of Handel;

Chorally, that coral coast

Correlates the bone to ghost,

Till word and limb and note seem one,

Blending, binding act to tone.

All day long they point the sandal

On the coast of Coromandel.

Lemon-yellow legs all bare

Pirouette to peruqued air

From the first green shoots of morn,

Cool as northern hunting-horn,

Till the nightly tropic wind

With its rough-tongued, grating rind

Shatters the frail spires of spice.

Imaged in the lawns of rice

(Mirror-flat and mirror green

is that lovely water’s sheen)

Saraband and rigadoon

Dance they through the purring noon,

While the lacquered waves expand

Golden dragons on the sand —

Dragons that must, steaming, die

From the hot sun’s agony —

When elephants, of royal blood,

Plod to bed through lilied mud,

Then evening, sweet as any mango,

Bids them do a gay fandango,

Minuet, jig or gavotte.

How they hate the turkey-trot,

The nautch-dance and the Highland fling.

Just as they will never sing

Any music save by Handel

On the coast of Coromandel!

The Fifth

A snake came to my water-trough

On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, 

To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923

Hope you enjoyed the selection - don't forget to share your favourites in the comments section!

Five Questions

Happy Wednesday to you!

This post forms part of an assignment for the Behind the Scenes e-course I am doing - everyone in the group is posting their answers to these five questions today and linking them back to the BTS  classroom. Hope you enjoy my answers!

 

What makes you happy?….. in 5 words or less….?

Making a (positive) difference 

Which talent would you most like to have? 

I would love to be able to sing to a high standard

Which words or phrases do you overuse most?

I’m finding I’m saying ‘good’ when asked how I am - caught this from my son, though he has probably moved on to the next thing by now!

What is your favourite movie, book or both?

Miss Pettigrew lives for a day by Winifred Watson - the book the movie doesn’t come close. This is a book to read when you're feeling a bit low or having duvet day - it never fails to cheer!

Saving Grace - great British movie with a fab cast  -always makes me laugh out loud

If you could go anywhere in the world for a creative retreat where might it be? 

I would like to go to the USA as I often see fabulous retreats advertised in wonderful locations and there wouldn’t be too much of a culture shock to distract me from the purpose of being there - somewhere warm would be nice!

I would love to hear your answers to these questions! 

Introducing Honour Village Cambodia

For my first Blog interview I am thrilled to be able to talk (albeit via email) to Sue Wiggans, founder of Honour Village Cambodia,  a charity whose mission of ‘striving to help some of Cambodia’s poorest and most vulnerable children by giving them a safe home, good nutrition and an education’ is underpinned by the core values of Truth, Transparency and Integrity. This interview will also find a permanent home on my 'Sharing the Sparkle' Page.

 

One of the things that most inspires me about Sue’s journey is the fact that she embraced this new life at the age of 68 when many people are thinking about winding down rather than having new adventures - she truly is a role model for us all as we enter the third age.

 

NB all Honour Village photographs were supplied by Sue

How did your journey to becoming a founder of a charity in Cambodia begin?

I came to Vietnam and Cambodia on holiday in Jan/Feb 2009. I visited an orphanage in Siem Reap, and offered to return the following winter to volunteer as an English teacher. During the summer, I sent part of my inheritance money for land for permanent buildings. My volunteering was great fun and I loved the children. However, right at the end of my return stay, I discovered that the director was using donations for personal and family spending, and that my money had not been used to buy land.  The land I had been shown had in fact been fully protected by law since 1994 because of its proximity to the ancient temples. 

By a chain of linked coincidences, I was granted a meeting with His Excellency Seang Nam, MP. He generously offered to give land for a project, and said that if I started a children's project in person, he would be the Patron.  

How did you go about setting up Honour Village?

I returned to Cambodia in May of the same year for a month's fact finding and during that time saw the land that had been given for Honour Village. It was a third of a hectare of prime building land, still a rice paddy, which needed filling to over half a metre and fencing before any building could begin. During this stay, we formed a Board of Directors, began registration proceedings with The Ministry for the Interior, interviewed applicants for a Manager, who then worked in his free time as a volunteer for us for 6 months, and bought our first two traditional wood houses on stilts. I funded the development of the land with the remainder of my inheritance money. Since then, donors have sponsored two houses, which have now been named for them, releasing my earlier funding into the general running costs. 

I came home for five months to pack up my home, sell my possessions and register Honour Village Cambodia as a charity with the Charity Commissioners for England and Wales, and also with HMRC. I returned in September and moved into Honour Village in late November with a core Khmer staff. We had no electricity (we still only have it from 6pm to 11pm) and our water comes from a well, so I felt very intrepid as I settled in! Our official Opening Ceremony was on December 12, 2010.

When did you realise you wanted to make it your life's work? 

Soon after I decided to listen to my inner voice and take up the offer to found a children's project (and this happened within a couple of days of the offer). I had initially thought I would come and go perhaps three times a year, but soon realized that a) flights are very expensive; and b) it is not possible to live two lives fully.

How did you make the courageous decision to sell your home in England

and move to Cambodia?

It didn't seem courageous in any way, but rather a natural and inevitable consequence of the decision I had made. It would be difficult to juggle with concerns about property and possessions on the other side of the world when I am living an entirely different life, and  only return for eight weeks each year. In any case, my sister wanted me to promise to stay with her, so my bungalow, Dilkhush, would barely have seen me!

How did you come to choose the name Honour Village?

This came into my mind as I began to ponder on possible names, and I knew at once that it was the one. It symbolizes what we stand for, and that Honour Village came into being as a direct result of dishonour at the orphanage where I was volunteering. 

Tell me about the work of Honour Village 

We are always busy and no two minutes, let alone days, are ever the same. Every moment is precious. every contact with any child is important. Our "little interruptions" are, in fact, our work, and so the office is rarely child-free. A cuddle may be required in the middle of an email; a difference of opinion may need to be sorted over whose turn it is to play with a toy. Of course, housemothers are about, but when we are nearest the mishap, it takes precedence. 

 

Our children rise at 5.30am, and those who attend morning school (7 to 11am) leave at 6.15am. Khmer classes, for HVC and village children, taught by our housemothers, begin at 7 and end at 9am, when the volunteers arrive and English classes begin, for both our children and village students. Currently, we have four grades of English, plus  pre-school and special needs groups. At 11am we meet for meditation (our children are Buddhist). We are silent for 5 minutes, then there is open forum, singing, a story or some mental arithmetic before lunch at 11.45. Afternoon school is from 1 until 5pm; those who are still on site have a nap, volunteers do chores after their lunch break and English and Khmer classes begin again at 2pm and currently end at 4pm. Every child therefore has one hour of Khmer tuition and one of English, and during the school holidays, on site classes continue as our children have missed so much schooling. Home work has recently been instituted and times tables are gradually being learned.

We seek to nurture with love, good food, education and health care (an Australian school is currently "Sponsoring a Tooth" so that every child can visit the dentist and catch up on dental care). We go in batches of six, and everyone is eager to be next! Nobody minds a return visit!

How have you integrated Honour Village with the local community?

We do all we can to be part of our local community. Our children go to the local government school and children from the villages round us are invited to play and to attend free classes in Khmer and English. They are also invited to our Christmas party, resulting in over 200 children of all ages spending Christmas  (or the nearest Sunday) afternoon with us. 

Chhunly and I manage a project for a colleague who is sponsoring our nearest village school to remain open all day, so that the teachers can teach one grade at a time, rather than two. We are in school very often to visit as we monitor this project. As we bump through the village on Chhunly's motor bike, we are followed by shouts from the houses of "Hello, Mak Sue San!" (Mother Susan). We are also sponsoring the construction of a pre kindergarden room for our children's school, which will serve two villages (although not ours); the materials were given by Norway, and we have been able to add to these and pay building costs. The room will accommodate 47 x 4 year-olds in two shifts, and their mothers will attend courses in basic hygiene, nutrition, health, etc.  

How do you plan to secure the future of Honour Village?

By continuing our efforts to interest people in the work we are doing and finding a growing number of supporters. Our friends and sponsors help in a great many ways, and donations are sometimes one-off, more often a regular commitment but varying hugely in amount from a couple of pounds a month to much more. As funding grows, the work will spread into the surrounding villages, where there is great need and extreme poverty, coupled with few work opportunities. We need to find ways of helping people to support themselves, and are beginning to think of possibilities.

We have an excellent Manager, Chhunly Tiev, and it is my hope that he will make Honour Village his life's work. We have a wonderful team of UK Trustees, and are beginning the process of international registration here in Cambodia, which will simplify the structure and communication for urgent decisions, as our UK Trustees are always at hand to respond, despite being half a world away!

 

Who are your main supporters?

We now have supporters in UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Abu Dhabi and probably other countries that I don't know about! Increasingly our friends around the world are responding to our needs because they can see the difference their money is making to the lives of children both in HVC and in the villages around. It is important that people realize that no westerner ever receives so much as a penny (or a cent!) in payment or expenses (and that includes the UK Trustees!) The only paid staff are local Khmer people. 

If you were granted three wishes what would they be?

Am I allowed multiple choices here? Of course, my vision reaches much further than inside the walls of Honour Village, and even beyond our neighbouring villages.

• That teacher training in Cambodia be up-dated and new methods of teaching be used at least to supplement learning by rote, and that class sizes be reduced (most of our children are learning in classes of more than sixty).

• That health care be more widely available and at greater depth than is possible at present; and that those living far from the towns have easier access to health care other than what can be provided by the village clinics.

• That the economy of Cambodia could be improved to enable more people to find work, and that more vocational training opportunities become available. (We hope to do our bit here, in 2 to 3 years' time!)

And finally, what do you miss most about living in the UK and in particular the Isle of Wight?

The fact is, I'm so busy here I barely have time to miss anyone or anything! But of course it would be lovely to see the people I love rather than having to email, and a roast shoulder of lamb with mint sauce and roast potatoes, peas and roast parsnips would be a dream

come true! And I sometimes feel I'm back at Brambles, the place where I was so incredibly happy, and where I never dreamt of leaving until I died. I remember Dilkhush and walking along the beach searching for shells and pebbles and glass. But aren't I blessed to have these memories so close and real to me while I'm here on the other side of the world? And I am so involved and absorbed in every minute of every day here that I rarely stop to think of the past. Just sometimes, fleeting nostalgia drifts through me, but it is a gift, not a sadness.

Thank you Sue so much for taking the time to answer my questions. You can find out more about Honour Village Cambodia by visiting their website  here or following them on facebook here 

FunkyRosebud Studio will be continuing to support Honour Village by donating 10% of all profits from sales to them.