6th November 2024

Today is a black day

5th November 2024

 

The Peace Of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Why that poem? yesterday I was hunting around my books for the Welsh vicar R. S. Thomas gloomy poems.  A favourite of both mine and Weaver of Grasses heart. But I could not find the one I wanted.  Today of course has brought a different set of circumstances, the beginning of the voting in America, so perhaps an American farmer will do equally well.  

So as dawn struggles to emerge through the cloudy grey skies and I wait for the geese to come in to their daytime quarters.  I will recommend another video to listen to.  Again it is a historic look back through the history of Russia and the Soviet Union but Professor Tim Snyder is seemingly an academic well read, so you will find him here.  Also, if you go to Youtube he has is own space in which he talks.  I will not plead mercy for it being political, or topical and should not be on a blog.  Unless we get politics and history firmly learnt about there is no point to grumbling about our own British small history.

So having girded up my loins today ??? Well the last few weeks I have been nervous of putting my quilt together, but after breakfast I cleared the kitchen table and once the shopping is done with, will lay the three layers together and pin them.

And small fact learnt from watching Alice Roberts the other day on her travels round the East.  Turkey was unfolded in full beautiful colour and that glorious blue, turquoise colour tiles that I love so much.  Of course, turquoise/Turkey, though the word meandered through the French as well.

This is the wool I am spinning at the moment, my camera on the phone has coloured it almost turquoise but in real life it is a much gentler blue the blue of a bird's egg.

2nd November 2024

Well in light of people downplaying the budget that Reeves has put her neck on the line for, the following is what our Labour member of parliament Josh Fenton-Glenn has written on F/B. I note that the inheritance tax as far as small farms are concerned has not been addressed. But never worry dear people, I shall keep an eye on that. And with all those clever lawyers around I am sure the problem will be overcome.

Two sides will interpret the figures, Mr/Mrs Glum and then there are the people who accept that life has some difficulties. Count your blessings.

"AN HISTORIC BUDGET FOR CALDER VALLEY AND THE NHS

Today I sat in the House of Commons for the first budget delivered by a female chancellor in this country's history. The budget was delivered against a backdrop of a damaged economy and a public realm on it’s knees. It was a budget rooted in reality, based on the first spending review of all government departments since 2021. So this was our chance to balance the economy and reverse austerity of over a decade. Cuts don’t show when you wake up the next day, but over years not one of us can fail to see the impact on the country. It is a budget for our NHS and for the people of Calder Valley.

The budget announced today was a bold plan to stabilise public finances, investing to drive growth. It addresses the issues we face here in Calder Valley, whilst protecting your wage slip. There is a huge amount to cover, but here are some of the key points for our flood-prone constituency of rural areas and market towns:

An increase in the National Living Wage of 6.7% to £12.21 per hour from April 2025. No increase in basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT.

£1 billion to extend the Household Support Fund and Discretionary Housing Payments in 2025-26, which will be used by local authorities to address immediate hardship and crisis.

Maintain the state pension triple lock for the duration of this Parliament. The basic and new state pension will increase by 4.1% in 2025/26, meaning over 12 million pensioners will receive up to £470 per year.

Working age benefits to be increased in 2025/26 by the consumer price index inflation rate of 1.7% and a new fair repayment rate which caps debt repayments made in Universal Credit.

Freeze on fuel duty and extending the temporary 5p cut for one year, meaning you will pay no more at the pumps.

Fairer business rates, with specific support for small and medium-sized businesses and those in retail, hospitality and leisure. Alongside this, support for small businesses to implement changes to employer National Insurance payments, including increasing employment allowance.

Support for our small brewers in the Calder Valley through a cut to alcohol duty on draught products.

More opportunities to own a home. Alongside an ambitious programme of house building, stamp duty will increase for second homes, buy-to-let, and commercial purchases of residential property.

Investment in the natural environment and in climate mitigation and adaptation to protect the economy from the impacts of climate change, including a more productive and environmentally sustainable agricultural sector in England.

Investment in flood resilience to support the building of new flood defences alongside the maintenance of existing assets to protect communities.

Investment in improving public transport, including the electrification of the TransPennine route. This will mean fast connections from Huddersfield, brilliant news for residents in the Lower Valley.

Real terms increase in core local government spending power of around 3.2%, including at least £600 million of new grant funding to support social care. Longer-term reforms to allow local councils like Calderdale to plan for the future.

£6.7 billion of capital funding in 2025/26 for education in England, a real terms increase of 19% from 2024/25. This includes £1.4 billion for the school rebuilding programme, an increase of £550 million on this year. There is also a £1 billion uplift for SEND.

And the greatest investment priority of all for this government, our NHS. It should be there when we need it. Spending will increase by £22.6 billion from 2023/24 to 2025/26. This provides a two-year average real terms NHS growth rate of 4.0%, the highest since before 2010 (excluding the pandemic). This will support the NHS to deliver 40,000 extra elective appointments a week and make progress towards the commitment that patients should expect to wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment.

There is so much more to say, and in the coming weeks I’ll be seeking to clarify some of the finer details in terms of impact for the projects here. But for now, I just wanted to take a moment to highlight Labour’s ambition for the country. Times are still tough, but in the longer term this will be transformative and I’m excited to work to deliver it.

Guardian article

All reactions:

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31st October 2024

Well that wasn't too bad was it?  Of course I mean The Budget, Reeves managed beautifully I thought.  Yes I know there were things some people are cross about and apparently from what I have heard she did not go for more tax from the rich and you get a penny less on beer, tradition always goes down well with budgets.

Above is some of the photos I took of Hebden Bridge, as usual I was hurried on by my family.  The above photo is of the park as we waited for the bus (20 minutes).  As an aside Andy Burnham in Manchester has refused to raise the bus fare from £2 to £3 for Manchester, not following his government then.

I did not listen to the hee-hawing braying sound of parliament as the measures were enunciated.  It is such a pantomime of excessive bad behaviour, that I wonder whether Rachel Reeves should have made some enforcing laws of good behaviour as well.

Happy Halloween everyone and remember to lock your doors!

Earlier blog on Halloween 2009

 “It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world." Mary Oliver

28th October 2024

flickr sent me an email saying that my storage on their website would soon disappear. So I have started picking some photos out.  Helmsley is a pretty little North Yorkshire town, a small Co-op and a delicious delicatessen shop.  We never went to the above building so I am not sure it would be open but the walled garden had been taken over by a local group and there was a good little cafe attached to the garden centre.

Helmsley Castle

Helmsley Walled gardens 2015

 Garden history

27th October 2024

It has been a slightly weird week, the comings and goings.  Andrew stopped over for a few days to work.  He loves to walk, so I got asked did I need anything from the shops several times which was sweet of him.

Lillie is back.  On the kitchen table is at least an 20" inch pizza box, with a pizza inside it must have come back from the Hippodrome party last night, they always over order at the theatre.  She went to two parties yesterday and today is taking us to Hebden Bridge for breakfast at her old workplace.

I was supposed to roast the chicken for tea last night but was also out to a meeting, more of that later. So we had to have a takeaway, my choice is a curry Sag Aloo, a mild spinach and potato curry, which easily makes two meals, also I have managed to note it down for future reference!

The meeting was about James 1st - Witch Hunter.  The case against witches had devolved from the Catholic faith's hatred of the worship of the devil or daemonology - Satanism.  James mother was Queen Mary, and James was to inherit the kingship of England as James 1st though he had been King in Scotland as James

Superstitious nonsense to us, but in a more simpler time when the storm raged, or a cow fell sick, it was easy enough to blame local women. Also easy enough, with the use of torture to extract a confession.  The Catholic church has a lot of blame for those centuries of cruelty.  It was in medieval Europe that the wretched Inquisitor came into being and the auto de feu whereby people were burnt at the stake.

Off topic:  I quite like the fact that Phillip Pullman in his classic 'Dark Materials' also imagined a daemon but this time the daemons were animals, a representation of our inner souls.  So that in the film everyone has an animal attached to him, but if you kill that animal the person dies.

One thing to note when attending meetings round here.  Hebden Bridge is an 'up and coming' place to live.  So there are what I call plenty of long haired middle-aged hippies around, female equivalent of course being long skirts.  Now I would have thought that such a cult would have died out by now.  I enjoy the odd lecture at the Folk Centre but there again the subject matters are odd and even encompasses the word WEIRD but which is a delight to my soul ;)

Also of course as the clocks have fallen back I have an odd hour to fill.

James 1st and V1 dates  1566- 1625

He was king of Scotland as James V1 from the year after his birth 1567 and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1603 after Elizabeth's  1st death.

26th October 2024

 Well thanks to Bensozia for this weekly link.   Southerners moving to the far reaches of Orkney (bit worrying) to sell the glam life to us but what a marvellous acquisition this large, rather ugly house on Rousay is. 

Truly I hope not too many of the elite class move to the Orkney islands, apart from anything, they have to cross choppy seas. But still,  fashion is fashion and the pioneers are setting out to conquer or stylise maybe? the Orkneys, don't worry though, there are 10,000 islands I believe round the British Isles.

Enjoy the photos and watch the stamp of our designer couple on Westness House, who I have never met before in the land of the internet.

But apparently the Pre-Raphaelite designers have been down from London in the 19th century. thought I recognised the wallpaper and fire tiles.

There is a fascinating history in Rousay Remembered here of land ownership for the Westness House and for the whole area.  And an old photo taken from the site mentioned.  There is a wood next to the garden, trees are a rarity on these islands only those who were rich could afford to plant them, but of course it gave protection from the cutting winds.

There is almost an excoriating plainness to the frontage.  It looked better under a cloak of ivy

 

It wasn't all roses of course!!

25th October 2024

 It is 7.30, Lillie has just arrived after travelling all night on the coach from London, two bus rides one from Manchester to Rochdale and a bus from there to here. She reckons the trains are too expensive.

She has come home to see 'Bugsy Malone' at the Hippodrome, put on by the young drama group.  Yesterday evening the young Beaver scouts went by to see it, chattering loudly like a flock of birds in the sky.  When they came back it was more noisy but this time - bang, bang, bang.

Yesterday a knock on the door, it was two Jehovah Witnesses standing on the pavement.  Come to tell me that the Lord was good and caring for our Earth.  I told them I was a pagan and therefore had my own nature gods to choose from (I am not a pagan or religiously inclined) and they went away.

But it did make me wonder what did I believe in and question my thinking many years ago when Gaia came on the scene.  James Lovelock, an eminent scientist had been struck by the fact how all the gases on this Earth seemed to produce just the right atmosphere for life on this planet.

How everything worked with each other, it is called homeostasis, when everything works together and keeps a balance that is just right.  Now the argument, and a very valid one of course, is that us humans have just mucked it all up.  What with the industrial age and now over population.  Our plant life, animals, insects all are disappearing with our use of artificial pesticides and herbicides.  As we destroy the insects, and that valuable of all pollinators, the bee, whether honeybee or bumblebee, all these species are slowly being killed off.  If there are no insects for the birds they die off, if there are no fish in the sea, the great whales and lesser dolphins die off due to hunger.

There is plenty of action to try and save all these creatures, it has been a sad summer without many butterflies in this country.  But the truth lies in a very different venue.  We have to stop! Driving our cars around for any little item, we have to learn to take less from the world around us.  Not demand everything served to us on a plate. 

It is not all bleak.

Weaver of Grass

 let you know that there will be a Celebration of the Life of Pat Thistlethwaite (Weaver of Grass) in Leyburn this Thursday afternoon (2pm). It's at The Garden Rooms at Tennants. I can't make it myself.

Well today is rather a special day, a Memorial, or better still a Celebration of Weaver's life.  I cannot make it down to Leyburn but I shall be there in spirit at least.  Pat faced life with a lovely energy and time for everyone in blogland, she amassed many followers.  Followers who listened to her wise words about her life.  Her life with The Farmer, wandering over the fields and finding the wild flowers together.  She faced death stoically and said her last words to all of us with kindness and I think cheerfulness.  She was the example we should all be.

When I think of her, I wished I could have visited her, I know she loved the restaurant at Tennants Auction Rooms, being dined by close friends and her new red leather jacket to wear.  But I never did.  I visualised the journey Paul and I would have made, it would have been from Normanby in North Yorkshire, we would  arrive at Sutton Bank, the sharp cliff that falls down to Gormire Lake, where once a knight rode his horse over the cliff.  Down the steep road we would go to Thirsk.  

We only went to this town a couple of times, and that for visiting a bank.  I remember it had a cute little patchwork shop there.  I still have the print of Sutton Bank on the wall, for it was here that we stopped to feed a new acquisition to the household, dear old Lucy our spaniel from The Dog's Trust.  She had one of the two halves of sandwich and we shared the other between us.

Weirdly today, as I thumbed through my tablet I managed to find Weaver's blog, but I still get denied on this computer, so I don't know what is happening there.

So to all Weaver's friends in blogland and elsewhere let us to raise our glasses (of whatever) to a wonderful person who lived with such grace.

Ramblings - 22nd October 2024

Moss at Solva

The above photo whizzed through my F/B account, and two friends recognised old Moss.  One remembered him eating some  Zwartbles fleece.  Which had been given to us by a teacher at St. Edward's School.  The fleeces were useless, dirty and coarse to spin so they ended up in the dustbin.  

The other friend from America, Jennie will know them, recognised the place it was a walk to Middle Mill, where you could buy rugs and carpeting done on old looms.  It was funny, for Loie at the time  recognised  one stair carpet as being ordered for a library in America. Strange small facts.

Andrew has set up a small workspace in Lillie's old bedroom.  The chair and desk came over the weekend, Ikea I think.  Rather envious of the table it would make an ideal quilting table.  So after fondue last night he made them up.  He lives in Shipley, so they both spend time at each other's places, but as Andrew works on the computer he needs to be able to work from one quickly I suppose, anyway it is all set up.

Lillie is coming back next weekend, mostly to fulfil her social life and a party that is happening.  The children's lives go on happily I think, Ben is ill but it is not Covid.  I had my jabs over the weekend, formally organised by the surgery over the road and it goes very smoothly.

Listening to Rebecca Solnit interviewed by two American, not sure of their jobs but probably journalists.  It was in Prospect Magazine which is a UK magazine set up by Alan Rusbridger.  A former editor of the Guardian, might be a good Xmas present for me ;)

What you learn from Solnit is the absolute absurdity of how news is given out

Below is a video from South Africa I think.  I often watch their videos of people reflecting on life.  He is touching as he talks  and his confession that he likes solitude at times echoes my own somewhat selfish need for aloneness..  Also describes that nervous, anxious person that is so like me. But watching him rake the stones so reminiscent of Japanese ways reminded me of Paul, who would sit in the front garden on the bench drinking a beer on a summer evening.  Totally at peace and happy with life.  So I hope you listen.

18th October 2024 - whittling.

 New sheet of paper! Well not actually but have not much to say on my computer.  Listened yesterday to the person who wrote 'My Beautiful Laundrette'.  He had a fall somewhere abroad and is now incapacitated in all his limbs, but still blogs every day, his children help.  

I spin, glorious colours, that start out light and fluffy merino and then turn a darker shade.  Whilst doing that I listen to people telling me things.  You may ask do I believe them? No but I love being introduced to all the information that flails round this world.  

Yesterday it was John Billingsley about 'Journey's Between the World' on Academia.  He writes about the corpse paths that takes the occupants of the moors to their final resting place in the burial ground of the church.

He plots the paths, a bit like the Romans, who stood on a high piece of land and looked straight ahead and then had built straight as a die roads.  But of course the moors are not like that, boggy and wet, up and down, it would have been difficult for several men to carry a heavy coffin.

He calls this space in time a liminal journey, (I was in that liminal space between past and present) an explanation of the word.  To me, always in search of that liminal space, call it what you will, but I shall use Sense of Place to give it a name. Landscape which can only come into being because it has been given stories of its topography.  So in this land fairies, boggarts and giants will dance with the stones and throw them great distances, till slowly as history develops the villages and towns, characters also become part of the scenery.  Then of course we learn not to bury bad people in these hallowed graves in the church yard, but in subliminal places, like at the cross roads or under a great tree.  Their wickedness forever underlined by the naming of this spot.  So that over time we learn to dread such places.

But enough of that, I can hear the geese coming from their night's rest to go down to their daytime home in the canal, where they might get enough food. 

And today's listening?  Christianity Before Conversion.  One of the fascinating studies in this country, is seeing the emergence of Christianity through the Saxon settlers in this country.  Their burials reflect the changeover from pagan to Christianity.

Haworth cemetery

14th October 2024

 The week that was.  Echoes of a long ago satirical show TWTWTW.  But with our weather forecasting giving us false hurricane winds as well, wasn't there a bit of Deja Vue, did it ricochet through our minds reminding us of the storm of 1987 when Michael Fish's tame forecast came undone and we woke to all those trees brought down. 15th October 1987. 

Then there is the beautiful Auroras or Northern Lights we have all been experiencing.  Photos bounce through my F/B of gorgeous coloured skies, over Stonehenge or Avebury.  If, of course, I had lived through prehistoric times I would be seeing signs of the gods warning us of troubled times in the future maybe.

photo taken from Swindon Advertiser

English music on the radio, or at least music composed by English composers.  When I was a child I was often ill, lying in bed hour after hour with only the radio for company and it seemed around 5  0 clock in the late afternoon someone indulged themselves with 'Lark Ascending' or some Elgar.  I remember being quite disappointed when we went to lunch at some friends at Great Malvern, for this was the place where Elgar had settled.  We walked the hills and drank the water, but it was very suburban.

As for my back ;) well a paracetamol before I get up will take away the pain of actually getting up and once walking around there is not much pain.  So I shall wait for it to heal up.

I have been thinking about love and romance, something we hardly talk about in blogland.  But I am sure it starts at the beginning of all relationships.  The grass ring my first husband wove for me must have disintegrated into brown dust before I got the garnet engagement ring.  I wear a garnet ring today from Paul, I love the dark red of this semi-precious stone.  There are beautiful cloisonne Anglo-Saxon jewels found in the graves of the A/S women.  Nowadays we would not be buried with our treasured belongings but then burial was an acknowledgement of lives well lived.

12th October 2024

 Well I am not sure you will be able to watch this but here goes.  It is a video of the Allendale Folk Festival, I presume up in the wilds of Northumberland.  It is the tale of the wolf killing, though I think the wolf died out long before this wolf was around.  What made me cry though was that at the end Katy, had recorded the theme music from the Detectorists.  A programme many people loved for its gentle humour and the two actors who were such losers, Paul loved it as well.

The actual music was sung by Johnny Flynn

If you can't play it try and find the programme it is very funny with a touch of pathos.  

And you get Kate's Onion soup for colds, my daughter has just gone off to Switzerland with a cold to see her aunt, so I hope she doesn't pass it on.

An edit: Great news!!! a date that needs recording for the family.

An excited call from my daughter in Switzerland this afternoon, Tom, my eldest grandchild has got engaged to Ellie in Copenhagen.  Hopefully there will be a picture of them both.  I never actually thought I would live to see him grown up nor that somewhere in the future I could be a great grandmother.  I know my daughter is over the moon at this coming together.  They were meant for each other and are so sweet together.

So when they will wed I do not know but their  grandfather, who never saw his daughter grown, let alone his grandchildren would perhaps also rejoice.

11th October 2024

Well first of all I must make note of the news from Florida and the Milton Storm - bad but not as bad as forecasted.  Thank goodness for that.  It has been so sad to see the level of devastation left by the first storm Helene and realise that Milton would bring about the same effect.  It was watching an American weather forecaster break down in tears as he thought of the strength of the storm and its potential to destroy and kill that made me despair.

But what I learnt as I watched the scenes unfold was the good generosity of people and the state forces coming to organise the rescuing of people and pet animals, the road building machinery rolling in, to know that as always that the human spirit was still as strong as ever.

Apparently those who believe foolish things, the conspiracy theorists, the alternative reality that seems to haunt some brains have been out in force casting doubt and suspicion on the wretched tragedy of lost homes and lives and the help from the state, but they will be halted.  I have come to see in a country ridden by one man and his stupidity that there are plenty who are sensible and wise, and all I can say to that is Amen!

I am slightly displaced at the moment, or at least my back is, not sure what happened, was it carrying the shopping back yesterday, or mending my spinning wheel, which is low to the ground.

I am quite proud that I have made my wheel work better.  It all started with the string coming off the wheel, and 'The Maiden' coming off the 'Mother of all'.  Just had to write that as the naming of parts makes me giggle. A couple of screws lightly tightened and an extra long piece of string so I could easily manipulate it around the wheel.  Spinning wheels rely on tension from two points and achieving the balance is not always easy but the wheel has worked its magic all through history.

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These people from down the road at Mixenden spent a whole week trying to get a small dog called Rosie out of a 12 inch rocky hole.  Rosie had fallen 15 feet into the hole.  Rock breaking, earth lifting they were determined to rescue the poor pooch, and they did and she is doing well.

The other photo I have collected is of Whitby Abbey's artwork, all apparently done with environmentally friendly pigments.  It does of course represent hands holding on to the roots of a  tree.  It was paid for by The Lottery and the installation land art was made by David Poppa.

The ‘Heritage Tree’ honours the seven inspirational people who have "changed the game across heritage, land and nature” over the last three decades.

Stray news

News items picked up this morning.  Well not exactly, because the following bird was photographed by a friend in South America.  But for such a little scrap of feathers it has a big name, it is called the Tufted Tit-Tyrant, so beware if you go to Peru. 

Tufted Tit-Tyrant

The 'idiot's apostrophe' or Deppenapostroph.   The English often get into trouble as to where to put their apostrophes but  German language doesn't even entertain it.  Be humble, as my English grammar can be wanting I am so happy to see another country lay down contrary rules.

“In the midst of winter,” wrote Albert Camus, “I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”  Taken from Gordon Brown's article