Whan That Aprille With His Shoures Soote The Droghte Of March Hath Perced To The Roote

[Sullivan Maurer]

Ifirst encountered Mary late on an autumnal Friday afternoon in the library ofthe Royal College of Music. Mary and I werethe only two people in theDonaldson Room,a study area with large oak desks, and she happened to be sat opposite me. Ithink there was an immediate attraction because we kept surreptitiously lookingat each other. When I idly chewed my pen to try to hide that I was reallychecking her out, she caught my eye and smiled at me. I involuntarily bit downon my pen in panicked shyness (I'd been found out!) and split the pen lid whilealso chipping the corner of my front tooth. I soon fled in embarrassment.Later, I felt the roughness where my tooth had chipped and reflected thatit would be a permanent reminder of that pretty girl in thelibrary. For the rest of my life, when I felt the roughness on my tooth, I'dask myself "I wonder who she was?".

The following Wednesday, just after lunch, (yes, I have all the dates, timesand places recorded in my diary of the time) I returned to the Donaldson Roomwith a buddy only to find Mary sat at a desk with her friend and fellowcellist, Ellen. I sat down at the opposite end of their table (realising I'dfound the pretty girl again) and soon found they were not working on anacademic assignment, but goofing around playing the game ofhang man.

Mary had a unique tactic... whereas most people do something sensible likestart with the vowels or other common letters (to help figure out the skeletonor shape of the word), Mary used the least expected letters. She started gameswith "X", followed by "Q", then "W" or "Z".

Over the following weeks and months we got to know each other, talked a LOT andeventually shared our true feelings for each other in the spring. It didn'ttake much longer for us both to realise we'd found our life-long soulmate andby the end of the year we were announcing our engagement. A couple of yearslater, only a few weeks after Mary graduated from the RCM, we were married. Shewas 22, I was 23 and we've been an "us" ever since.

Meeting Mary was the most important moment in my life. Living life's journeywith Mary has been my life's greatest privilege and full of wonderful moments -the most important highlights being the arrival and growth of our threebeautiful children, Penelope, Sam and William.

To celebrate 25 years of sharing our journey through life together, Mary and Ihave decided to make another (symbolic) journey together. We're going to walkover 170 miles, during the Easter holidays, alongOffa's Dyke,a 1300 year old earthwork barrier created by Offa, king of the ancientAnglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.Nobody knows why the dyke was built, but the modern Welsh/English borderroughly follows its path and it passes through some of the most beautiful partsof Wales and England.

We'll start in the south and walk an average of 15 miles a day,staying in bed-and-breakfasts or hotels along the way.It being April we expect fresh showers,but hope for sun to encourage spring flowers.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licur

Of which vert engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye,

So priketh hem Natre in hir corages,

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

Over the coming weekends we'll spend our time training by rambling similardaily distances in the rolling Northamptonshire countryside that surroundsTowcester. We'll alsoblog each day of the journey as a memento of our progress - we both suspect ouradventure along Offa's Dyke will be something we'll want to remember.

If you're at a loose end in the weekends before Easter, get in touch, comevisit and share a walk with us as we prepare... we forgot to mentionthere are many wonderful pubs on our local rambles, and we'd love to sharetheir hospitality with any of our friends who happen to be passing by.

Six hundred years ago, Geoffrey Chaucer started ``The Canterbury Tales.'' Writing in English was a new idea in the 14th century, when the languages of culture were French and Latin. We excerpt from the Prologue in Chaucer's Middle English from the new edition of ``The Riverside Chaucer,'' published by Houghton Mifflin, and from David Wright's modern translation published by Oxford University Press.

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye, (So priketh hem nature in hir corages), Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially from every shires ende Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

When the sweet showers of April have pierced The drought of March, and pierced it to the root, And every vein is bathed in that moisture Whose quickening force will engender the flower; And when the west wind too with its sweet breath Has given life in every wood and field To tender shoots, and when the stripling sun Has run his half-course in Aries, the Ram, And when small birds are making melodies, That sleep all the night long with open eyes, (Nature so prompts them, and encourages); Then people long to go on pilgrimages, And palmers to take ship for foreign shores, And distant shrines, famous in different lands; And most especially, from all the shires Of England, to Canterbury they come, The holy blessed martyr there to seek, Who gave his help to them when they were sick. THE RIVERSIDE CHAUCER, Third Edition (ed. Larry D. Benson.) Copyright 1987 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Used by permission. THE CANTERBURY TALES, Copyright 1986 by David Wright. Used by permission of Literistic Ltd.

Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour; -Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

I was working at the time as a copy boy for the New York Herald Tribune. I walked over to the Tribune office one morning, and there were two gentlemen standing outside the office, and I asked them who they were, and they said they were the Rosenbergs. So I asked them what they were doing there, and they told me they were on trial for allegedly passing atomic secrets to Russia, and had been arrested, and there were two trials; one in New York, and one in Washington.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. As it was the 13th of April, and not the 1st of April (which was on Sunday), the clocks were being advanced by one hour. It was an hour which is almost never noticed by people. But one man, sitting in his room in north London, was quite conscious of the time. He was waiting for a letter. That was not extraordinary; the day before, he had been waiting for a letter, and when the letter came, there was no time to read it at once. This was not a matter for worry; he had a good deal to do. But still, there was that hour to wait; and the wait was irksome.

And then suddenly there was a knock at the door. The man put his hands over his eyes and listened. He could not see who was at the door. He felt quite faint, he was so happy. But he knew that it was the knock at the door.

The knock came again. It seemed a long time before the man recovered himself enough to open the door. A strange person was standing on the threshold. A lady was standing on the threshold, with her finger raised to her lips. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks flushed. And she was waiting for him. She waited there until the man was ready.

In 1793, a young man arrived in England. In fact, it was the year that he was born: John Adams, third President of the United States of America. His journey had started at the port of Liverpool, with his family, who were headed to the American colonies to join his father, Thomas, who had been appointed to be the minister of the recently established republic of Massachusetts.

His father was delighted with the decision of his son to return to the Continent. Although he was not a big fan of America, his parents had decided to remain in England, and they were going to follow their son back to the United States in a few years.

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. Now, in the middle of the day, the sun was beating down from a clear, blue sky, the smell of smoke was in the air, and no one had any idea what was happening.

The boy who had just been made to strip was now on his knees on the grass. He was looking up at his friend. Then the boy was on his hands and knees, and the boy was sucking his cock. The older boy took the opportunity to pull his pants down. He was so hard he couldnae hide it. He started masturbating.

After several attempts to clean out our dishwasher and clean the stove, I sat down and took a few minutes to reflect on our journey to this new place. We are going to be here for a month, then move on to the next town. I took the time to remember how we arrived to this place. I also reflected on what we are looking forward to.

I ended up using EleutherAI for all the examples above as they seemed slightly more interesting. This may have just been chance or my bias. I used the first result I got. I used the default settings (GPT-J-6B model, 0.9 TOP-P, and 0.8 Temperature) rather than bother learning what any of that meant.

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