27th January 2026

Here I go again looking through old blogs, here and elsewhere.  But I remember during my archaeology education I had to do a viva on my subject, which was Abbey's of Wiltshire.  The scary professor I had to face was Glyn Daniel, but he was sweet and kind and passed me on my not very good answers.  

It was only at a later date that I concentrated on megaliths. the date is in actual fact 2003, only to find that Daniel had written a book on the Megalith Builders of  Europe.  He had written of one type of cromlech called sub-megalithic which translated means a capstone often only resting on two orthostats with the back resting on the ground.  It creates a three sided triangle, you can see the pointy bit on the capstone third photo down.

Constructing the Past | Blog — The Modern Antiquarian

Sub-megalithics in West Wales (or not?) | Blog — The Modern Antiquarian

This is a photograph of the double chambered tomb (or two separate ones) that lie above the coastal path half a kilometre from Whitesands carpark (SM7352 2789). WW2 platform in front. One tomb abuts the rocky face, and the capstone that has fallen could have rested on the rock face. Behind me is the view out to sea, so the tombs would be facing towards Carn Llidi.

this second capstone is fallen but Glyn Daniels thought that it might rest on the ledge shown in the picture..

Shaping.  See how this second capstone on Carn Llidi cromlechs points out to the little island

Coetan Arthur also on St. David's Head. The sepia touch was added by me, it makes such a dramatic sighting hidden amongst the rocks.  It points upwards towards a valley, behind it on the headland there is a small coastal Iron Age fort, you can still see the ring of small stones where the huts were situated.  The photo below, is looking at the environment they lived in.  Fish from the sea, maybe a few animals grazing on the bleak rock strewn ground.  Defensive stone walling, it wasn't a peaceful existence.

 

I am reading (listening) to Stone Lands by Fiona Robertson at the moment, recommended by a commentor - thank you.  Robertson, like me, escapes the sadness of loss to head for the megaliths as a form of comfort.  But of course such places bring happy memories.  Even the memory of Paul moaning away about trekking to Carn Arthur that it was much further than the half hour walk I had promised.  

Rupture

 

Two missives posted on Facebook.  I know many of you hate politics but I think the Trump regime has made us all realise what a terrible danger his wicked statements are having.  Most of us in blogland have American friends and respect American people, we know you are as sick as us as to what is happening. 

I happen to classify myself as a European, Brexit was a definite no-no for me.  Nationalism and fascism two words which I deplore.  The outrage and cruelty of the ICE people cannot be tolerated neither can Trump and his entourage.  For that is what they are, they are not a government, just a handful of men trying to make themselves rich by bullying people and countries around.

They have probably overstepped the mark by criticising the efforts of our soldiers and veterans who fought alongside them in the wars that we all deplore.  Starmer, our prime minister has at last come out from his bunker and lashed out as well.

But red lines have been crossed again and again.  The actuality of governing by law  bypassed by corrupt government officials.  Though I see time and time again, honest judges and lawyers calling for the corrupt guilty men to be put to trial.  This is actually frightening for many people.  We live by laws laid down in our societies, for laws to be overturned at the behest of a narcissistic obviously sick man is truly frightening,

The parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti want the fate of their son shared and Denmark is angry.  There is an obvious parting of allies it is never going to be the same again.  Europe needs to be united.

To the American people. This is from the Denmark thread pasted and copied.

If one follows the public debate in Denmark, a clear picture emerges: the Danish population has had enough.

After decades of close cooperation, loyalty and shared military engagement, patience is wearing thin. Donald Trump’s repeated statements claiming that Denmark and other European nations have not been good allies have pushed the matter beyond what can be brushed aside as rhetoric.

For many Danes, these remarks were not merely incorrect. They were deeply insulting. They dismiss real sacrifices, real losses and real responsibility. They reduce twenty years of war, trauma and death to a talking point detached from reality.

Denmark stood by the United States in Afghanistan long after others left. France and Spain withdrew around 2011. Denmark did not. We stayed committed to a mission that, in hindsight, was fundamentally flawed — not because of Danish soldiers, but because of American leadership and strategic decisions.

The United States chose to divert focus to Iraq, undermining the mission in Afghanistan. Both wars ended as military and political failures under American command. Afghanistan collapsed. Iraq destabilized an entire region. These are not interpretations. They are outcomes.

This pattern is not new. Korea ended without victory. Vietnam cost the lives of 58,000 American soldiers and achieved no meaningful result. Again and again, U.S.-led military interventions leave behind instability, destruction and unresolved conflict.

The same pattern applies to political and covert interventions: the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile, and numerous others. Democratic leaders replaced by dictators and despots. The driving force was rarely freedom. It was power and money.

From a Danish — and European — perspective, this contradiction can no longer be ignored.

The United States presents itself as a guardian of values, yet remains a society marked by deep structural corruption: recurring school shootings, mass incarceration unmatched in the Western world, the continued use of the death penalty, and a foreign policy characterized more by coercion than cooperation.

Donald Trump did not create this reality. He exposes it. Brutally and without restraint.

Europe still holds on to values that matter: dignity, responsibility, proportionality and respect. Money is not everything. Conduct matters. How allies are treated matters.

And this is where the line is crossed

Disparaging Danish soldiers — men and women who fought and died alongside American forces — is not politics. It is a violation of basic respect. It is an insult to those who served and to the families who lost loved ones.

That demands a response.

Denmark must demand a formal apology. From the Pentagon. And from Donald Trump himself. If such an apology is not given, there is no basis for further discussion about expanded cooperation — including strategic cooperation regarding Greenland.

We do not deepen cooperation with actors who show contempt for our veterans and their families. That is a red line. And it is non-negotiable.

If this position carries economic or strategic consequences, so be it. In our part of the world, values still outweigh money. And if those values are not respected, we are prepared to walk away.

Let Donald Trump speak. Let him rant. If the United States has something serious to say, it can put it in writing — and say it with respect.

Until then, Denmark — and Europe — should distance itself clearly and decisively.

Because dignity is not for sale.

And respect is not optional.

Sunday, a quiet day

 Today is Sunday, I can hear the birds outside in the dark.  RU3 is playing gentle music, time for meditation and writing.  They played Vivaldi's Trout music earlier on, a favourite.  It always reminds me of tickling for trout on a Welsh farm when I was a child.  Wandering down to the small river at the bottom of the farm, the pig often joining us when we went fishing. 

Optimism or pessimism as the news unfold.  There is a distinct note of hopefulness that #47 will be trounced soon, even his most sycophantic followers must see the folly of his speeches.  He changed the nature of how we see the world but then along came a challenger, Mark Carney, who had been governor of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada and painted a different picture for us.

Adam, Andrew's architect friend for the latest news on the restructuring of the house was here yesterday.  Well the two balconies are out, no surprise there but it means that the kitchen will not be enlarged into the small back yard, a biggish change there. But that area still has to be dug out to make a window for the basement room at that end.  There is a large window in the other basement room, along with a fireplace    For me I suppose the xxxxx history be kept.  Which means flooring, not glamourous old wood but chunky lengths that already give as you walk on them and peer down into the gaps.  No dormer window at the very top though there are several velux windows for light.  It makes it all cheaper of course.

Old treasures.  Chinese cups.  I was looking for these the  other  day, they are in the attic and not basement thank goodness.  So fragile, so pretty and so useless! I had come on some old news of a Chinese cup fetching a lot of money and it made me think of these,  Basically who in the family gets them.

Edit for me: My Precious leading on to Heritage Trust What has it got in its pocketses? | The Heritage Trust

23rd January 2026

 Well here I sit with my coffee wondering what to write.  

So I knit and listen to audios, my  cardigan is finished and beautifully warm, this comes from using two threads, one of the main colour and the other is 'kid silk' which produces a halo round the knitted garment and 'gingers' the colour up slightly.

Listening to a Kate Ellis book, think it is a new one out 'The Cadaver Game'.  Rather gruesome for it covers the hunting of humans instead of foxes.  Neither sport is needed!  Again the book is written with two threads running through. A historical past wickedness and a modern one in which two teenagers get killed.  Am I reading the wrong books I wonder?

Just made the coffee (gave up writing this yesterday) and Sam has arrived, tea for her.  She tells me that she and her husband are going to the Midlands to stay in a pod with a hot tub.  I burst out laughing and think of my  old friends in Normanby with their hot tub in the garden.  Hot tubbing is not my idea of heaven in January but she says it is nice to have a bath with a view.

I know spring is not quite on the way but the first bunch of daffodils are in the house.  99p as always, how do they do it?  But it is a reminder that the first earlies still come from the fields of Cornwall.  In this photo you can see the yellow of Euphorbia, early in April but its handsome leaves provide a backdrop to other flowers later on in the year 

Soon, on the first of February will be Imbolc, the Gaelic festival of new birth and spring.  In Christianity the date of the saint Brighid. Farmers will be out lambing bringing forth those little delights of scampering lambs, that sadly we eat. 

 But not to end on a forlorn hope, the Davos meeting gave someone the thumbs down, he was humiliated in the eye of the world, what a blessed relief when the hands of a clock move on and it just may bring lighter relief. 

Forgot, I picked this up this morning, guess who it reminded me of?

A resilient speech

 A great speech by Mark Carney.

18th January 2026 Puddingstone

 A WIP or a work in progress.  Chasing puddingstones.  You will see from the walls that these churches used up every bit of stone and Roman tiling in the area.  Then patterned the walls with supporting puddingstone.  Flint is of course also used as is plaster and lathe, giving rise to pargetting as an art form.

And why Puddingstone? because the pebbles in the dark matrix looked like a pudding, Christmas maybe!

There is hardly any stone in Essex, so every scrap that could be found to build a wall was used.  Interestingly brick was also used from as far back as the Romans, that is why you see the reinforcing edges of churches where Roman brick is used and later on brick that came over as ballast was used  from the Netherland.

Ingatestone (I think)

Fairstead Church.  P/S, Roman tile and flint
to be found here

Ingatestone Church.  The puddingstone is layered with Roman tile.

Broomfield Church. Was the stone already in situ and incorporated into the foundations?

Well we did this church in 2008. Paul has as always written it up beautifully.  

I love the paragraph out of the church pamphlet....

“The Roman tiles are a reminder of the story still related fifty years ago. The plan had originally been to build the church at the top of New Barn Lane, called Dragon’s Foot in the tithe maps, there is a depression, now somewhat ploughed out but still deep enough to be a dragon’s footprint. This was the site of a Roman building which still yields numerous hypocaust tiles and bricks, so the story is a delightfully muddled memory of the Saxons trundling cartloads of Roman bricks down to the Green on the orders of their new Norman masters to use as quoins since there were no local stone quarries.”

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St.Botolph's Pudding stone  ??? at Beauchamp Roding It hardly looks like a pudding stone but it is referenced as a pudding stone on the Megalithic Portal.

The Ugley Green puddingstone

The 2011 blog on this is here

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Saint Mary, the virgin. Great Leighs.  Look at that Norman doorway has someone cleaned it? 

Also, have just stumbled on Beeleigh Abbey, which is situated next to the River Chelmer and the original building is still intact. Also we once walked all this way along the river to Beeleigh but never found the abbey, all I remember is the beautiful demoiselles dragonflies skimming over the water.

Beeleigh Abbey

17th January 2026

From Perth, Australia, a non-profit idea that rebuilds war torn places.  Definitely worth donating to. Crisis Construction. Maybe the new 'peace organisation' being formed by the American government regime will take note, as will  Tony Blair. 

 

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This photo is from a visit we made to the family when they were holidaying in Whitby. Our rather plump and getting old Lucy was climbing the steps (not the199 steps) but steps from the small beach.  And it reminded me of trying to get her up the three  flights of stairs to the apartment the family had rented.

Lucy was reluctant to go up the stairs.  In other words she refused.  People came out of their apartments to encourage her on, one person even brought out ham to tempt. But no go, until my daughter marched down the stairs picked up a very heavy Lucy and carried her up the stairs, vowing she would never do it again.

Though Whitby is the 'in' place to bring your dog on holiday, it is rather steep in places.

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Not very funny but passable

Always fancied one of these, a curiosity cabinet

A blue sky for once.  I noticed something gleaming above the roof line, it was a heron.  Hardly to be seen in the photo. Maybe it is the one that occasionally sits beneath the bridge on the way to the bus station.  But it sat there for sometime sunning itself.

Carreg Samson

Definitely a favourite.  Carreg Samson, just says "you think I can't do this?" That heavy capstone must have taken some engineering to get it atop the orthostats.  Was it a top down or bottom up build I wonder.  There is a grace as to how the vertical stones lean.  This monster lives in a field, a fairly long walk down the drive to the farm and then you spy it in the field.  I remember Bucky and Loie coming with us and Bucky looking for more stones.  But look at the solid stone and green hedge behind and you will see large stones also in the wall.  Intriguing, what has been lost here I wonder.

Carreg Samson

Above this sea stands one cromlech, Samson Carreg facing the curving coastline, the ground is not high, softly sloping to the small bay beneath and the tiny island offset against the beach. Was this the reason the burial mound was placed here? It is an elegant statement of large standing stones that balance a chunky capstone. Julian Cope says of its stones that they are shot through with amber quartzite, it has become sculptured on the landscape like an "ancient stone rhinoceros, caught mid-charge in one instant and destined to remain here forever".  From an old blog.

Dear Moss my companion for many years on these forays into prehistory.  He looked after me and I shall never forget one time in an enclosure with a ruined chapel.  There was a couple in there and Moss seemed to go up and bite the man's bottom.  Profuse apologies from me, but the man said don't worry he was only protecting you.  Moss loved these holidays in Wales.

Saint Samson gave his names to a lot of prehistoric places and this 2009 blog gives some of them. 

Rebecca Solnit comprehensive essay on what is going on in America

Carreg Coetan

 I have decided to feature the cromlechs of Wales each day that I have seen in the past.  It is a bit like a revue and an opportunity to allow my mind to think about wormholes the mind goes down and comes up with no answers.

Carreg Coetan - Newport

You have to admit our progress into smaller gravestones was a technical advancement but Neolithic people were already studying the weight and balance of these cromlech stones. The upright stones look like a dog or seal, balancing the capstone on their noses. One asks the question were these stones shaped like that or were they natural but something tells me that shoulder curve was shaped.

These burial places sit all over Britain, relicts of the past, immovable almost, that is why they are left.  This cromlech is but a few miles from Pentre Ifan, were they tribal points in the landscape.  A stone monument declaring this is where so and so tribe lives.  Can we imagine the ceremonies of committing the dead either to fire or the birds in excarnation?  A 2007 blog here.

Geologically the different types of stone in our country is many and varied.  I often used to walk along the coast path of Pembrokeshire marvelling at the horizontal layers of rocks.  You would see the same in the small quarries or the stone houses, the bronzed nature of some of the rock layers.

Stone is beautiful, you have only to look at Bath buildings to understand that and also in the prehistoric use of them.  They would be chosen for their colour and durability.  The Bluestones of Stonehenge were brought down from the Presceli Hills, and the glint of quartz is often to be found in some stones.

A link to puddingstones

Puddingstone Trail on the Megalithic portal

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Last night I listened to a Green Party women's discussion on Zoom.  It was mostly about bullying within the party and I guess control of what was being said.  Now if you know the GP it bases itself on a democratic method of discussion within the party.  Everything fair and equal.  But then of course you must add humans to the pot and that is where the disarray happens.

Lots of words bubble to the surface, am I an ecofeminist for instance, do I have strong views on misogyny and trans people, to a degree but whether I am willing to spend endless hours discussing it - no.  I do feel though that since Andrew has committed himself to helping out locally I should take an interest.

I looked up the bio on Wiki of a certain person who bullied our wing of the GP in Bath, and remembered when he was a young lad  working on an excavation with us, think it was the medieval pottery kiln at Chippenham.  He was full of himself then, Derek Wall should have followed archaeology not politics.

Rambling

 From the Heathen Witch: "I took the road less travelled, and now the f**k  don't know where I am"   Loved it.  There was also good Brian Bilston poem about a plea for a no news day.  

Prayer for Uninteresting Times

Send me a slow news day,
a quiet, subdued day,
in which nothing much happens of note,
save for the passing of time,
the consumption of wine,
and a re-run of Murder, She Wrote.

Grant me a no news day,
a spare-me-your-views day,
in which nothing much happens at all,
except a few hours together
some regional weather,
a day we can barely recall.

As someone who watches Midsomer Murders because of its gentle murdering nature (you know it is not true). I sometimes think I cannot keep up with the adults you find in blogger land.  How can they sit through blood and gore, over-sexed maniacs, and opera, yes opera is a personal hatred and I think I do not understand the human race.  Here by the way, I am talking about the films they watch not what they get up to in Blogger land.

I haven't succumbed to the virus that is going around, though Andrew has been coughing terribly but of course there is still time.  

So what photos today, a Welsh cromlech - Pentre Ifan.  How to find it, just drive down some Welsh lanes out of Newport,  Park in the small layby, go through the gate, wander past the foxgloves and then find truly magnificent stones echoing the bare bones of a cromlech, for it would probably have had soil and stones to bury it.  I see I visited in 2007 my great love affair with Wales must have started from this year.  Here is a description of it. See how cleverly the capstone sits on the upright stones.  Balanced delicately on what must have been worked stones.  You can see this method in other cromlechs nearby.

I forgot to boast.  Got wordle in two this morning...........

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.