Escape to Innisfree?    (please see below poems by WB Yeats)

It is human nature to try to avoid, as far as possible, difficulties we come across either as individuals or in groups. But when such difficulties arise there will usually come a point when they can no longer be avoided or ignored and they have to be confronted. If they are extremely unpleasant, or arise as a result of bad or evil actions by other people, it is even more important they are confronted even when we are reluctant to do so.

In a small way I hope I may have confronted some of the bad and evil in the world by thinking and writing about such difficulties – Covid, and Ukraine particularly – and some of my health issues.

But just as we shouldn’t ignore these issues nor should we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by them. There is plenty of humour to be found in the world and it is good to have a laugh with other people and to laugh at oneself every so often -  laugh by oneself at oneself. I recently noticed it was the 50th anniversary of the Good Life which made me smile, as did recalling other sitcom classics like “Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em”,  “Only Fools and Horses” and  “Frazier”. The latter lifted my spirits on a Friday night at 10.30 during my stay in the oncology hospital in Bristol.

A few weeks ago I went through a phase of trying to make up some doctor, doctor jokes and knock, knock jokes to help me get off to sleep. Here’s one: Knock, knock. Who’s there? Neil. Neil who? Neil down when I come in please.

I have allowed myself to escape into the BBC series Springwatch and have seen some wonderful and amazing features of our natural world: the swift flying thousands of miles to return to the same nesting site each year; a Pied Flycatcher feeding her chicks; an adder gobbling a  chick in a nest; the mating ritual of snails, the behaviour of fox and badger cubs; or the ingenious way the cuckoo-pint imprisons insects overnight in order for them to be dusted with pollen.

The photography in the series is incredible especially when cameras have been set up right next to where the action is.

I can escape into the world of sport too, although not for long these days. For me it’s rugby and a little bit of football in winter, with athletics, cricket and occasionally some tennis in summer. I briefly escaped to Headingley the other day and listened to some of the Test Match Special coverage of the final day’s test match against India.

And personally I get a lot of pleasure from my garden – its lawns and borders, its trees, shrubs and flowers, and its fruit and veg. I have had a few strawberries this year, the onions look good and the potatoes are flowering well. Out in the yard I have tomato plants in pots, courgettes, runner beans and some nasturtiums and I can see how they are coming on through the kitchen window.

I guess there are times when many of us would like to get away from it all and go to Innisfree as  the poet Yeats yearns to do: I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree … And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow.

I hope, though, I can carry on confronting but also carry on escaping, not perhaps by yearning or dreaming but by doing some of the things I enjoy.

13.06.2025

Remembering William Butler Yeats (W.B. Yeats) on this day. An Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature.

                                                                               Born on13th June 1865 and died in 1939

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