A meme from Frances...hmmmm!

So, I have been tasked by Frances to do a meme, well, here goes....it will be my usual random stuff

Five Favourite Songs;

1. Flowers in the rain [forget the bands name but think 60's era]
2. Scarborough Fair - Simon & Garfunkle [used to sing this in the folk group I was a member of back in the days of folk Masses.
3. At Vinegar Hill O'er the pleasant Slaney...good old fashioned rebellious ballad.
4. Such a perfect day [I'm glad I spent it with you...] love this song - sums up - well, perfect days perfectly.
5. I will survive - Gloria Gaynor...this came out in the 70's when I was going through the break up of my first engagement - and that's engagement in terms of out and out warfare between The Plonker and I, thank God for OH.

Five Favourite films

1. Watership Down [the original]...still get glisteny eyes when I hear "Bright Eyes"
2. Ryan's Daughter, what's not to like? Robert Mitchum, The Kerry scenary, and an ill-cast Christopher Jones!
3. Mogambo, Clarke Gable - There were two versions of this, 1932 Red Dust, starring Gable and Jean Harlow, and 1953 the overblown Mogambo with the glorious Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly. Have to say that Harlow & Gardner were the heroines for me in both, and as for Gable himself...swooooooon!
4. Rear Window - Jimmy Stewart - never get tired of this film!
5. The Maltese Falcon with my man Bogart...and I could go on, and on and on with The Thin Man, any of the Powell/Loy films, anything with Bogart & Bacall - if its a B&W I'm hooked!

Five Favourite Books

Frances, darling...I'm a bookworm and that's like asking me to make Solomon's choice!!! Here goes a few...

1. "Peig", [Peg] the autobiography of Peig Sayers who lived on An Blascaoid Mhór [The Big Blasket] off Slea Head, Co Kerry. I love the lilt of the language, the story of her life - the whole thing. At school we were given this book to study, in Irish, for our Intermediate Certificate [O levels] and it is generally referred to as the bain of Irish students...however, having Munster Irish myself, it was a joy to me and no hassle at all to study. I treated myself to an English translation [by that wonderful Kerry author Bryan McMahon] when on holidays recently.
2. "Wellington", by Richard Holmes - I love anything to do with The Iron Duke, despite his denial of being Irish ["...a man may be born in a stable..." but he was from Trim, Co Meath, and he was a brilliant master of strategy.
3. "News from No Man's Land" - John Simpson. I have the highest regard for this man, and read anything I can get my hands that he is the author of. I love his reports from ... wherever he is. He is a truly classic reporter who reports the facts and doesn't try to impose HIS viewpoint on his listener/reader. Unlike so many modern colleagues of his who seem to think that the general public must be nose led to the thinking trough.
4. "Darling Buds of May" - H. E Bates. This is one of those "comfort zone" books that you take out into the garden of a summers day, as you relax and sip a cool drink [although with recent weather that should probably read strong hot drink or nip of whisky] and watch the butterflies on the Buddleia.
5. "Yes Minister"/"Yes Prime Minister" Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay's hilarious spoof of the ministry of James Hacker M.P. No matter where, when or in what Government crises - this one is a winner.

Five Favourite crushes eh?

1. O.H., [should have been a politican with that one eh? ]
2. Robert Mitchum
3. Clarke Gable
4. Chris Jones [when I was 15]
5. A skinny, spotty, lank haired individual who, back in the days of being 13, I thought was a God...it lasted for six impassioned weeks - love from afar - until he sat down on the bus beside me one day and said hi. Loved died on a cross of bad breath, body odour and acne...the close up view was sadly lacking in the "from a distance" view. Met him two years ago at an agricultural show. His teeth are - well six to the gum, his beer belly preceeded him into the tent where his current wife was displaying her brown and soda breads, and he is farming on a sheep farm. It would never have worked. I'm a cattle person at heart being a Dairy farmers grand-daughter!

Five Random Things...aha!

1. Sunday's when we are all fogged in here, and I can hear the fog horns in the Bay and the Woodpigeons clump across the lawn, wings down, depression on their feathers as they pick among the wet blades of grass for a tasty morsel of bug.
2. Sunshine streaming in the sitting room window early on a summer's morning, the window open and the same wood pigeons cooing, magpies chattering and the Robin singing his little heart out before they all go quiet for the July/August moult. The buzzing of the bee's and the smell of the new rose I planted under the window - rich as Turkish delight - coming into the room.
3. Cattle lowing as they are being milked, that deeply satisfied sound of theirs which tells you that the heavy udders are being lightened and they are looking forward to going back out to graze in their meadows.
4. Leaning on the gate having a natter with the neighbours, or down the lane chatting to pals I grew up with - and reminiscing on our youth, that is when we can remember that far back :-}
5. The play of sunlight and shade on the Sliabh Mish mountains viewed from The Spá [spaw] across Tralee Bay as the clouds cross over and create the different highlights on each peak. It is at moments like this you thank God you are alive and no matter what burden he has sent you to carry, you just know that he has sent you the back to bear it.

So there it is, my meme...and I have just remembered - it was The MOVE who sang Flowers in the Rain.