Living for a Thousand Years or More …

‘Living for a 1000 years or more …’ by Ms Paige Turner

Heather Smith is the chairman of Abbeyfield Residential Home in Gerrards Cross and an old friend. No, she’s not old but I’ve known Heather since I started teaching Creative Writing in Beaconsfield thirty years ago. How time flies and fugits. Heather has done the most amazing illustrations for the annual anthology ‘Rhyme & Reason’ in aid of the Iain Rennie Hospice and she also penned the illustrations for my ‘Serving Bluebird Pie’ collection seventeen years ago. Time fugits again.
Heather invited me to go and do one of my ‘Red Lipstick’ perfs at Abbeyfield. It was truly a delight. There was I in my red dress, with red tablecloths and my Red Lipsticks performing in front of a red Christmas tree. Some of the twelve residents bought copies of ‘Red Lipstick & Revelations’ as Christmas presents. (I suggested pairing it with an Estee Lauder lipstick – what a great gift – Estee Lauder do the best of lipsticks.) At the end when the overhead Christmas lights were switched on in preparation for the Brownies’ visit I suddenly realised that I had performed to a small group whose total of life years came to over a thousand. Vivienne had started the proceedings by beginning to beautifully recite the poem ‘Nicholas Nye’. Neither she nor any of us knew who had written it. The group are light years from Google but I was able to do so this morning. Beautiful ‘Nicholas Nye’ was written by Walter de la Mare:
‘More than a score of donkey’s years
He had been since he was foaled.’
It’s worth a read …
Creative Ink classes at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield begin on Tuesday 9th January for 5 weeks and the course is running but has some places left. Email me.
Also the ‘Get that book’ arrangement has some places.