joe bloggs

This blog seems to have become obsessed with idleness, the writings of Jerome K. Jerome, ghosts and furry animals.

I must get out more.

But in the meantime, here is something combining at least two of the above obsessions - Jerome K. Jerome writing about ghosts (I'm leaving it in Rom. because Ital. is hard to read in this font):

... the world grows very full of ghosts as we grow older. We need
not seek in dismal church-yards nor sleep in moated granges to see the
shadowy faces and hear the rustling of their garments in the night.
Every house, every room, every creaking chair has its own particular
ghost. They haunt the empty chambers of our lives, they throng around
us like dead leaves whirled in the autumn wind. Some are living, some
are dead. We know not. We clasped their hands once, loved them,
quarreled with them, laughed with them, told them our thoughts and
hopes and aims, as they told us theirs, till it seemed our very hearts
had joined in a grip that would defy the puny power of Death. They
are gone now; lost to us forever. Their eyes will never look into
ours again and their voices we shall never hear. Only their ghosts
come to us and talk with us. We see them, dim and shadowy, through
our tears. We stretch our yearning hands to them, but they are air.

Ghosts! They are with us night and day. They walk beside us in the
busy street under the glare of the sun. They sit by us in the
twilight at home. We see their little faces looking from the windows
of the old school-house. We meet them in the woods and lanes where we
shouted and played as boys. Hark! cannot you hear their low laughter
from behind the blackberry-bushes and their distant whoops along the
grassy glades? Down here, through the quiet fields and by the wood,
where the evening shadows are lurking, winds the path where we used to
watch for her at sunset. Look, she is there now, in the dainty white
frock we knew so well, with the big bonnet dangling from her little
hands and the sunny brown hair all tangled. Five thousand miles away!
Dead for all we know! What of that? She is beside us now, and we can
look into her laughing eyes and hear her voice. She will vanish at
the stile by the wood and we shall be alone; and the shadows will
creep out across the fields and the night wind will sweep past
moaning. Ghosts! they are always with us and always will be while the
sad old world keeps echoing to the sob of long good-bys, while the
cruel ships sail away across the great seas, and the cold green earth
lies heavy on the hearts of those we loved.


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is it time for a nap yet? i think so