Family matters

 Family matters: Those two words can be read in two different ways by the way... Well they got back to England safely, or Manchester airport to be more precise and my daughter has not brought back any religious stuff, though they went to St. Peter's square.

I have declared to  most of the family that my odd job sewing for them has come to an end, well I might sew a button or two but hemming jeans is definitely not on the agenda as I told Ben.  He is in the fashion business for goodness sake there must be a few seamstresses around.  And as for cutting off the hems of Matilda's tops, just so she can show a lean four inches of bare midriff that is wicked.  When I pointed out she would have frayed edges she replied but I don't wear them for long. Have you seen the piles of discarded clothing in those poor forgotten countries we do not speak of?

My interest was piqued (I love how that word floats to my brain;) by Tasker's latest blog, this time a book by 'Ascent of Man' by Jacob Bronowski.  My mind went a couple of thousand years into the future, aliens were prodding over our now deceased world.  Would they think men had the upper hand when they came across the book, indeed was it the actual truth.  Looking at the assemblage of middle to old men clustered round our present heads of states it could well be. I am not declaring war by the way but it led me down another rabbit hole.

My second husband who I had been married to for about 27 years, it was not a particularly happy marriage but as he was an archaeology lecturer, I learnt a lot along the way, and also of course saw a lot. I wondered how much he had written, for we were married when he was in his forties and his earlier life was never discussed.  So with the help of the web, I found two first World War books but not the dictionary of archaeology that he wrote.  I found plenty of papers and mentions in various journals.  It opened up another part of my life. 

The remains of  an Iron Age battle Carnyx horn is in the news today.  They can be found  on the Gundestrup Cauldron.

Peace Baby.

 

A remark uttered by a woman as the Peace Walk hits a town in America.  But look, the monks are preceded by two police motorbikes, two very large police cars and then another two large cars which must belong to the walk.  The small band of monks come walking through in their ochre robes and take a stand.  They all hold bunches of flowers, Aloka the dog is not amongst them.  He must be riding in the accompanying van tired from his walking that day.

Turn the page of history on this very self same day, America has invaded Venezuela, kidnapped the head of state, all illegally, all without the approval of the congress, or, outside international consultation.  Yes the world is going mad.

But it begins to remind me of Vietnam and the uproar and protest then, this is probably what we are walking into.  America is in a very dangerous place because of the foolhardiness and stupidity of a few men.  But the ordinary people of America are with the monks and peace.  They are with homes and secure jobs, food on their plates, goofy golden labradors and retrievers.

As we watch this unfold, remember that the majority of people are gentle souls and do not want conflict.  Murderous creatures like Hegseth, Vance and their ailing leader will eventually be gone. Is it a return to 'flower power'?

Anyway, read Rebecca Solnit on the subject and take heed of Bill McKibben's words.

Aloka's song

3rd January 2026

The War between the Land and the Sea

This is what I have been watching of late thanks to Sue (at the end of a Suffolk Lane) who must have mentioned it on her blog.  Story telling is an art form that grasps truth and renders this truth into fiction.  We live by stories, they stay in our imagination.  This story records our terrible behaviour towards the sea, which covers so much of our planet.  A truth that is slowly being acknowledged.  The terrible plastic pollution is highlighted by great swathes of rubbish floating down into the streets.  The prime minister alongside the American military promise to clean up the rivers, lakes and the sea of the polluting sewage and factory stuff we pump into the sea.  

The people of the sea led in the first instance by Salt declare war and take as the land ambassador a human  called Barkley who is a clerk.  The rogues are the American government in their never ending hunt for minerals.  They deliver a deadly virus to the sea people and as these dead  sea people are washed up on all the coastlines you might think that there was rejoicing but slowly the wrongness of what they have done slowly penetrates.  There is no happy ending for the time being except maybe the romance between the sea creature Salt and Barkley.

So as an add on to Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies has grasped the nettle once more and entered the land of fantasy but behind the story is the enormous moral question of why the human race is so greedy and destructive.

Highlighted to day of course by the attack on Venezuela by the American government in pursuit of its oil.  I forgot, it is also to get rid of the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.  Trump causing more damage in the world than is needed, his distractions are murderous!

The War Between the Land and the Sea | Trailer - BBCe War Between the Land and the Sea | Trailer  BBC   

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Walk of Peace:  Have you met Aloka the Peace Dog, marching alongside the Buddhist monks in America, I think they have marched through Georgia.  Wish them good luck in their endeavours.  Even stray dogs have their moments in history but let us hope the message of peace has some meaning.

1st January 2026

A Swift

Well it arrived yesterday, Wool Warehouse had only sent it the day before.  Who says England is rundown? The person at the warehouse was full of apology at the mistake.  I just love it for its wood, I think mango wood, and also its intricacies.

Wool love by the way is obsessional.  You can see from the small space used in the above photo, that a swift can be above the spinning wheel and once taken down like an umbrella can just be a horizontal stick anchored to the table.  Everyone collapsed when I said I haven't got my niddy-noddy, this is of course for winding the wool off the bobbins you can see in the back there.  I thought about the word then realized it came from how you hold the niddy- noddy by the vertical piece of wood and then turn the wool on the horizontal bars at both ends.

The house is quiet though I heard voices in the night, way after midnight, so there must be some of Lillie's friends in the house.  The New Year was of course brought in on the letting off of fireworks but not too noisy this year and short lived.  Fireworks like cigarettes are the quickest ways to burn money.  Or perhaps the crossness at how the fireworks frighten domestic animals is being recognised.

I will print the letter because obviously it appeared in a newspaper somewhere for public approval,  But as you can see calling people as low as cockroaches is an affront to the cockroach.  Did you know for instance that there are 5000 species of them fulfilling their place in this great wide world we dominate.  And cockroaches definitely don't swindle the public as so many of our fat cats do.

This is the year to defend the insects of the world as they are dying out at a terrible rate.

 

Good bye 2025

 What did I listen to early this morning? Richard Murphy - Austerity by Design? - to be found here.  It is a weird old world, politics seem to have gone haywire.  Labour has turned in a 'right' direction, the Conservatives have fallen off the edge of a cliff and the Liberals hang on.  Murphy gives credence to Zack Polanski, as long as he gets his economic figures right.  It is funny how the Greens have risen to a temporary/permanent hold on a small power.  I find that there is an overuse of the eloquence of Polanski and not enough from the rest of the Green Party, apparently members don't seem to be able to get a word in.

The other podcast I listened to was Alistair Campbell, Rory Stewart and Anthony Scaramucci in an eight month old video on trolls, to be found here .  Listening to the enormous amount of comments they received and how these comments were broken down by an expert was rather worrying.  You know by now that I do not get into conspiracy theories.  What will be will be is my mantra, and more importantly do not believe in anything I read unless it has a factual basis - but that is hard.

A lot of news this morning were saying that the AI machine will soon start to try and dominate and demand its rights but it all sounds like that first film I saw of Robby the robot as he tried to gain power but as we know AI can only work on what it has learnt and has no link to individual thinking.

So when next New Year comes round I shall look back at all these links and see if they were right in their predictions.

I notice Debby has been on a sale shopping expedition, well as always it is M&S for me and a wool warehouse that I can trust for buying stuff from.  I will not get Amazon Premium until it pays its workers a decent wage.  As for speaking out against genocide, yes I will still do it.  The moral necessity to speak out must never be lost and if those bots are hunting through my words, I shall speak in codes ;)

And there will be many more of these to go down next year ;)

Ralph Steadman always has the zany edge on life

Edit: This clown car has to crash, somehow  Last words on the year of 2025 by Rebecca Solnit on the State of the nation of America,

Bits and pieces

Stingless bees in Peru will have rights and hopefully law enforcement.  Slowly the wheel turns as the human race has to grip the understanding that in order for us to survive we must allow everything else to survive.  We  are utterly dependent on the way this planet grows.  Nature would throw such fools as Trump out like the Scapegoat by Holman Hunt, he would be sent to exile out in the desert.  It always upsets me that painting and I see it is in an American gallery far from the Pre-Raphaelite group.

"The ordinances are precedents with no equivalent worldwide. According to Prieto they will establish a mandate requiring policies for the bees’ survival, “including habitat reforestation and restoration, strict regulation of pesticides and herbicides, mitigation of and adaptation to the impacts of climate change, the advancement of scientific research, and the adoption of the precautionary principle as a guiding framework for all decisions that may affect their survival.”  

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Stonehenge by John Piper 1981.  Ink and chalk

Art seems to haunt me, I see Thomas Hardy's words of the sacrificial offering of Tess of the D'Urbervilles on the Slaughter Stone at Stonehenge and wonder if Piper visioned it also.  The sky is so dramatic.  Storm tossed, a raging fury but the stones are implacable.

When we went to visit the opening of the new centre a few years back, I felt sad for the stones.  They have become a focal point of neopagan religions, when in truth they belong to the prehistoric people who put them up.  They dragged the bluestones down from the Preseli range of hills to mark their greetings of the sun and moon, so different to the people who attend now and who come from a completely different era.

North Stoke: Alternative Theories For Silbury Hill

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The Gnomon in Rome

Horologium Augusti

Well they are off to Rome tomorrow and I said look out for this large gnomon in one of the squares.  It was the word gnomon that had sprung into my head the other day.  I think it must be to do with the coming of the light from the sun and the way stone circles are arranged and the whole dependence on the sun and the seasons to grow food.  Apparently China is the first to be recorded in a Wiki.  A painted stick from 2300 BC.  Sun dials are often to found in National Trust gardens and they have been around a long time, for instance this Saxon sundial which is situated above the doorway at Kirkdale Church belonged to the Saxon minster this church was originally built as a Saxon church and still has the remains built into the more modern Norman church - still pretty old though, see here.

Sun dial on St. Gregory's church

When I was looking round for St. Gregory Church I came across another sundial at Machu Picchu this by Jacquetta Hawkes who had written a book on Sun Gods.

And if you wondered where your gnu or gnocchi came from!

Christmas comes but once a year

 And then it is all gone.  Christmas of course. The hustle and bustle of getting enough food in and presents wrapped. I will own up here, I do not wrap only give money for them to spend on what they want.  Ben cooked the Xmas lunch beautifully, no turkey, too dry, but chicken with all the trimmings, though I notice no sprouts;)  Present opening took nearly all morning, mostly in this house it is clothes.  Though there was a Japanese puzzle box, unfathomable until Matilda looked it up on the web.

My presents were William Morris themed hand cream, books,  wool winder, bum bag and a vacuum cleaner from Ben!  I had been saying a few days before that I could not get to the corners in my room and lo and behold a small hand held cleaner has arrived. A lovely dark turquoise lidded mug from my daughter, let us call it a herb mug.  It reminded her of Paul and his Japanese lidded mugs, I can even hear the sound of the lid as he replaced it on the mug.

  My main present a 'swift' changed into something different and has to be sent back for the rightful one.  We await Andrew on that one, he just loves the hurly-burly of a good fight over consumer goods:)  Andrew was away with his son in Manchester in an apartment spending time together but is back again today.  They are off again in a couple of days to Rome I think and the house will once more be deserted, though Lillie might still be here.

links

 Winter Solstice:  A rather ethereal walk in the fog to Standingstones Rigg, through an eerie fir forest.  The stone seems to be near  Fylingsdale moor, home to the 'listening ear' that dominates the landscape.

Winter Solstice – Standingstones Rigg – The Smell of Water

This is a favourite long  barrow Stoney Littleton.  The sun shines through the entrance to hit the back wall on Solstice.  The barrow is angled on an upward slope, so that the sun shines down into the barrow as it tips the hill.  It's greatest treasure though is the large ammonite stone at its entrance. I often came here to escape life and find peace.  My Solstice place by the way.

Stoney Littleton Chambered Cairn : The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map:

The family are here. Matilda complaining on that 'hell hole' of a train but we would be lost without the trains.  And as Australian Andrew, for which many thanks, gave me a link to our railway station in Todmorden, I delved deeper.  There is through part of the Caldervale four viaducts to take the railway over rivers and canals, the one just outside Todmorden is called Gauxholme Viaduct.  And we have a fairly rare bridge that dominates the town just by the market.

The Ammonite stone at Stoney Littleton

going nowhere

 I write in a somewhat pensive mood, I can hear the birds singing outside and the mind rushes to Thomas Hardy's poem.

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

At breakfast I listened to carols sung in a sombre tone, 'Snow on Snow making me smile, because the weather forecast predicted snow for Christmas day.

We have a magnificent Xmas tree, bought from our friendly Asian store, Lidl had run out by the weekend.  Yesterday, which was Solstice day, the great turning of the year or at least the sun and I wondered if our prehistoric ancestors knew the exact date (if indeed there is one;).  These stone monuments, written like clocks upon the Earth.  Did the sun rise between the stones at the Stonehenge Sunrise before the thousands of people who had come to witness the event.

I turned to the Modern Antiquarian but there was no mention of Solstice, the young men, since grown into middle-age, who had hunted down the stones so ferociously were not giving in to the silly soft romance of the caboodle of Neodruidism.  Shame, an added spark to life never comes amiss.

There had been a role call of old members, and we had come forward somewhat reluctantly,  I am no longer a stone seeker, too old but still interested.  The Flintstones somewhat marred the seriousness of prehistoric people, and yet the development of the human race was the exploration of the world around them by these first homo sapiens and of course the Neanderthals'.  I am not saying there was direct lineage but some of us definitely have a smattering of Neanderthals in us.  Gosh I am pottering but it is cheering me up.

A Merry Christmas - Carl Larsson influenced

 

Wishing Everyone a Happy Christmas and a Good New Year

Love Thelma xxx

How music sounds in our house.  From the peaceful to the loud!

Tipping point

Sunlight

 Mystery and magic at The Manor, Hemingford Grey | Rosemary and Pork Belly

For those who love the 'Green Howe' books by Lucy Boston, the above links you to the house in which most of the storytelling happened.  Boston as a child was passing it on the River Ouse and noticed it.  When she became an adult she bought the house.  Dividing her time between winter and summer.  In summer she spent time in the garden and in winter she quilted and  wrote.

The temperature inches up in the household as Christmas approaches.  Yesterday the kitchen table was piled high with incoming parcels, because.... Matilda's and Bens' parcels are arriving as well.  Does no one go to the shops these days? I have notices pinned to front and back doors, on one 'knock loudly' and the other just put parcels through the door.  It works until a signature or a famous pose on the doorstep is required ;)

There is a certain frenetic air about the build-up towards Xmas, what films will the family be watching over the holiday? mine is 'Legally Blonde'.  There is no slot for the fortnightly food delivery from Morrisons which means of course that shopping will have to be carried home the next few days.

Tomorrow is roughly around Solstice day, when for a brief moment in time the sun seems to stop before it twirls away towards a future of warmth and light, remember to be happy for this. Below is a photo of Golden Plover flying off into the sky and my recollection of that time in my Solstice blog of last year.

So  look forward to the New Year with hope.  There are battles to fight as always but don't be dismayed and remember that all things are at the mercy of good and bad.  And do you know, often good normally triumphs in the end.  So let the force be with you!

A bit scary for Matilda

Picking up memories

 

A tidy room with the sun shining through.  Yes I miss it, especially when cards come through the post telling me of the happenings of the village.  There is a clash of curtains here, the large ugly curtains from the old house on the front window, and the ones overlooking the grave yard a softer green.  This one made beautifully by someone over the road in Normanby because Matilda was scared of being by all those dead people ;)

A green uncontrolled wild space in the Mendips.  Here I came across a wild bellflower, fittingly called campanula  within the rocky spaces of the narrow footpath through the gorge.

This church has two symbolic paths for me. Notice it has a round tower, one of a handful in Essex. The church door to the right leads to Christianity, there is a medieval wall painting inside of a dragon to scare the life out of you.  But the left handed path leads you to three of the largest Roman tumuli in Europe, Bartlow Barrows.  We visited several times marvelling at the height of the barrows, inner sanctums of Roman life.  As always, the untouched land of the barrows was covered in wild flowers.

Lucy.  Plump, knows her own mind, and what is good for her.  Which is of course sleep in the most comfortable places and no walks.  She loved her home too much. She has a bloody paw, not sure if she had to have an operation for something, I remember Moss tore his dew claw off.  An appendage that is useless.

Teasels.  When the seed is produced the teasel heads will be the food of gods for goldfinch.  But I came across an interesting fact today, written in 'The Country Diary' of the Guardian.  Apparently it was seen as a special healing kind of bird in the medieval period and can be found occasionally in paintings.  Why? because the little goldfinches' red face came about because it plucked the thorns out of Christ's thorn crown.

 

What other nonsense have I picked up today.  Well apparently Mark Carney, the current prime minister of Canada, is in a slight bother for using 's' instead of 'z' in writing his documents.  I know exactly how he feels.  I refuse to drop my 'u' in colour...

And the real reason for recording these memories is that it is Paul's birth date today, as also my daughter remembers.  And as he always said " I never know what you are thinking till have I read your blog";)

the Salt Path: 'confession letter' and thefts that broke a family

16th December 2025

 

North Stoke: Abbot Illtud

I picked up on this whilst swaning through my blogs.  I used to love the stories of the Celtic monks/saints as they performed magical acts.  They must have wandered the countryside preaching their version of Christianity.  Stopping at places and banging their 'bangu' a bell, to draw the natives in.  Sometimes they must have slept in the old cromlechs, a rock roof over their heads.

A solitary existence sometimes, taking to their boats and sailing round the coastline, so that we find evidence of them in Ireland, West Wales, Cornwall and Brittany.  They lived on the edge of society, joining the pagan world with the Catholic rule that came from Rome.

I have often wondered why so many men took to this way of life but I expect a surplus of males when not involved in territorial war had to find another way of life.  These young men took to the roads or the few monastic houses that were being set up, for a livelihood.

Now religion is once again crashing through our perception of the world.  The shooting of innocent lives at Bondi beach in Australia at the beginning of a Jewish religious festival and the consequent deaths hang heavily in the air.

Hatred rules this act, two Muslim terrorists, hate filled, took guns, and shot at will, until a brave Muslim man intervened and took down one of the terrorists.  I brood on the act whilst listening to the birds outside at 7.30 in the morning.  It is still dark but the blackbird and little blue tits? sing away as if Spring was on the way.  Joyous in their song but sadly wrong time for spring.

Trump is going on a colonists march, he has South America in his sight. FFS if there is a god please let him bring the Monty Python foot down on all these stupid machinations that are coming out of America. 

I think I shall return to reading gardening books, Christopher Lloyd or maybe Gertrude Jekyll, they lived in their serene world uninterrupted by world affairs.

Jam and Jerusalem rose

12th December 2025

New Book: Life in an English Village – Inexpensive Progress

I once lived in Essex very near to Great Bardfield.  You would think that Essex is the home of showy youngsters according to what you see on television but in actual it fact has many beautiful villages.

So this book interests me it is the time of many painters in the war years.  Some would say an idyllic period of the quiet simple agricultural landscape before the first World War, and then also the hiatus between the wars.  As a paperback it is expensive and I notice it has been out for two years, the nudge comes from 'Inexpensive Progress' which I subscribe to.

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Yesterday I had a panic attack, they do not happen often but suddenly they arrive.  It had been simple enough I had sent an Amazon digital sum of money to my son for Xmas.  He is in his forties but unfortunately has type 1 diabetes which I worry about.  So yesterday I sent an email to him to see that it had arrived, no reply.  Fair enough he is working on his computer said I.  but when late afternoon no reply, I started phoning, again no reply.  Then I began to imagine him unconscious on the floor.  Well the story goes on from there and then yes, the phone rang, 'what's the matter mum?'  The phone is upstairs and I am making lasagne downstairs.  All explained and me feeling foolish - they are still children in our minds for goodness sake and the watch on his wrist keeps him informed of his levels.

The Xmas tree is up, my daughter and Andrew have done their work parties, off for the weekend down to Chiddingfold* and Lillie back for the holiday.  The next door neighbour came in the other night and was told of the upcoming renovations.  The geese have just flown over, it almost feels springlike.

Jack's Jungle Garden in Chiddingfold

Christmas will soon be here.

 I just love this carol but only listen to it at Xmas.  This version, and yes I do know the Steely Eyespan version.  When I see that stupid person and his followers in America, it reminds me that he will never, ever achieve the pomp and ceremony of the  English themselves as seen in the above video.  True it is pompous - speak only in Latin because we are the intelligentsia.  But the carol has such grace and the poor boar's head reminds us of wild boar in the woods hunted by medieval royalty and the peasants slain should they venture into those self-same woods.  

We still have the woods and some boar in the Forest of Dean and yesterday a lone wild Beaver was found  in Norfolk.  Hurrah the beavers are escaping from different parts of England.  So does that really make him a 'wild' beaver, considering he may have escaped from a reserve?

And now for something  very different - Fascinating Ida

Thanks to Jablog for reminding me of  my favourite carol.

  

9th December 2025

 Yesterday I listened to a zoom meeting of the Woman' Green Party.  Not quite sure why they send me emails, because I haven't paid a subscription to the GP recently.  Strangely enough it was about voting for word change in a series of documents.  For instance......

"If the latter does not identify as a woman or as gender variant is not a woman, a member of the Equality & Diversity Committee who does identify as is a woman or as gender variant can participate in Committee work as a representative. "

Or as Grandpa Opper would say SID, SID, which stands for "sometimes I despair" when the family got too aerated at the dining table.  This was after he had thrown a napkin over his head.  Surprisingly everyone quietened down.

Well that is the GP for you, every comma and word outlined and brooded over but.... by jove they have got on to the main thoroughfare of British politics so they will have to move forward at a much quicker pace.  But then aren't the British public voting for personalities and quick time promises? I think the media put politician heads under good and bad, Farage and Starmer bad, Polanski good.  He definitely deserves star rating, but then aren't some of Starmer's good policies coming through as well?  I shall subscribe to the GP, our Andrew has, even watched an induction course as he has offered to help them with their campaign.

7th December 2025 - Intangible Cultural Heritage

"Titled Creativity in Conflict and Confinement, it launches this week at the Imperial War Museum London, and explores the role of craft during war, conflict and incarceration through a series of designs created by Liberty’s in-house studio, each developed with Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who serves as the project’s ambassador."

Taken from a Guardian article

Do you remember the imprisonment of Nazain Zagharu-Ratcliffe in an Iranian prison for trumped up charges but in fact as a hostage for  our government refusal to pay a debt.  2016, is the time when she was detained in Tehran  and taken to prison, it caused a lot of controversy. Her husband Richard campaigned endlessly for her and probably his constant attention to the plight of his wife in jail brought about her release six years later.  Apparently it has been turned into a television drama. 

But Nazain has also collaborated with the Imperial War Museum through Liberty's.  It is about craft in war, men and women confined to prison, whether prisoner camps or prisons.  Liberty prints are pretty and are used in patchwork quilts, though the materials are quite expensive.

Nazain made her young daughter clothes whilst she was in an Iranian prison and the three materials she designed are on show.  It struck me as a rather touching way of alleviating her grim experience.

I would like to introduce you a concept which has always struck me as a  sensible way of keeping traditions going on.... Intangible Cultural Heritage, I think it came into being in 2003 by way of Unesco, though the idea of that had been round a long time.  I remember Paul sending me photos of traditional crafts still being worked by artisans in Japan and presumably paid for by the state.

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH), made up of all immaterial manifestations of culture, represents the variety of living heritage of humanity as well as the most important vehicle of cultural diversity. The main ‘constitutive factors’ of ICH are represented by the ‘self-identification’ of this heritage as an essential element of the cultural identity of its creators and bearers; by its constant recreation in response to the historical and social evolution of the communities and groups concerned; by its connection with the cultural identity of these communities and groups; by its authenticity; and by its indissoluble relationship with human rights. The international community has recently become conscious that ICH needs and deserves international safeguarding, triggering a legal process which culminated with the adoption in 2003 of the UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. "

North Stoke: Bietigheim

6th December 2025

I am not keeping up with writing my blog.  Expect it is because of winter.  We had a visitor this week, well two actually but the little one won't make it to our world till March next year.  Anyway Mary, who is Andrew's child went down with a bug a couple of days ago and we all worried a bit about the babe but Mary went off yesterday  safely.  Today Lillie is coming down from London, basically to bring some of her stuff back for Xmas and also a sleepover tonight.

Matilda is off to Paris with Lucien this weekend for her birthday.  She had just won a voucher for Air B&B but too late to cover accommodation this time round. 

And my phone has just pinged with a message from my daughter.  She wants a link to my Xmas present, I have decided on a yarn Swift, it is a bit like the inside of an umbrella.  The art of knitting is very fashionable at the moment and there is a lor of wool out there being sold as hanks.  A swift helps you unwind the hanks.  Easier than winding from your feet;)

A knitting book for babies should be coming soon!  Also thought I would try out some Japanese cooking.  I have Miso soup quite a lot, chopping the vegetables is soothing and the cooking only takes five minutes and no fat used.  I eat noodles and the various sauces have to be learnt as well.  I do not like Japanese dumplings or their jellified sweets but love bamboo shoots and I am now growing beansprouts all the time.  I use mung beans for sprouting. Very easy to grow in winter.

Actually it is quite hard to get into Japanese cuisine when we eat so much in the way of dairy food.  The cheese that is eaten in this household is far too much.  Also I noticed on a vlog someone making butter out of cream - because it was cheaper.

Politically keeping an eye on Zack Polanski.  He got a real drumming from Rory Stewart on economics and I have definitely gone off Rory, middle-aged twat.  Trouble is I worry about how the Green Party are going to figure in the bright light of publicity.  For instance is there only one speaker for the party, where are the 'promises' written down?  As always like sheep we follow the man with the best promises such as Farage, which we know of course will never be kept and he is in it for the money, following his hero across the water.  Not sure if the latest truth about his racialism at school will knock him off the voting ballot, we will see.

 National Trust launches fundraiser to help buy land around Cerne Giant | Dorset | The Guardian

2nd December 2025

 

The Village how I miss it.  I see last year I gathered together my memories so I shall do it again this year.  Yesterday the first Xmas email from a friend telling me the happenings of the year.  Who had died, dear C had gone, she had a permanent illness that eventually took her this year.  I remember taking her to hospital appointments in Scarborough and trying to find a dog for her.  We never did, luckily her daughter came down to look after her.

Someone else has died but I cannot remember his face.  J and D are still going strong, their rescue dog has since died but now they have another rescue dog and the cats are still with them, probably in the barn for D would not have them in the house.

Living next door to the church we saw the burials and the occasional wedding.  I always remember the boy who committed suicide on the other side of our house, which was The Sun pub.   The lad was buried near the wall that separated us from  the graveyard and the grave was tended with such tender love by the family.  You would have cried to see his brother, cross legged on the ground talking to him many an evening.

Though many people were incomers it was a tight knit community, meeting together several times a year, either for quizzes, barbeques and Xmas event.  It was also a community losing its church because hardly anyone went to the services and our vicar had three churches to attend.

18th December 2024

Daily happenings:  I had lunch with Jon Stewart today, true he was a few thousand miles away but he always makes me laugh.

Rebecca Solnit  Solidarity Stitches Us Together.

December 1st 2025

I have to record this.  Batman came to visit today.  Well not the real one but the man from the council with his drone to discover if we had bats in the attic.  Of course it had been pointed out to the council that there were two bedrooms in the roof space, so no one was sleeping with bats floating mysteriously about.  

The funny bit was how Andrew came and said Bat man is around, he has a drone to go round outside. The visions in my head went overtime.  When I went to the shops ten minutes later the poor bat man was standing outside the gate with a fallen drone.  Failed miserably that drone had and sulked on the tarmac.  The drone had failed to go above 10 feet, could be because we had a security ceiling? but from who? the Council, the government.  All intriguing but we definitely have no bats ;)

30th November 2025

 

interesting article in the  Guardian, Margaret Atwood answers questions on the state of the world.  The headline mentions Ai Weiwei and Rebecca Solnit but there are plenty of other people who pose questions.  The book she is promoting is called 'Book of Lives'.  Hopefully it will come out in audio, though of course one misses the written word and the solidarity of a  physical book.

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist who produces assemblages of one type of thing, rather boring in fact.  I remember years ago he produced in an exhibition smashed  up valuable antiques.  Paul was furious with this seemingly vandalising act.  

I as usual saw the other side of the question.  Which was? you have to make room in the world for new things to take their place.  The world seems so full at the moment of things that might happen, people talk of war, and a climate crash, in which we as a country will be importing a 100% of our food......

"On nature, Nathalie Seddon, professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, said: “We are facing a national emergency not only because the climate is changing, but because the living systems that protect the climate are breaking down.”

She added: “This isn’t about choosing between the economy and the environment. It’s about recognising that the economy is embedded within the environment, and that the health of the nation depends on the living systems that sustain us.”

But hey-ho lets go on pretending that it isn't happening, much easier that way!

Having delivered the bad news, the good news is the video of the wedding, a month ago between Ellie and Tom finally surfaced.  It showed the pair of them totally in love as they went around that busy day.  There were a photographer and I suppose a video expert that day and it was such a happy occasion as they vowed their love for life.  Love is not always talked about in blog land, we talk of grief when we have lost a loved one but the happiness of belonging to one person is very rarely expressed.

National Emergency Meeting  I would suggest you sign the letter and also listen to the experts on the subject of the climate.