At last - Janice and I share something - a love and respect for RLS. I lived for many years almost within sight of his house near Canonmills, my eldest daughter is a Catriona, my father adapted three of his works for BBC radio and I've known all his poetry and most of his prose all my life - and loved it - and one of my precious memories of teaching at Dartmouth was visiting the studies for, and cast of, what was to become his memorial in the studio of Augustus Saint-Gaudens at Cornish - a photo of the view from whose windows sits in front of my desk in the Borders. I was also inspired by Paul Dehn's parodies, largely from the Child's Garden and aimed at the nuclear issue, to embark on my own parody anthology aimed at the Iraq war, in which I also plundered the same source . I absolutely agree with the comment on his 'auto-epitaph' (only challenged, for humour if not for feeling, and not in verse - by Spike Milligan's "I told you I was poorly") and his verse, including the one chosen, has a deceptively simple charm and truthfulness which refreshes and touches the heart - mine at any rate, and Janice's too!
A lovely selection and how approrpiately simply presented and urged.
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