Again words - Celtic Thunder

Wayland's Smithy Neolithic long barrow

This morning the road outside is blocked with weird machinery, goodness knows what they are doing, could be they are really cleaning the drain that runs into the river, the Seven was high again yesterday from all this rain.  I have written so much about Wayland's Smithy that I will not say more, one of my favourite places though.

Came across a video from a megalithic friend this morning, it was done by the following Irish group Celtic Thunder and is about WW1, remember that Xmas advertisment? Much better done here.  This group sings (well) in a dramatically edgy way, you will see the theatrical showy way below.  Never come across them before but they are definitely enjoyable. Words to 'Heartland' below and also the video..... 
A thought to be explored about Nationalism which has reared its ugly head in many parts of Europe, do such things as this song narrow our view of our country or expand them?

Heartland

Out of the mists of Time it comes
Older than the oldest rhyme it comes
Coursing through our veins it comes
Pulsing in our brains it comes
Crashing like a thunder roll
Echoing in our very soul
Listen for it as it comes
The pure, unbridled sound of drums
(Spoken end)

Hear our hymn from the heartland
Hear our prayer
Steer us through stormy waters
Lead us there...

When the storm is raging
And thunder rolls
Deliver us from the ocean
Save our souls

A Thiarna, déan trócaire (Lord have mercy)
A Chríost, déan trócaire (Christ have mercy)
A Thiarna, déan trócaire (Lord have mercy)
A Chríost, déan trócaire (Christ have mercy)

When the winds are howling
Vigil keep
Shelter us and save us
From the deep

A Thiarna, déan trócaire (Lord have mercy)
A Chríost,…

Perhaps two photos more for that old long barrow has sad memories as well.  Here is my son sitting with a black bin bag round his shoulder, cross with his mother for dragging him miles in the rain just to attend a pagan scattering of ashes.  Next to him 'Wysefool' who died not long after this trek and who had a poetic soul.

Flowers from the garden we brought to honour 'Treaclechops' and her wish to have her ashes scattered round Avebury and here amongst the trees.

Friday 28th November

As always the weather is wet, wet, wet.  I cut the last of the things to go into the garden waste bin yesterday, last day collection this morning, and then took Lucy for a short walk.  Met the vicar coming out of someone's house, only to hear that the vicar had found the occupant unconscious outside the house.  He is a widower and is so depressed just wants to join his wife.  The vicar visits him regularly and as I walked I wondered how the village could keep an eye on the man, as he is so uncommunicative and keeps to himself.

Well I had an appointment with the nurse for a MOT, and it transpired the last one was 10 years ago, but my blood pressure righted itself after three goes and my weight has stayed the same during that time.  I asked the nurse what could be done about single people getting old and not wanting to live.  She said something surprising, there is nothing you can really do and the person has the free will to choose.  Also said that my refusal of the flu jab is quite common, the vaccination going round at the moment can only tackle three types of flu, there are unfortunately thirteen types of flu on the move.

But to happier notes.  Called into the library and spotted  several Elle Griffiths on the shelves, must have seen the books on other blogs and wanted to read them so was pleased with my find.  Will also try to find George Elliot's Middlemarch and reread it again, it seems very 'in' on the radio at the moment.  And to get back to spinning, having found some melded coloured tops to spin...

I toyed around with the idea of an e-spinner but threw the idea out when I found out the price, so my old Ashford wheel will have to do.  

Wednesday 27th November

Saw this yesterday and made me giggle and of course feel nostalgic.  The sheds are of course for the 'German' type market which opens tomorrow by the side of the Abbey in Bath.  Before these sheds open, it looks like a square of garden sheds and very bleak.  Wonder if they will 'ice' over the garden bit of Queen Square? but I see a rink  has been established in  the park.

Tuesday 26th November

Yesterday I had a terrible drive to Scarborough, coming back in the dark, and rain.  I had offered to take a friend to hospital for a scan.  We set off at 3 just as dusk was beginning to settle.  It was a close call for timing an hour's drive found me in  enormous car parks, C jumped out of the car and headed for the main entrance, and I sorted out where I had to park.

We had thought of C driving her car with me as passenger, but the consequences of that was something I did not want to contemplate especially when........... she told me that her £25 winter check over had turned into £260 because the garage had found her brakes (hanging on by a thread?) not working.  She had deliberately been driving around with this because she was going to buy a new car in January and did not want to spend on the old - bless her.

The rain beat down as we drove back, and I sloshed through deep puddles of water that stretched across the road.  The amount of rain that falls is worrying and if changed to snow as winter arrives means a lot of us are going to get stuck.  Anyway she treated me to a meal in the pub next door, scampi and chips, and Lucy was happy with her portion of scampi/s?

Scarborough is a place I have never explored, probably due to snobbishness, not sure.  It has a long promenade front I think, but Whitby, and its charm always held our interest.  Never ask my daughter what she thinks of the two towns her estimation is quite cruel.

One of the things about Whitby, and continuing Pat's talk of dog poo, is that Whitby is the dog capital of the North.  Everyone brings their dog there and you will see practically every breed, dog sxxt is cleaned every morning by the council but is run by the unscrupulous council of Scarborough I think.  You thought that it was just central London was corrupt, come up North.

The replica Endeavor, shorter than the original and of course famous for Captain Cook

A favourite early photo of the grandchildren.

Whitby is a town with too many churches but then it is also the Goth centre of England, take your pick!

Three churches lie at the bottom of Brunswick Street jostling each other for space.
Yes I miss Whitby but not its hills....

Comments have been restored thanks to Rachel and me looking once more at the instructions properly.

Words

Chasing words:  This blog was in drafts last week.

"The phrase "OK Boomer" is a pejorative retort used to dismiss or mock perceived narrow-minded, outdated, negatively-judgemental, or condescending attitudes of older people, particularly baby boomers. The term has been used as a retort for perceived resistance to technological change, climate change denial, marginalization of minorities or opposition to younger generations' ideals."  Wiki entry

Millennials, also known as Generation Y (or simply Gen Y), are the demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with 1981 to 1996 a widely accepted definition. Millennials are sometimes referred to as "echo boomers" due to a major surge in birth rates in the 1980s and 1990s, and because millennials are often the children of the baby boomers. The characteristics of millennials vary by region and by individual, and the group experiences a variety of social and economic conditions, but they are generally marked by their coming of age in the information age, and are comfortable in their usage of digital technologies and social media .

I have a love affair with words, how they appear with a little help from academics.  We are air-brushed by society into our compartments.  I even did a sociology A level course many years ago, and my words flew onto the page with a rapidity of analysis - unfortunately.  It is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope at people, judging them by fine lines made up by a curious urge to settle everything around us. The problem is social situations become underlined by the words used to circumscribe them. But I don't know the answer to make this world a better place, all the words spilled into the atmosphere will not right wrongs.

There is a 'babel' of words for politics, we turn off in a weary mood, comfort ourselves in our own lives which may seem from the outside a foolish thing to do.  So I came upon these words this morning, and copied them from F/B.... rather than yell at winter, greet it as a friend who slows us down and make us aware of the difficulty of doing things.

"Winter takes away the distractions, the buzz, and presents us with the perfect time to rest and withdraw into a womb like love, bringing fire & light to our hearth".
.. and then, just around the corner the new year will begin again, and like a seed planted deep in the earth, we will all rise with renewed energy once again to dance in the sunlight

-Brigit Anna McNeill
Art: Jessica Boehman

Life is a gift ❤ a Happy winter to you all...

 past blogs;  Etymology

and then there is this, always loved those Celtic stories of 'opposites' black/white sheep.

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/11/celtic-gods.html

Apologies - Comments

Sharon (Morning Minion) asked me on F/B what had happened to my comments this morning.  I just thought you were all not talking to me! But then I went to my 'comments' in settings and saw that they had lined up there.  So I pressed  publicise on as many that came up.  Sorry to you all, feel such an idiot.

And now can't get rid of those blardy (as Jennie would say) but I am quite capable of using real swear words, REACTIONS.....................

Saturday 23rd November

Life is so lonely without the person you love. Such a simple fact, the tears that spring unbidden at any time.  Round this house, Paul's pride in it was wonderful his presence is still captured, will I end up like Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens caught in a time frame forever.  I have left everything as it was, his watch and glasses in the bedroom, old jumper hanging from the chair.  Razor in the bathroom, shoes in the utility room.

I keep the radio on constantly, and switch the television on in the evening, I will do anything not to remember but memories cloud the head with their bitter-sweetness.

I should not write this of course, be brave and I have indeed tackled all the correspondence that flows through the letter box.  Hung on phones listening to interminable music whilst I was handed from one department to another.  Most big companies have a bereavement department is something I have learned.  Most people are kind and gentle is another.  Yesterday was a great relief and I was happy that a credit card was at last paid for and finished with, the man on the phone so good.

And of course all this happens as winter and darkness spreads around.  Waking up in the dark, listening to the radio at 3 o clock, bet you did not know we could have biased algorithms running the country, especially in the social security department.  Think about it, AI running amok with its logic and lacking the warmth of the human heart.

The Quiz night was something I attended, if you were to ask me why, I would point to the calendar which has Paul's notification on the day he predicted for this year, only one day out.  He so loved the village and was interested in things happening.  The quiz was incredibly hard, sweet Harriet found a lasagne for me amongst all the great portions of pie and chips everyone else had.  And I sat with Elaine, Keith and Alison their daughter.  When we first came she washed and cut Lucy and walked dogs but is now a decorator.  Her parents will build an eco-house on the land next to their cottage, and the village seems happy with it.  David in his loud town crier's voice introduced two newcomers to the village, and the raffle prizes were mostly booze.  The pub is a very friendly old-fashioned place, Harriet's friends intermingling with our older generation.

Well having written all that I am happier and it is getting lighter so that I can go out to let the two bantams out and feed the birds.  The owl has drifted away, yesterday apart from a pheasant prancing around on the lawn there were a couple of gallinula (little hens) or moorhens.  At first I thought they were ducks as they strode across the lawn, then their shape appeared, must have wandered down from the river.  Which reminds me that Keith had said that they had introduced beavers into the river/s at Cropton Forest to slow down the water with their dams.  Must look into that.  Which I did.

Thursday 21/11/2019

Today dawns frosty, the car windscreen is frosted up with pretty patterns.  But I have my defrosting kit from the garage should I need to go out.  My £25 pounds is well spent, they have checked battery, antifreeze and tyres, even taking the car out on a run to check performance.  Not so good news I will need a couple of front tyres sometime in the future.

I pottered around the town whilst the car was in the garage, buying vegetables and watching the small market set up.  Drifted through the church yard and admired the clipped yews, much neater than ours.  The town runs up a hill just above the church is a moated site called Vivers Hill Castle, unusual because it is situated on a hill.  At the very top of the hill is the late medieval Neville Hunting Lodge with just one small part of a wall standing.

When will princes, politicians and unscrupulous businessmen go to jail for crimes committed?  Andrew is being punished by the withdrawal of charity support, he has been turned into a black sheep by his family and thrown to the wolves? Anyway he will not be drawing a state salary.... The Queen consulted Prince Charles on what to do, does it not sound like 'Alice in Wonderland' to you. 

Simon Armitage is handing out his salary he receives as Poet Laureate to anyone who can write a good eco-poem.  Just read Deborah Harvey's poem which is political rather than about nature.

Suddenly I remember a poem by John Masefield, I must have learnt it at school... Sea Fever ... how simple it seems amongst the confusion of the days we live in.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

The Ark

Wednesday 20th November

Quiet is the day, there is as I predicted a thick layer of golden leaves on the ground after all the cold we are experiencing.  In half-an hour I shall take my car to the Kia garage for a winter check, which they are offering for £25.  When the weather is really cold I light a fire in the afternoon, not always successfully but I am getting better.  

Never listened to the political show last night, sometimes you get sick of all the words spouted knowing that many of them will not be fulfilled.  It would be easier to write our own lists and post them up the chimney to Santa Claus.  Did watch 'Look Back In Anger' the other night and managed to watch it from the beginning to the end.  Burton definitely had the sultry look that his wife Elizabeth fell for.  What is striking about the film though apart from the 'kitchen sink' feel is the overall gloominess of the 1950s, that grayness and drabness against which passionate emotions were played - but yet they knew no better?

Tomorrow is the quiz night at the pub, something I shall have to enter on my own, the thought scares me, my soul's eye will be looking for Paul, talking to him silently.  People will be kind I know there is a generosity in people we should all be thankful for.

What else, Lucy is pacing the house once more, does she need a walk? she hates walking and there is not a happier dog then when we turn round and she heads for home at a very much quicker pace.  Never know what sends her off into this walking back and forward mode not being able to settle. Could be because she is a spaniel the vet says they demand a lot of attention.

Just typed in the date, apart from time flying, how could Prince Andrew remember a pizza date of 20 years ago, apparently if he had had a police escort at the time their pocket books would have recorded it!  

John Crace says it all

Transit

All those lovely leaves to sweep up!

susurration = whispering or rustling. Of leaves, or water.

"I know my song well before I start singing it."

 “God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within himself nor without does he find anything to cling to”. Sartre

Very philosophical you may say.  I picked up this quotation from an old Independent article on the Paris riots of 1968.  I remember thinking at the time will the old kill their young?  And today as the riots in Hong Kong turn into violence I feel the same sense of unhappiness for the fate of these young people.
Times have changed, past wars slip under the vision, they happen is something we say, we can have no input into such decisions.  It is the time of China to rise up and become a super power, those that have no power must fall.  'For the greater good?'
Remembering songs by Bob Dylan, the depths of despair that so many felt in the misery of the Vietnamese War.  It makes no difference - it happens and we should be truly grateful that things that annoy us are so small and petty, such as Prince Andrew!
Does the quote above beg the question that if god existed we would have a better life I doubt it very much.  The Church was just as cruel as the outside world in its behaviour to its people.  You have only to look at the tranquil old churches in today's Britain to understand that those gargoyles and horrible carved leering  creatures you see on the outside walls are what was used to frighten people into worshipping the 'one' god.

Sartre and Dylan has disappeared into the mists of time and we live in a modern world, where sadly war and discontent still go on, this time played against a background of climatic disturbance.  But funnily enough our quiet lives go on, I gathered the leaves off the lawn yesterday, and as I raked their sodden mess the world was a normal place. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/may-1968-paris-student-riots-demonstrations-sorbonne-nanterre-de-gaulle-a8335866.html

It has not happened yet, but it will..................

To write every day? How does this happen.  Drag something up from the past, forget the'scream' inside me as I think only of what I have lost?  Memories flit through my brain, mainly a summery Essex at the moment.  Looking out of the window and it is a cold grey Yorkshire day.  The leaves are scattered across the lawn. So much nonsense on the radio, for Christ sake these people take home good money.
Reading Paul Mason at the moment, 'A Clear Bright Future'  There is some optimism in it but basically he is talking about AI and a need to control it. We have lost so much along the way.  So apart from environmental concerns, the contract between labour and capital which has been undermined.  There is an ongoing fight for there to be a fairer world, decent wages, decent homes and a NHS which is well funded.  Something written and read by Nick Drake,(a different Nick Drake to the one who died years ago) it goes further but the video does not translate to blogger.

It has not happened yet, but it will

'I am the future, but before I appear,

Please - close the scrolls of information,

Let the laptop sleep,

Sit still

And shut your eyes.

Listen - Things are going to change

You can hear the poem being spoken by Nick Drake on Jackie Morris's site, below the 'Letters to the Earth'

Optimism is our only hope, fighting for what is right. Listening to others and not rounding on them like an angry tiger. Yesterday I pulled up a moment of history just to illustrate what I was talking about. Some would say using history as a blueprint for reading present events is foolish. Maybe so, except the fact that everything comes round with a certainty for sure.

Listen to the trees as the wind takes their leaves and either rattles their dryness or sounds like a soft shurring noise. They are the new saviours of the planet, imbibing the carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and clearing the atmosphere. Although we are extorted to plant more trees the government and their agencies have not kept to their promise to do this. (Which is probably a reflection on many of their promises!)
Our young beat the drum, there is a tumult in the air, as fear presses down. Look at Hong Kong rioting for democratic rights and the fear of being extradited to China, some as young as 8 years old. It comes to something when the students rioting on the street are still school children, yet we are experiencing this with the climate emergency. A need to have their voice heard, and don't listen to the cynics whining that they should be in school being educated. We can learn anywhere the difference between right and wrong and fight for our rights.
Speaking out is the only way things get done, a slow swelling of majority happening, curse the traffic hold-ups but also ask why is this happening?

  

Thursday 14th November

Skinningrove is famous for it's annual bonfires

Several years ago whilst out with the family we drove towards Teeside but down narrow lanes and we drove down a steep incline to the village of Skinningrove, (Viking for skinner's grove or pit).  It was dull and dismal.  A cluster of terraced houses faced the sea, and allotments tumbled down a hill.  Yet it still gets a mention in today's news as one of the iron mills of the British Steel Company (though long gone as a name).  Here is a 1920s photo, bleak lives by the seaside.

Well we have sold out to the Chinese, the family jewels are tumbling onto the carpet at a scary rate but jobs are saved of course.  It reminder me of the Greek economy at the moment, they are also allowing the Chinese to buy into their economy, actually Yanis Varoufakis (Greek economist) was instrumental in trying to sell Greek ports to them... wonder who will buy our ports when all that export to the rest of the world becomes a reality when that dreaded six letter word comes up?

I remember on that journey the seamier side of Teeside showed up, it is not all beautiful dales and moors in Yorkshire.  Think we ended up in the seaside town of Hartlepool for icecreams.  Matilda and Ben playing by the water's edge.  Matilda took a tumble and the wave carried her into the sea, her father ran in to pull her out.  I wrapped her in my cardigan and we made our way back to the car with a very miserable little girl.

But something to take us back to childhood and H.G.Wells.  'War of the Worlds' adaptation by the BBC - should be good.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/nov/11/british-steel-rescue-deal-jingye-scunthorpe-jobs

photos

Berries and trees:  There is a serenity in the garden, golden with sun and leaves, a tranquility  of age sits lightly on the air next to the church.  The holly tree, has an abundance of berries, and blends beautifully with the old Coke House of the church.

In days gone by the coke would have been used on two stoves within in the church.  It would have been filled from the front hatch by a horse and cart man.  This little building has a previous history though.  It is a Grade 11 listed building, basically because it was a Watch House.  A sort of police station, where you threw the miscreants before they were carted off to the courts in the bigger towns.  Here in this village, it would probably have been for drunkenness, for the road through the village was a drover route, and many cottages sold ale. 

Probably the land on which this house was built would have temporarily housed the beasts on their way to market.

Monday I took a friend to Malton hospital, and whilst she was there, I wandered round the shops.  The oomph has gone out of many high streets, they are unloved by the public and slowly sink into emptiness.  The Museum was shut, only opens Thursday and Saturday, and I decided Malton  was not for me.

Yesterday a friend visited, they have a house in Whitby, but came back because the weather there was so bad.  We discussed the shops around and I found out that apart from the Co-op having a strong monopoly up North, there is a 'Waitrose' type supermarket called Booths further up north.

My daughter has just messaged she has started a new job as a manager in a charity shop in Manchester.  Tired and exhausted but I think happy, Matilda is refusing to help in the house though.

Today is a boring garden club meeting,  Why do we need lawns, well all I can say is that ours is filling up with leaves, and we are being told by nature lovers to leave them there - brilliant. 

Sunday and the Windhover

"Definition of counterpoint rhythm. : rhythm in poetry including so much metrical inversion that the prevailing cadence ceases at times to prevail and so that a complex rhythm results from the concomitance of the basic cadence with its inversion if … reversal is repeated in two feet running"

I caught this morning radio BBC 4's 'Something Understood' which dwelt on counterpoint.  Listened to the music of Bach as he would have composed playing  through his motifs, blending these small batches of notes to create such beautiful music.  Listened to poetry, the last being the finest by Gerald Manley Hopkins - The Windhover and imagined the moment captured as he viewed this bird in the sky.

The Windhover

Gerard Manley Hopkins - 1844-1889

• 

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-  
  dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding  
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding  
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing  
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding  
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding  
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!  
  
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here  
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!  
  
  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion  
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,  
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

                       ------------------------------------------------------------

It is the moment when the beauty of this Earth shines through pushing aside the ego, and allowing happiness to shine through.  Yesterday dawned cold but that means the sun will light up the frost on the lawn, the red berries of the yews in the church yard and the holly trees.  Birds will cluster on the feeders because of intense hunger.  Golden leaves of the beeches shine like copper and the sparkling array of Autumn colours shine through on dying plants in the garden.

Looking up 'sillion' what does that mean?

sillion. Noun. (uncountable) (rare) The thick, voluminous, and shiny soil turned over by a plow.

Uncountable that is how the world creates, leaves fall, crumble get turned to soil.  The cycle of life creates and creates again, beauty is there for a brief moment  until the hand of man destroys it with ugly design......

Promises, promises

Here I am talking about the political parties offering us all kind of goodies if we vote for them.  It is a bit like the wretched flooding that has stalled across South Yorks/Midlands caught between two winds blowing in opposite directions, so are we.

Do you realise we have made all these news commentators happy to be alive and earning their salaries because they have been given the latest batch of political nonsense to talk about.  Knives have been out, a bit of virtual stabbing in the backs as Labour deserters have taken to pulling apart their leader. 

There we are, flood water round our ankles, this is not true in North Yorkshire by the way, the rains gave us a miss but it is still very wet.  And all we have to look to is Xmas - yikes. And maybe wading through the floods to vote - joy.

We have an out an out liar for a prime minister, his party in disarray, climate emergency bearing down on us.  

How have I helped towards this catastrophe?  Well I let Rod and his wife cut down the galloping Virginia creepers and ivies yesterday, they had 30 bins of cut stuff Rod informed me, largest cut they have ever done.  I feel guilty about the sparrows who lived and tweeted in this overgrown haven, but they seemed to have returned and the climbers will once again thrive as the weather warms up. Also they can go and live in the thick cluster of ivy that wraps round the tree in front.

I love this photo gleaned from the internet, so serene, though to be honest I don't like memes advocating greater serenity - it is not as if it ever happens!

And in a dark mood, Leonard Cohen, voice like melting chocolate, capturing it all...."You want it Darker" ;)

Wednesday

Welcome! Who am I welcoming this morning?  Well weirdly enough I have had a large spike in viewing numbers.  Investigation showed up a Russian contingency.  So is it my rather scary political views or something more sinister?

Never mind.  Noted this morning, was the BBC's 100 books that have made an impression on us.  To be quite honest I haven't read many but that could be to do with the fact that I don't read modern fiction.  I earmark quite a few books  to read as the months go by but have lost my password for the library, so that I could order some rather than spend money.

Two Guardian articles read this morning.  I questioned this one paper view I always have, and came up with the answer, I need to subscribe to such papers as 'The Times ' or 'Telegraph' or even 'The Independent', though the Independent is far more scarier than the Guardian, and is only online.  Poor newspapers overtaken by the media on the internet. 

So what were the two articles?  One on food banks in this country, the Trussell report.

The other was a paper signed by 11000 scientists arguing that Climate change is  real, something I believe, I know others do not.  But come on 11000 signatures must surely say get real.  Here is the original article  taken from the Guardian, read either I am sure both will say the same. 

on a 

Tuesday 5th November

Europe a Prophecy by William Blake.  God holds a compass as in  'The Golden Compass' of  the film of Phillip Pullman fame

Or as we know it the instrument of truth, the alethiometer.  It does raise the question of how we recognise truth, perhaps a mechanical instrument would do us all fine! This morning I am informed by the government via email, on those government petitions I have signed, are all written off because the committees and individuals could no longer be there after tomorrow. What is happening tomorrow? Parliament is closing down for an election - fun and games and the repetitious nonsense of the media.

I watched the film 'Golden Compass' and found it depressing but the story line was of course completely unusual.  Setting the background in the cold North with the Northern lights as 'dust' and we enter another world.  Warrior polar bears, in this time when we see them starving on icebergs as the North and South polar's melt, brings us to a reality we may have to face.

Also brings us to Greta Thunberg, stranded in one country because they have changed the venue of the meeting she was going to in Santiago has now changed to Madrid and she needs a boat ride across the Atlantic.  Somehow the children in Pullman's book have a relationship with the children who strike on Friday to draw attention to Climate change.  

I am not quite sure what to make of this, she is intelligent, outspoken and has gained a lot of respect.  On the other hand she has also been castigated and made fun of by some in power but she sticks to her message and you have to admire her for that.

William Blake, Phillip Pullman and Greta Thunberg all bring their messages to us, art, storytelling and I suppose in Greta's case facts or science.

So where does truth lie?