8th September 2024

 

A book recommendation:  Once many years ago I read a book by William Dalrymple, the sort of historical adventure book you can't put down.  He is an excellent writer, for a start he introduced me to Stylites.  Men who follow an ascetic religious life by sitting atop pillars in the desert. My mind grappled with the dangers of falling off the pillar once asleep.  Food of course can be winched up in a basket but it is perhaps a better fate than monks or nuns who choose to have themselves walled up in their respective monasteries for the greater glory of their God in Europe.

Well it is already on Audible and already bought so I shall listen to it as I work.

Early rise this morning, constant meowing in my ear at about 5, when eventually, I looked for what was upsetting Mollie, found she had been sick at the bottom of the bed.  She obviously wanted the duvet changed! Who invented the duvet? I know there is logic to changing one but as I carefully lay the four corners out of the duvet, and then offer up the duvet cover why does it always end up such a mess?

A review in The Guardian

7th September 2024 - Lillie off to London

 It is the big move today,  Lillie the last grandchild is moving to London to start her course in drama.  Her father will bring a van and all her stuff will be carted to her rooms at her accommodation.  Three large Ikea bags house all her new kitchen stuff.

It is a big day for my daughter also, the last chick has flown from home but as she has to work needs to catch the coach to Manchester.  This weekend on the M62 a railway bridge is going to be taken down, so not only the motorway disrupted but also the trains.  I can just imagine the trouble with Saturday traffic.  The journey for my daughter adds an extra hour on to travelling time.  According to the news it will only take two weekends on the motorway to dismantle the bridge, maybe they are being over optimistic.

A quiet weekend for me, though a friend is coming on Monday and Matilda is also coming down on Wednesday, she has already moved into the new flat with her friends, eyewatering rent to pay of course.  I have bought a ticket on Omaze (they are expensive) this time for a North Yorkshire house.  If you remember I bought one for a London house to accommodate the grandchildren.  Yes I know winning is nigh impossible but some of the money goes to charity.

There is a scandal over Ticketmaster upping the ticket prices for the latest tickets to the Oasis show, Marina Hyde wrote a scathingly funny piece on it in the Guardian.  Ticketmaster is a 22$ billion dollar company, obviously profit orientated ;) and don't forget the ticket touts selling on as well.

My book came - The Excavation of the Shrine of Apollo at Nettleton, Wiltshire, 1956-1971.  Though published in 1982 it is a perfect example of a an archaeological excavation neatly laid out in the form of reports.  Speculation kept at bay, with none of the who-ha of excited publicity we experience today whenever a 'new discovery' is made.

The funny thing Wedlake, the author, noted that there seemed quite a special feel to this little valley, as I had found out and perhaps the Romans as well.  The land originally belonged to the Dobunni tribe but they made peace fairly early on with the Romans in AD 43, their capital being Cirencester and Roman administration reverted the area to its control.

I have just discovered the following in the Wiki article which perhaps proves the special nature of the valley.  One piece of statue is of Diana the hunter with a hound.  Though the top half is missing

"Stephen Yeates asserts that a study of the religion of the Dobunni has shown that there was a focus on the worship of the natural world. It is possible to identify deities associated with the landscape, for example *Cuda, a mother goddess associated with the Cotswold Hills and its rivers and springs, and Sulis Minerva at Bath. Other cults were defined by social action, such as mining, for example at Lydney Park, and hunting, for example at Pagan's Hill near Chew Stoke."

So does 'Genius Loci' exist I wonder? or indeed the modern day version of it, the 'Spirit of Place'

And another question did the Romans build their temples over existing native places of worship, as did the Christian church on some stone circles?  The Romans cut down the sacred trees to be found in pagan towns, see France?? Also the tree being carried on the Gundestrup Cauldron

A reconstruction drawing of the Pagan Hill temple

Notes:  The search engine is such a good addition and I have just found what I was looking for in sacred trees chopped down.  It was St. Martin of Tours AD 3l6 to AD397 and this is what I culled from this Wiki...

"As bishop, Martin set to enthusiastically ordering the destruction of pagan temples, altars and sculptures. Scholars suggest the following account may indicate the depth of the Druidic folk religion in relation to the veneer of Roman classical culture in the area:

"[W]hen in a certain village he had demolished a very ancient temple, and had set about cutting down a pine-tree, which stood close to the temple, the chief priest of that place, and a crowd of other heathens began to oppose him; and these people, though, under the influence of the Lord, they had been quiet while the temple was being overthrown, could not patiently allow the tree to be cut down".

In one instance, the pagans agreed to fell their sacred fir tree, if Martin would stand directly in its path. He did so, and it miraculously missed him. Sulpicius, a classically educated aristocrat, related this anecdote with dramatic details, as a set piece. Sulpicius could not have failed to know the incident the Roman poet Horace recalls in several Odes, of his narrow escape from a falling tree."

5th September 2024 - carp

Streams and mountains beyond end.

This rather bad photo of a Chinese landscape speaks to me of a journey through a landscape.  It is housed in the Cleveland Museum in America, and dated 1100-1150, (I presume AD) Late Northern Song Dynasty.

I found it illustrated in a book of poems of Gary Snyder with the following Chinese poem by Ch'i Shan Wu Chin.

Clearing the mind and sliding in

to that created space,

a web of waters streaming over rocks

air misty but not raining,

seeing this land, from a boat on a lake

or a broad slow river, coasting by.

I am I suppose gathering thoughts together. Watching Liam's blogs on paintings flow by has made me think what do I like in art.  Well sadly not those 'brown' portraits of the eminent males in Europe, nor the flighty fancy of Roman inspired themes and Christian art leaves me very quiet.

Also add to this list of nearly about everything, is Japanese art as well, so why does the above, ink on silk by the way, move me, it must be about the idea of action through a landscape. It is a life that moves through the natural world of trees, rivers, mountains and lakes with a flowing water like movement until it comes to death standing at the end.  As a word jolts the memory so does a picture come into the mind without asking.

Gardens and flowers influence me, at the moment Monet, trying to catch the ephemeral nature of their shapes and colour. One of my inherited treasures is a silk cream piano cover.  It has a Chinese dragon embroidered on it with beautiful intricate flowers and butterflies surrounding it.

What I admire of course is the delicacy of the work; so many hours dedicated to it.

So as I wander through this morning's memories, I thought of the one painting that Paul had that I loved and took pride of place in the sitting room. 

It was a painting that stood in the entrance, maybe of a temple, holding evil at bay and not allowing it into the temple.

Two carp leaping among waves Tsukioka Shuei (1790-1830)

You can find the story of the carp here in this blog.

4th September 2024

I have just worked out what is happening with Mollie.  She missed me over the weekend away and now demands my presence near her.  Her furious yowling at the top of the stairs is explained.  Being 19 years old and deaf explains the rest of it.

Well today I trekked to the other side of town to get her food from Morrison, Purina's Gold pate, though she will eat the Savoury cake if there is nothing else on offer but there is a bit of  battle of wills over that.

I set off just after eight this morning, and walked down the canal, a certain coolness but sun and blue sky, ducks sitting on the side of the canal but no Canadian geese, obviously snoozing somewhere else.  Towards this end you come to a very cobbled path under the road.  But before that I noticed two great escapees of Russian Vine or mile a minute on the other bank.

Plant it at your peril, it is rampant and will happily push through everything even paving.

The narrow road between the steep sides of the valley had commuters going to work, up on the road restaurant owners were opening up and gave me a happy 'good morning', Tod was waking up, though yesterday there was a slightly different story to tell about the road.

The Morrison lorry on a too tight turn. Holding up the traffic for sometime

Narrow roads through steep wooded valleys do not make a happy combination. It took me sometime to find the things I wanted at Morrison, normally we have a fortnightly delivery from them. But they are expensive compared to Lidl and Aldi, Aldi is the one supermarket  I have never visited yet.

Home again to wait for Post Office parcels.  I had missed one yesterday because it needed a signature, so I waited in the kitchen for her.  Poor lass she was so apologetic about the signature, she had asked her supervisor could she leave it inside the door but of course he said no.  Have you seen the unintelligible scribble we have to put on a PO phone but I assured her that I didn't mind sitting around in the kitchen.  Three parcels came today, Lillie's of course and another one.

3rd September 2024

Over these springs Minerva presides and in her temple the perpetual fire never whitens into ash but as the flame fades turns into rocky lumps.   Solinus

I have been listening to music this morning, the soft tone of Nick Drake on a recurring link and then 'Blessings' which I will put below, for it will soften the furious bosom wherever it may rest.  Sadness has a healing aspect to it, the imagination wanders and we should be grateful for past memories.

I am glad I invested in a hard backed notebook, I copy out words that pass by and they are caught for evermore. The foolishness of gods at the great Roman temple of Bath as written by Solinus.  The coal came from just up the road at Camerton, silly how belief hits facts!

This morning Rebecca Solnit, gave a link to an essay writer who wrote about 'Why AI Isn't Going to make Art - Ted Chiang'.

It’s harder to imagine a program that, over many sessions, helps you write a good novel. This hypothetical writing program might require you to enter a hundred thousand words of prompts in order for it to generate an entirely different hundred thousand words that make up the novel you’re envisioning. It’s not clear to me what such a program would look like. Theoretically, if such a program existed, the user could perhaps deserve to be called the author. But, again, I don’t think companies like OpenAI want to create versions of ChatGPT that require just as much effort from users as writing a novel from scratch. The selling point of generative A.I. is that these programs generate vastly more than you put into them, and that is precisely what prevents them from being effective tools for artists.

Now when I write anything a nuisance little thing flies out from the corner as my co-pilot, (expletive deleted) if I accidentally touch goodness knows what. Andrew explained that my fears are unwarranted but words are having a very good time of it on social media.  Do like the fact that X + Musk has been banned from Brazil and Pavel Durov + Telegram has been arrested in France.  Freedom of speech unfortunately does not mean that speech is now truthful and factual.

But I must stop waffling, the freezer needs to be switched back on and the dry laundry folded.  Lillie leaves next week, but an old neighbour comes for a couple of days and also Matilda down from London.

Ruminations but I am not a cow!

I am sitting here slightly exhausted after having prepared tea for tonight. It involved pulling every scrape of chicken off the carcass then mixing in tarragon, mustard, cheese and cream. Vegetables and potatoes done.  So should anything happen in the next few hours, at least there will be a meal on the table.

Mollie my cat is very quiet, I wonder if she is on the way out, still eating and demanding to sleep on me through the night.  She had given me a rest from this the last few weeks by going to sleep in the attic room but now has decided that my room is better.

Listening to 'Ann Cleeves - The Dark Wives'.  It is rather good a 'Vera' story but less emphasis on her and more on her two sergeants, Joe and Rosie.  Perhaps the author is pensioning her off, real life actress has said she is leaving the series.

The terrible tragedy of the six Israeli hostages killed yesterday, their smiling faces not showing what it must have been like at all as hostages, who killed them is now being argued over. I have amongst my drafts the smiling face of Hind Rajab, the little Palestinian girl killed in a car.  All deliberate death is senseless and all break the heart.

Now I have hit a sad note, but not all news is good.  William Blake said something, and it really needs a philosophical answer because I am not sure he is right.  Joy by William Blake.

Joy and woe are woven fine,

A clothing for the soul divine;

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

It is right it should be so;

And when this we rightly know,

Safely through the world we go.

Well in the  safe but dull Todmorden, there are two/three big issues.  A Cycle track of about half a mile and of course parking near the market. How they rage those car owning fiends. Also against the pedestrianised crossings the poor pedestrians use - too many, too many. Just by pressing a knob, the traffic slows to a halt and we cross in safety.  Such minor problems but the breath of the moaning class.  

And what about mending the potholes for goodness sake says someone else and Josh patiently points out then rather then do it now, it is best to wait for all the utilities to dig their holes to repair everything and then to tarmac the road. And another complaint comes in, Hebden Bridge is being destroyed by the filming around the town.  This highlighting of the town is dragging in terrible stag and hen parties.  

31st August 2024

 Garden video

Well Andrew managed to upload my video from the phone to the camera.  Of course obviously he can as computers are his work.  Now I go round singing to myself "Hey you get off of my cloud".  The earwig for the day!

I notice it is on a rolling link, and no interruption between stopping and starting.  It is there purely for family entertainment and is 8 minutes long.

Nettleton Shrub

The Bybrook which ran past the Roman Temple at Nettleton Shrub

The things that come up in conversation.  Whilst away at the weekend someone asked had I been to Hadrian's Wall.  Yes said I but 6 months pregnant, so I did not get far, especially as my son Mark had his foot on my sciatica nerve and I thought I was going to give birth.  But Jack rose abruptly from his chair and bought back a heavy thick tome on Roman history with their surname on it and started a conversation.

 

I found myself defending the Romans after their conquest of Britain and saying they had managed the colonisation of this country pretty well.  I had written a few years back as to how the native gods had been paired with the Roman gods, a subtle blending.  My old megalithic friends who were all for the prehistoric legends were very dismissive of the Romans seeing them as the out and out enemy.

But during the time of the occupation the Romans brought a degree of civility to the natives, and the showy nature of the Bath or Aqua Sulis Roman temple with its hot bath lays testimony to a civilised culture.

So where am I going with all this? Well Bensozia mentioned Nettleton Shrub Roman Temple the other day and I had the familiar spark of homesickness for the little valley that lies hidden just outside Chippenham along a narrow lane.  Wandering along with my collie Moss by the outline of the Roman canalised brook that followed the line of the valley.  It was also a designated nature reserve of a chalk landscape.

So this morning I did a rather foolish thing and went and found Wedlake's book on the excavation of the temple.  It wasn't expensive ;)

The funny thing is I remembered that my ex-husband of 27 years, and who I talk little of, was an archeology lecturer and had dug at Nettleton shrub in the 1970s.  Also my favourite professor Ronald Hutton had stated that this place was also a favourite!

Why 'Nails of Gold'? Because it is one of Weaver's favourite natural plants, the Marsh Marigold or King cup and it has its own small history.

 Nails of gold or kingcups

The Roman Temple of Nettleton Shrub

28th August 2024 - miscellany

Claude Monet's Bridge

I have neglected looking at paintings for a time then Claude Monet came into my F/B account and I stopped to admire.  This morning it was the frail beauty of peonies. Below the water lilies float gracefully in the luminous water.  Art and garden.

Water is probably the most important part of a garden, here you can sit awhile and experience the life forms of the garden.  Newts and frogs or maybe a toad or two.  Or the miraculous birth of dragonflies or demoiselles.  I have a photo of two damselflies mating amongst the bright colour of the nasturtiums flowers resting lightly on the water.  

Claude Monet's Water Lilies

There was a time, the time when I collected books, that the picture below  was the fashion in the early 20th century. Monet in his garden had that  formalised appearance, a repetitive nature of one type of edging plants in front of a flowerbed of the main display.  Every small suburban garden would have its edging of white, blue and yellow plants.  Order was called for, a rigidity of preciseness, though William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll with their wider expanses of garden to play around with went for the 'wild' garden, drifts of flower edging woodland.  Whilst the formal long flowerbeds had colours drifting through the spectrum.  Clever use of planting was an art form.

I think these are peonies

What I love about peonies, is their untidy flounce of colour against their dark leaves and then that sudden moment when the flower decides it has had enough of life and proceeds to shed its petal with a rapid movement.  Now Claude has not captured this, so are they peonies?

Jack's jungle garden

just photos of 'Jack's Jungle Garden'.  It is quite an extraordinary moment as you leave the ordinary lawned garden and descend the steps into the quarry.  Forty years it has taken to develop from the place where once the farmer threw his scrap farm machinery into this combe and then it became this darkness of gigantic ferns and plants.  It was started by Jack as a challenge, to grow something in a different environment, the sides of the quarry and trees surrounding it made it possible, a convivial ecosystem.

Jack is a biochemist so perhaps such things come easy.  But all these plants prospered and now tall ferns and spiky sharp leaves tower above your head.  Welsh poppies, evening primrose, nasturtiums self seed around.  At the top of the path walk Californian poppies and dahlias toast in the sun, and lower down the Asiatic primulas grace a watery edge. 

I found one Barnhaven auricula, but this little group had somehow disappeared I think because of a soil slide.

Seeing that there were the Asiatic primulas or candelabra primroses, I asked if he had grown the blue poppy, acid loving, it is the most beautiful sky blue flower grown.  Of course he had, the whole garden was about challenge after all.  But they had been a failure and he only managed one plant.

The council have surrounded the quarry with a playing field and allotments and of course as Nicki and Jack get older there must be some sort of safeguard on this unique site.  What will happen I don't know.  But what a success.  I also have a video which, if I can get it off my phone, or at least find it in my cloud will publish.

 

Hal beware

 The idea came into my head the other day how much we are influenced from our early years. But our ideas mature through to old age.  So the exciting times of the 60s would be its music and parties.  Funnily enough it is music that triggers the mood.  Donovan's 'Yellow mellow' mentioned by Y/P the other day had me humming its gentle though slightly ridiculous tune all day.  Our need for music, whether to sing or dance, is part of our lives.  For instance I was never too keen on the Beatles but loved the Rolling Stones.  Nick Drake replaced Donovan, and then Simon and Garfunkel - Hello lamppost, what you knowin come to  watch your flowers growin, complete nonsense but seeing the world at a different level.  

Films passed me by, but the two that remain with me were 'West Side Story' and 2001 Space Odyssey.  Of course Hal the computer with his frightening voice taking over the space ship was totally scary and a reminder that things didn't always go the way we wanted it to.

Then my first husband introducing me to the Tolkien books and I was lost in this immense world of imagination, of good and bad, of courage and daring do.  To think that I can remember still the 'Spaghetti Westerns' that Nick so loved.  And today can read that they were so called because they were mainly produced by Italian directors.  And who can forget the April 1st joke played by the BBC as they seriously featured 'spaghetti trees' in Italy growing the pasta.

Now I can flick to Wikipedia to look up a fact, someone,  somewhere is bound to have covered it and those giant encyclopedias have become a thing of the past.

We hold our learning lightly, but can measure the steps we have taken by the writings and ideas that have come across our journey.  

This Friday we shall journey on the train to Surrey for the weekend, I still have not learnt how to do train tickets on my phone, mine resides on my daughters. This failure niggles me but I am terrified that my phone will hold too much information about me.  Like a worm, the intelligence that is unleashed through technology is waiting out there ;)

17th August 2024

 Yesterday coming back from the shop I developed a migraine, with aura beforehand. I become aware of an upcoming headache by those wavy lines that blur my sight, making in impossible to use the computer or read. I am glad of the warning and the fact that though I have sickness and headache it is never so bad as past migraines.

So this morning I have travelled over Bath City by drone on my computer and thought what a beautiful symmetrical city it is. No terrible skyscrapers, just an ordered city sitting within the seven hills surrounded by trees.  The Green Belt has of course protected it, also the hills of course but it is the vigilant eye of such places like English Heritage that keeps a wary eye on the grade listed buildings.

Goodness knows where the next lot of new housing will figure in the English countryside but we desperately need new affordable housing for our young people.

I have been watching McDonald and Dodds television series, two odd characters that solve crime in the city.  Of course it makes me homesick to watch all the shots of Bath, but at looking at some of the houses that are filmed it.  Boy there is a lot of money around in the fair city, also of course tourists but floating above it all it still looked beautiful.

Also listened to Anthony Scaramucci and his prediction that Trump will bow out. Maybe, maybe not, but I would rejoice having the name Scaramucci.

Also debating a book written by CEO of Microsoft A1,Mustafa Suleyman.  The book is called 'The Coming Wave' and is all about A1.  I have become very suspicious of an awful lot of what is written and the photos I see on the net is their capacity to fool you. A1 is an enormous breakthrough but has an incendiary nature to go off into realms we had not even thought of yet.  Can the human race keep its head above water? We developed the Atomic bomb which had a catastrophic effect in the cities it exploded in, killing hundreds of thousands of people.  Whilst nuclear rockets hang in perpetual threat above our heads.  So does what ever technology we create, once given flight, remain with us forever or do we try to regulate.

Anyway, a more peaceful end to my witterings, the  video on Bath.

16th August 2024

Not much to write today but I thought to introduce you to the latest professor I listen to.  A funny man who wears headgear in the house, but taking this small sign of vanity away and you have an articulate person ready to give his opinion on the state of the nation.  He is not a Cicero or a Tacitus, hesitates at times but his analysis makes you think.  Here he is talking about 'The Arrest of Instigators Begins' by  Professor Tim Wilson.

As he points out there is a lot wrong with Britain at this time but if we were to give a more hopeful and optimistic view to the world around us things could get better.

What we saw in the riots was hopeful.  A revulsion against right wing violence, which followed  on so rapidly after the terrible killing of the three children at Southport.  A counter protest movement moved rapidly into place and the far right thugs quickly rounded up and are now in the process of receiving prison sentences.  Thank goodness we have a prosecutor at the head of government now. It does remind you of the Roman assemblies doesn't it? 

Law has always stood as the lion at the gate, no one can duck their bad behaviour in society, we come before the judge and jury, it is called Common Law, we answer to our fellow men for our deeds.  

Manipulative words, and here I am talking about Musk and his domination of social media.  He is but one voice, and can disappear easily underneath the rabble of other voices, is trying it on.  Rather foolishly one might think.  But whilst we have lazy news, only able to pander to the media through names that are meant to shock we will have worry.

We need other voices out there, and we do have the means to air them.  That's a thought!

 

15th August 2024

Lillie at 7.0. clock comes in dressed to the nines.  It's result day, I wish her luck and tell not to bend down too quickly with the short skirt she is wearing.  After she has been to college, she and her friends will go out to lunch and we will have a takeaway this evening to celebrate.  There are three big Ikea bags of stuff to start her new life, she is looking forward to going to London.

But before that happens she is going to Glasgow on a birthday trip this weekend with her mother, not sure of the reason why but they have booked themselves into a good hotel.

Which brings me to the astonishing news about Stonehenge and the Altar stone from Scotland no less.  For a good read on this, you must turn to Mike Pitts on Digging Deeper.  He has written so much about Stonehenge he must be the expert to beat all experts on the subject.

Stonehenge is made up of several assemblies, the great sarsen stones come from the downs around, within a 20 mile distance. The Welsh blue stones from the Preseli Hills. The stone discovered to be Scottish from the North-East of Scotland.  It is Old Red Sandstone of the Orcadian Basin and is the Altar Stone, buried deep by time and the toppling of other stones, it lays half hidden in the grass.  Mike Pitts jumped to the same conclusion I did when he learnt it was from Scotland a 'recumbent altar stone' something you find in this part of Scotland.

So what are we seeing, well the interminable question that has haunted the Bluestones, how did they travel from Wales to England, by land or sea? Now of course we have a much longer journey from Scotland, land or sea?

Note, Pitts makes a little jibe at Brian Johns for his theory of glacial movement but it is extraordinary to think that these stones both from Wales and Scotland made the journey down South.  Was this the first Brexit, a mini market like Europe, makes you think!  Well done to the team that analyzed it, I think it was done in Australia.

Nearer to home, my patchwork quilt is coming to an end, I had made squares of 16 small squares in four different colours loving the way colours match, or do not.  My worry yesterday was the backing material, Cotton Patch materials are very expensive, but I managed to find some 'fat quarters' on the net so it should all come together.

the Prescili Hills

Guardian news on the subject

Mike Pitts writing in the Guardian

August 2008

 

I only wrote seven blogs in that particular month, so what to choose, there is this one on dyes and thistles, and even today I laugh about Moss who so delicately lifted his leg against this beautiful thistle plant.  I wonder what happened to 'Miss Whistle', she was an American who came to England every now and then to see her mother.  

There is this.....

"Such a nostalgic trip back into English history are church fetes, they embody all that is good, kind and giving in people who are of the christian faith. So where did this fete take place? It was at Ingatestone in Essex, we had gone to look at the prehistoric stones , and the sight of stalls and a marquee in the church graveyard was a surprise. I bought a corn dolly from a man who was patiently weaving them in a corner, his wife sat at the front of the stall with baskets of them to sell. We sat in the marquee and drank tea and ate homemade cakes, one a little rice krispie chocolate cupcake that fell to pieces, a reminder of all those children's cakes I had baked in the past for parties. A gentle soul talked to us of circle dancing that evening and closing the marquee flaps. Up on the tower a man's head peered over as he let out a rope for a bucket mysteriously being pulled back and forth.
In the church great vases of flowers beautifully arranged, and local paintings on display for sale, the vicar happily walking amongst his flock, ordered a ploughman's lunch in the marquee. Genteel England in all its beautiful old English charm, slowly dying but never gone - for to lose this facet of our world would be like losing a great jewel of the past - a gentle muddle-headed way of past traditions enacted in a church, that once not so long ago, recorded our coming into the world, marriages for life and the final end as the dead were laid to rest in the earth. The small parochial way of life, community and certainty wrapped round the central hearth of the religious church - paganism still quietly lurking in the graveyard with a prehistoric stone that had never been removed"

I chattered on to myself, in a world that was changing.  Today I listened to the fact that Elon Musk was buttering up Trump, I think it was on X.  I have wondered whether to join this notorious website, but I have a feeling it is far too evil for me so will refrain.

I have been reading Bensozias writing on the war between Russia and Ukraine, and this somewhat surprising move by Zelensky into what Bensozia calls 'The Ukranian Offensive Update.  All I can see and feel is the death of the soldiers as they once more fight pointless wars over territory.

So to complete the 2008 August, I of course gathered the Saxon history of Broomfield church in Essex, and found a poem by R.S.Thomas, I know a favourite of Weaver.  But he was such a miserable old bugger!

August 2007

 

Japanese anemones:  From May 2007 I have written to myself about the happenings around me.  Actually further back then that but I deleted the earlier blog because of a troll.  So as it is August I shall pick up this 2007 August blog.  I actually went to Google Earth and looked at our old house and garden, not wise, it had been turned all to lawn, apple trees gone and pond.  Sad but inevitable. 

"In my garden are two great displays of these tall Japanese anemones, far too early for this time of the year as they are supposed to be autumn flowering. There exuberance is extraordinary probably down to the strange weather we have been having this summer. But suddenly I realised that they have a story behind them. A small plant of these flowers was given to me about 25 years ago by a person who lived in Box in Wiltshire, and they have now grown from small beginnings to giants dominating their positions. The garden they came from, had the remains of a large roman villa under its surface. This villa was enlarged in the 3rd or 4th century by a wealthy owner, and apparently has the largest collection of roman mosaics in the country, with mosaics being found in 20 of the 41 rooms in the complex. The villa was excavated by Hurst in 1967, there are probably pottery and mosaics at Devizes museum somewhere in a dusty box."  .....

It continues here

9th August 2024

It is the 200 year anniversary of the RNLI - Royal National Lifeboat Institution.  An institution you will see everywhere round our island's coast line.  Paul supported it and we had a sticker on the back of the car.

by Thomas Musgrove Joy - Grace Darling at the Forfarshire

It reminded me of a story I read as a child,  Grace Darling, the first woman to be involved in rescuing shipwrecked people, or at least to be recorded.  She lived with her family in a lighthouse off the coast of Northumbria, and one day when she spied a ship on the rocks, she and her father rowed out to save 9 people on the rocks.  Because she was a woman she was lauded in society at the time, and I suspect my first female heroine.  Sadly she did not live long and died of tuberculosis when young.

Henry Freeman

But in Whitby there is also the tale of the cork lifesaver that Henry Freeman wore in 1861 and which saved his life, when all his comrades perished at sea after saving the lives of seamen out in a terrible storm and bringing them back to safety onshore.  The storm caught the lifeboat on its third rescue and toppled it over leaving only  Freeman able to save himself.

You will notice the cabling on his jumper, there is another tale to be told here.  Fisherman's wives knitted these hardwearing jumpers in a multitude of patterns.  The reason why though was sad, for when the dead bodies of those that have perished out to sea came ashore, the jumper was the only way of identification.

Robin Hood Bay

I have never understood what Robin Hood is doing down here so far North when everyone knows he lived in Sherwood Forest but there is another tale about life boats here.

A ship the 'Visitor' had been driven onto the rocks by a storm in 1881 but there was no lifeboat at Robin Hood Bay, so the people of Whitby dragged their lifeboat to the village.  It was six miles in deep snow, 200 men and 18 horses, they dug out the snowdrifts as they went along and had a steep precipitous run down into the village but they made it.  The storm raged, on the first outing six oars broke but eventually the stricken crew was saved.  You can read a much better longer version of the story if you can find it.  The the link is not working, search engine Visitor ship/Robin Hood Bay should bring it up.

What comes across of course is the effort to save lives, the ability to put one's own life in danger to save another.  Today the RNLI is proud of its achievements, they are often more caught up rescuing foolish people from the sea, who have no knowledge of currents and tide and how fierce the sea can become.  But those early heroes live on just as today's heroes capture the headlines and we should do well to put a pound in their boxes.

Afternoon news

 My two favourite commentators have returned to the screen, Rory Stewart has been in Afghanistan, which accounts for them not being around....

08/08/2024; A sort of update.  Yesterday was quiet and the counter protest came out to protect vulnerable buildings and to challenge the lawlessness.

My daughter came home early from work in the afternoon, the Northern Quarter of Manchester had been closed down by the police - pubs, bars, restaurant and shops and two of her friends sweetly escorted her to the station.  It must have been a bit of a disappointment to the instigators and I hope when Robinson sets foot back in England, he will be arrested.  The news of there being right wing clashes on Wednesday evening was probably a hoax.  

7th August 2024 - Holidays

 Lillie has gone to Whitby for the week with her friends, she is 18 years old now not the little girl here sorting her books.  But it is good to look back at photos.  I will look up the blogs I have written on Whitby, a town my daughter moved to probably in 2006, and put them down below.  Whitby has such a history it is almost impossible to grasp the full historical feel of the town.  It attracts most of the North to its fun-loving aspects, fish and chips, cheap junk and penny machines, it just throbs with life.

Photos capture its magic, and a fuzzy blurred video captures the silliness of the interpretations we put on our history.  The video always brings tears to my eyes as the reduced replica of the 'Bark Endeavour' ship surrounded by its little flotilla of modern ships buzz round it like bees as it sails into harbour. 

My daughter and I have mixed responses to the town but Lillie like me is drawn back to it, it was the place she was born.

Whitby harbour

A look at Whitby

Whitby

Goth Week in Whitby