Tag / wordsworth

The Laudanum Lover

I sit on a high shelf above the mantelpiece in Coleridge Cottage, far from the reach of small children. Yet I have been given to them when they suffer from colic. I’m the panacea of all ills, the great analgesic of my days, used to treat anything from female menstrual cramps to diarrhoea and toothache. I am laudanum, an innocuous-looking  pale yellow liquid in a small glass bottle. Bitter to the taste, I’m 10% opium diluted with 90% alcohol and I don’t even need to be prescribed by a doctor....

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 A walk with the poets

We went for a walk on the Quantocks the other day. It was a crisp clear morning, but cold, there was still snow on the ground. It lingers longer up here than in the vale of Taunton Deane. We took to talking about Coleridge and Wordsworth, of how they would have walked these very paths, of what we would think if we suddenly saw them now, walking towards us. Easy for us to see now that they were giants of literature, but if we came across them on our walk (fashions notwithstanding) we would see them as jobless layabouts, scrounging off others while they scribble...

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