3rd December 2024

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware. 

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

A poem always to be read in December.  Thomas apparently alluded to religion, we know better now, perhaps though even hope is a foolishness.  Every morning, Mollie having woken me up through the night has one last go at 5 am.  This time she wants me up and moving to address the day and so that she can get her comfortable spot on the bed.  She will snooze all day here until night falls and then she wakes up!!!

Mostly family photos today.  *Ruswarp, a strange name but typical of Yorkshire.  We would walk down from Whitby about a mile and a half along the 'Monk's Trod.  I remember as we walked through the fields, a bull occupied the field.   I said to the children it was not to be feared and as it happened it was not and perfectly amiable.

Originally it was called *Risewarp (Old English hrīs wearp, c. 1146) meaning 'silted land overgrown with brushwood'.

The river Esk at Ruswarp on its way down to Whitby

Moss on the downs

A little god of the house

 

This is a favourite, the grandchildren playing very miniature golf at Ruswarp

The family at Gruyere

and the family by the river in Essex, but no Matilda.

An afterthought

Now something I wasn't going to talk about but I notice John of Going Gently has broached the subject, with the quiet sense he always brings to the chatter. The first debate about Assisted Dying was given an airing last week in Parliament.  We all have our views on it and I am similar and there is no need for me to regale you with my approach.

But, no doubt you will have noticed, I rarely speak of the North Yorkshire village I lived in with Paul the love of my life, above on the left.  It was a happy time cut short.  But it was a memory that haunted me all last week as people chatted on about the proposed bill.  It was suicide.

Walking back with Lucy the spaniel, a swish of brakes and a friend, D from the village skidded to a halt behind me and we got chatting.  Paul had died recently and so out of the blue D said to me had I ever contemplated suicide.  The answer was of course yes, but how to tackle the subject sensitively and not put me on neighbourhood watch;) was difficult.  My answer is of course family, a dreadful legacy to leave behind and therefore the answer was no I had faced it an made a positive decision.  But it brought to mind that in the village of not more than a hundred people there had been two suicides in the last year.

An older man had moved to the village, his wife had died 10 years before but in the few months he lived in the village he had never settled down and sadly committed suicide.

But for me the saddest one was a youngster.  Late teens, early twenties, his grave was positioned on the other side of the church wall outside our dining room window.  The family attended the grave lovingly.  Someone would cut the grass around it, flowers were regularly changed.  But the saddest thing I saw was the younger brother, in the evening, coming to talk to his brother.  His spirit still lived on in the heart of the family.

The young should never resort to suicide, their emotions too quick, flash points that should be recognised.  Whatever brings on thoughts of suicide. feelings of despair, depression or a life seen as not worth living, there should be an intercession from outside.

2007 collecting

A photo a day not a bad concept. But then again. why not half a dozen. So I begin in 2007, when I wrote of these little snails.  I read a Guardian article today about how our human presence may have scarred the Earth but in many ways we have also created a myriad of other animals and insects with our meadows and cleared ground.  It is not all bad news.

"and tonight, indoors, in winter, our bodies are idle, and our minds best at work; which is the great pleasure of the winter-time"  Grigson

December 2007: "When out walking on the Lansdown, I often come across groups of these little snails clinging to stalks or blades of grass. They cluster in the early morning sun, high above the wet turf. There is something vulnerable about them, light enough to cling to grass stalks, they seem a reminder of an ancient past.

I had spied such snails around the Kennet at Silbury. The river was in full flood, and wading through the water on the path I had noticed snails clinging to the blades of grass. At the time I thought it was because they were trying to escape the flood water, and I remembered all the snail shells that had been trapped inside Silbury, generations of them stretching right back to when it had been built.

These small innocous creatures, would also have been round in prehistory to delight the children with the pattern of the shells; perhaps they made necklaces out of them, or chalked on the stone their weird round shapes.

It is a humbling experience when reading all the daft theories that people come up with regarding prehistory, to remember these little shells and their quiet constant presence in the cyclical nature of time."

The Lansdown

Ebbor Gorge in the Mendips

Goth weekend in Whitby

The soul of the world, a pure ethereal spirit which was proclaimed by some ancient philosophers to be diffused throughout all nature


"It is this immense antiquity that gives our land its look of confidence and peace, its power to give both rest and inspiration. When returning from hill or moor one looks down on a village, one's destination, swaddled in trees, and with only the church tower breaking the thin blue layer of evening smoke, the emotion it provokes is as precious as it may be commonplace. Time, that has caressed this place until it lies as comfortably as a favourite cat in an armchair. Caresses also even the least imaginative of beholders"

A favourite author of mine Jaquetta Hawkes.  She describes an England long gone, her book on archaeology was written late in the 20th century.