11th November 2025

Good bye Autumn, and welcome brown, slithery muddy leaves. Constant rain is already turning their golden tones to the brown of decay. Look on the bright side the reservoirs are filling up.

Family are back and forth, Lillie back to London and Andrew also went up to London yesterday for business. Tonight my daughter and Andrew are going to see Lucien play in his band in Manchester, I hope it is a success, think their band is doing a tour.

Someone on F/B put up Riveaulx Abbey and Byland Abbey up, on a misty morning, well I shall put up my sunny photos of these two abbeys.

Riveaulx Abbey

Bylands Abbey

How the mighty have fallen and yes I am talking about the BBC and its fall from grace.  Yes the conservatives will be in there swinging left and right trying get rid of the old elephant.  They won't win of course, the BBC is an institution around the world. So a couple of idiots screwed up a factual documentary with splicing two bits of a conversation together and annoying the orange one.  So he immediately demands a billion (dollars or pounds I don't know).  Now the BBC can give a very apologetic answer to him and hope that it will work.

The BBC has been our background to life since it first began in 1922.  Did you believe everything it told you? of course not.  Two heads have offered up their resignations, one always has to have heads on the chopping block don't you know;) A certain justice has taken place.  The BBC had to wend its way through an equally disturbing matter of the Palestine/Israel war, it may or may not have got it right because of political pressure.  But if you want to be informed just read around, or at least listen around, there are plenty of podcasts out there strumming the "truth" and facts don't alter, though death figures might.

What came out of those abbeys so needlessly destroyed in their times? Firstly beauty, a dedication to craftmanship.  A community spirit, the monks also looked after the poor.  Calm oases, a belief system that marked their lives.

Definitely not the mayhem we see today in our society.  The thing is there is no mayhem in most towns, mostly we see community spirit.  It is only the media trying to drum up reading figures that blow up every  scandal out of proportion.

Who can resist the logical quote from Shelley.

And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

North Stoke: Book

Rebecca Solnit in the Guardian

8th November 2025

 Times are quiet and dark, by dark I mean the way afternoons get darker and darker faster each day.  We wait for the 21st December when the turnaround happens and then once more we shall surge towards the light and growth.  I suspect that was why Xmas was devised a whole event of light and present giving.  I miss actually going to the garden centre near Chelmsford, the place sporting displays of coloured baubles and lifelike animals that clustered in unreal tableaus.  Books to read, candles to buy and tea to sit down to after you had saturated yourself with the gaudiness of the season.

It is 7.30 I hear music somewhere in the house, my daughter has been haunted over the last few days by a Melanie song, which I used to play when she was young.   Melanie did not have a very good voice but she had that raw energy of the day.  The song - 'Look what they've done to my song ma'  Finding it on YouTube, the next song is from 2009 and it is Peter Seeger and co singing 'This Land is My Land'. Obama sits in the audience.  Somewhat ironic  16 years later.

Knitting wise, having put down my needles for a few days, picked them up and knitted the second fingerless glove for myself. I have one in black and the other in grey.  This is because that at this time of year with black wool it is difficult to distinguish the stitches.  The black one caused me much frustration. I tried because Matilda wanted a pair but I thought to myself she will probably lose them anyway.  And the saga of my lost suitcase still haunts me.  Childish of course but I only used it once and then she went off to London with it.  Last time I asked she just waved her hand generally and answered - it's somewhere in London ;)

Lillie is back this weekend, she arrived late last night, there is of course a parade of the scouts in Todmorden on Sunday which is tomorrow for Remembrance Sunday.  I reckon she will be up for an OBE in 30 years time for service to the scouts.

One other thing, you may, or you may not know that Ted Hughes ex-wife Sylvia Plath is buried in Heptonstall.  Many people make a pilgrimage to her grave and at this moment it is covered in plants and looks respectable.  But there are some who have taken it on themselves to judge Hughes for the unhappy marriage and try to remove his name which appears next to Sylvias. All to no avail, because the name is recut again.  It is vandalism of course, as is the need to put your mark on someone else's history.

Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted

This also is written on her gravestone, it means resilience and hope and is taken from the Bhagavad-Gita.

The Calderstones in Liverpool

Solsbury Hill and honey

 

Solsbury Hill

My mind goes back to Solsbury Hill so often that sometimes I think I should have my ashes nestled in the ground up there.  Up the steep hill one walked, the lane came to a dead end and there was no space for parking a car.  I once walked  up on a Good Friday and found a local community of people carrying a cross on the hill, it seemed so weird this place which was once an Iron Age settlement.

It was situated just outside Bath, near Bathampton and  of course a song by Peter Gabriel always pulls me back to these hills around Bath.  This particular version is a montage of the times he played it and how he grew old over time.  He lived in Box a few miles away and had his studios there.

As for honey.  Well I have been on a search for genuine honey these last few weeks.  Basically it did not have to cost a lot.  This doesn't mean I am mean, I will pay a good price for decent food but Manuka Honey not...  The cheese stall in Tod market had local honey but it seemed to have been sold out.  So yesterday when I went to buy my favourite cheese at the moment - Cranberry Lancashire cheese (£7 for 200 grams!). 

They do it cheaper at Aldi but of course the real crumbly cheese is much better.  And also someone has got the wording wrong at Aldi, Granberry Cheese! So I wandered down the aisle and there was the olive stall.  I spied honey and the two men were seemingly a father and a lovely camp lad were very talkative and friendly.  So I specified what I wanted from  honey, his £12 jar was too much but they produced a smaller jar at £8.  I had some this morning, it was delicious, Greek and from  oak and chestnut trees.  The boy added up the two items and said with a grin 'that's £10 precisely' rounding it up no less, which made me giggle inside.  Bet he didn't do his timetables when growing up Tasker.

Note:  I like the montage over time of Gabriel singing this song, he ages well but the fun, singing and dancing do not age.  And as a reference there is no eagles sweeping over this last part of the Cotswold Hills, neither are there vultures. 

A Happy Face

 New York's new mayor  Zoran Mamdani.  O dear he is a socialist democrat says she dancing with delight.  Is the great liner of America slowly starting to turn towards a more humanitarian outlook.  In the voting of several states Democrats seem to be winning.  Let us just hope that it is the beginning of a sensible course.

Turner Prize 1 - Artists.

 

Artist - Mohammed Sami

Mohammed Sami - Modern Art

Renee Matic

Renee Matic;   Rene Matić – 'Born British, die British' | Turner Prize 2025 | Tate

Nnena Kalu

Nnena Kalu – ActionSpace Artists

Zadie Xa at Leeds Gallery

Celebrating the work of Zadie Xa

Turner Prize my photos - 2

Indian Garden at Cartwright Hall

 

Nnena Kalu

A permanent Lowry there was also an early drawing by Hockney there

The phone just about gets the very vivid red of the tape

The quiet space

I

Artist Zadie Xa this was my favourite artist.  Description later, A reflective floor

It is a shame I did not take more photographs of this art installation by Zadie Xa

but the floor had motion in it and I felt rather sick.  You have to wear cloth shoes. It was a very waterish effect in the green shimmering light and great, in the sense of large, paintings on the wall.  One was warned as a female when you booked a free entry time not to wear a skirt so there was no 'upskirting' going on!

Trip to Bradford

We went to Lister Park in Bradford and the gallery there yesterday to see the Turner Prize. Karen and Andrew had not heard of the man that ran amok on the train the day before near Cambridge and were completely innocent as far as the attack was concerned.  It was of course a stand down from a terrorist act more a young man acting on his own motives.  I have just been listening to 'Thought for the Day' on the radio, and the person expresses his gratitude to the men who unflinchingly tackled the man with the knife, one now who is in hospital dangerously wounded.

Yet our train both ways yesterday was full of people, chatting away or consulting their oracles of knowledge - yes the phone, for which no one shall say a wicked word against them!

Below you will see the photos I managed to snatch out of my phone, when I had not inadvertently hit the wrong spot and gone to video.  

At the old Odeon, we could not not get in to see Andrew's friend Adam Goodfellow's work on the restoration but trail a little further down the road to the Albramha and the place was alive with the excited chatter of the little ones going to see Matilda. Dresses sparkled, feet danced in gold shoes as they joined the queue.  Slightly funny, to me of course, was the couple of bouncers to organise the crowd, I mean how do you quieten down 5 year olds as a bouncer?

As you wander through the city of Bradford and wonder how the money was spent on this 'City of Culture' this year, you will see it in pedestrianised streets, large flowerbeds everywhere, even a very long bed of wild flowers. 

We were going to the market but only one floor was open which was the restaurant area so that idea had to be given up and we caught an Uber to Lister Park.  I am greatly impressed by Ubers but could in no way actually get one.  They arrive within a few minutes of you calling for one in the immediate area.  Mostly run by the friendly Asian people, sometimes they are chatter boxes other times silent.

As we drove down the avenue of trees in the park it was absolutely beautiful the Autumn colours, our driver said he came to the park to find peace and also to bring his boys along to play cricket.

 

Fashionable benches everywhere

Andrew was such a hero as he caught me every time I stumbled ;)

Always like the detail B/W photos produce

I think the large building facing the camera was the Town Hall

The Gallery in Lister Park

To be continued

1st November 2025

History in the making - 2007

Does anyone remember Trinny and Susannah - Women Undress.  An ITV show which featured these two fashion women dressing poor females who thought themselves as dumpy or ill wardrobed.  That maybe cruel but then light hearted entertainment is all about that sort of thing.

Wilmington Long Man.  Taken from Wiki - Cupcake kid

Well the two women committed a crime against one of the precious monuments of England - The Wilmington Long Man.  For historic evidence go to the Wiki here, but it was a medieval figure marked out by chalk.  The idea was to turn the 'man' into a 'woman'.  Good thing they did not try it on The Cerne Giant, getting rid of his penis might have been a problem! 

Cerne Giant taken from Wiki - Peter Harlow

But they came up against the Druids who were angry at this desecration of the monument and who protested at the site. You can see the disagreement in the video below.  The video by the way is old and a bit of jumping around is probably needed, it is 9 minutes long.  We must have covered it on Heritage Action and I wrote about it here.

It is the sheer silliness of it all that still makes me giggle, what were those hundred women, dressed in their white suites, thinking about.  Was this women's liberation gone batty, or was it the fault of a producer that had hardly left London to think up this silly prank.  The dignified Druids turned their backs on the women as they came down the side of the hill away from the monument.

All this came back this morning when I was thinking about the chalk giant in John Hooker's poem.  At least it has stopped raining now.  It was a gentle sound though noisier on the Velux windows in the attic.

The Cerne Giant Wiki

31st October 2025 - Ben Edge

Ben Edge at Avebury

I haven't had much to say the last couple of days.  Been listening to the new book by Philip Pullman the last of the trilogy about Lyra it is called 'The Rose Field'.  Pondering on shadows/spirits and dust and material beings and maybe avenging angels in the black space. 

But the 31st October has arrived, and as long as you don't open your door to that knock then visitations from the graveyard should be far and few.

So what turned up this morning?  Ben Edge an artist of the folklore of this island of Albion and his rather wonderful interpretation of the weird and wonderful that lies behind our folklore.  I know Liam will dismiss this artist as childish but at least it gives us a break from you know who, that orange topped man with the red tie.

But as someone who has watched the Druids parade around the stones in their white gowns his paintings  makes me smile.

Here is his 'Children of Albion' at the Fitzrovia Chapel,  the exhibition of which opens in November.  In the short video below you will see the rather large crowd who have gathered together to clean The White Horse of Uffington, who probably does stretch far back into prehistory, the token animal of a tribe.

 Happy Halloween everyone xxx

And as always a poem to be found.   John Hooker on the Soliloquies of a Chalk Giant.

Chalk

A memorial of its origins, chalk in barns and churches
moulders in rain and damp;petrified creatures swim
in its depths.

It is domestic, with the homeliness of an ancient
hearth exposed to the weather, pale with the ash of
countless primeval fires. Here the plough grates on an
urnfield, the green plover stands with crest erect on
a royal mound.

Chalk is the moon's stone; the skeleton is native to its
soil. It looks anaemic, but has submerged the type-sites
of successive cultures. Stone, bronze, iron; all are assimilated to
its nature;
and the hill-forts follow its curves.

These, surely, are the works of giants; temples
re-dedicated to the sky-god, spires fashioned for the
lords of bowmen;

Spoils of the worn idol, squat Venus of the mines.

Druids leave their shops in the midsummer solstice;
neophytes tread an antic measure to the antlered god.
Men who trespass are soon absorbed, horns laid beside
them in the ground. The burnt-out tank waits beside
the barrow.

The god is a graffito carved on the belly of the chalk,
his savage gesture subdued by the stuff of his creation.
He is taken up like a gaunt white doll by the round hills,
wrapped around by the long pale hair of the fields

**********************************

Edit.  The Children of Albion.  Article in the Guardian 28th Oct.2025

26th October 2025

When times were different:  Steve Reed mentioned Space Odyssey 2001 and I remember going to see it.  When I looked it up it had been released in May 1968.  Must have been pregnant then because I gave birth to my daughter in August.  As a film it just blew me away.  The black monolith turning in space, yet no answer for its being there.  The renegade computer called Hal, cutting the lifeline of one of the aeronauts as he works in space, the killing of the cryonic people frozen in time for the settling on a new planet.  But before that, I must have seen as a child Robbie the Robot in 'Forbidden Planet'.  All those years back and yet Musk still has not cracked the nut of space travel to other planets...hmm

The first AI computers were born and HAL proved that things can go awry easily enough as he rebels against the humans. As a note of comfort, a human person did manage to disable him/it/HAL (I'm not sexing a computer;) and HAL pleads for its presence/life.  I have lived through the coming of the dawn of computers, as a young child who became obsessed with H.G.Wells and his sci-fi stories.  The space age was definitely an opening story to life, shame it fizzled down to little robotic hoovers trailing around on the carpet with often the cat sitting on it.

And talking of cats Mollie is no longer constipated thank goodness.  How do you cure a cat and administer  some magical potion of medicine? You swaddle them in a towel and as they open their mouths to complain you squirt the medicine in with the pipit you are holding in the other hand.

There was a programme in the night discussing a washing the dishes robot but surely the dishwasher fulfils that role.  Slightly disappointed!  If you look at the Americans who land on Robbie's planet, you will see a version of America we all thought of them then, clean shaven and noble.  How did Trump arrive on the scene of history? by what paths did he waddle towards the ways of a fascist and authoritanism state.  A different state of which was defeated in the year I was born.

Slightly disorientated this morning, the clocks have gone back an hour, once I had worked that out my day proceeds normally.

22nd October 2025

 Let me fill the white space with words.  Firstly Phillip Pullman has brought out a new book, the final book on Lyra, we shall see.  It is called 'The Rose Field' Lyra is looking for her daemon.  Daemons are attachments of animals that reflect the person they accompany, as I haven't read all the books I don't know when the loss occurred.  But it was noticeable on the radio this morning that Pullman was very against AI which goes round vacuuming up all the knowledge in the world.  And presumably regurgitating it into new computer speak.

I did a little study of left-handedness yesterday. I am left handed and have gone through life unperturbed by being so.  True at kindergarten the nuns tried to make me use my right hand but I could not. Apparently though you are sometimes seen as neurodivergent and could have other neurological offsets.  In practice 10% of us are l/h and it just means we use the different sides of our brain differently.  We are indistinguishable from the rest of the population by the way ;) ;) but perhaps my need for a daemon distinguishes me a little.

Of course not to forget that l/h is sometimes referred to as 'sinister'.  This because sinister in Latin meant left, and so sometimes through history, those l/h persons were often seen as evil and dark and witchlike.  Well as it is coming up to Halloween - who knows?

I made a fish pie yesterday, it was slightly austere because there was no cream to enrich the very lemony sauce I cover the fish with.  But a few garlicked mushrooms and plenty of grated cheese on the mash enlivened it.  I had picked up some sprouts that morning, love sprouts but they are not for everyone, that includes Andrew.  I think sprouts have improved since our childhood recollections of them, they have a more nutty and sweet flavour.  

Anyway Andrew went out later and got some cream for the first apple crumble of the season, which is probably my most favourite of puddings.  My next favourite pudding is Eton Mess, a gloriously messy jumble of meringue, strawberries and cream.  Can also bring on a headache because of the richness.  My third favourite must be Bakewell Tart but it should have home made jam at its base to compliment the ground almonds above.

And just because these are fading as winter approaches....

Remember bluebells will be appearing in the spring...........

 

Interlude

 I haven't got much to say, but it is raining outside and it reminded me of the temple, the rain is falling very gently though.  The travellers are back.  The unloading of Italian food has been undertaken and also a large old wooden pestle, the mortar was too heavy and expensive to bring back.  What else, another Mary and Jesus to add to the collection.  My daughter collects but she is not religious.  But occasionally, just occasionally she finds paintings or prints of both to hang on the wall.

Collections are funny things, and I am not a collector of anything, maybe books but a lot of those have gone to Oxfam.  Once one of Paul's clients had several boxes of religious icons delivered to the studio.  They had been in his cousin's basement for thirty years.  What was the point?  were they collected to go up in value.  Needless to say they were dark and unattractive.  We all unwrapped them, they were checked and then went back into the boxes again.

Just the thing for Sunday

 Blackthorn Cottage

But then if you want your blood pressure up, biggest protest in history.  Well maybe but remember to keep the pressure up. No Kings crowds.

Silbury

 

It is International Archaeology Day, the third Saturday in the month of October. And Silbury Hill went through my wallpaper on the computer.  It stands proud in the landscape,  often surrounded by water, the information says

Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, England, may seem like a simple slope in the countryside. However, it conceals a 4,500-year-old Neolithic enigma. Starting around 2400 BCE, chalk was locally quarried, transported and compacted by hand, layer by layer, over generations. The result is the tallest prehistoric mound in Europe, built entirely by human effort, rising to over 39 metres.

There were actually three mounds built within a few miles of each other.  The Marlborough Mound, standing conspicuously in the grounds of Marlborough College, school to many a British scholar, and in the Pewsey Valley, Marden Mound now razed to the ground over the centuries.  The Marlborough Mound, only recently seen as a Neolithic monument is  rather messed up by being part of the school's playground.

But to return to Silbury, Paul's great love and where he wanted his ashes thrown, though this later translated to the Yorkshire village we had settled in and loved.  The flat top is something of a conundrum, some would argue that it was a Saxon defense.  Marlborough was a Saxon town and there were several battles fought in the area.  Other theories have it as a catchment area for water or a copy of the Egyptian pyramids.

I have written so much about the hill I shall stop but leave you with an old photograph taken by Jacquetta Hawkes.  The photo must be about 70 years old but the hill is still the same but throwing a great cone shaped shadow. 

 Bones of our wild forefathers

O forgive,
If now we pierce the chambers of your rest,
And open your dark pillows to the eye
Of the irreverent Day!
Hark, as we move,
Runs no stern whisper through the narrow vault?
Flickers no shape across our torch-light pale,
With backward beckoning arm?
No, all is still.
O that it were not!
O that sound or sign,
Vision, or legend, or the eagle glance
Of science, could call back thy history lost,
Green Pyramid of the plains, from far-ebbed Time!
O that the winds which kiss thy flowery turf
Could utter how they first beheld thee rise;
When in his toil the jealous Savage paused,
Drew deep his chest, pushed back his yellow hair,
And scanned the growing hill with reverent gaze,
-Or haply, how they gave their fitful pipe**
To join the chant prolonged o'er warriors cold
. -Or how the Druid's mystic robe they swelled;
Or from thy blackened brow on wailing wing
The solemn sacrificial ashes bore,
To strew them where now smiles the yellow corn,
Or where the peasant treads the Churchward***path

Emmeline Fisher

An unknown poet from Wiltshire, but her mother was a first cousin of Wordsworth.  Born 1825 and died in 1864.  Some information on Emmeline to be found here and here on Emmeline's poetry (Wordsworth thought she was a genius)

Fires and energy

“on the verge of realizing that the sun, which already provides us light and warmth and photosynthesis, is also willing to provide us the power we need to run our lives. We are on the verge of turning to the heavens for energy instead of to hell. It won’t happen automatically, and I don’t know if we will do it, at least in the short window physics is giving us to deal with climate change.”

― Bill McKibben, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.

This is taken from the book I am listening to - the rise of energy from the sun and wind.  China, India and Pakistan are the front runners.  Solar panels and wind turbines now dot the landscape.  And I know to some peeps on here this desecration of the land makes them angry.  But the burning of fossil fuels has to stop, we have almost put an end to burning coal and with our reliance on gas from Russia, an unholy alliance which might bring Europe to its knees we have to explore other ways in getting the energy we need.

On many journeys in the past we drove past the great turbines with their blades turning slowly.  Sometimes they were still, no wind the naysayers will say, what do you do then, but storage in the form of batteries I believe, will go somewhat to relieve that.  I have seen them out to sea on the Norfolk coast, and there is the scheme of putting them up in the North Sea on Doggerland.

I must admit the taking of great chunks of farmland for the placement of solar panels is a bit daunting to contemplate but the future must be thought about for our children and those that follow.

*****************************

 

North Yorkshire Moors:  I fell in love with this landscape years ago, you can see the brown of the heather.  A vast waste land one could almost call it, until a farmer may decide to cultivate this difficult acidic soil.  There are of course sheep roaming about eating at the patches of green grass that appears but you can see the ruined farmhouses around this area 'up top' on the moors to know it is an unforgiving landscape.

In the news clip it shows the result of a fire that has been going for quite a few weeks now on the North Yorkshire Moors and seems to have come under control now.  The Langdale Moor near to the Fylingdales army station. The fire had retreated below ground through the peat and this of course means that the fire can continue.  The moor land is just smoking at the moment and farmers take water tanks fixed to their tractors to dampen the area.

An investigation will go on as to why the fire started, it could have been a picnic, a deliberate attempt, or it could have been the drought we had through the summer.

15th October 2025

 Mission — Friends of Bridestones Rewilded

Good news yesterday, or so I hope.  Bridestone Moor, approximately 114 acres of moorland has been bought for 'rewilding' by a local group of people.  The princely sum of £387,000 has been raised and it is now a done deal.

Reading the blog highlighted below I am not too sure of whether shooting will take place of the red legged grouse the species that live up on this moor,  and there is some speculation of how to approach control.  See here  Though of course nature has always worked that one out.  It is only humankind that upset the balance.

Traditional conservation of species through managed populations is not always in keeping with rewilding values. There remain conflicting arguments surrounding the ecological importance of species such as the red grouse because there is a history of it being a managed species bred and released on moorlands for game shooting. This means that the numbers and distribution of red grouse today may not reflect that of natural population if unmanaged. The natural selection pressures that determine the delicate balance of species numbers and cohabitation with other species, are difficult to predict and replicate.

The poor old red legged grouse is a game bird, The Glorious 12th and all that.  I can see how this land got sold off, there is a public right on the moor to visit the area and especially the Bridestones, as we did the other week.  Members of the public are not allowed to be shot!

A grouse butt for hiding in because those grouse are such bullies.  Sorry

Funnily enough I haven't seen any butts up on the moors here not like the North Yorkshire moors pictured above.  You can see that I am no fan of shooting the millions of introduced and bred pheasants. And grouse.  So already we are talking of a 'managed environment' if they allow shooting on the moor.

Apparently the grouse are prone to worm, this due to overgrazing of the heather so this is somewhat of a break in their breeding.  But medicated grit is also put down to help with this problem of worms.

It will be good to see the Belted Galloway cattle up on the moor, I saw them down on the Cornish moors such as Bodmin Moor.

West Yorkshire moor brought under community ownership - Co-operative News

14th October 2025

 So the release went through of the Israeli hostages and the Palestinian prisoners, for which much rejoicing.  But of course this is only a fragile beginning of hope to a better world.  And yes Trump must be thanked for his contribution to peacemaking, though I believe it was his son-in-law in his wheeling and dealing with the Arab states that brought people together.  Now the solution.

The Autumn darkness creeps in, I have the bright pinkness of geraniums flowering on my windowsill, plants grateful for being saved and brought into the warmth.

On the family front I am 'home alone', daughter and partner having gone to Genoa for a few days.  Photographs through email.  I am perfectly happy to stay in one place and be still, listening to members of the crow family greeting each other this morning.  Soon the Canadian geese will fly over to the canal and then the ducks hitting the water with a splash, both species ready to happily collect the food people will throw in.  Not bread of course is the usual mantra but bird seed and frozen peas.  The problem is I have never walked along the towpath with a packet of frozen peas.....

I am looking for photos to decorate and cannot find recent ones this is because they are still on my camera and I can't be a**** to find the camera, maybe later but two photos I have picked up along the way, the first is Japanese Anemones

They were in the Bath garden and had come from a garden in Box near Bath 

 and have never escaped out into the 'wild'.  I suspect they have long since gone because the old house was 'done up' by the retired people who bought it and has been shaped into a modern version of goodness knows what.

The second is Amitabha  Buddha of Eternal light, from the Edo period.  There is a certain smug satisfaction in that face.  He is associated with infinite life and happiness and if you call on him at the point of death he will take you to his Pure Land.  A nice thought if it were true.  Religions offer such prizes to keep you going through life ;)  One can read about him in this wiki.  

Mollie the cat is meowing furiously at my feet, I have turned the radiator down.  Now there is someone heading for Eternal Life, must be 23 years old now and still going strong.

This is the Place

 This is going to be a bitty blog post.  Random thoughts brought together.  We live in hope, or so Rebecca Solnit would want for us. The first thought has been nagging at the back of my brain the last few days.  We live next door to an Asian family, when I moved in a couple of years ago (or longer) the little boy came up to me and said "hello, I am your neighbour", whenever their cricket ball thumps my window and I feel cross I remember that.  

There is a small Muslim community in Tod, I see the men going to prayer many days.  The Singh community and the Muslim community help when there is a flooding crisis in the town they bring in food and help to clear the  houses of water. Surely very neighbourly.

I think up North they have a very different attitude to people of other religions.  Yes I know the terrible thing that happened in Manchester when another fanatical Muslim person attacked at the Jewish synagogue, it was terrible but it was one crazily stupid terrorist.  He was shot dead by the police and a vigil was held for the two Jewish men who had died at this moment in time.

Tony Walsh wrote a poem, it was given out at the last time time in 2022, at the concert in Manchester Arena when another terrorist bomber killed 22 people, mostly youngsters 'This is the Place' you can find it in the highlighted link.

We have Andy Burnham as the mayor of Manchester now and listening to him speaking on the religious programme this morning, he said he was a lapsed Catholic.  Same as me, though actually it was the young child in me at Sunday school, who asked the pertinent question as I looked down at my prayer book.  So, if that bearded man is God of us all, why do Chinese and all those other people on the planet not believe in him? That thought scuppered my religious beginnings from an early age.

But one thing I am fairly sure about is that Jesus's teachings were right to love one's neighbour.  And so today, I fervently hope that the hostages will be released in Palestine tomorrow and that some kind of peace will be arrived at,  And that terrible broken place of Palestine will one day be rebuilt.

****************************

As usual blowing their own Northern trumpets!!!

This is the place in the North West of England

It’s ace, it’s the best and the songs that we sing

From the stands, from our bands set the whole planet shaking

Our inventions are legends! There’s nowt we can’t make and

10th October 2025

 Is Google trying to take over my own searches, or is this some diabolical plot to take over my blog.  Foolishness aside, I am getting tired of all the changes that happen on my computer.  There has been a 'shock' of emails about if I had Window 11.  Could not find out myself but Andrew found that I was indeed programmed by Window 11.  Microsoft and Dell have since gone quiet, but I notice subtle changes in the programming.

Also, this makes me cross, instead of allowing me entry into sites, I have to show my pin number.  And horrors of horror, why should I have Bing and is it MSN news page that pops up from my left hand side?

And weirdly The Guardian isn't allowed on the sodding Bing site. End of small rant.

I should go on to a news revue but all I can do is wait for the release of the hostages without any thing terrible happening but also grateful that the Palestinian news has reached a small plateau of discussion.