16th July 2023

 The weather opens up again outside with gleaming wet pavements but we are promised a heatwave soon.  But this warmth that stretches across Europe is not kind but fierce and very hot.  It will set trees ablaze, animals will die and so will some humans.  Woken up yet?

It was my son's birthday yesterday, we slightly squabbled over his age and I have sent him some money to buy something for his garden,  Not to worry you all but he mentioned there was some squabbling (twice used word) over borders with Russia and Europe, Germany for one, Poland for another.  We all sit quietly in this corner of our blessed isle as if the war in Ukraine doesn't affect us at all.  But Europe must build up its defences against the warlords of Russia.  When I look at the news on this, I see the statistics of war, gain and loss.  Cities reduced to rubble and the sad faces of people hopelessly watching tanks roll in, how many times must this scenario be watched?

But less sad things, my granddaughter brought me back a bunch of red roses yesterday, and I put them in my own vase rescued from the boxes down in the basement.  There are some things I am missing I am sure but downsizing might account for it.  The summer holidays approach, Lillie off to scout camping, and Karen and Andrew off to camping next week at a festival.

And now a story - Canute was not the only one to try to hold back the sea.

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A tale not of a saint but of a king of North Wales. Maelgwn Gwynedd. (died 547 A.D.)  Or you can call him Maelgwyn Hir (the tall) or even the Island Dragon.  He wasn't very nice killed his first wife and nephew so that he could marry the nephew's widow but thereby goes the tale.

But the story goes, he called all the Northern Welsh kings to  Ynys Las, near the beach called Traeth Maelgwn.  Here I will quote; Maelgwyn, 'The Ambitious' asked them to join him in a contest to sit on their thrones on the sand as the tide rolled in.  The longest to remain seated would be overlord of North Wales. Maeldaf Hen had constructed a huge chair, coated with waxed feathers, which floated on the incoming water,  The chieftains recognised his ingenious and Maelwyn became their overlord.

500 years earlier than Canute, stories handed down through time.  The story taken from Breverton's - Book of Welsh Saints.

Gildas writing on this king.  Gildas wrote with hate:

"And like wise oh thou dragon of the island who hast deprived many tyrants as well of their kingdoms as of their lives and through the last mentioned in my writing, the first in mischief, licentious in sinning, strong in arms but stronger in working thy own soul's destruction"

He goes on in this tirade of crossness, perhaps it is wise to view present day situation with the lawlessness of past.