WHAT THE DICKENS

Source: Google Images

"Barkis is Willin'"

"Please Sir, I want some more"

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Today is Charles Dickens' 200th Birthday,

and the above quotes are regularly tossed about between the Red Cardinals to amuse ourselves.

Our front door knocker is Marley's Ghost (A Christmas Carol)

We found it at the Dickens House Museum in London in 2004.

The museum is located in his former London home:

 

Something of a Dickens Tragic,

 I was thrilled to be asked to assist in the weekly winding of Dickens old Grandfather clock:

This is moi, actually touching a key

that was touched by the great man himself!

A pretty mug was bought at the gift shop,

picturing young David Copperfield when he meets his

Aunt Betsy Trotwood

in Dover, having walked all the way from London.

Dickens' garden, tucked into a tiny space at the back of the London home.

Did he plant that pink rose? or the ivy on the wall?

Happy Birthday Mr Dickens,

and thank you for the hours of happy reading,

the quotable quotes, the weird and eccentric characters,

and the commentaries on the human condition,

you so generously left to us all!