Cows
Sometimes I’m envious of cows
In sunlit grassy worlds at ease,
With peace to ruminate or stare
For endless hours at hills and trees.
I’m sometimes jealous of the birds
Freed from earth’s gravity. To be
A lizard lazing in the sun
Seems oft the happiest life to me.
At other times I’m more content
With weals and woes of human lot.
What joys are mine enjoy’ed are.
Their pleasures please them not.
Margaret Taylor
Almond Blossom
Three Almond trees have blossomed in the square
And all this week their palely-tinted flowers
Have hung in wondrous clusters, gently swaying
With every little breeze, and dropping showers
Of tiny snow-flake petals to obscure
The dusty pavement stones. And I have passed
And as I passed looked up to wonder at
The glory of these clusters ‘gainst the sky.
There have been many others this week who
Have raised their eyes to see the laden boughs
But more have passed, with down-bent heads and missed
The joy of seeing Nature’s freshness triumph
Over the dingy, time-worn city street.
And as I watched them from my window here
Hurrying past, unconscious of the joy
They might have had by merely looking up
I wondered if those people spent their lives
Missing the beauty that is freely shown
To those whose eyes are looking out to see,
Whose minds are not too stagnant to receive
Fresh thoughts, new wonders, great discoveries.
And yet, I reasoned, if they miss the joys
Yet there are many sorrows they miss too,
For to be blind to Beauty when she beckons
Is to be deaf to Sorrow till she weeps.
Thus we must choose to joy or sorrow keenly
Or lose them both in dull indifference.
Margaret Taylor
Reflections (1938)
‘Tis women’s way –
Or so they say –
To beautify or rectify
Their varied physiognomy
Regardless of economy.
It may be so,
But this I know,
At Telegraph and Times they laugh
Neglected quite they let them lie
And daily to the Mirror fly
Margaret Taylor 1938 (Age 24)
Anatomy (1935)
I’ve donned my erstwhile snow-white coat, my gloves,
I’ve bagged a stool, and joined the other seven,
And now we’re sitting round a thing that once
Was all a self-respecting corpse could wish.
But what’s the good of stuffing my poor head
With facts and figures, measurements and names
Deep-delving oft in many-pag’ed tomes
Searching the mysteries of anatomy
When at the moment when I need them most
They all take wing and fly away, or start
To twist and twirl, to writhe and wriggle so
A tangled mass of most untruthful facts
Remain where ordered knowledge once held sway.
For half an hour – a very long half hour –
The constant stream of questions has gone forth
And answers, not so flowing, been returned:
Answers that made their authors blush in shame,
Or glow with humble pride. O would that I
Might get the question that my neighbours have.
But they can always answer and I get
Instead a most unfair conundrum,
And after meditating on it well
I give up and earn another frown,
And all the facts give yet another squirm
And settle down more jumbled than before.
But slowly, slowly that large minute-hand
Climbs upward jerk by jerk until at last
It is eleven, and we rise, released
And tally ho! for biscuits, coffee, peace.
Meg Rugg-Easey 1935 (Age 21)
The Thyrotoxic Lady (1943)
The lady sitting over there
(with proptosed and unwinking stare)
Is thyrotoxic. It’s not hot
But note that she perspires a lot;
And if you chanced upon the sly
To knock her knee as you went by
(I recommend you take the risk)
You’ld find her knee-jerks rather brisk.
If you sat next to her, and dared
To take her hand you’ld think her scared
For ‘twould be trembling; her pulse rate
Might rise to dizzy heights; a state
Of palpitations in the chest
Would come upon her if you pressed
Her fingers – be not over-bold
Her feelings cannot be controlled.
In fact it is because her nerves
Are so on edge that all the curves
Of female form have worn away
And left her thin and far from gay.
Though she (it cannot be denied)
Eats like a horse, something inside
Must take all value from her food,
It never does her any good.
(Only her neck’s circumference
Enlarges fast at her expense).
All told, the thyrotoxic state
Is one, I fancy, she must hate.
Published in “The Lancet” 1943 (received £5 !)
For Mr Joll
Five thousand incisions of necklace type
Five thousand glands exposed
Five thousand, or more, bits of thyroid removed
And five thousand necks reclosed.
Just think of the innumerable Spencer Wells
Just think of the swabs without end
Just imagine the rows of Michel clips
And the five thousand patients to tend.
May the goitrous patients long flock to A.2.
May their thyroids fall fast in the bowl.
May the thousands increase, Mr Joll, may you reach
(spite of students) the ten thousand goal.
Meg Rugg-Easey 1936
(Mentioned in Meg’s 1937 diary)
Jane
Jane always was a timid girl, a rather shy and timid girl,
And when she went to college she was terrified to death.
She tiptoed up the front steps, the dreadful public front steps,
Then pressed against the wall inside, and almost held her breath.
But somebody soon saw her there, standing lost and silent there
And showed her to the cloakroom where she took off coat and hat,
And after taking ages – yes, she made it take her ages –
She returned to the Common Room – she knew her way to that.
And sitting in a corner, a nice convenient corner,
She watched the others dash about and laugh and joke and yell,
And during all that first week it seems she sat in corners
And why she didn’t die there is more than she can tell.
But now she’s been at college for ages, simply ages,
And you can see her dash about and laugh and yell and joke,
And when she sees the “freshers” sitting frightened in their corners
She can never understand it,
No she cannot understand it
For she says we’re all such kindly, harmless, friendly sort of folk.
Margaret Lilian Taylor 1936
Album 1: A mixed set of photos ranging from the 1920s through to the 1970s
Album 2: Colour photos from the 1970s, 80s and 90s featuring (among others) Jo, Simon and baby Alex, Mrs. Rowe and Auntie Pat
Album 3 Mostly family weddings over the years, and a few other pictures
Album 4: A mixed bag, including early pictures from school, wartime, more weddings, and several friends and family from different eras
Album 5: Early black-and-white pictures of Meg’s parents and the Taylor family
Meg’s diary 1932
Continuing the journey across France with No. 6 Military Hospital.
Skip to…
Mum’s Wartime Diary – 1945
Tuesday, April 3rd 1945
Looking back through this small book makes me feel a hardened war veteran already – Bayeux, Rouen, and Ghent – France and Belgium already, and maybe Germany and Burma to come!
We arrived at Oostakter, Ghent, on Dec 2nd after a fairly comfortable though rather tedious train journey. Peggy and I were delegated to the Sisters’ care again while travelling and spent the first few days after our arrival in their mess at the Convent.
We revolted against it almost every moment, though of course we recognised its necessity. The endless and pointless tittle-tattle and petty gossip which is the sole source of conversation got our backs up and irritated us beyond endurance. Yet I can well imagine that we should be doing just the same thing if we had lived amongst them for many months on end. Anyway, we got shifted across to the unsavoury little pub serving as the Officers’ Mess after a few days and settled into our cosy little bedroom on the top floor, with good old cheerful Jock McClean to “mother” us, and we have been installed there (and very comfortably housed all things considered) ever since – 4 months already!
From the moment of our arrival we liked the face of Ghent, and we haven’t changed our minds. The town is old and has some beautiful buildings; the shops are numerous and well-stocked and the people friendly and full of good spirits, not like the depression of people and place in Rouen.
The hospital at first depressed us, for it was so obviously unsuited for a hospital – at least the old block was, and that was where the medical division wards were to be. Alterations, adaptions and innovations got done slowly and are still going on, but the first lot of patients arrived within a fortnight or so of our arrival. I started off with D Ward , one of the old and unheated rooms, with no duty bunk and no kitchen worth the name, and sister McKeoun, whom I had at Rouen and would have like to have been spared! Very soon I was given Ward J at the top of the old block, but a much better ward and Sister Peche, who was an old friend of Bayeux days. But I never got the chance of settling even there, but got shifted again to F Ward, still general medical, and then got Ward E, the infections ward, and one of the best on the medical side. I thoroughly enjoyed myself there and it was too good to last, for one fateful afternoon a month ago Col. Jones said he was the bearer of bad news – I was to be loaned to the Surgical Division which was very short of M.O.s.
So for the past few weeks I have been coping as best I could with Ward 6, the big P.O.W. Ward with 120 beds, which are never empty for long and never filled by the same patients for more than a few days at a time. It has been hectic at times, but not all the time and the main hectic-ness has been in writing up documents and rushing rapidly round new cases when convoys have arrived.It hasn’t involved much clinical work and I have been more than a little depressed at times,longing to get back into the medical wards to be a doctor and not a clerk. Still, as Peggy said, “it has got to be done and someone must do it”, so on the whole I have tackled it with resignation and as much goodwill as I could muster.
Now I am for the moment leading a bone-lazy existance, doing temporary duty on an ambulance train outside Ghent, at Medbreak. I arrived here yesterday morning and goodness knows when or if the train will go on its next trip. Meanwhile there is nothing to do but relax, and that I am finding rather boring than restful. This morning I went with “Percy” – Miss Percival – into Ghent and made some useful purchases of handkerchiefs and stockings at the officers shop and tomorrow if possible I shall try to get back to No. 6 for the clinical meeting there, and to collect my letters – I want especially to get Mum’s letter because she will have just heard about my coming leave on April 23rd and I’m hoping to read what she had to say about it!
Besides work, the last few months have of course been eventful in other ways. Many M.O.s have come and gone, and they are still coming and going frequently. Pop Sanderson went to a Field Hygiene Section. Major Isaac, Lewis, Lucas< Bobby Morton and others have gone forward to Burma and Pop Elliott to a ?? Depot. Peggy and I got a terrific shock about 3 or 4 weeks ago for we received warning that we were to go to the Far East in March – we had a medical exam and spent a week in a weird daze, unable either to believe or disbelieve in the prospect of such an imminent and drastic change. However, after about a week we heard that the ;postings had been cancelled and we came to life again and resumed normal activities with renewed energy. Luckily we had decided not to tell our families until things had been really settled, so they still don’t know how near they were to saying goodbye to us for several more years – it may happen yet, and we had to complete a form about length of foreign service the other day, so perhaps the great adventure was only postponed for a month or two after all.
Although I am officially on the surgical side my loyalties all belong to the physicians, and whatever happens I down tools on Saturday morning and go along for the clinical round from 11 to 12; and enjoy every moment of it – I think it keeps me alive from one weekend to the next! I still read my Lancets and BMJs in the M.O.s room in the evenings so I still see the Office Boys and Col. Jones nearly every day and keep up our bantering in the old style, and all enjoy it. Col. Jones was given the OBE the other week and was simply delighted, and never ever tried to conceal the fact! He is much easier to talk to now and I’m not so frightened of him as I used to be, though my respect for him is even greater than ever, I think. Drury is still “with us”, and a medical specialist “trainee” (so are Grainger and Robertson, the new man, and Pop Elliott before he left.) Dru has done about 2 months now and so has another month and then I’m afraid he may be posted and that would be a great pity, for he is one of the few remaining “old originals” and one of the nicest people in the mess. Major Cameron is still here, though he volunteered for the Far East several months ago and has been promised that he will be going.
A new lady M.O. – Morley – arrived about a week ago and we had met her and liked her at 121 when we were billeted at Bayeux. She could not be nicer or easier to live with; we really are awfully lucky. A third woman might have spoilt things, but she will help and even now she is company for Peggy while I am on this outpost of the Empire. Enough for the moment.
Goodnight!
