miss above all things
is the kindness of half a
century ago

Adapted from a passage in the book, Past imperfect by Julian Fellowes (2009) New York : St. Martin’s Press.

Mr. Fellowes wrote, again in 2009, that:

There’s danger in it, obviously, but I no longer fight the sad realisation that the setting for my growing years seems sweeter to me than the one I now inhabit. Today’s young, in righteous, understandable defence of their own time, generally reject our reminiscences about a golden age when the customer was always right, when AA men saluted the badge on your car and policemen touched their helmet in greeting. Thank heaven for the end of deference, they say, but deference is part of an ordered, certain world and, in retrospect at least, that can feel warming and even kind. I suppose what I miss above all things is the kindness of the England of half a century ago. But then again, is it the kindness I regret, or my own youth?

I suppose what I miss above all things is the kindness of half a century ago.

But then again, is it the kindness I regret, or my own youth?

I am not sure.

I don’t think the world was so scared, so edgy, so chip-on-the-shoulder.

Maybe that was deference.

Maybe it was respect.

Maybe it was courtesy.

Maybe it was caring.

Whatever it was, it doesn’t seem to be around today.

And I miss it.

My youth?

Truly I am kind of glad I was a kid back when I was a kid.

And I feel sorry for my kids and my grandkids.

They might have more technology but I bet I had more fun.

If you aren’t familiar with Julian Fellowes I am happy to tell you that you are.

Much I what I feel I know about the British Aristocracy is from TV shows like Downton Abby and Monarch of the Glen or movies like Gosford Park and books like Snobs.

Watch all and you get to know certain themes about the Brits that become part of your collective conscious and as many of those themes are repeated in different shows and movies and books that I just named, well then, they must be accurate.

Then you find out there were all written by the same guy, Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford.

sunset evening
tide star moving seems asleep
and after that the dark

As I watched a freight outbound on the Savannah River I thought of Savannah’s own, Conrad Aiken and the lines carved in a bench at his gravesite.

The lines read:

Cosmos Mariner:

Destination Unknown

Today’s haiku is adapted from the famous Crossing the Bar by Alfred Tennyson.

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.