39332 gwendolyn harrison ceremony

8/6/2019 39332 Gwendolyn Harrison Ceremony

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1 (Cover)

GWENDOLYN OLIVE HARRISON

July 1 1921 September 22 2010


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2 (Inside front cover)Page size is outline of box: A5, 148mm x 210mm (approx. 57/8 x 81/4)


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Page 3

ENTRY MUSIC

MendelssohnViolin Concerto in E minorOpus 64 Second movement (Andante)

Itzhak Perlman

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

Pippa Wilcox

FAMILY TRIBUTES

MEMORIES AND STORIES OF GWENDOLYN

TIME TO REFLECT

followed by

THE COMMITTAL

Bach Concerto for Two Violins and Continuo in D minorSecond Movement (Largo Ma Non Tanto)

Yehudi Menuen

CLOSING WORDS

Pippa Wilcox

EXIT

Singing in the Rain

Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra


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Page 4

READINGS

Remodelling

Yannis Ritsos

That which you call serenity or discipline, kindness or apathy,That which you call a closed mouth with clenched teeth,Showing the sweet silence of the mouth, hiding the clenched teeth.It is only the powerful endurance of metal under the hammer,

Under the useful hammer.It is what you know,That from the formless you pass towards form.

A Week in the WAAFs

Phyllis Castle

We were going to be made into good Waafs. Accommodation at the Grange wasnt fancy. It comprised for

fifty-five of us plus staff three bathrooms, three W.C.s and not onelooking-glass. We slept on three-piece pallets called biscuits, and

straw, sausage-shaped pillows. We kept our clothes in airmenswooden boxes. The wretched things were painted grey and their mostnotable characteristic in the blacked-out semi-gas- lit gloom, which wasall that we were allowed after dark, was a miraculous invisibility.

We were made to march over the innocent English countryside likeyoung Prussians, and when we got rather out of rhythm negotiating atwisting down-hill loose stony bit of lane with hedges entwined withblackberry brambles overhanging just the height of our faces, we wereloudly abused by the Senior Section Leader and commanded to

whistle Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line to keep us instep. [...]

There were eight of us in our room. There was a Cambridge girl,

an elementary school teacher, an art student, two Harrods shopassistants, a child of eighteen fresh from finishing school andpresentation at Court, and an amusing tough collar-and-tie type

whod created records on the motor cycle, could take automobiles topieces, and held a pilots licence. The general atmosphere inclined toheartiness, especially when the flyer was about. [...]


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Page 5

Discipline and unquestioning obedience are, of course, firstprinciples in the services. Orders are given with an air of God from aburning cloud, and, however impossible and preposterous, have to becarried out. Personally I was rather charmed by this. Such goodexercise for the faculty of inventiveness, I thought. Discipline wasrigid. I mean that. As one of my superiors pronounced over me: Youcant be late in the services, theres no such thing it simply doesntexist. (Id just arrived half-an-hour late.) Life in the Waafs was goingto be a cross between boarding school and prison, I quite saw that.

Our lectures were truly diverting. An officer would appear in the

morning and talk about etiquette in the services. You were allowed towear a pin under your tie in the army, but not in the Air Force neverin the Air Force it simply wasnt done. That very afternoon anotherofficer, lecturing on rations, would tell us that white bread was betterfor you than brown, and that fruit was an unnecessary element of diet.But we would hardly be listening to these peculiar pronouncements,

we would be gazing transfixed by the charm of the thing at thepin under her tie.

!"#$%&'()*"+"#%"*,

Womens Writing of the Second World War

Edited by Jenny Hartley

My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close

Emily Dickinson

My life closed twice before its close;It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveilA third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,And all we need of hell.


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The Art of Losing

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isnt hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof lost door keys, the hour badly spent.The art of losing isnt hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:places, and names, and where it was you meantto travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mothers watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.The art of losing isnt hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.I miss them, but it wasnt a disaster.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gestureI love) I shant have lied. Its evidentthe art of losings not too hard to masterthough it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Page 6


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7 (Inside back cover)

Dying To Get Home

Nigel Williams

Coming home to a cold, grey house you away

And nobody there, not even the dog The door yawning wide with that noise it makesWhenever opening on to loneliness,I thought of you and of all the good youd doneIn your life the things youd made with your hands Toys for the kids and things for school bazaars

And I didnt cry because I know you hateAny kind of sentimentality;But I waited at the edge of the house

And I didnt go in. I was frightenedOf picking up my life where it left off,The threads of it wound around our old home,

The place where the kids grew up, its windowsSightless, now, like my fathers eyes that dayIn the hospital side ward, stuck in his fresh corpse

With all the teeth still in his head....

Were dyingThese days. Were dying every day love.

Were rehearsing our final departuresAgain and again and again and the dayIt finally comes will be so familiar

A feeling of dj vu. Ive openedThis door into this hall so many timesBefore, and heard the silence and been scared....


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After the ceremony you are warmly invited to join Gwendolyns family

at 18 Holmbush Road SW15 3LE

Any donations to Trinity Hospice,Clapham Common North Side, London, SW4 ORN

8 (Back cover page numbers for reference only)

39332 gwendolyn harrison ceremony

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