Let this coming year be better than all the others. Vow to do some of the things you've always wanted to do but couldn't find the time. Call up a forgotten friend. Drop an old grudge, and replace it with some pleasant memories. Vow not to make a promise you don't think you can keep. Walk tall, and smile more. You'll look ten years younger. Don't be afraid to say, 'I love you'. Say it again. They are the sweetest words in the world.  (Ann Landers)

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This is my favourite painting - “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” by Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)

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The Months of the Year by Sara Coleridge, daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

January brings the snow;
Makes the toes and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen ponds again.

March brings breezes loud and shrill,
Stirs the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses;
Fills the children’s hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Strawberries and gilly-flowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the Harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit,
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasant,
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast,
Then the leaves are falling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire and Christmas treat.

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The music clip will be familiar to older folks. It was the theme tune for a long-running BBC radio series “Listen with Mother.“ Played here by two pianists Jacqueline Bonneau and Genevieve Joy, “Berceuse” is the first movement of the Dolly Suite by Gabriel Fauré.



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Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

WISHING EVERYONE A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR

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Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. (J. H. Payne 1795-1852)

There is a spot, 'mid barren hills
Where winter howls, and driving rain;
But, if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.

The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight’s dome;
But what on earth is half so dear,
So longed for, as the hearth of home?

The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o’ergrown,
I love them, how I love them all!

A little and a lone green lane
That opened on a common wide;
A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain
Of mountains, circling every side.

A heaven so clear, an earth so calm,
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;
And, deepening still the dream-like charm,
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. (Emily Bronte 1818-1848)

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The music here is part of the slow movement from the New World Symphony by Dvorak, played by the Dublin Philharmonic conducted by Derek Gleeson


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WISHING EVERYONE A HAPPY CHRISTMAS

12th century silk painting “Bird on a Branch” by Li Anzhong

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have won. (Henry David Thoreau)

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All through the night there’s a little brown bird singing,
Singing in the hush of the darkness and the dew.
Would that his song through the stillness could go winging
To you.

All through the night-time my lonely heart is singing
Sweeter songs of love than the brown bird ever knew.
Would that the song of my heart could go winging
To you.

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  “Bird Songs at Eventide” (words - Royden Barrie, music - Eric Coates) sung by Robert White accompanied by Stephen Hough.


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"The Concert" by Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)


Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing. (John Erskine)

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If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
(William Shakespeare, from Twelfth Night)

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This is the 16th century melody “Greensleeves” played by Andre Rieu and his Orchestra.


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The Fairy Festival painted by Gustav Dore 1832-1883

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We the fairies blithe and antic,
Of dimensions not gigantic,
Though the moonshine mostly keep us,
Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,
Stolen kisses much completer,
Stolen looks are nice in chapels,
Stolen, stolen, be your apples.

When to bed the world is bobbing,
Then’s the time for orchard robbing,
Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,
Were it not for stealing, stealing. (Leigh Hunt 1784-1859)

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The music here is “Walking in the Air” sung by Chloe Agnew of Celtic Women

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This Friday on SCOTTISH TALES FROM THE OTHER WORLD -
“True Thomas and the Elfin Queen”
http://scottishtalesfromtheotherworld.blogspot.com

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HAIKU HOMESTEAD resumes today -
http://haikuhomestead.blogspot.com

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