12th December 2023

Before I go to do some shopping I must write something.  My saints have rather fallen by the wayside.  I am stuck on Gilda, maybe the first historian to record history in this country.  But he was in such a bad temper about those British kings I am not sure he deserves a place. 

History I suppose should be about facts and not one's own individual interpretation of it.  Also what has struck me on reading the 'Lives of the Celtic Saints' is the fact these early ones were really part of the upper echelons of society.  Their fathers taking on several wives and having lots of children.  So people what do you do with too many offspring?  Just farm them out to the nearest monastic house and set them preaching along the highways and byways.  It saves the territory for the eldest son to be heir.

The landed gentry still do it!  Unfortunately, large private parks and houses are expensive to keep up, so the National Trust stepped in. 

Will there always be such easy solutions in this war torn world, as I type they are talking death by starvation in Palestine on the radio.  It happens elsewhere of course we just do not note it down in our consciousness.

Ukraine is being forgotten, dire warnings from the Ukrainian side that should we fail to deliver the weapons of war to fight the Russians, we too will be standing at the gate of war.  What, or who do you believe?  I note that the BBC uses the word 'Verified' whenever it gives out news. For which I think we should be grateful.

So, having been woken up by Mollie once more in the middle of the night, for food.  My mind wandered and I thought of the language students I had looked after many years ago.  They came from Brazil, the Arab States, Europe.  I heard how it was to live behind the Berlin Wall, or live an isolated life in Siberia.  The Japanese girls, there were quite a few.  Sometimes sad in a strange country, the three I took to Ikea one weekend, who were overawed by everything they saw.  And next weekend got a taxi to go back to the Ikea in Bristol.

The ones who wanted to stay, and the loft room that became the overspill for many of them.  That loft room had a life of its own, my daughter was there with small Tom at one stage after a breakdown in a relationship.  My son and his two friends when coming back from a year in Ghana shared the room till eventually my then husband threw them out, two at least of course.

So I shall get out that big box of photographs and see if I can copy them on to this computer.

"I haven't got my head in the sand, it is just that the world has turned darker".