31st May 2025

I wasn't going to say anything today but then I thought a little praise for my member of parliament - Labour;  Josh Fenton-Glynn for the work he is doing in parliament.  Like many who feel angry and sad the Palestinians are always there in my mind and when will it all end.  So it gives me comfort that somehow the workings of parliament are addressing this terrible happening.  

josh.fentonglynn.mp@parliament.uk	May 29, 2025, 3:32 PM (2 days ago)
to me

Dear Thelma Wilcox, 

I wanted to update those of you who have previously written to me on Gaza as to the action I have been taking to escalate your concerns on this.  

Since being elected, this has been one of the issues that has come into my inbox most frequently, and I have spoken in Parliament often to raise the dire situation in Gaza.  

Just this week I spoke to once again raise the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and call for the escalation of diplomatic measures against the Israeli government, which you can watch here.

I am also writing to Hamish Falconer, Minister for the Middle East, to echo this; asking that the Government use all diplomatic efforts available to bring peace to the region.  

I was also among 75 Labour MPs and peers to write to the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to call for the recognition of Palestinian statehood, and to emphasise the need for greater efforts to bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict.  

The letter, attached, calls for the Government to use the UN Conference on the Two-State Solution next month as an opportunity to work with France to the recognition of Palestine as a state, as a step towards peace. 

Over recent months, I have repeatedly raised the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and called for more aid to reach those who need it there. I have also continually raised the dire medical situation, and the urgency with which we need to protect medical facilities and staff, and ensure the supplies needed reach them.  

I will continue to call for a permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and a two state solution with a viable Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel.  

Kind regards, 

Josh

Josh Fenton-Glynn (he/him)
Member of Parliament for Calder Valley
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Also seen yesterday.  I hope that the renewed entry of aid will go towards feeding some of the people in Palestine.  This is such a delicate matter, I have no side to uphold only the need for the people of Palestine to be treated with some respect.

How Israeli settlers profit from stolen Palestinian land – video | Palestinian territories | The Guardian

29th May 2025

Last photos.  These from Ramster Gardens, Chittingford.  We had lunch here and wandered around before getting the train back.  It is  a beautiful garden but rhododendrons and azaleas are not my favourite shrubs.  Having made a spectacular show early on, they then sit around with their dark foliage for the rest of the year.  The trees were beautiful though and the Redwood towered magnificently, though it is only 120 years old, as old as when the garden was planted.

 

Azaleas

Azaleas

Trying to capture the purple iris against pink rhododendron. Failure

The sort of dragon you would want guarding your garden

Village green of Chittingford

Village pond at Chittingford

Impressions:  Let us start with football supporters (on the train) and our expectation of them.  Well they rolled onto the train in their brightly coloured t-shirts.  First thing the carrier bag of tinned beer banged up on the table, and the several men all took out one immediately.  Then they settled their seats and the one opposite me was talking with the teacher in the corner about the coal mining strikes and shut downs that was so devastating to the local communities.  It turned out he had been a mine engineer and knew his stuff.  The sad fact of how it broke up communities, that people stopped speaking to their neighbours, should they be a 'scab' and people moving into villages and no one speaking to them.  Was that Maggie who set the police on the miner's strike?

Chittingford was a pretty little village, my impressions of Chittingford and area, with its olde world houses in the trees, made me think of 'The Shire Land' of Bilbo and kin.  When we went to Hazelmere for an Indian meal and had a wander round the high street, the first thing to notice was the half dozen estate agents and the prices - whoosh.  It told you one fact, selling houses is a good way to make a quick buck.

I was going to write about how many of the women were thin and blonde their children the same but realised that where my mind was taking me was too strong, or at least disturbing but anyone who has read the 'The Midwich Cuckoos' will know where I went.  The thought is of course totally untrue.

28th May 2025

 

 

Arum lily caught in the sun

 

Golden bamboo, twice the size of a person

A gigantic fern, the colouring is so beautiful

And the man himself, who, as his wife Nicky said, when looking for a house, looked at the garden first.

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Changing the subject slightly, though not from the trip, after being woken by the cat around 2ish.  I began thinking! and came up with ergot (parasitic on grasses and cereals) and corncockles, both of which are poisonous to humans. All this because as we passed rolling large fields of wheat on the train, with not a weed in sight, and I wondered if the funghi is still around (don't worry, it is all under control)

The Ergot funghi fixated on our crops probably from the beginning of growing such things as wheat, rye and oats.  It went through the Middle Ages with terrible consequences for Ergot poisoning of people.  There seems to be a total breakdown of the physical self and also of the psycho.  In fact, could have been responsible for the behaviour of the Salem Witches, though many dispute that.

All this you can find out through the good offices of Wikipedia, but of course there were rabbit holes to dive down and learn further.  In the middle ages the saint St. Anthony's remains were supposed to cure you if you touched them.  But then I came up on another interesting fact.  This time it was the 'dancing disease',  when one day a woman started dancing outside her house and just went on dancing and slowly more people started dancing and did NOT STOP until they dropped down exhausted, either from a stroke or heart attack, hunger or dehydration.  Saint Vitus is the patron saint here for healing.  I will put the links down below if you want to go further.

Another rabbit hole: You may not have noticed it but I became intrigued by the song 'Chaise Longue' sung by Wet Leg duo.  How did the song develop? And then, came across  another song, which went back to to the 'dancing disease' and featured Bill Nighy as the 'anxiety' of Florence and the Machine.  Enjoy ;)

Ergot 

Dancing Disease of 1518

 

The start

 The Jungle Garden; Caroline Mardon's photos  It is set behind a semi-detached house and a suburban small garden.  Then walk up the sloping path behind and you are suddenly into dinosaur land, tall ferns, exotic plants, enormous Gunnera leaves.  The walk starts at the top of the garden past the Prosecco terrace as it is called.  Which overlooks a crowded Euphorbia stage, their bright yellow heads at their best in spring with the little Welsh poppies running around at their feet, orange flowers, Californian poppies have started opening, this is the hot spot of the quarry garden. 

Then the path winds zig-zag down past the plants and it gets deeper and darker and large plants start to dwarf you.  There is a bank of sedums growing on a steep slope, they are growing in compacted sand, which looks at first like clay but the sun has baked the sand hard, plants can only be put in when it has rained.

I did not have much luck with my camera - I should have read the next paragraph down! Video was completely washed out, actually to be truthful my phone would have been better but I find difficulty in taking things off it to the computer. 

The following photos were of the Asian primulas, or Candelabra primula.  I have always wanted to grow them but they truly need the right ecosystem to grow them in.  I saw them many years ago at an Abbey in Devon, also the blue Himalayan poppy-Meconopsis which is the most glorious blue out. But like the rhododendrons and azaleas we saw on Sunday at the Ramster Gardens they seem to like a more acid soil.  Here in Surrey they have taken off this year, running like ribbons down the bottom of the quarry, hybridising into all the shades of pinkness and red.

Jack's Jungle on Gardener's World

The weather was gorgeous.  I went and sat on the terrace Sunday morning and Jack came down and we spent an hour identifying the birds with a new app called 'Cornell Merlin app'.  My daughter had a kingfisher on her phone, which was different but chaffinches dominated, dunnocks, collared doves and the robin of course.  Also, I heard the cuckoo in the distance but the app did not catch it.

24th May 2025

 

Normal service will be resumed sometime next week.  From now we will be travelling up to London on the train with a host of Sunderland football supporters.😎

22nd May 2025

 How did the trip go?  Well first of all Manchester was so crowded.  There was a football match, not in Manchester but in Bilbao but fans had decided to descend on the city and watch on pub televisions.  We all met up in a bar with tall chairs.  Outside the street was lined with tables and many, many young people enjoying their drinks.  Then the meal at another place that dealt solely in chicken and 'dirty chips'  Something wrong there.  Actually I did have the breaded shrooms so there was some vegetarian around, the crunch was good.

Not only are the pair getting married but also trying to buy a house, they have their eye on one and are waiting for a surveyor to look at it.  Their rented property is having a losing battle with mold, a common enough problem with the older British houses.  Wedding plans are well under way and Ellie is a confident person

I am impressed by the trams as they move silkily past but if I lived in Manchester would definitely be run over by one.  The railway station had police and rail police on patrol and guarding the entrances and there was already some drunkenness around.

Andrew's architect friend has also almost finished the drawings for this house's makeover but it will probably be next year before it is started.  There is of course the planning law to go through.

Cocktails are the order of the day, not for me, the rim of salt is very off putting.

Being a party pooper I did not like this.  Some call it a mural or graffiti

They are a very happy and loving couple

21st May 2025

This weekend we are off down South to see Andrew's parents and the 'jungle garden' of course.  Hopefully I can get my new camera working how I want and there will be some photos.  I did look to see if there were any camera courses in the area but no luck.  It will be a 6.30 train and then through London and then another train to Sussex.

Tonight I have said I will go into Manchester with Andrew to meet up with my daughter and oldest grandson Tom, and his financee (gosh that is an old-fashioned word) Ellie to see how the wedding plans are going along.

Jessie, a friend of Lillie, will look after the cat.  She seems a sweet girl and wants to work with animals.  You would think there would an animal shelter in this small town with the lost dogs and cats around but no.   

I am sure I saw a report of a wallaby around Tod the other day and apparently there are a few in England bouncing around, so it maybe is a true sighting.

One of the problem is of course is now the veterinary centres have been taken over by the pet insurance companies and the whole thing of looking after animals has become so expensive.  We are of course following in America's footsteps.  I find the dressing up of dogs really queer, the poor creatures have become play toys.

 

19th May 2025 - Folklore Meeting and Robin Hood

 Through the 1950s my brother and I watched 'Robin Hood'.  We probably had bows and arrows as well (rubber cup on the end of the arrow maybe)  We accepted that Robin was part of our history and never doubted his existence in past times.  Yet one of the funny things when I moved here was to see placenames with his name on it.  But according to my knowledge of the story it was set around Nottingham  with the robber den hidden amongst the trees of Sherwood Forest.  Well Nottingham is quite a way down South from here, with only it's border touching Yorkshire. Which as everyone should know is a very large county. Sherwood in days gone past was an enormous forest, so perhaps the forest spread as far as Yorkshire.  But then what was Robin doing at Robin Hood Bay on the East coast.  Well apparently he was fighting pirates as well.

Stories turn on the twist of words, and this tale had many manifestations.  But somehow my childhood reflection is the one I want to keep.  But it did make me think of another story and its' truth.

There is the tale that Bath's founding father was Bladud.  A young prince who was thrown out of his father's court because he had leprosy.  So poor Bladud had to look after pigs and become a pig herder.  One day he noticed that his pigs who had skin complaints, rolled in a hot muddy stream and got better so he tried it and his leprosy disappeared.  He was allowed back into the bosom of his family and went on to found the City of Bath.  Well linguists have had fun and games with all the naming of place-names. But the simplicity of the word Bath had been arrived at a much later date.  The Romans called it Aqua Sulis, after the water and the Iron Age goddess Sulis, who is named on one of the cursus which were once found in the fountain there.

Well today as I pottered around and learnt a few more facts.  It was Geoffrey of Monmouth who told the tale of Bladud  in the 12th century and his understanding was coloured, let us say, by Roman and Greek books of various tales told.  

In the telling of the tale Bladud tried to fly and died as a result of this (Icarus who flew to close to the sun is the motif here).  But where did Geoffrey get the idea of flying?  Well here we go to probably the most famous Celtic head which was found in Bath, and which has two tiny wings hidden in the mane of hair.

The great Celtic Head that faced you at the entrance on the temple pediment as you walked in.

His symbolic image brings both Roman and British images of a god together in one.  The Romans were clever enough not to enforce their gods on the locals and there is a marriage of the gods that is reflected in the Romano-British population that eventually flourished in Bath and elsewhere.

This head has been classified in the past with the 'Gorgon' head of snakes.  In fact there are many interpretations as you will see in this Wiki. The melding of both Sulis, local water goddess and Roman Minerva at the hot springs is to me the practical answer. It says in the Wiki that this was carved by a Gaulish craftsman in the 1st century AD.  Read Miranda Aldhouse- Green The Gods of the Romans on the Gaulish gods for a clearer picture. 

Even now all these years later this head still fills me with curiosity,  I sometimes use it as my banner on the side to give me courage as I venture out into the written word.

So why write about it now when I live on the West Yorkshire/lancashire border? Well strangely enough there are a few heads to be found up here.  Rather scary ones as a matter of fact and I have never studied them, feeling that the Northern reaches have a more militaristic Roman history and the heads could belong to the foreign mercenaries that kept the border strong in the North.

Robin Hood's Bay  

17th May 2025

The Wizard of Todmorden, modern of course.  Yesterday Andrew and I went for lunch at the Folklore Centre just around the corner.  I wanted him to see the marvellous library of books upstairs in the building.  Holly greeted us warmly and served vegan soup.  I had mushroom, and was a little taken back by no cream added but it would take sometime for me to adjust to veganism.

I dearly want the centre to survive but it has to make its own money, and after only a short period of opening the cafe bit they have a customer problem.  Why? Well the red brick building next to it is the Hippodrome, which has just won some money and now is spending it on building work to make a cinema room upstairs.  The building work has sprawled across the pavement, forcing people to walk in the road and it is said that it will be a year before it is removed.  Holly says footfall has fallen dramatically because of this.  Car parking is not a problem, there are two supermarkets over the road and  it has always seemed to me that there are plenty of people at the talks.

Apparently at the beginning of the 20th century the block of buildings you see above was financed by one man, and that includes the enormous Hippodrome next to the centre.  He unfortunately bankrupted himself but left behind a good legacy.  The centre was at one time the offices/printworks? of a local rag called 'Todmorden Herald'.  Now long defunct.  It would be interesting to find out the history, but nothing seems to be online, so a visit to the local library is called for.

Nothing else of interest, except, maybe the long conversation I had with my son about transhumanism, apparently there is even a party of them in the USA.  Let us say that Musk and Mark Zuckerberg must have their fingers in the pie there.  I have this picture of talking heads but no bodies, except of course there will have to be some sort of transport.  But it has all been done before.  See Bran the Talking Head.

 Home | Centre for Folklore Myth Magic

15th May 2025

Oh dear we have to get rid of men ;) ;)  From the Guardian via Rebecca Solnit, they use up too much of the Earth's resources and drive cars, though I thought women did as well.

Murr being her usual wickedly funny written self  Now Murr has a very funny bone inside her, it is the way she looks at the world from, often, a purely nature inspired blog.

Someone will have to give his totally over the top plane back.  As if, forgot he is totally above the law.

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I really cannot cope with what is going on in the world today, even its humour escapes me.  But checking through my photo files I came across 'Collections'. It was Paul's file of the multitude of things he collected.  I wonder what happened to the old straw firemen's Japanese uniforms that were soaked before they tackled a fire.  He was a great collector, I have the opposite tendency trying to off load my possessions, I hope his sons treasure them though, as will Leo his grandson when he grows up.

Amitahba - Buddha of Eternal Light

A wooden Mejii shop sign

Japanese Kanamona (metal fitting) of a hare dancing amongst waves

Japanese Buddhist Vajra

And of course my favourite large painting that hung on the wall.  It would probably have been displayed at the entrance to a temple to ward away evil.  Somewhere in my blogs I have written of it.  And here it is.

Two Carp Leaping among Waves by Tsukioka Shuei (died 1839) mid-late Edo period