The Birds Are Still Calling By,

for their morning feed,

today two magpies arrived first,

 normally the crows beat them to it

 but not today, only one of the crows appeared, but the pair of magpies were joined by a third, 

 on to Sunday lunch,

 for our starter, a scallop shell filled with prawns, baked and smoked salmon with a salad, 

 'Cheers!',

 Diana decided to take my photograph through the flowers,

 for our main course roast chicken with all of the trimmings,

 I then remembered that Steve had kindly brought a bottle of red around on Friday, so it was time to open it to go with the main course,

 and nice it was too,  

for our dessert, a sherry trifle, then feet up for the Sunday afternoon film,

 Diana had decided on Sink the Bismarck!, she likes to watch old classic films on a Sunday, this is what I wrote when we watched the film in August 2013, 'full of stiff upper lip, it was a interesting film from my point of view if for no other reason one of the Swingate kids had a Dad who was on one of the ships in the sinking of it, in those days there was a naval base H.M.S. Pembroke in Chatham, where one side of my fathers family originally came from, also I spent more than a few days there when the faculty was open to the public on Navy Days, this is a 1954 example of a typical 'Navy Day' for the public, I seem to remember my first day to watch the spectacle I must have been about 8 or so four years after the article, but back to the battle to sink the Bismark, for a more factual account of the battle have a look here,'

 after a snack in the evening, it was feet up for The Big Country, here is what I commented  about the film in November 2017, 'talk about an all star cast, Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, Charles Bickford, Alfonso Bedoya, Ramón Gutierrez, Chuck Connors, Chuck Hayward to name just a few, in case you have not seen it the film contains for myself one of the best, if not the best, monologues in film history by Burl Ives,

 and here it is, Burl Ives in the speech that won him an Oscar, and rightly so, I did read some where that his monologue was made in one take, the first one, and that was the one used in the movie, there were no second takes, strangely enough my first childhood memories of him was him singing in the Uncle Max radio show from 8 till 9 on a Saturday morning, I guess I was about 5 or maybe 6 years old, the song? Big Rock Candy Mountain, a song about a hobos dream land, great lyrics, here they are in full,

One evening as the sun went down

And the jungle fires were burning,

Down the track came a hobo hiking,

And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning

I'm headed for a land that's far away

Besides the crystal fountains

So come with me, we'll go and see

The Big Rock Candy Mountains,

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,

There's a land that's fair and bright,

Where the handouts grow on bushes

And you sleep out every night.

Where the boxcars all are empty

And the sun shines every day

And the birds and the bees

And the cigarette trees

The lemonade springs

Where the bluebird sings

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

All the cops have wooden legs

And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth

And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs

The farmers' trees are full of fruit

And the barns are full of hay

Oh I'm bound to go

Where there ain't no snow

Where the rain don't fall

The winds don't blow

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

You never change your socks

And the little streams of alcohol

Come trickling down the rocks

The brakemen have to tip their hats

And the railway bulls are blind

There's a lake of stew

And of whiskey too

You can paddle all around it

In a big canoe

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,

The jails are made of tin.

And you can walk right out again,

As soon as you are in.

There ain't no short-handled shovels,

No axes, saws nor picks,

I'm bound to stay

Where you sleep all day,

Where they hung the jerk

That invented work

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

....

I'll see you all this coming fall

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

the song was first recorded in 1928 by Harry McClintock, its a Hobo song, the word Hobo I have been told stands for Helping Our Brothers Out, first coined in America's Great Depression',

Burl Ives, what a great actor he really was, and with that we were off to bed.