A magpie's miscellany
Well America has responded with a definite thumbs down to their new government yesterday. Did you see New York? In my heart such nonsense that came from the evil three would soon be shown for the empty greediness of corruption. I don't know where America goes from here but the battle is on and I think democracy will win.
I have been listening Katty Kay and Scaramucci, you can find them here. I find their partnership on their podcasts as an intelligent discussion on the woes of America. It is like living in a parallel world, and it was summoned up by one comment in the podcast - I wouldn't be surprised at this point if Trump declares himself a god and marries a horse. As of course the Irish high Kings in Dark Age Ireland were supposed to do at Tara I believe (and I think they mated!)
The ridiculous and surreal has pranced onto the world stage. Has anyone read H. G. Wells- War of the World. There are two groups of people the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are pretty small blonde haired people living on the surface of the Earth, the Morlocks on the other hand are dark creatures living in the dark subterranean caves below. Sadly the Morlocks keep the Eloi for food, and they tend to their needs and the Eloi who are not very bright live uncomplicated lives, not understanding what is happening..........
The other thing I caught last night was the Wandering Turnip in Hawarth of all places, marvelling about the small shops open up the hill to The Rectory, home of the three Bronte girls. He also went up on the moors, to find the supposed farmhouse where Cathy lived in "Wuthering Heights". Bit daft, and it was a rather ugly old ruined building but interesting all the same. Sometimes I see England as a whole theme land of past history.
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| Heptonstall Weaver's cottage |
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| The grave of David and Grace Hartley (King) taken from Geograph - Nigel Lloyd |
North Stoke: 22/02/2022 Palindrome Day
North Stoke: 30th January 2023
North Stoke: Clipped and counterfeited |
| Rocky Valley carving, date of carving unknown |
This morning when I woke up I thought of the little wild white wind or wood anemone. It is strange how the mind unconsciously remembers the time of the flowers. Well I know it will be flowering up at Langridge near Bath and also in Blake Wood near Chelmsford, so I wish them well in their sanctuaries. I turned to Richard Jeffries writing. He came from Swindon, not exactly the town you would expect to have such a fine 19th century writer but there you are.
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| The tiny windflower jostles amicably with the violet |
Did you know that the bright green of our fields so beloved by the farmer to feed his herds, relies on nitrogen and the nitrogen will slowly work outwards destroying the wild as it goes. Our rivers are so polluted by farm waste and sewage that the abundant water life ceases to exist. I don't really worry about people being able to swim in the rivers and lakes but I do worry about the fish that once lived in clean waters. An earlier blog.........................
A concise description of a flower that I have never been able to grow, though it has acquired the name of Dane's Blood or Dane's Flower, (unusual beauty deserves unusual origins says Grigson)
But it did grow on the Devil's Dyke and Fleam Dyke which were associated with the Danes."
It is quite an exciting time of the year, the small Pasque flower (for Easter) is making an appearance and also the Snakeshead Fritillaria flower, a rather exotic flower and though cultivated now, the one place you can see it in the wild is North Meadow near Cricklade in Gloucester.
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| Fritillary |
Humour: Like the thread of silver that used to run through our old pound notes, so has humour run through the blogs lately. So I set a very forgetful mind to work out who made me laugh - it was a mixed bag!
Remember 'The tub of Lard' that was 1993, when Roy Hattersley the politician did not appear on 'Have I got news for you'. They substituted a tub of lard for Hattersley, it was original and funny as they addressed the tube of lard quite seriously.
Ian Hislop and Paul Merton always have on the tips of their tongues a funny remark, my two favourites by the way. Ian Hislop latest was recently, when asked to talk about the latest crisis with America. He said, and here I am paraphrasing, it will be four years of glorious fun, there maybe a few nuclear bombs involved - but hey-ho.
Spike Milligan's rather droll outlook on life is captured brilliantly on his gravestone "I told you I was ill".
My one and only joke which is so pathetic.
There were two dogs who lived in Rome, one was a Catholic dog the other a Protestant dog. One Friday wandering together through the streets the Protestant dog cocked his leg against the Vatican. The Catholic dog looked at him furiously, 'if it wasn't Friday I would bite your balls of for that'.
Now most people won't know why. But of course you don't eat meat on Friday just fish by Catholic command, silly but it always made me laugh.
Home news: the Swiss trip is off, Matilda was sick all night, apparently Nora virus is doing the rounds through her friends so the trip is cancelled much to my daughter's relief. Funnily enough she and Andrew went to listen to an older comedian at a club on Thursday night. She didn't find him very funny, but if I remember will look his name up. She was cross with him because he picked on them in the front row.
Andrew's laugh is always enormous, he laughs at most things. But is funny how humour and laughter helps the human heart to relax. One more, when the bet was on that Liz Truss leadership would not outlive the life of a lettuce. Guess who won? the lettuce of course. It was an Iceberg lettuce, spiteful of course but humour can also be cutting.
what can I say? America is despised by an awful lot of people at the moment, although we love many of you but it is basically because of your government's outrageous behaviour to several countries. Blatant takeovers, I don't think. Usha Vance is not welcome (wife of JD Vance) in Greenland, no one wants to host her, so her husband grasping the stinging nettle bravely is going to inspect the American base that is there. A show of military force maybe.
We find ourselves in extraordinary times, perhaps it is a good idea for the EU and Gt. Britain to revue their defense spending. It would never happen to us? Perhaps Starmer instead of rolling over and having his belly rubbed like a dog by the Americans should actually stand up and bark aggressively. Canada is all ready for the fight, though economically it will cause drastic losses.
But I am beginning to wonder if the Democratic party in America is just sitting back on its heels and waiting for the great downfall of the blessed three and not prepared to fight.
It's Over; Mark Carney speaks - Life is a daily bulletin of weird news.
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I wish life could return to its old ways, messy of course but then humans rule the roost. Here, Matilda returns home today, she goes off with her mother to Switzerland this weekend. She has finally nailed a journalist job, online magazine. She has been working in an Iranian restaurant in London for the last couple of months to pay for her share of the flat, so it seems she may be off on a writing career, bless her.
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| My Mother's day card, opened early. |
chiefs and Indians; I am not sure where I am going with this. But chiefs and indians was a game we used to play on archaeological digs as volunteers. Jim one of our team would say 'hey up, here comes the chiefs' (meaning the archaeologists). Here were the experts though they could be talking rot but we had to be attentive and quiet.
Now of course we have to have leaders, foremen, teachers, sister nurses and even politicians but the thing we learn that each and everyone of them is just as silly as ourselves. They are not divine gods - listening to Professor Ronald Hutton yesterday and his practical approach to the telling of history always impresses me.
But again I go off the subject, as I have often written about Lillie, now 18 years old and she belongs to a scout group. She is a leader and trustee which is a bit of responsibility, especially when she has to act and talk with adults, so this holiday back at home she was nervous. There had been a bit of a falling out whilst she was away with the other leaders, leaving the group split in half and she was worried. Luckily she managed it fine and this third day, she has been every day, will monitor a walking competition.
Professor Ronald Hutton: Yesterday he described the builders of Stonehenge as 'cowboys' (note: someone who does a quick lousy job of building work). The trilithons of the monument are based on a wooden method of building, a tenon on the two uprights fits nicely underneath the horizontal stone. But apparently on one trilithon there was a long, vertical stone and a short vertical stone, so the long stone went down say five feet (they often go down much deeper) and the shorter stone rested in a shallow hole. Of course it fell down in time.
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Words as always interest me. Fascism is the Word at the moment. Terrifying to many of us. Tell me why are people voting for it don't they realise how serious it is?
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Wiki
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| Summer. Did you notice our one day of warmth yesterday. The weather is changing today! I have just eaten breakfast, never talk about food much. But it was a favourite, large chestnut mushrooms on sourdough with garlic and Maggi for flavour. Lunch will be a homemade soup and the main meal of the day depends on who is cooking. Last night for instance it was a chicken stew, tonight it maybe a takeaway. I have just been watching a video on rations in the last war, the fat content was very meagre and the person who was doing a week long experiment said she felt hungry all day but more energised. There is also news of the fire in the substation near Heathrow airport and the airport closed down till midnight, throwing passengers into disarray as they find themselves in different parts of the world. There is also this rather disturbing news on Sky News a French researcher has been denied entry to the US for what he has written in messages on his phone about Trump. The other good news, and the reason I was thumbing through my photos, was that they were saying on the news that a new forest will be planted in the South-West of England. That's funny, they were talking about it 14 years ago, or nearabout. I think that this is called 'carrot dangling' to keep us happy in this time of difficulties. Anyway I did not find the photos. Land like this up at North Stoke.  |
Words: Thank you Murr for these three, "petrified pansies of progressivism" those of us who think that Climate Change is being woke will enjoy being a pansy.
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| Up against the wall! |
I love pansies by the way they freely seed themselves everywhere, they have such sweet faces, it is the viola, that tiny heart-shaped flower called Heartsease which is the prettiest.
Well parts of the family are back. Lillie arrived from London, Andrew in the morning and Karen in the afternoon. She had made an appointment at the doctors (same day) and had been triaged over the internet, and the doctor deemed it serious enough for an appointment, so she arrived in Tod, went to the doctors, and got all of her prescriptions as well in less than under an hour.
As in many parts of the country we do not have enough doctors at our enormous clinic, so people get passed down the line to faraway doctors. The problem of course starts at the reception desk, so the poor receptionists are at the mercy of patients on the phone but they are slowly changing things in the 'white elephant' of a clinic that was built a few years ago.. There are stupid things patients do - I mean everyone call at eight in the morning, it stands to reason you are going to be put on hold.
Anyways, someone wrote on the local thread how GOOD the service was, and mostly everyone agreed with her, except the 'negative nellies' another two words to add to the pot.
I have been collecting the writings of discontent around the world as the insane mess that Tr*ump/M*sk are creating unfolds. I love the following song from Canada. A battle cry maybe and childish to boot, but far from being leaders of the world, the world has turned on them with the power of words to show up their foolishness. Funny coincidence, the polar bear in Dark Materials, the one that Lyra rides is a Pansbjorn.
"Finn was was walking through a wood one day and happened to spy a man sitting at the top of a tree. A blackbird on his right shoulder, and in his left hand a bronze vessel filled with water, in which swam a skittish trout, and a stag at the bottom of the tree. The man would crack a nut, half of which he ate himself the other half he gave to the blackbird. Then he would take an apple out of the bronze vessel, half of which he ate himself the other half he threw to the stag below. Then he would take a sip of the water in the vessel, as did the stag and the blackbird - they would all drink together. And then his followers asked Finn who he in the tree was for they did not recognise him on account of the hood of disguise which he wore."
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| The stag headed god called Cernunnos. Surrounded by animals. In one hand a serpent in the other a torc. |
Tidying Up: I have decided to draw out the little tales of Celtic telling. It is to do with the old saints, the Celtic ones, that wandered round our land and others of course, preaching but there is a whole swathe of opinion that the term 'Celtic' is a descriptive term that has come in through over-romanticism, starting in the 18th century, of past people.
A lot of the stories come from the Irish tradition of storytelling and old books still exist with the dates of battles and kings and ancestral lineage. So imagination may have run riot but there is still a small truth hidden somewhere in all the myths.
This thought came to me when on listening to a talk on Saturday. The speaker had written a book on tales from Lindisfarne, but the thing missing was hardly any reference to Lindisfarne??
I did enjoy the talk, though there was a thread of the modern day through it which was gender identity, she identified herself as she/they. Now my family will tell you I get completely confused by the use of they, but that is my age obviously. Also obviously trying to work out whether people from the Celtic Age were LGBTQ, was a stretch too far ;)
Lindsfarne Island like Iona Island on the West side of England was the place where the first early monasteries congregated and were the place where many important Celtic saints came from, they accrued their stories and preached far and wide. They took some of the practice of imitating the Eastern monks, finding lonely places to live like hermits but also preached. I also love the idea of them walking around with a bell, a bangu to summon the congregation in the open air.
So I start with probably my favourite female saint, Melangell, she saved a hare from a local hunting prince and was rewarded some land which forever became a sanctuary from the kill of the hunt. The first environmental person to stand up for the rights of animals maybe.
The Story of
Melangell
The story of Saint Melangell and her little hare. She was the daughter
of King Cufwlch and Ethni of Ireland and she fled to Wales to escape a forced
marriage. She settled in Pennant at the head of a valley, and whilst one day
sitting in a clearing she heard the sound of a hunt, dogs and horses galloping
up the valley. This was Prince Brochwael of Powys hunting hares. As she sat a
hare came into the clearing and Melangell hid it in the sleeve of her dress to
protect it. When it peeped out the dogs fled, and so the Prince gave her the
land on which he hunted, and she lived at Pennant for another 37 years and no
animal was killed in her sanctuary. Hares were known as wyn bach Melangell or Melangell's little lambs, and to kill a hare was an act of sacrilege.
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| 1795 drawing of the hunt on rood screen |
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| Church of Melangell, Pennant |
Not much to write about. My back has suddenly given up, think it was spinning some yellow wool yesterday, the different way of sitting. I sit in a three sided cocoon, to the right is the sewing machine on its table, in front of me is my larger table with computer screen and to the left my spinning wheel.
This afternoon I go to a talk on 'Legends from Lindisfarne' which should be interesting. These talks at the Folklore Centre get plenty of people. Also I have been deserted (once more) as daughter and Andrew off to Germany this morning to visit Andrew's relatives in Munich for a few days.
Andrew who is the most affable person you are likely to meet, spends some of his evenings on the computer to the young children in Munich teaching them how to programme.
What else, I have just read the most comprehensive blow by blow, or at least date by date of the horrendous would be takeover of Canada by Trump. I cannot say America because I believe if American people were to read the document they would be horrified. Carney seems the man for the job, his ex job as the chair of the Bank of England should give him some leeway in the fight against the loathsome three.
Things I miss: Lazy spaniels who can't be arsed to open their Xmas presents.
Roses in their state of supreme loveliness
Each year I write of cherry trees in March. Early to flower their blossom attracts the bees and the butterflies. The white clouds of blossom against a blue sky, a revelation after winter.
But Paul also had another ceremony when the blossom came out, it was the drinking of hot Saki wine out in the garden to welcome the two cherry tree's he had planted as they blossomed. We would choose our small Japanese cups and then pour the wine for each other. I can also remember eating soya beans. They came in their pods and were hot and salty, you sort of sucked the beans out of the pod, it always reminded me of childhood when we podded peas and chewed the inner sweet layer of the pod. A good greeting for Spring.
Paul's friend who lived in Hawaii, was a Saki wine merchant, and every so often would come to London to sell his wines to restaurants there. An American, he was also at Kyoto at the temple the same time as Paul, so it was a long friendship. He also edited an air magazine in Hawaii, presumably for reading on the plane.
Here they are at Rievaulx Abbey, tucked deep in its valley away from the troubles of the world. I think Chris was more of a friend of Gary Snyder than Paul. But Gary Snyder who was also at the Ryozen-an temple helping with the translation of a book.
"Why did Joseph say that no one would read what he wrote? Why did the villagers tie tin cans to the tail of his dog? Why did the peacocks shriek and the bells ring? Why was there no mercy shown to him and no respect and no love? With agonising repetition the diary asks these questions; but there was no answer. At last, one morning in December 1839, the Rector took his gun, walked into the beech wood near his home, and shot himself dead."
Virginia Woolf's essay on the Reverend Skinner and the world which so plagued him. Picking out sentences to allow the thoughts to roam ;) You can find the whole story here. I actually felt sorry for him, he had a parish of unruly villagers, miners in the village of Camerton, near Bath. Children who laughed at him and then of course his children died because it was Victorian times and disease stalked the land. But through all this he traced the prehistory of the area around him and occasionally following in his footsteps I also have felt the 'pull' of the unknown. The sense of excitement as you look across an empty field and imagine the life that once lived there.
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| Probably Diane and her hound |
So what else caught my eye? It was one of those walks on a lovely August day from the Avebury stones to Silbury Hill to witness the gathering of the neo-pagans. Sometimes life is not about religion for some people but about a belief system and the need to dress up. So as I have observed the neopagans, sometimes full of anger over the fact that Stonehenge is not their temple of druidical worship (as dictated by the laws that be) Or singing and drumming to welcome spring or farewell to summer.
So an old 2008 blog mooching along on a walk, with all my senses alert to the world around me, and this time I walk towards humans not away from them!
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