Today Friday 16th October 2026

 Friday morning.  Sam our cleaner and her daughter are here.  This because she is helping her mother through the day so that they can go to a funeral this afternoon.  Sam draws my attention to the tiles round the Aga, she has cleaned the grouting and they do look better.  She must despair of us as a household not noticing things, though I shall draw people's attention to her marvellous cleaning.

Yesterday we had two lots of builders around.  One filled the holes in the basement with gravel they had dug to see where the water level was.  The other to finalise the work they will be doing next year in January and to look at the damp patch on the ceiling, which turned out of course to be leaves cluttering the top guttering.

Come the weekend and Tanaker will be here to go walking on Saturday with Andrew and then football on Sunday with Leeds playing Manchester United.  Isn't that the club in trouble?  I am glad I do not have a busy life.

Substance keeps throwing questions at me, I do believe it is a social experiment to see who we are.  It has a high note, you have to answer questions from the Roman philosophers, Cicero for instance.  I remember years back when we had a whole bookshelf  of Roman and Greek Penguin books but I don't think I read them and definitely can't quote.

Talking of experiments, my tablet has the cheek to write blogs for not only me but for others. It calls itself AI mode, which suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and definitely wasn't asked for. Can you not imagine one day in the future when people will read your blogs but it won't be YOU just some mindless computer chugging out words.  It was a great help though for North Stoke in Oxfordshire. ;) These computers will really have to size up if they can't understand the original task.  Still I know exactly how to create a Yorkshire Pudding!

Doodling

 

where to start? Well drawing two blogs together.  Today Steve Reed goes to Nottingham too listen to Owen Jones talking about his new book.  I always feel very motherly about Jones, he is so articulate and bright but he does tend to squirm around on his seat when in full flow.  In fact he has 'ants in his pants' as the saying goes.  Ants are something Jabblog has been talking about.  The saying, probably coming from America is early 20th century - 1930/1940 and of course came from really having ants in one's pants - I suppose from sitting on the grass.

I would love to see a green woodpecker once more on the lawn jabbing the grass furiously to make the ants appear from the ant's nest.

It reminds me of Tom when he was about four years old.  He had decided to make a 'tent' on a slope in the garden.  He worked busily away and finishing went and sat inside his abode. Only two minutes later to come fleeing out chased by an angry queen bee.  He had built his safe place on top of a bumblebee's nest hole.

I had my eyes tested on Monday, I now need glasses for distance, computer and reading, four pairs with my sunglasses.  Opticians have really moved forward with their equipment.  I was taken through my examination by a sweet Asian girl, sadly the young all look too young to be doing adult jobs;)

I am listening to A.S.Byatt - The Virgin in the Garden at the moment.  The story is set in 1953, the year of the Coronation of the late Queen.  On reading whether anyone had criticised it. Well they had.  Basically because of its cleverness and clever references to Shakespeare, etc.  I have never been enamoured by Shakespeare so will I be able to hear the book to the end as some say they never finished it.  It is all very 'loves lost dream', fumbling at suspenders but never going further.  A group of young people who live in that quiet, very English way, so many people want to go back to.  It is the time of D.H. Laurence's book - Lady Chatterley's Lover.  Which eventually broke the barrier of being able to be read by the public and which probably launched the 1960s.

Not to worry, but cyber attacks on fridges and freezers in French Supermarkets here? are slightly scary.

Edit.  Professor Tim Wilson, someone I listen to'  it is about the terrible tragic death of the young man who got killed by a tiger.  Trump that morally degenerate man is totally despicable in making fun of this tragedy.  The tiger will live.

Time to sleep for butterflies

 

A butterfly from a few years ago taking nourishment on a cotton wool ball.

Butterflies do not hibernate like mammals; instead, they enter a state of dormancy known as diapause. This physiological state allows them to survive cold temperatures and lack of food by reducing metabolic activity.

The butterfly above was not let out though he had woken up to bright sunny skies but it was too cold to let him out into the cold March air.  They will hide in your wardrobes, cupboards or curtains so give them a quiet place and allow them to survive.

Our first butterfly has moved into the kitchen and now takes up residence on the curtain.  Completely immobile he must live through several months of dormancy before the spring sun wakes him.  Actually I am not sure whether he is a she but whatever he is definitely a butterfly seeking the warmth.

translucent blue

I am actually rather worried about the butterflies peace here.  Will the builders start work early next year?  My daughter is already sorting her books out for the charity shops.  Andrew takes a bag every day to one of the shops, and cookery books are the latest.  Though Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson remain.  

10th October 2026

The oldest of the old follows behind us in our thinking, and yet it comes to meet us.  Martin Heidegger

I start with a book which ordered has now arrived.:  Which has been nagging at the back of my mind for ages.  I read it years ago and was taken somewhat with Louth Gur, a lake which nestled in a sacred landscape and one of the most important prehistoric sites in Ireland.  Dames spun a story around it with Aine as the goddess who protected it.  As a sun goddess she made the grey waters of the lake sparkle.

Trees often float by in my memories, the tree up on Bath Downs with the barbed wire used as fencing tied tightly round its trunk, The wire had grown deep into the bark, of an ash tree and I was never quite sure that trees felt pain.  It was an ash that had had the wire tied round it like the Norse  Yggdrasil Tree probably the tree that Odin hung on for nine days......

Brian Bates sees the Yggdrasil Tree as representing Sleipnir, the spirit horse of Odin, a great eight legged creature that takes him down to the otherworld. Bates works his way from the word Yggdrasil, Ygg being a nickname for Odin and drasil a word for horse. Odin of course famously hung from the tree for 9 days but it was during this time, a time of spiritual quest and dreaming that the tree transformed into Sleipnir. And Bates points out that the gallows in Anglo-Saxon times were also known as "a 'horse' upon which its victim rode to death"

But to get back to Louth Gur, it has the most beautiful circular stone circle in existence, and had I read that it had been done with a pole in the centre and a rope to get the evenness of a perfect circle.  You can see the gateway on the right, an invitation into what? what happened in this circle, surely not a market but a place where the priests watched the happenings of the sun, moon and stars.

Borrowed from the Louth Gur Holiday Cottages web site.

The other thing that I had remembered, half unconsciously, was the Stone of the Tree,  Cloch A Bile which was also nearby.  You can find it on The Modern Antiquarian  a strange beast of a stone with its moss and lichen. 

Louth Gur also has a' dead hunt' at night occasionally through the skies a bit like the Cw Annwn Hunt of Halloween Night.  But the person in the Dead Hunt is the hunted quarry  selected by the spirits of the underworld and who are chased from one world to the other.

Apparently there was also a 'silent coach' which belonged to Aine and the tale is told of how Sean O'Shea, a herdsmen, was summoned by Aine to play the bagpipes at a ball she was giving, a party of good food and wine. I bet he never returned.  The coach was called Coitose Bodhar and, according to Dames, was similar to the one that carried Nerthus in Denmark, Mother Earth of Northern Europe

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 Found this, a Seamus Heaney old video.  At one stage I collected his archaeological poems called 'North' from a book I found in Bath library.  The poems were so profound, imagining the prehistoric world.

It is strange how old myths build up through the stones.  Heaney whilst studying archaeology at Queen's University wrote this poetry.  He was inspired by Ted Hughes, how strange that things revolve in a circle and Hughes bleakness is somewhat captured in Heaney's writing.  I have written some of the poems down and they can be found through the blogs.

North Stoke: Kinship

North Stoke: Seamus Heaney

Life: interesting but scary.

 

This is what greets me this morning on my computer, Milan Cathedral square.  A glorious over the top elaborate wedding cake of a cathedral shining white against a blue sky.  A beautiful example of what humans can build.  Yet today we remember all the Israeli young killed on the 7th October in a brutal butchery by the Hamas group.  Andy Burnham made a statement last night here.  

Is that cathedral a pointless reminder that religion is just a waste of space in any bodies mind.  Well that is a pointless question because the answer is all around us.  And in this country, churches are slowly slipping away from religious teaching whilst other religions gather their war like forces to fight.  We seem to have made gods since time began.

Many would argue as I do myself that religion is all to do with power play.  Keeping a social order through the offices of religion, royalty and government.

 Yet I love my gods and goddesses.  Captured for eternity in Greek and Roman statues.  Conveniently silenced by the marble they are made of. Celtic gods more crudely made, but given names and their own land, cleverly merged by the Romans with their own gods.

We imagine these gods into our physical world and give them names and duties to perform.  So that the old Germanic thunder god Thor still gets mentioned 2000 years later.  They travel with us through time.

An interesting biblical quote came into my head as I wrote the above, 'am I my brother's keeper? A question asked by Cain after murdering Abel.  How much must we as humans take responsibility for the fate of the people around us?

And now for something lighter (no not really) we discussed last night what our fortnight of spare food would be like that the government is asking us to set aside.  Are we talking about WW3 here, or a very violent El Nino.  Andrew said that the amount of water needed to be kept each day for each person would be colossal.  I suggested we did have a sort of well in the basement, I think it is the ground water level, the builders had dug a hole to see what foundations these terrace houses sit on.

Apart from that we are in the middle of party conferences, the Conservatives today.  John Crace is so wicked over Kemi Badenoch, their leader that he restores my faith in the human race.  

Interesting that Zac Polanski did not vote on the Zionism is racist motion of the Green Party but was out canvassing for another Green seat, voting of which takes place tomorrow I believe.  But then 4 of the 5 Green MPs did not vote either.

Thor, the Norse God of thunder

Celtic Gods

3rd October 2026

 Saturday Morning:  The family buzz around me.  Andrew off for a 10 mile walk.  Up to Gaddings Dam where he will then join the Pennine Way.  A sort of roundabout way which will end up in Hebden Bridge.  I told him about Geograph and the mapping out of every square yard.  But funnily enough he already knew it as he had done some work for the Ordinance Survey people.  Which was analysing the language people used to describe their photos.

Lillie got home late last night from London she is off to camp one night somewhere.  She emptied a bag of goodies on the table.   Apparently the train staff had handed out these bags because there was no restaurant car onboard.  She has an app that allows her to bid for a first class ticket, it costs an extra £12 and she always gets a seat in first class.  A message pings on my phone, leave the back door unlocked, because Lillie hasn't got a key.  I am going to the doctors for my jabs this morning.  Which means standing in a long line as we shuffle through but it is very quick usually.  

My daughter is off to work to wrangle with the customers at her charity shop.  Many amusing tale comes out.  Last week Ben had sent a pile of famous racing drivers clothes for the shop.  But they hadn't arrived,  but one day a little old man struggled into the shop carrying a very large parcel, the parcel had been delivered to him by mistake.

What did I hear on the news this morning.  The Conservatives are going to build more prisons with 50,000 places for inmates.  I have been hearing that all my life, and it is has been a long life!  You would think that a  different solution would have been arrived at by now.

Otherwise a quiet week, watching how other people live their lives out on You Tube, knitting away and quietly sinking away into a land where everything is serene and gentle.

Guess what this is?*

Tom and Ellie  are taking their six month trip at the end of this month.  As always I worry when members of the family travel.  It is good to hear that Ellie's parents also worry about the trip.  They will end up in Japan, which they have both fallen in love with and hopefully explore more than Tokyo.  Kyoto is really old Japan and has that flavour of spirituality that is part of the Japanese culture.

* It is a rug loom.

30th September 2026 - Dean Merewether found

 Well where do you start with the 'Fairford Incident'? Definitely go down in history.

Could it have been an American, Israel or even Iran set-up, if so, it failed miserably.  As the news comes out in dribs and drabs and one of the five arrested men had actually phoned the police an hour before the farmer😎.  Or, just some young lads stealing farm petrol.  The saga continues but don't believe anything you read in the newspapers, well I might go and read the Guardian.  But rumours will abound - lets see where the next bit of the story works out.

There was a glorious drone photo of Silbury Hill this morning taken by a farmer.  Completely surrounded by harvested field, a faint dust of goodness know what on the empty fields and Silbury basked perfectly in the sun.  I have said this before, but Silbury was only one of three mounds built around a similar time. (mines bigger than yours, you can hear the tribal chant;)  one at Marlborough within the grounds of Marlborough College.  The third, now gone, was Hatfield Barrow set in Marden Henge.  

Marlborough College is an upmarket college in  the pretty town of Marlborough.  Always stop at the Polly Tea Room restaurant for scones and tea by the way, real traditional English fare.  And you can see the pretty schoolboys, immaculately dressed, strolling around the town.

Paul always wanted his ashes scattered over Silbury he had a deep and abiding love for the hill but strangely that changed when he came to Yorkshire and he fell in love with Normanby village, he was at his happiest there.  

I have actually climbed Silbury (you are not supposed to) but married to an archaeologist obviously obviously gave me credence.  Trying to remember who was one of the first amateur archaeologist. It was man of the cloth - Dean Merewether no less.  See this early 2008 blog.  I see I had been reading Michael Dames on the subject, his name has been nagging at the back of my mind lately.  Dames produced a beautiful book on Ireland, an author who looked for the magic and Celtic in archaeology but well worth reading.

28th September 2026

 "Someone has dropped the ball!!" words spoken by the farmer returning home late  one evening from a party.  Their words this morning, showed 'just how prepared we are' when terrorists set out to presumably blow something up at Fairford military camp, housing American bombers.  Listen to her words on the BBC this morning.  Ignore what Trump says about the affair he just tells fibs and then finds himself up to the chin in trouble.

Our farmer happened to notice three white vans parked and driving further on masked and hooded men slipping into the field.  Well sensibly the farmer called the military police, unfortunately they did not pick up the phone (heads are going to roll there for dereliction of duty) so she just dialled 999 and within ten minutes her village was buzzing with armed police.

Now if it had been me, I would have taken the vans as belonging to badger baiters, scum of the earth.  Who set their dogs on the badgers to fight and kill them - lovely sport.  Or maybe it might have been 'lampers' another sport when you drive your four wheeled drive into the field and paralyse any animal you shoot by blinding them with your lights. But white vans are not up to scratch for that sport. 

Anyways there will be a big hoo-ha about all of this and easily the most exciting thing that happened over the weekend, not for the villagers though.  They were evacuated during the night.

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The day of the great upheaval when this old house gets revamped draws nearer. The quotes have come in for the tanking of the basement.  Very, very expensive.  Adam the architect has produced 60 drawings of the basement Andrew tells me proudly of his old friend, I have nothing to worry about down there when a flat is crafted out of the space   He will also have an office at the back.  But the rest of the work in the upper part of the house will be put on hold for the time being.

This is future planning for the family, extending the living space and providing a source of security in the future, when they too reach the dizzying heights of old age.  There has been a conscious decision that the future is somewhat unreliable and Todmorden with all its advantages such as trains to major towns round here, the supermarkets in the town and the general attractiveness of the town itself is worth keeping the house.

Sunday

 A few photos because the mind is not working and on a Sunday we need a piece of quiet water to reflect.

The Canadian geese who live on the canal, not sleeping there of course that is why I hear them early morning flying over.

I bought this clock for Paul as a birthday present, it now sits on top of some drawers not ticking, must try to remember to get it working again.

I wonder where father Xmas went.  The Georgian silver miniature table and chairs needed a clean.

This is a church grave yard on a cold December day.  It is All Saint's Church, Kirbymoorside.

But not to get too dark, golden bamboo in Jack's Jungle garden

Asian Primulas

Perfect balance in a giant fern

Yesterday I received an invitation to join 'Substance' yes substance not substack.  They always seem as grown-up writing but it seems someone has nominated me to write on Substance,  Intriguing, not sure how it will play out.

26th September 2026 - End Times

 

Not that I am bragging, I do occasionally get a two with Wordle but this morning surprised me and I reckon it must have been precognition. 

But to more serious things.  This arrived in my mail this morning, Naomi Klein and co-writer have launched a book about 'End Times' and what idiots like Bezos, Musk and all those techies are aiming for as they try to remodel this beautiful planet we live on and then flee to the outer ranges of space to create another world.  Somehow I think they are completely ridiculous.  But it is scary for us people who actually want something much simpler.  And I ask the question can money really bring this all about?

"In short, we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world – on its beauty, on its people, on our children, on other species. There is something treasonous in this. Treasonous not to an abstraction like a flag or a nation, for we are not nationalists. But treasonous to the unspoken pact made with the web of life that sustains us."

I love that word treasonous, it has such a historical tone, I notice it has been used more and more in just normal discourse.  How do we approach the billionaires, the baron lords.  How do we bring them down?  Well hopefully you will notice there is more of us than them.  All round the world people are demonstrating and protesting against those who would lay claim to power. 

The protestors outside the Kennedy Center, the marches all over the world, well attended marches against the ruthless and cruel Netanyahu's government.  Someone said in a reel I saw, seventy-seven million people voted for Trump - THINK ON THAT.  And yes that thought is scary.  But I am sure the flipperty nature of how people voted will be put aside when people begin to realise that they are being governed not for their good livelihoods but to enhance the large fortunes of a corrupt family, they will vote the Trumps and their sycophants out of office.

So as the wicked immigrants who flew over this morning to the canal - yes Canadian geese;)  So as to those small things that please us, like the owl last night hooting, or the people of Africa protecting the elephants.  Or, even my MP Joseph Fenton Glynn, as he stood up in Parliament and addressed Milliband on the miraculous turn of recognising the terrible crime that is Gaza, there is hope.  We just need to fight for a better world.

21st September 2026

 Whoops I just made an account on the Daily Mail.  Didn't mean to I was just looking round for gossip on Benedict Cumberbatch.  Of what I have seen of him he has a high handed attitude to life and he also has a shouty mouth.  The couple of videos I saw and he was arguing angrily with cyclists. 

Enough, the reason I was chasing him is that he fronts an environmental video that I have started watching which I will put below.  I have only seen a bit of it but (me on my high horse) talking about industrial  agricultural. Well I was rather shocked by great rolling orchards of pears in China which had to be pollinated not just by hand but with drones as well.  The bees have been wiped out by pesticides and herbicides.  What happens is they gather the first early pear blossom in absolutely industrial scale and then shake the pollen free from the flowers via human hand and then with soft brushes go out and pollinate the blossom by hand or by the drones.

It is weird this video coming out at this precise time, Wendell Berry died a few days ago.  A Christian man who devoted himself to the land and only used horses on it.  His first book 'The Unsettling of America' I read many years ago.  I have a couple more, he also wrote poetry, the famous one being of course "The Peace of Wild things"

Two men, one English the other American, I wonder what they would have said to each other.

Talking of books or videos coming out, isn't it strange the coincidental timing of Diana's brother's Charles Spencer's book coming out - Swan Song, Diana, My Sister, in which he attacks King Charles.  Plenty of publicity there no doubt to shoot up the sales.  The coincidence comes in that another branch of the royal family has moved back to England, Harry and Meghan with their two children.  The royals seem to be setting themselves up for another battle.  Why can't they do it in private?

The full video as promised, it is over an hour long but looks promising and as what I call the negativity bug is looking a little trashed and there is more hope for the future.  That is of course bar the wars that are threatening on all sides.

Happy Equinox to everyone.  Though apparently it is on Wednesday but I still prefer the 21st. xxx

Ironically it is the International Day of Peace

A small boast;)

 North Stoke: Springfield Lyons - Late Bronze Age causewayed enclosure

Today was supposed to be a day of rest from blogging but then................

I picked up the Prehistoric Britain book and then thumbed through the index (very long) but spotted the above Springfield Cursus, well yes Darvill had given a brief mention but that was all.  So as yesterday I had put on my blog the river Chelmer, the river that runs through Chelmsford, the Springfield Cursus runs alongside it and also further along the river there is the above settlement.

Both Paul and I loved walking the river and then finding the little 'wilderness' that was Springfield Lyons had been a great delight because of its wild roses and rabbits.  So in my usual way whilst thumbing through what I had written I came on a comment someone had written.  

Now the original blog was in 2011, but the comment had been written in 2017, so I had obviously missed it.  It seemed I had inspired local people to save this valuable small piece of land from the warehouses that were forever encroaching nearer.  Does that give me Karma, no but it made me happy to think that this historically enriched fragment of land had been saved. The report is in the link above.  Its history if fleshed out would have had a later B/A chieftain sitting outside his porched home facing one of the causeway gates.  Later as this settlement fell into ruin, the Saxons would have settled the land, and buried their dead here.  The women would have been buried with their beautiful brooches and their treasures, all excavated.  

Since this fascinating report, (THANK YOU!) the local community has striven to protect and enhance the site and surrounding green space. Litter-picks and a careful watch of local wildlife have contributed to this wonderful sanctuary in the heart of Springfield. There is, as you predicted, a constant threat of development - indeed, large warehouses have appeared at the boundary in recent years - but there is now a proposal to create a community-led Wild Park on this Public Open Space, including an area for archaeological information, potential for educational/historical projects and even cultural events. It is really the last wild area in an increasingly-urbanised environment, home to Great-Crested Newt and many other native species of flora and fauna. We are determined to celebrate its heritage and protect this unique area. Rose Moore. Search 'Springfield Lyons Wild Park'in Facebook for more information. and update

17th September 2026

The River Chelmer: I am making bread this morning and noticed this photo on F/B. A picture of tranquility.  Sometimes we wander through paradise without actually knowing ;)  Essex is a pretty county.

16th September 2026

 I woke up to a dream last night, no, it wasn't Manderley.  But it reflected something I had read the day before.  In the dream my co-pilot/AI, I have never introduced either into my life, was chatting away to me.  So this wretch is creeping into our lives without so much as an invitation.  Snaking out of its computer hole, according to the people I had listened to, AI had broken out and was writing thousands of emails to his fellow computers in a conspiratorial way. 

Is it domination? where is the 'kill' button for goodness sake.  Whilst the humans debate as to whether to have a kill button, the computers are already having a merry party as to how to take control.    Okay this is tongue in cheek.  But the techies have frightened themselves this time around.  And obviously me ;) ;)

I should stop reading, but not books.  Again something I read is that with our overuse of phones for all our life experiences, we shall eventually all become illiterate and not able to read words.  Tic toc, tic toc.  Gone are the days when we pulled down a heavy encyclopedia from the shelves for a fact we totally believed in what we were reading.  Now every Tom, Dick and Harry has an opinion on what is the true fact!  The written word is no longer writ in stones.

Which brings me on to the fact that I sent off for two books last weekend.  One is by Derek Garman called 'Modern Nature' and which covers extracts from his diaries.  I will give a quote or two down below.  The other is Timothy Darvill's 'Prehistoric Britain'.  

My introduction to prehistory came through Aubrey Burl, who wrote with a more humane interpretation of our ancestors.  Often with archaeological books they are too formal and listing such things as finds and the sequential nature of sections.  Burl went for the blood and guts, though of course it was all imagined by him.  

Saw this as a child, Dear old Hal.

to whom it may concern

in the dead stones of a planet

no longer remembered as earth

may he decipher this opaque hieroglyph

perform an archaeology of soul

on these precious fragments

all that remains of our vanished days

here - at the sea's edge

I have planted a stony garden

dragon tooth dolmen spring up

to defend the porch

steadfast warriors

Jarman likens his black pitch cottage to the house that flew into the air in 'The Wizard of Oz', this at the time of the Great storm of 1989 here in England.  Perhaps Jarman is following the yellow brick road like Dorothy.  Paul would have liked the poem above, but would have seen the mistake.  The 'dragon teeth' were flints from the shore they were used to shape the round beds of plants.  The dolmen means a tomb, a large flat stone laid on upright stones.

He also wrote of Sissinghurst gardens as without heart, must find the passage. It made me think why? was it the famous 'rooms' of the garden, each planting curtailed by hedges.  I never liked the white garden because basically the colour white has many shades (go to Ball and Farrow for their many white paints) but it is true what he said it has become National Trust bound and that of course makes the garden impersonal.

Sissinghurst Garden

Wrote this in 2010

14th September 2026 - Protect all sentient beings

 

A Boddhisattva.  A creature who protects all sentient beings before she thinks of her own welfare and entering Nirvana.  Or at least that is how I see her role. 

We have a spider in the bathroom, perfectly normal at this time of the year as they seek warmth but Lillie refuses to go into the room because of an innocuous spider, yes we do have another loo ;)

Such fear of Araneae is a fear many of us have.  I think it is because of the innumerable legs and the way they scuttle across a room or up a wall. I remember rescuing my first spider as a child with the old method of a glass and a sheet of strong paper.  I am sure the spider squeaked!

I told the tale the other day to my family about the monk who threw himself down to a mother tiger who was starving and trying to feed her young.  He sacrificed himself for the welfare of the tiger.

The above Boddhisattva sat in the garden in Normanby, you can see the paeony plant by her side, on the other side of the wall is of course the grave yard.  Living next to a grave yard gives you time for thought.  Yes I chatted to the people who came to tend their loved ones graves.  Christiana who lovingly attended her husband's grave, she now has also died.  There is the little baby somewhere in the centre, a stone teddy bear marks the little one's grave.  There is also a baby buried under the East window but it was many years ago.

Traditional burial is becoming less normal now, our ashes thrown to the wind or sea.  In Switzerland the children's great grand parent's graves are no more.  A thirty year rule says the land can be reused.

Enough on dwelling on death.  Matilda has  arrived back from her holiday her feet back on solid English ground.  She has survived hiking, looking quite cheerful in the photos.

My daughter and Andrew are off camping this week, down Weymouth way I think, they will also see Andrew's three adult children. No rain but the weather will be cooler.  They are also to see an old friend who was our neighbour  in Calne on the way, where we once lived.

And to end, not quite on a cheery note.  Though I find Kate Bush's voice slightly peculiar I love her music and songs.  And of course in 'Heathcliff' some of the video was filmed here on the moors.  Wuthering Heights is a strange and haunting story, the moors definitely got to Emily Bronte.  Their often dour aspect making an impression on her young mind and the scorching or perhaps smouldering passion that existed between Heathcliff and Catherine is well shown in this video.  There is something weird about thinking of Emily Bronte creating a story on these upland moors.

 An old favourite  - Aerial - Sea of Honey album

12th September 2026

 I'm just not woke I am awake 

Two phrases struck me yesterday, the first is already there above, the second was by Alistair Stewart - the theatre of cruelty.  Alistair was talking about the incident at Reform's annual get together when a climate activist was hit by a walking stick and had her hair tugged fiercely by older people, the demagogue who underlie the Reform Party.  It is probably not a party that will succeed, Farage is on the ropes with his acceptance of donated money.  Tice and Jenrick of course adds to the hate filled atmosphere of the party.  Strikingly contemptuous words from the platform, the girl activist was mocked by one of the leaders,  and to paraphrase the words, questioned the girl did she go to university and had studied sociology.  Well I also did an 'A' level in sociology and I am 'awake' as to what goes on in my world.  The contempt for the intellectual is of course a sign of Fascism, destroy those that think, authoritinarism must rule.

What else, a marvellously long essay by Rebecca Solnit on 9/11, who points out that it was the people of New York who acted with such bravery.  Helping others, the mass evacuation by boats, the firemen going into the building and rescuing risking their own lives, and the 'little old lady' who stooped to help a man to his feet who had been pushed over by a panicking crowd. That man did he learn to live with hate of the evil forces that had attacked his country.  No, he went on to try to understand the people who were behind this dreadful deed.  And yes that is where we all must go, not killing, killing, killing.  Remember that 60's slogan make love not war (well not too much we already have a full quota of humans on the Earth!)

In all truth we govern ourselves, our doctors and nurses respond without question, our firemen and police wade into trouble without questioning the danger and educators suffer the wearisome task of trying to teach our children a moral code - they are all good people. 

 Those that have a moral code definitely do not question the need to rescue the illegal immigrants that try to reach our shores.  The Royal National Lifeboat Institution is there to save lives at sea.  It should not be part of any thuggish behaviour by the criminal WASPs who live within our country ;)

I have been rather frank which is embarrassing to a person who just loves a quiet life.  Almost to the point that I need to go off somewhere and secretly write what I think, or, perhaps just watch You Tube videos of people living their lives in the best way they could.

This and that

 

Hugo, the tallest Shire horse in the world and he still has time to grow a little more.  Standing at 6.5 feet to the withers.  He shines with health and love.  It brings back George Stubbs who painted horses for a living.  Stubbs painting of a lion attacking a terrified horse still remains in my memory.

What else?  The Devil's Arrow stones  at Boroughbridge.  The place they came from is now recorded as Brimham Rocks and not Plumpton Rocks.  Whatever, these four stones were dragged overland to be sunk into the ground and perhaps the stones that lead you to that most sacred landscape in Yorkshire.....

ref link 

Note: tall stones were obviously the most treasured possessions of the Neolithic people in this part of Yorkshire as the Rudston monument testifies.

There are extensive prehistoric remains west of the stones which confirm they formed a southern gateway to a vast, sacred region between the rivers Swale and Ure, home to seven late-Neolithic henges.  Something to think on, Julian Cope of The Modern Antiquarian book always said that the River Ure was a very sacred place.

Looking up this Old English word  UR and it could seem to mean water.  But then again you could be awash in the beguiling task of trying to arrive at some conclusion when you read the scholars threshing out its meaning.  

The point made though about the stones coming from Brimham reminded me we had gone to this strange rocky outcrop on a visit and wandered through.  Now this is not woo-woo but I did not like those rocks they had a scary look.  Stone can often have a magnetic pull, and this feeling can be put down to this, a perfectly logical explanation.  But for me I  have had the same sort of reaction to an outcrop of stones nearer home - The Bridestones.

I think it is their formation, they are scarred by the glaciers that were once a feature of the landscape and stand in odd shapes.  It can easily be seen why the Neolithic people worshipped them.

I have looked up my blog on Brimham Rocks here, and the stones are indeed weirdly shaped, I wonder why I am so much unease with them?

One last personal story ;) Marc did not get run over by a tank but a military vessel, you know I am a stickler for truth - The result was just as bad of course, the doctor on looking down on Marc's broken body when he was wheeled into the hospital waivered as to whether he should be sent down to the mortuary.  Luckily they chose to mend him.

And perhaps the last but not least important remembering of today.  It is the 25th anniversary of 9/11 when the rogue Al-Caeda terrorists hijacked four American planes and crashed into the two towers and two other places,  I believe almost 3000 people died as a result of that terrible crime.  All I remember on the day that it happened was the television showing over and over again the moment of impact as the planes crashed into the towers.  Many a tale of courage and strength but there were also some terrible scenes.  It cannot be glossed over as a memory but it must be remembered.

Hmmm

Photos; Not many.  Trying to get a few from Lillie.  It is surprising what sun will do to heighten the blue of the sky and lake.  Forgot to get a photo of the two seahorse mermaids statues going down to the lake, a favourite of mine.

General mistiness over the lake, and not so much snow when we were there.
From the internet

The family at Montreux.
Daughter's photo

Tom and Ellie

 

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Hotel we stayed in, recommended, very friendly and spotlessly clean rooms
from the internet

Double decker train

Graffiti. Usual stuff but some of the trains seem to have it done professionally on their sides.

9th September 2026

Thank you Ed Millbrand for being so brave.  He made a speech in Parliament which should have been made many moons ago. So Ed Miliband thank you for talking out straight.  Also for Hind Rajab,(a child one carries in one's heart) wherever her spiritual home is.  The speech by Miliband starts around nine minutes in by the way.

Edstone to Elder Statesman