A magpie's miscellany
Durer's Hare
It is snowing this morning, the snow hares of the mountains are fast disappearing according to the news. We will remember the hare in song and verse but it will not be the same. Spell Songs are not quite the songs for this time of year but the dark times are already with us.
Where the machair grass is and the selkies live - Dig in, Dig in is one such song but keep listening to the others. And then this...........
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| Cornwall on a miserable day |
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| King Arthur's Hall |
On Sunday it was the old film 'Gone with the Wind' , Andrew exclaimed but you had only just mentioned it when it reappeared in the conversation a few minutes later, as trivial as that. But last night I dreamt someone asked me which was my favourite stone circle and I had said The Hurlers in Cornwall. These are are three stone circles scattered somewhat haphazardly on the moors beneath the Tor on Bodmin Moor. So this morning when I looked at my emails, "Sound the Trumpets" caught my eye. From an old friend, at last, there was to be an official exploratory excavation at King Arthur's Hall in Cornwall. A strange rectangular site with stones around a pond like structure. The argument goes that either it is prehistoric or medieval. It denotes the boundary line between two estates and has all that lovely historic facts sited in this particular spot. You can read about it here.
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| A corner of Cornwall, moors meet up against forestry plantation. King Arthur's Hall firmly in the centre, with the faint sign of the boundary bank in front. |
My heart leapt with excitement, why I don't know, but it was one of the places in this country of ours that fell deep into my soul. Its barren wilderness still held in the compass of the moor. So as my mind danced round the past excursions to Cornwall, there was a feeling well maybe before I kick the bucket I shall know its secret ;)
The house is full. Two Londoners came down Saturday evening to surprise their mother. Very difficult to do in this house because everyone has a tracking device on their Apple phones (except me). It rather put the walk at Hardcastle Crags out of view as we would have needed a people carrier's car. So after extensive discussions it was decided to go to tea in Tod, the alternative, Hebden Bridge is full of tourists on a Sunday.
So mostly it was a day planned round food, lunch was Richmond's vegetarian sausages in baguette. I find that the vegetarian Richmond sausage packet looks like their real meat ones, it tends to confuse me.
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Tea and cake in the afternoon: Tod is not renowned for its restaurants, they have a tendency to close down. But we went to the one that advertised games. Two shelves of boxed games and we ended up with a Wikipedia game, American biased. Luckily I had not got my reading glasses so did not have to play. Everyone is so much cleverer than me at remembering which American president presided over what. Me I am stuck in the prehistoric age!
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Social trivia blip in the news now! Will Smith hit the compere on stage in an Oscar ceremony. I will probably be on the side of Smith, the cruelty in some of the comedians on stage leaves a lot to be desired.
Evening meal was takeaway curry and the young ones watched a 'foul, funny' American programme, have you not noticed the word f*** is standard language now? But I managed the Wordle yesterday evening very quickly, wicked when they throw out all the vowels, luckily 'y' still fills in as the 6th vowel. It would make an interesting exploration as to why the Welsh language has such long difficult strings of letters that only have 'y' as the functioning vowel.
Yesterday Pat wrote about bad behaviour of a couple of people, uncivil you would call it. The taker of daffodil plants and the person who did not clean up after her dog. In the evening my daughter said that their shop had been burgled and a sizable amount of money taken on Tuesday night.
What do you do about bad behaviour? An old lady stealing plants or young lads stealing for drugs. Solomon needs to be called to adjudicate. Watched the CEO Peter Hebblewaite of P&O ferries this morning openly admit to doing wrong it was called criminal behaviour by the chair of the committee judging him, but he won't go to prison of course. Crimes just flitter past all the time now, there is seriously no moral compass in some people.
I watched an Irish man who had given up city life to go and live on one acre of land in the grottiest cottage, not lived in for years, and calmly explain that this was the type of life he was heading for. He was building his own little paradise, mostly in his head of course, but making a dream come true.
Ben Fogle chases round the world looking for similar people. We watched the other night a lady living in cold snowy conditions somewhere in a Scandinavian country. She was living a 'Stone Age' way of life, hunting and killing her food, preparing skins for wearing. Sometime later when Ben had gone back to visit her, she was sporting a mobile and attachment to the internet. There are some things you just can't live without.....
Channel 4 have started a new series - The Simpler Life. Usual tripe, throw a lot of people together, normally ones that won't get on with each other, and then see what happens. The backdrop is they must live an Amish way of life, with stored food, farming the land and not owning personal possessions for the 6 months but they live in perfectly delightful surroundings. One feels sorry for those that have been picked as they face up to plain and simple food, the children are the worst culprits here for pickiness.
Well I remember the first dash into reality television in 1978, 'Living in the Past' an Iron Age experiment with several couples (who may or may not have sneaked off to the pub or for fish and chips now and then ;) It was good watching at the time.
Previous:
Yesterday was switch over time to a new internet provider, coinciding with the new Equinox of course. It was managed successfully by my granddaughter early morning, though deep in 500 questions in Spanish which she had to deliver that day. The router was set up, and I managed to eventually decipher the password she had left me; all this tapping on phones is hell to the handwritten word. Alexa stayed in misery all day and the television switched in the evening. Goodness knows if Putin decides to wreck the internet system what we shall do.
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I think I wrote that on Monday, bad news coming in thick and fast and I did not want to know the world. But today the 23rd, the sun shines, the Canadian geese, two swans and ducks are floating, not exactly peaceful, for they are squawking with belligerence choosing their mates perhaps. My favourite canal boat, Carpe Diem has returned to its mooring slot, with its wooden monkey fishing laconically on the back, and the two large huskies asleep in the front end of the boat.
Sunday is Mothering Sunday, so we are going out for a walk somewhere above Hebden Bridge and of course tea and cake. There are gardens round here to visit but quite a drive away, and in this time of inflation perhaps we should stay nearer home.
What is the Chancellor going to do, all the morning news is how people cannot afford the cost of living, the chant, heat or eat is heard time and time again. Those with means will survive, those without need social assistance, it will be interesting to see how he manages it.
The line drawn between those who are poor and those who are rich, is no more fully underlined as to the millionaires who govern us. Will we see us falling into the same pattern as the Russians are doing now and queueing endlessly for such staples as buckwheat and sugar.
The shock sacking of 800 crewmen by P&O, was a light up moment for many. Apparently Chris Grayling in 2018 gave the go ahead for a law to be passed that said that the Secretary of State 'does not need to be notified of the mass redundancies of ships overseas' . He was a b***** idiot in the time he was in office, his mistakes obviously just keep on coming. And, apart from that £1.80 an hour for the poor people recruited to work on the ships - heaven forbid we should sink so low.
So I shall return to my knitting and listening to 'Children of Ash and Elm' a Viking history. But not before looking up 'Seize the Day' (Carp Diem) music, which I used to listen to years ago..... The closing of Clark's factory for shoes in Bath, then went on to Street, the original factory. Firing and Rehiring sounds ideal music...
Yesterday I read Paul Knights post ' The Ebbing Past'. He lives somewhere around Hebden Bridge and I am fascinated the way he gathers the landscape in and examines it. This time it was two old derelict farms at a place called Reaps, interesting to me because they are near Standing Stone Hill. I occasionally complain because of the lack of prehistory around here and especially standing stones, and yes the hill does have one.
It took me back to Gallow's Pole again, a book I had not got on with particularly. I had not mentioned it too much because I know of two bloggers who were yet to read the book and that Pat had agreed with me it was rather a violent book to read, and of course you knew the ending. Well yesterday studying the map I came across the moor on which King David Hartley and his family lived. It was called Bell Moor and the house, Bell House still remains, though now it has been tarted up with one of those large 'barn' windows so beloved of the middle class.
I listened to the Calder valley History - Women and Coiners in the Calder Valley. David Hartley's wife Grace escaped the hangman's noose and seemed to have squirrelled away enough money to live on for the rest of her life buying a new farm on the death of her father-in-law. In this story by the way, there is a gruesome fragment of what happened to the informer who ratted on the killers of the tax man - William Dighton. I would skip it if I were you.
You can still walk down to Cragg Vale from Bell House. The farmhouse is this one, a typical Yorkshire windowed house. Its history still intact in the walls.
It was here that the clipping of coins shook up the foundations of money for a brief time in the 18th century, and the law of the land chased the citizens, for there were many involved, and punished them severely.
Was it a time of lawlessness with the Turville gang? Perhaps but in one thing often overlooked in the retelling of history is the role of the female. Air brushed out of a lot history it would seem that women also had a hand in this clipping of the coin. For who spends the money on housekeeping? The Calder Valley video mentions names, it was the women who passed the clipped coins into the hands of the vendors, a bit like today of fake notes that are covertly passed over the counter for goods, not much different.
Watching the video you are aware of the surrounding countryside, the high moors on which the Hartleys lived. The inhabitants had to be self-sufficient in food, but money was needed for essentials. It was a trade born out of hunger and poverty and a certain amount of lawlessness.
Clough - Steep valley or ravine
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| Steve Bell's retort to the sacking of 800 crewmen by P&O |
This is a miscellany of photos found on my camera this morning. The first one is of a 1980s knitting magazine my daughter found in a charity shop last week. She was so excited about it ;) Mum do you remember this, I used to pour over this magazine and ask you to knit sweaters for me. Now I live in a household of females, and as I occupy Matilda's bedroom (with a large print of Kate Moss glaring down on me) and the long length mirror for the girls to come and twirl, you could say that fashion is part of the conversation.
Well I would be kicked out of any discussion, what with my Cotton Trader labels, and the polite giggle from someone who handles the advertising for another company I own up to, that I really have no opinion on the subject. Except to say of course that fashion always comes around, and I don't understand why males are wearing dresses to go out at night... It is a generational thing!
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| It hasn't travelled far from Betsy's Wool Shop in Droyslden. 4 miles from Manchester |
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| Elegant simple dresses but the knitting would not stand up to wear and tear |
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| The stairs to the attic. My daughter covers the walls with prints, film prints (luscious ladies) and of course, Mary Mother of God bric-a-brac, it is something she collects, she is not religious I think it is the matriarchal aspect that intrigues her. |
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| The ugly face of Long John Silver when you turn the corner |
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| This is a family painting (bad I might add) of what we think was a house in Leipzig, rented by a g.g.g.grandfather? many years ago. Because my daughter's grandmother said she always visited her grandfather here. There are things I am hopeless out, geography for one and spatially working out how ancestors relate to one another but reading Prof. Alice Robert's on Ancestors this morning, I see she is as sceptical as me on not relating to any one ancestor in the past, except to their stories. When you have to go back ten generations - so around - 300 years - to gain over a thousand theoretical, direct ancestors. Can you possibly, in any meaningful way, identify with all of them? It's surely individuals, and individual stories, that we identify with most - even if (perhaps because) there is no way of demonstrating a direct genetic connection to them, other that they were human, like you. |
Landscape how do you measure it? John of Stargoose and Hangland whipped up a memory for me of a trip to Norfolk to see Sea Henge. That enigmatic wooden circle found as the tide washed out. Excavated much to the anger of local Druids and then housed in Lynn Museum, with the marvellous upside down tree at its centre, pointing to excarnation. Such mystery lies at the heart of Sea Henge. It didn't actually start in the sea, for that has slowly covered the land over the centuries. But it would probably have been in a more wooded part, or perhaps it stood on the line between life and death, land and sea.
We played Mary Chapin Carpenter in the car on the way down and then in the sun came to Holme-on-Sea and we wondered at the vastness of the beach. Sand rolled on for miles and in the distance wind turbines stood knee deep in the sea. There is no notice board as to where Sea-Henge was found, and apparently there is another henge - Holme 11 somewhere but badly eroded I think. Two distinct wooden monuments only a 100 metres apart but constructed in a different fashion at the same time though.
It was the landscape that caught the magic, silvery plants, hedging down the beach path, dunes stretching back to woods, so different to what I had experienced to that moment. The depth of the landscape flat and wild, going on into infinity. I can think of long beaches like the Gower or Newgale but there was always a backdrop and an end stop of cliffs. Flat land just dissolves into the distance.
All started by hunting down Anne Ross, whose book started me off.
And if you want to read the blog it is here
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| Sea Henge |
Yesterday flicked past, it was the Ides of March of course and the Smithsonian Magazine came up with a little story to fit the bill. Recently in Japan a stone called 'The killing Stone' cracked in two and if legend is right the spirit of the nine tailed fox/woman killer is let loose. Though someone did say after looking at the year 2022, she probably fled to another stone in dismay. There are of course more down to earth explanation for this volcanic rock splitting in two - rain had got into the cracks and split it open. You will be pleased to know that she was killed by a 12th century warrior.
So we still sit on the edge of the cliff with millions of people fleeing Ukraine (and Russia) and a person who likes to think of himself as a demigod still in power. So many brave acts, people from other parts of the world making the journey into the territories of war to rescue loved ones. It is not going right for Putin, a global revolt at his nastiness is showing that war is a weapon no longer needed, but I am sad for the Russian people having to go through all this at the behest of a crew of criminal gangsters, it does not matter they call themselves generals and politicians. The evil of greed writ large, and territorial lines drawn.
On the 15th March 1917 The Russian Czar abdicated, I wonder if that date figures in Putin's reasoning? There is a painting of the Bolsheviks burning a portrait of the Czar, which shows that craziness of the mob as they overthrow the regime.
Czar Nicholas II of Russia signs his abdication papers, ending a 304-year-old royal dynasty and ushering in Bolshevik rule. He and his family are taken captive and, in July 1918, executed before a firing squad.
History has a funny way of taking you by the throat and leading you down rabbit holes. This one Maiden Castle, or Mai-dun (great hill) One of the largest Iron Age hillforts in Europe, but situated in Dorset. It has scarred the landscape with its human made banks and ditches. It is formidable but its long history starts way back in the Neolithic with a cursus (a banked long length with external ditches, once thought of as Roman race course) over the centuries it developed into a large settlement with strong fortifications. The Romans came along in AD 43 and maybe they destroyed it, evidence of fire and death around that period and it declined, though there was a small Romano-Celtic temple built there.
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| Aerial Photo 1935 |
Two thousand years it has stood there, a graceful landscape art dug out by hundreds of people all those years ago, now empty and deserted.
The Celts - 1980 BBC programme
The Hairy Footed flower bee - Anthophora Plumipes; A sign of spring surely. Early to the flowers, you must plant lungwort, flowering currant and maybe comfrey. The female almost black, the male ginger, though I notice in the video he gives different colouring. Alys Fowler gives a good sketch of them here. When I talked to the bee man the other week, he had not heard of them, and looking up at the leaflet he gave me, many bees are missing from his list. May he plant a few lungwort plants and discover them.
I am not sure the bee would like it up here in the colder North but my Pulmonaria in the old garden showed a couple last year. You must always be patient. Love them and cherish them for they are gentle bees, not bumble because they are so called solitary bees.
Bensozia on Ukraine 1) and 2) Strange Defeatism About Ukraine
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| Is this the Westbury White Horse I wonder |
Listening to Macfarlane: I have just woken up with Edward Thomas travelling across France in the freezing cold, to, as we know, his certain death. All day I have been tired and gave into to it this afternoon and slept. The sun shines outside, but my inner journey is with Robert Macfarlane and the 'Old Ways. Here he is plodding along the Ridgeway, the mysterious Silbury Hill on the horizon. The great Neolithic sacred land before him, his words not mine. Avenues and circles, great stones dragged for miles and erected in dumb worship, though we spy the golden orb of the sun at their centre and also the cool moon on high. Macfarlane has read many of the books I have read.
He mentions Massingham, Prophecy of Famine, written with Hyams, a book I have also read. Famine did not come to fruition in this country at that time you will be pleased to know, we were always one step ahead of the game. The book Macfarlane refers to is 'Downland Man' a lyrical book, written before the world wars I believe, about a beautiful England before it fell under the heavy plough of modern farming. I can see the photos even now, the long lines of the downs, the horses ploughing, the Kent orchards with full apple trees.
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| There are so many stories about this area, especially the Uffington Horse. Eric Ravilious |
A completely different England to the one we are living in now. We have the edge on fear like Thomas travelling in the company of other soldiers, to a death yet to be experienced. Macfarlane mentions Ravilious and his painting. One that springs easily to mind, is the train carriage painting with the view of the White Horse just outside Swindon or is it perhaps the Westbury Horse that I could see, when the weather was good. from the top of the Bath Downs. Ravilious also painted the down lands as well.
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| Eric Ravilious |
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| Paul Nash - Silbury Hill. There is a feeling of homesickness for Wiltshire, it still calls but I have severed my connection with cars, and going back is not always a good idea. In fact given the presence of our country's mobility and excessive use of cars, perhaps I do not want to anyway! |
Yesterday evening was fondue night. Salads made, out come the pickles, the baguettes cut, the heater lit and we are off. We are in the process of eating our way through the 8 fondues and then similar amount of raclette cheeses, that Lidl seems to stock at Xmas and my daughter always buys.
Yesterday I left my purse, a favourite tapestry Welsh one, at Lidl, My daughter and Andrew went for their evening walk and picked it up, someone had handed it in. People are always losing their credit cards round here but by the same token they will be advertised on the Tod group and mostly restored to owner.
I bought myself a coat last week, typed tweed in Google and came upon 'Seasalt', down in Cornwall. Pretty dresses and a sale, a coat reduced from £159 to £69 pounds. A bargain. They do 'petite' as well which was a great find. So I am happy with this new coat, it makes me look smart for a change!!
I see everyone is putting prices on how food is going up. Our Lidl is yet to go down that particular road, plenty of vegetables at normal price, picked up baking margarine for 69p. We do the 'big' shop at Morrisons, delivered with its £4 extra charge but as everything is done on the phone I have very little to judge the prices by.
Money, which reminds me. I read one of Benzosia's blog the other day and forgot to put the link on to this interesting article here. Do you think your money is safe having watched the strict sanctions put on Russia. Think again
Just saying. Flash mob in Trafalgar Square We are all in this ghastly mess whether we like it or not. It affects our country economically, trying to pretend it does not exist is not the option. Whatever news you may hear from the BBC or the newspapers, will in all probability be speculation but not necessarily lies!
To those on the front line like Lyse Doucet and Clive Myrie, BBC journalists I listen to them. They've been there and experienced all the horrors of war, give them space and credence.
Or this boy of 11 years old who alone travelled several hundred miles to safety with a phone number written on his hand.
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| Courtesy of Sky News |
And perhaps last of all, the Polish mothers who left baby buggies outside a railway station for the Ukrainian mothers.
Empathy - Cognitive, Emotional and compassionate
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| Haworth Rectory |
Sunday dawned bright and beautiful. I had marked a bee talk at the Community College but when I arrived there at 10 found out that it was gardening out and about and then the talk round 12ish. Still I talked to the man who was going to give the lecture. I am puzzled by all the gardening effort for the art of growing food needs the assistance of bumble bees. Who cannot swoon at the sight of a bumblebee's pollen strewn bum deep in the heart of a foxglove flower?
So I went for a short walk instead, down the canal path, coming up into one of those tiers of terraced houses further down. We were all going to Haworth in the afternoon.
A drive over the desolate moors, I cannot help but love the North Yorks moor more. There is the odd farmhouse buried deep in a small valley and you wonder where the lane is to them. Great wind turbines dot the landscape and I can only hope that one day they will fulfil the need for necessary energy in lieu of oil and gas. Up on the moors are also dams of water.
Arriving in Haworth, and I struck by the similarity to the last village we visited - Heptonstall. A high village eyrie with houses clustered around small cobbled streets, not car friendly at all. Lots of tourists though milling through the main steep little street, shops selling all that tat that tourists are supposed to aspire to.
We always go out for tea and cake as well, so we walked down till eventually we found somewhere. The owner was a lady with a very, very loud voice and as we sat down in this 1940's little shop with the news that there was only scones on the menu. She was kind and friendly and two of our party tried the use of the outside loo (or should I say lav) with newspaper for loo paper - not Izal for goodness sake.
We visited the church and of course the Haworth Rectory where the famous trio of Brontes lived. We are going back to visit inside the Bronte abode another time. I fell in love with the quiet exterior of the house its symmetry of windows. Bath has spoiled me for rows of house elegantly designed and unpretentious, yes I do know about the Royal Crescent but it presents a symmetrical presence that I love.
My daughter said that there were thousands if not millions buried in Haworth. So I shall look up that story later! The graveyard was dark and dour with plenty of gravestones in line with their God and the sun.
You can catch the Bronte bus from Hebden Bridge every hour and we met it both ways coming over the moors, so there is no need to take the car, but Andrew is more than willing to go out for Sunday Drives - do you remember those?
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| Are flat graves the norm, or are laid flat from the beginning? |
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| Charlotte taught at this school just by the Rectory |
The usual sanitary conditions in the 19th century led to many deaths. The small history is here. Flat graves deprive the soil of green growth, which of course has the ability to take up matters of decay - not going any further!
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| The left hand one is a ammonite from Whitby (Dactilioceras). Middle Nautilus |
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| From Morocco - Orthoceras |
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| ammonite Hidoceras (possibly) |
For much of my blog writing I have felt unsure, or maybe even shy, of commenting on other blogs. But by the same token I have become more aware of people who have now become my friends. I still ask myself what are you doing writing about everything under the sun. The answer is of course I enjoy the backdrop of life, the history of all the things around me. Pure, unadulterated curiosity in fact. Today I read several blogs, which I do every morning battling against a weak link called the internet. Nothing blows my mind more than having typed in a comment and pressed publish only for that silly little sign to appear.
Today which is St. Davids Day, the first of March, the cromlech that is hidden amongst the rocks on St.David's Head appeared, so that is why you see it above.
Reading Sue's blog (my Quiet Life in Suffolk) I suddenly remembered the Saint Winneral she was talking about, you can find him here in Cornwall. The photographs must have come from our friend Roy and I was immediately struck as I looked at them by the beautiful simplicity of the church, though a cross 'bloody Normans even got down here' crossed my mind.
A rather small, simple Cornish church, wearing its religion quite well. If you study the stone decoration round the door apart from the zig-zag of the Norman, you will see in the lower semi-circular arch, the maze in one of the panels. Anyone who has been to Cornwall will have probably walked down that pretty little valley with the maze etched on the stone, I always thought it was more recent. Never studied mazes though they do appear in certain places.
Edit;
Mazes and labyrinths: The difference is a maze is multicursal and the labyrinth is unicursal (only one path) So the two Rocky Valley motifs on the stones are a labyrinth. Date speculative could have been made 4000 years ago, or later for instance in the Iron Age, or maybe modern. Well that gives it a long history!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winwaloe
