I said I would tell you about the novel.

It’s about a WW1 nurse who loses her fiancé in the conflict, and the consequences of this for the rest of her life, particularly WW2. Then it becomes a ghost story. It’s set on the Isle of Wight, of course. Well, that’s a bare summary.

But the other day I tried writing it and it did not happen.

In other news, I’ve discovered the BBC comedy Detectorists and now have a full appreciation for the poems of A.E. Housman. These are my two favourites:

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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

This one actually inspired me to write a poem, and that’s a rarer occurrence these days. I now have to read poetry in order to write it.

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Into my heart an air that kills 

  From yon far country blows: 

What are those blue remembered hills, 

  What spires, what farms are those? 

That is the land of lost content,

  I see it shining plain, 

The happy highways where I went 

  And cannot come again.

I think this one might be my ultimate favourite, specifically the second verse. In a way it makes me think of the Isle of Wight.

That’s my piece for today.