THE RICHARD BARTTELOT SITE

Richard and I often visited Steep, lunching sometimes at the Harrow or 'The Pub with No Name' for its associations with Edward Thomas, a poet we both admired. Sometimes members of my family came along and here we are (Richard, my son Henry and daughter Imogen) at the Edward Thomas Memorial Stone on Shoulder of Mutton Hill. 

r e d c e 2 April 2019   THE WEEKLY VISIT: Took today's Telegraph , The Rings of Saturn (for the Edward Fitzgerald piece), a book of verse, an obituary from The Times , and a pair of trousers from the charity shop. We are trying to institute a new regime of a clean pair every week - we can take the old ones home to wash. The care home seems to distribute the washing on a random basis. Sometimes the trousers he is wearing end way above the ankles. It's not a happy arrangement. At the care home you walk along two corridors lined with mostly open doors and as you pass by you see bits of the occupants within, as they doze or watch their televisions. As I turn the corner there's always been an old boy in a woolly hat lying on his bed with his mouth wide open and clearly not long for this world. Today the bed was empty. They take the bodies out by the back way and down the ramp outside Barp's room. He is not supposed to see the procedure but they didn't draw his curta...

  End of an Old Song   I'm told I had an Uncle   Moving around the globe, - I really ought to find him   By satellite or probe He could be not too distant   He can't be all that far - He may be at Uttoxeter,   He might be at Utah!   He could be down at Haltemprice,   He could be up at Hull, I might find him in Merseyside,   In Macclesfield or Hull; He might have gone to Lampeter,   He may have gone to Leicester, He could now be at Chiddingfold,   Or Chichester or Chester.   One day I'm sure to find him   In Farnham or in Fleet Behind a chemist's counter,   Or jogging down the street. He might have gone to Petersfield   By way of Polesden Lacey, Or walked to Warninglid from Ware   Via Bude or Bovey Tracey.   O Peripatetic Uncle   Under the self-same sky - Are you ensconced in Rochester,   In Rejkjavik or Rye? You may have glimpse...

 

R.B. Reads Poems   R.B. Reads Poems II

Tuesday 7 March 2018 After lunch we drove to Horton to see Barp. He was raring to go out, not having seen anyone for a week, but I wasn't so keen as he seemed far more doddery and likely to collapse (and his nephew Thomas has expressed disapproval). He insisted. He wanted to buy more birthday cards. We dawdled along the corridor with the chief nurse who asked him if he wanted to go out. He said 'YES' very firmly and out we went. The bookshop in Ilminster has cards and also sells wine. Barp was delighted with the place, tottering round with his zimmerframe, reversing out of corners, with us hovering nearby to catch him. Up and down the steps we went, moving as slowly as it is possible to move, every second close to disaster, but somehow no disaster came. He sniffed the scent of books and stroked their spines, having no way of telling what the titles were without his glasses. But being in a bookshop again was like being in Paris used to be for men of his generation. Then we...

Today is the anniversary of the death of my friend R.B. and to mark the occasion here is one of the many poems he sent me over the years,. It's to do with C.S.Lewis, who is not a favourite with me and it is in manuscript form so I may have misread the odd word. I know that C.S.Lewis was known as 'Jack' and his brother 'Warnie' and I remember being told by Richard that Lewis' dog was called 'Mr Papworth' but I am not at all sure about the reference to 'Barboes'  at the end. If you can correct or add anything please do. When Richard was at Oxford he did briefly to tear himself away from the steam trains to hear C.S.Lewis lecture and I know he was an admirer, even managing to smuggle a copy of The Screwtape Letters  (which he knew I detested) into my house, via my wife. The poem has its weaknesses but is laced with the sadness that, as a lifelong bachelor himself, Richard shared with his subject. He signed the poem 'T' which he often used as...