6th June 2025 - Newcastle

 

rabbits in Newcastle

The day I visited Newcastle;  Flicking through my photos with nothing much to do, I came across an old file, and there was absolute proof that I had seen rabbits in Newcastle.  They lived on those gardened islands surrounded by moving traffic.  I had wondered at the time how they managed to get off the traffic islands but I suppose at night when it was all quiet.

I do not like towns, they frighten me somewhat, there is this ugliness in the form of buildings everywhere with no shape or pattern.  We had gone to Newcastle to see the university for Tom, one of three.  I quite liked it but Tom was to move down to London.

Here I suffered an embarrassing moment much to the amusement of my companions, I tripped over in front of the entrance of the university and truly fell flat on my face, so I well remember Newcastle for both humiliation and rabbits.  Also the last time I have been to Ikea, we bought the table I am typing on at the moment and on the way back from a distance The Angel of the North was spied.  This great rusty figure is somewhat symbolic of man's dominance over the landscape, so thereby scores nowt in my estimation. 

Two towns I would think of being symmetrical in their appearance, Bath which is of course a city and Whitby with all its cottages.  Both have grown out of a pattern of social needs.  Whitby with its fisherman's cottages and Bath with its Georgian exteriors.

3rd June 2025 - Heartjumping

 I have been following a knitting video on Youtube - it.is.a.sarah.  She is so upbeat and has this wonderful saying 'heartjumping moment' A moment of happiness, a moment of recognition? I don't know but she is from the Nederlands and is so enthusiastic about her knitting that it is a pleasure to watch her.

So do you wake up on a high in the morning? looking forward to a new day.  Sometimes the miseries of the world overtake our natural optimism, we fall into the trap of the blackness that is happening around us.  Wars continue unceasingly, as does cruelty.  Yet we are helpless to do anything.  We must recognise the blackness around but also take pleasure in the good.  So on a high this morning I am listening to George Ezra and Pretty Shining People.

Wandering over the blogs, Steve Reed's Shadow and Light brings forth a small insect inspecting a most beautiful rose and Arctic Fox has been studying fungi, which makes me look up the fungi foraging explorations Paul and I used to go on in Essex, finding the weird and wonderful and once going round with an expert and finding a favourite of mine the Amethyst Deceiver, a pale lavender but turning bluer as time goes on.  A couple of blogs on the subject.

The Delicate and Vulnerable World of the Mushroom

Fungi Hunting

Decay in Autumn

But as Gary Snyder says........

Don't ever eat Boletus

If the tube-mouths they are red

Stay away from the amanitas

Or brother you are dead.

A far-flung friendly clan,
   For food, for fun, for poison
        They are a help to man.

1st June 2025

 Wild Folk - Tales from the Stones

I once blew a blast into the Blowing Stone, which rolled a hollow wave of sepulchral sound into the hills. The megalith builders, taking their lesson from the conch-shells of the Eastern Mediterranean, blew into this very stone to summon the gods or, more probably, the goddess of the high places. Another two miles and there is the goddess herself or rather, the celtic descendant of the goddess, stretched in white and in flight across the bald brow of Uffington Hill. The downs lift to 800 feet and by their very godliness of combe and crescent, of jutting ness and plunging spur, ordain the tie beam of White Horse Hill to be one more of the holy places of the chalk. So it was on Windover Hill.... and so it is here where the Celtic town of Uffington is flanked by the galloping horse and a Neolithic workshop on the one side, and the chambered long barrow of Wayland's Smithy with its grove of beeches on the other........

H.J.Massingham - English Downland

Owning the stones again.  There is one magical place in Wiltshire, on the dry chalk land a Neolithic long barrow that has been restored in the 20th century but has the peace and beauty so beloved of our English countryside.

 

 I had Massingham's book, Prophecy of Famine which he wrote with Edward Hyam.  The famine never happened though he worked out the amount of food that each family should eat, measuring prisoner's diets and ours as well.  He lived through the two world wars, so perhaps his book had some significance.

But these words are for Wayland's Smithy a place of stories .

Wayland, should you ride your horse past will shoe it if you leave a coin.   

Moss hoping that my meditation will end and the ball thrown again

A sad occasion.  The scattering of 'Treaclechops' ashes.

I have just found this link on Bensozia's blog (thank you) and will record it here for it gives a picture of Orkney, viewed by Londoner's of course.  Here is the link.  The photos are fabulous. There is talk by Andrew of visiting Orkney next year  and camping there.  I feel rather sad about the fact that these Scottish Isles have become awash with tourists but that is the way of life I suppose.