For those who like churches

 The Smell of Water Has been on a church finding trip in East Yorkshire - Seeking the Romanesque in East Yorkshire.  He draws attention to the fact that all three churches were shut and they are no longer places for the public.  Facts and figures show that the Church of England is worth 10B£.  At some stage the Church has to acknowledge that people will not return to the faith and that some sort of future has to be found for these beautiful buildings.

Simon Jenkins in an article in the Guardian proposes a sensible solution.  Give these churches back to the parish councils to open up as venues for other uses.

There are many problems with the buildings, one of course is the coldness in winter and inadequate heating.  Another is loos and water for teas and coffees but such minor problems can be overcome and many churches have been turned into different venues over time.

I suspect that it is mostly down to money and getting people to agree to certain conditions.  The Church of England is sitting on a pretty big chunk of money, there must surely be some relaxation for helping to modify the churches into a public space for the use of the public and not this hopeful approach of how everyone will eventually leave their secular natures behind and once more turn back to Christianity and the church. 

Ivy growing in a church in Essex

St. Marys in Mundon Essex

St Marys is closed and under the care of 'Friends of Friendless Churches.

  Lovely unusual church with it's timber Tudor framing.

22nd July 2025

Rose tea at our favourite Iranian restaurant.  It was good, next to the glass teacup is a lollipop of brown chunks of sugar, you just whisk it into the tea. I had avocado and poached eggs with their strong feta cheese. I almost fancy collecting teapots again!

We went to see 'Some Like it Hot' at the Hebden Picture House, or Cinema of Sanctuary.  It was free with biscuit and tea included, all three of us.  The film just as good as I remembered it.  My daughter pointed out certain things which would not pass of what today we think of as right and wrong but even so it was pure comedy.  Tony Curtis made a very pretty woman, though I must admit the gangster killings were a bit macabre.

Jean has gone back to Calne on the train and Lillie who arrived yesterday from camping over the weekend somewhere near London is now sorting her camping gear for the Portugal jamboree which lasts a fortnight, she flies from Manchester tomorrow.

More plans from Adam the architect, this time for the exterior of the back elevation, he is thinking stone and iron to reflect the North.  I wonder if I have the nerve to ask him does he know Christopher Alexander's work approach.  My son had his books for his computer course which seemed strange at first, but now I see the sense of different approaches to computer algorithms.

Hebden Park

 

20th July 2025

This morning I was just trying to think of how memories occur in the mind.  Often I will say that our minds are like the silver many faceted silver balls that you twirled to at the local dance hall.  Or maybe they are like a heavily scented perfume that drifts through, taunting you with its presence.  Very similar as to what Ted Hughes says in his 'The Thought Fox'

Till, with a sudden hot sharp stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

However a memory comes, it comes with an accumulation of emotions that flash by and you are hopelessly caught in the reel action.  So it was this Sunday morning when they played Spiegel im Spiegel.  The calmest music out, tranquil and slow it tunes down the rush of the day.

Yesterday we  walked to the park,  dogs abounded in every shape and colour all good natured and sweet.  Children played in the playground and Jean and I wandered round to the far edge where once John Fielden lived with his family.  A famous figure in doing good also a politician in the 19th century.

The house no longer stands but is etched out in the ground with a few laid stones.  The walled garden  still exists, planted in true council style - lines of flowers outlined by silver foliage.

Saint Volodymyr of Ukraine there seems to be a religious tie between the town and the Ukrainian people.... I should have pulled that plant aside. The leader of the country now is also called Volodymyr Zelensky, though it can be changed to Vladmir.

Another plaque reads: "60 years of Ukrainian life and culture in Todmorden 1947 to 2007.

The first Ukrainians arrived in Todmorden in 1947 to work in the cotton industry.  They gradually integrated into the local community staging dances and concerts at the Town Hall, Calder College and the Hippodrome."  

The hippodrome is being refurbished at the moment it will take at least a year but they have knocked down a part of it, see below, I think this is where the new cinema will be as part of the theatre.

Operation 'West'

A canal walk

Oxeye daisies in profusion

Stately hogsweed

Safe in their small patch,  narrowboats are having to take refuge from the shallow canals

half 'O' of a bridge to be reflected fully in the water

Pride feature

ragwort

Meadowsweet

Greater Willowherb

Neatly arranged marigold pots

Evening primrose

Edit:  One photo I did not take was of the Tansy plant that appeared along the path, along with Golden Rod, Tansy attracts many insects.  Well there I was watching Vanessa in the new video on the 'Mindful Narrowboat' and  she mentioned the rare Tansy beetle, only to be found in parts of York. But she managed to find the little jewel like beetle much to her delight.  According to the blurb on my computer it can be found elsewhere, as in the watery Fens of East Anglia for instance but I salute the people who keep track of the little creatures who inhabit our island in their small ecosystems.  Tansy photo coming soon!

York was her destination this week, a town that hosts a wealth of history.  Once the centre of the Viking North it is now the haunt of the ever passing tourist down The Shambles and around the castle. 

17th July 2025

Gotland Sheep

Well two links both local;  I had to go to Hebden Bridge today to pick up my two pairs of glasses.  Lillie took me and we had coffee at the cafe she does some part time work for.  Afterwards we wandered through the market to get to the opticians, and there was a stall with a man selling wool.  I almost did not stop but then went to look over, it was arranged in delicious rows of blending colours.

  Now I know without asking that I would be paying at least £12 a hank for them, so would only buy two.  But he went into a long history of the wool he and his wife farmed from the Gotland sheep they kept on his farm.  He was very enthusiastic but I had to cut him a little short because of my appointment, so here is their enterprise, beautifully coloured wools from the rather soft curly Gotland sheep.  It is local wool from Burnley in Lancashire,  The sheep are Northern European and produce a fine wool. 

It is lovely to see in this country a move away from synthetic yarns to proper natural materials, and we should always use such yarn to knit with.  It is expensive but then the farmers have to make their income and for all the hard work that goes into the product.  Listen to anyone in the craft industry for a start at how much time they spend on their work, which if counted by the hour would involve far higher costs.

The next link came from Megalithic Portal news, it is about 'Exploring the Ancient burials' above Rochdale.  Rochdale is about 9 miles from Tod and the barrows are up on the moors. 

16th July 2025

 We have cleaners round today.  This is in honour of Jean's visit tomorrow.  Jean is an old neighbour and friend from Calne, she has known Karen my daughter since she was small and when I moved to Calne with her and our Labrador Kim.

I liked Calne, a small town, once famed for its bacon at Harris's factory though I must admit it probably turned me vegetarian.  Jean liked to travel round the world, so we are different in that sense, but her three boys and Karen grew up together.

So we been making plans, who does the cooking, what we are going to eat and where are we going to go.  Well one good thing, though it stops us from going to the Wakefield Sculpture Park, is that it is raining, so at least the moors are dampened down and not so ready to catch fire.  The weather is iffy up to the weekend so it has been decided to go to one of my favourite places which is Salt Mill.  To wander its cavernous realms and poke around the books and art materials.  Also have lunch there.  There will be art displayed and of course David Hockney's works.

I came across the following painting of Garrowby Hill, obviously very steep and it reminded me of the Sutton Bank road, which in winter because it is so steep people are warned not to drive up it with a caravan in tow.  But we have a print of Sutton Bank, the print slightly similar in style to the Garrowby Hill painting and I wonder if the artist had imitated it.  Steep hills are always a nightmare to go up by car, willing the car to make that extra effort.  I remember my old camper, would slowly go down to about 10 miles an hour up the steep Lansdown Lane, with a long trail of cars behind ;)

Garroby Hill David Hockney

North Stoke: Sutton Bank

While nations are convulsed with rage, how quietly the flowers and grass grow.

E.H.Chapin (1814-1880)

15th July 2025 - links

 

quick post.  Really about links and recording stuff.  Today is my son Mark's birthday and I had posted his card a couple of days ago.  It was one of a stained glass local landscape done by Deborah Lowe who apparently has her studio in Todmorden.  I have always fancied a small square or roundel to hang on the window so that those diffuse colours shine through the room, so maybe?

Another link is about 'Degrowth' - yes we have to go there at some stage, and it should really have been yesterday.  I had the 70s book of 'Limits to Growth' though it seemed only to be about facts and numbers but it still seems to stand there questioning us and our consumption of goods, so here is the video by the BBC.  Funnily enough, you see the wind turbines up on the hills in the card, which are really there by the way, well a news item came through that said that in France a much smaller turbine had been made without blades.

The third link is Mike Pitts on how to write a book.  He produces the 'British Archaeology' magazines.  So as he was very much part of the Avebury landscape here is his blog.  Of course he doesn't really tell you but Yorkshire Pudding might be interested in his next book 'Island at the end of the World' which if I am reading it right means the Easter Island.

Silbury Hill at Avebury

And lastly, because this garden floated through my mind yesterday, an open garden day in Kirkbymoorside in 2018.  The garden was behind one of the town houses and it was a very hot day.  A link here.  It is a very English happening;)

14th July 2025

 Bits and pieces:  It is now Monday.  Got up early to take a shower, the house is rather full. But so did Andrew and Karen who are going swimming at the pool.  So a rather garbled account.  Mollie the cat is very discombobulated.  Her attic bedroom has been taken over by Ben and she has been LOCKED OUT.  So the cat and I both spent an uncomfortable night together and now she happily has full ownership of my bed.

Sunday and Ben is here, he has been to the Oasis Concert on Saturday night in Manchester. He is our  fashion expert and no he won't be wearing a skirt at the forthcoming wedding.  Lillie and her mum have just come back from Manchester looking for a dress for Lillie for the forthcoming marriage of Tom and Ellie, they were not successful. I suggested my dress from way back in the 70s but it is too small for Lillie, she has become colour fixated on the dress she wants, the colour is blue at the moment.  It is decided that my old dress is a heirloom and will not go to a charity shop,  it is made out of synthetic material, but hangs beautifully. The following blurry photo also shows my daughter in her red outfit.  The photo itself belongs to a  much larger group which I have cut out.  Basically because they have passed on and it is sad to remember days when everyone dressed up to go out to a restaurant.

We were so much tinier in the olden days!

Andrew also sorted my McAfee account, I had somehow managed to have two automatic renewals on it, so he scrolled through masses of gunk to eventually find the delete button on  one of the automatic renewals, well hidden of course.

Well the media seem to be in a tizzy about the The Salt Path and the goings on of the couple.  Did she fib, or is leaving out certain parts of the truthful story a sin.  Her one moral sin was to imply that the walk did her husband's terminal illness, CBD a favour by extending his life.  When according to other medical opinion it should not have progressed the way it did.  It of course gave others, who were also suffering from the illness, hope.  

How truth can vary from whatever side you are reading it is an unenviable  place to have to go.  'Righteousness' is not part of my thinking and the story was good apparently. I did not read it for some reason.  But as a story it seemed to have many fans. Well it is all water under the bridge, another shining star exploded. 

12th July 2025 - Don't worry, just watch the daisies growing!

 From neglect to a beautiful walkway.

A walk in the sky.   Castlefield Viaduct in Manchester.  I think you would call that good news.

Yesterday my son sent me a link, it was a video made by a media friend and was totally terrifying in its message.  I won't give you the link but perhaps  'Brave New World' - Aldous Huxley and '1984' - George Orwell should be taken off the school library shelves, so that these 40 years old people can't panic today!

The element of chaos that is being brought back intrigues me.  It is almost like the Northern gods have suddenly appeared and are now thundering around the world.  Only they are not really, just a load of techos experimenting with different ideas.  Is there to be a new world order?  Or will chaos live up to its name and choose otherwise, all bets are on.

Of course they  (the younger ones) blame it on the baby boomers, and they may have a point.  But for all the greed it is lovely to see people just living their lives as they wish to.

And if you think in despairing tones, just take a narrow boat ride through the canals and admire the beauty of the English countryside.  The woman on the Mindful Narrow boat has a fantastic life with her dog Zephyr and is also an artist who collects her thoughts and drawings together at the end of the day. I admire her courage in handling a long narrow boat through difficult locks and overcoming the many problems with those selfsame lock keys she meets along the way.

11th July 2025

 

little things that become bigger. 

I started this morning with nothing to write about.  Then I went down to make my coffee and a crow stood croaking on the fence but six feet from the door.  He must have missed out on the breakfast bread this morning and was demanding a late meal.  I had met him/her before a couple of days ago, probably one of on the newer ones on the block. 

How creatures come to live with us, noting our habits and normally calling at our homes at night when we are out of the way.  I was sad when the new patio was built next door the other day, the blackberry bush that flourished there bought in bees and butterflies to our urban home and had now disappeared without a trace.  But we have let our small back yard flourish with plants and bees and hoverflies came to visit.  How does nature grow we ask. 

At the bottom of the steps in the small yard there is a wild violet plant that starts early in the year, where is the soil for it to grow? it was then superseded by a stray aquilegia and now a pretty blue star like flowers tumble over the step with gay abandon.  Nature is always generous with her bounty.

So when I came across this Guardian video this morning, I laughed happily that someone is always ready to poke their heads above the parapet and yell out for the wild places to be reborn.  For the sanctuary for our wild creatures to live on this earth in peace.

Dragonflies and damselflies 2008

A Bath Garden 2009

We are the ark

9th July 2025

 Stats:  What is happening in Stats I wonder.  Mine have bolted into the thousands, are they bots - repetitive, automatic nothingness, or what?  I am now doing the rounds in Brazil having left Hong Kong and Singapore behind.  Weird and rather scary.

The other thing that came to mind was 'gentrification'.  Next door, which has been empty for a couple of years, and had a catastrophic flood one winter, because of frozen pipes,  is now being done up and a smart little patio area out at the back with newly made steps to the backdoor.

Doing houses  up is a British pastime, mostly in search of a bigger buck, but we have been landed with an inheritance of old Victorian and Edwardian houses.  Large, high ceiling rooms that are cold and no double glazing, and forget damp courses as well.  They need a lot of tender loving care, as people try to find the old fireplaces and decorative design on ceilings and dado rails. 

To do anything to one's house it is best to go through the planning department of the council.  Which is an excellent foresight by those that made the rules.  Adam our architect will oversee our house when eventually the required planning permissions come through.  But hopefully that is way into the future;)

The bad news goes on in America, did that completely false view of America I had, which unsurprisingly based on its films and news about film stars, be all untrue?

I have watched that river in Texas eat up the ground with a ferocity which is overwhelmingly frightening.  Know that there will be more deaths than stated each day and wonder how everyone copes with the aftermath.  The loss of children is terrible, suddenly one finds that there is nowhere safe in the world for them.

Whatever the reason as to why people were not informed about the coming disaster by sirens or warnings is something to be looked into.  We have a flood warning here, an old war siren, with all its frightening sound, which will be tested throughout the year.  But though the water will come down from the moors above we will never have a raging torrent but the slow creep of water rising.

What does come out of this American disaster though is the stupidity of those in charge of the government, who rush round mouthing empty words,  Is it really the end of politics as we once knew??

The Post Office scandal

It must be said - The Rest is Politics

7th July 2025

 

Bachalpsee Lake in Switzerland. 

Something calm, something serene, something without any humans in.  The mountain embracing the lake, a female/male moment in nature. Each morning as I switch on my computer there is more often than not a beautiful photo to contemplate, this one reminds me of the Tibetan myth, the mountain is the male and the water the female. I also came across the following....

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice"  Martin Luther King Junior.  I always find the use of the term 'junior' weird, I understand the ancestral heritage bit, but to have the term junior tagged onto you through life seems illogical. 

Getting back to the expression of a belief that good finally triumphs because justice will  win, well that is somehow harder to figure.  I have watched several small videos of people being swept up in the Trump's racket of getting rid of 'illegal immigrants'.  Innocent people who are arrested and thrown into terrible jail conditions.  True some of them are white, middle class people who can produce a lawyer to argue their case but such people talk of the others they meet in jail, who have been swept off the streets by ICE thugs.  

America the moral path is there for the taking.... and yes I do see good honest people fighting back and then I turn to the world only to see our leaders slobbering over this vile man - where are the strong backbones?

Then this I heard in the Observer, not a magazine I would count as being lurid in its writings.  The 'Salt Path' is founded on untruths, it wasn't the supposedly truthful tale that Raynor Winn wrote about.  Well they have made a packet out of her books and the film that has just come out.  What will happen now I wonder?  A real life story turned to fiction and based on lies.

 

The well of St.Keynes in Cornwall

Stories

Duloe Stone circle

What do the stones tell us, except of their longevity and that what happens is just happenstance.  A story from the past we can no longer decipher.  They touch our emotions with their stillness  and their shapes, which are crude to the eye.  Humanity will go on to produce beautiful works of art.  These first ancestor stones are just the beginning.

Stories to be told:  Another terrible news items. Floods in Texas.  People have died including children, it was a favourite camping area and 20 odd children are missing.  It is a heartbreaking news story. But not one for blogs.

So what was I going to write this morning. It became two items.  The first fell off the shelf this morning and were two fish slices given to me by Leni Heaton.

As I looked at them I thought they would be a wedding present to Tom and Ellie, though a good clean would not come amiss.  I remember Leni Heaton giving them to me.  Her little house by the mountain rail line in Blonay, the chateau above her house and funnily enough the tall sun flower in her garden.  She was a dancer in her younger years, best friend to Lotta my MIL.  The following photo is of my baby daughter with the three women behind her. Florine Katz, Karen's godmother, Lotta her grandmother and then Leni.

So what was the second story.  It was the sadness of listening to Stone Lands by Fiona Robertson as she went back and visited all the places she had been with her husband who had died in his 50s.

I realised I could not do that,  having to visiting past places where I had been with the love of my life over the years.  There would always be that sinking of the heart, pain and tears. I am not brave.

Robertson had been to a favourite stone circle of mine down in Cornwall the Duloe Circle. A small one encrusted with quartz stones it sat in the field and its stones had a presence that was difficult to describe but quartz has a magical gift to give.

As I thumbed through my blogs, I came across the following video by an old friend from Cornwall.  He bred collie dogs and you will see Jan, a favourite, for a second in the video.

 Salt Path revelations

4th July 2025

 8.0 clock and  Andrew and Karen have left for the airport, they are off to Switzerland to see Karen's aunt Sylvia.  Andrew has performed a miracle this morning he got the refuse collectors to take our old dustbin as we had a new one delivered this week.  Such things as going down to the tip is easy when you have a car but there has been a deliberate move here  not to have a car and just to hire when we need one.

Just for a moment I am envious of their visit but then think of all the memories that will float to the surface if I was to go, so best stay.  So Lillie and I are arguing over who gets the kitchen for cooking, she bakes, always chocolate cookies, mostly for her scouts group.

Oasis will be coming to Manchester, is it next weekend? Ben and his father will be going to the show.  My daughter says there will be a lot of middle-aged men in the Northern Quarter smelling of testosterone and reliving their youth.  She can be so cruel ;)

Then watching You tube last night, The Wandering Turnip video of him camping out in the B&M car park in Tod was funny.  He camped behind a bush there, he was slightly on show and the security man saw him asked what he was doing, WT said clearing rubbish.  The funny thing happened in the night though when a noise woke him up and it turned out to be a hedgehog snuffling around him.  But as Karen said it was nice to know that there were hedgehogs around.

Now I am worrying about the hedgehog how did he get down the steps from the canal path and can he get up again?

4th July - happy wishes to those in America, though he got that wretched bill through and his smirking face will be everywhere.  America why can't you be like our government and call foolish cruel bills out for what they are.

News yesterday, I kid you not, was about one tear rolling from Rachel Reeves (our chancellor) eye, because she was upset about something personal.  It went on all bloody day, our media is so facile as to be a laughing stock by the rest of the world.  The Telegraph was the worst with a photo, obviously AI adjusted and touched up in a really horrible way.

2nd July 2025

 Well here is another story garnered from the Fortean news.  It is not a nice story so you can give it a miss but it takes place in the little town of Helmsley.  Helmsley is a few miles from Pickering where we would go for food shopping.  But every now and then we would go to Helmsley to have coffee, it also had a good delicatessen as well, and was not too far from Rievaulx Abbey.

A story had arisen in 2018 about a body being found in one of the cottages there.  It turned out that a Japanese family, three adult children and their mother lived in the cottage  but had been hiding the body of one of the children who had died.  Speculation was rife, builders whilst working on the attics next door had said they smelt a funny smell but we never did find out the truth about what had happened.

Well Fortean Times fills the story in. Apparently the mother and one of her daughters went to the chemist and bought  'excessive quantities' of surgical spirit, and the chemist said he could also 'smelt the smell of dead bodies on them.  The police went round and indeed in a bedroom they found the dead daughter and a funeral was arranged.

Now you could say this was a criminal offence, a body has to be buried by law. The three were taken to court but the judge said because of the unusual circumstances and that the three defendants 'suffer from an extremely rare mental affliction' and would therefore  not be charged.

Helmsley is a very pretty little town and yet beneath its surface strange stories lurk.  A typical market town.

Article at the time