Snow and Whitby

Decision made I decided to go to Whitby yesterday (saturday) even though the forecast looked forbidding but my love accompanied me to Kings Cross through the welter of trains/coach/tube stations and we arrived at Kings Cross just in time to catch delayed Edinburgh 11 o clock train. Travelling through the snowy countryside it did'nt seem too bad and very pretty. Catching the Scarborough train (this is a long journey) was different though. Travelling through the valleys and the sky went dark and suddenly there were blizzards of snow, a white-out. Twice this happened, and it was worrying that the road to Whitby, which the was the next part of the journey, would be closed. Luckily I happened to be sitting next to a person who lived in Whitby and she offered a lift in her jeep, and we got to Whitby safely over the moors


Next thing of course was to go to The Show which went on for about three hours, in which Matilda was making several appearances it took place at the Pavilion theatre, overlooking the sea, thick snow by now and the waves creaming against the sand; 80% of children and audience turned up, Matilda graceful and pretty, she has only been in dance a short time but she is pretty good....



Sunday and the roads over the moors were closed, cars slipped and slithered up the hill outside never quite making it to the top but the snowy look of Whitby is very pretty, especially at night when it is lit up, the lights shining on the harbour.

No photos for the moment, typing on a netbook is obviously more difficult than a nice large keyboard, and today (monday) the weather is also not too good, the wind has picked up in the night, blowing the snow off the roofs, hail as well as snow. Not a good time to go house hunting, my favourite cottage seems off limit, as it is near to a couple of nightclubs but there are half a dozen others to fret about!

Heywood Sumner

Heywood Sumner is a little known artist, illustrator and naturalist working around the beginning of the 20th century, (dates 1853 -1940) he dismissed the pre-raphaelite style and followed in the footsteps of the Arts and Crafts movement. I came across him years ago when I ordered his book from the library which was called Cuckoo Hill or Gornley. It was a handwritten book, illustrated with pictures of the area around his house of his beloved New Forest. The first thing that strikes you about his trees is that they are unusual, a lot of pine, maybe scotch pine, beech, etc. This is because the New Forest occupies a type of sandy heathland, the trees are in his watercolours, the soft greeness everywhere, gentle hummocks; he doesn't paint in a classical style, and his figures and horses can be terrible but there is a warmth and love for the natural world.

He also illustrated Cranbourne Chase, so that there are archaeological drawings as well, mostly black and white in true Arts and Craft style. He even managed to paint barrows, which I consider a great achievement because they often look slightly peculiar.

He built, or had built his house at Gornley, and it is still there today being used as a care home, medium sized and unpretentious, I suspect that his great love for its surroundings would have made for a pleasant life, being able to wander and sketch at will.

Cottages and frost

I could say that nothing has happened this week for me, but that is not quite true, for I have been finger tapping on the Internet looking for a small cottage in Whitby. Its rather exciting this exploration, looking into these small houses and trying to create mental pictures. Whitby is so medieval, narrow streets, narrow alleyways and tiny poky cottages that may have housed a large fishing family in its time but have now become holiday homes so that modern double beds seem to overwhelm tiny beamed rooms. Most of Whitby is tiered rows of houses up the hills that surround the harbour; a choice of medieval, Georgian, Victorian and modern.

Last night they were talking of Captain Cook and his ship sailing to Australia and the inevitable consequences of colonialism that destroyed the indigenous population.

A replica of the Endeavour (but only 40% of the original size)

Well Captain Cook started work in Whitby when he was young and went to work on ships trading out of Whitby to London and the local museum has a large display of his life and work, the famous ship Endeavour on which he sailed was built in Whitby and up till two years ago a replica of the ship was moored alongside the quay.

Cook sailed round the world both north and south poles, and it brings me to something else.

Rime - frost, especially formed from cloud or fog;

A few days ago I read about the etymology of the word frost on a beautiful photogenic website called The Fields we Know, and so I did some delving as well. Words were a common theme last week, Mornings Minion had also written about fascinating descriptive weather words. What had struck me was the word rime something we find used in poetry and 19th century literature, but which also is a term used for frost. It's Old English - hrim and if you were Saxon you would say hrim-ceald - icy cold, or hrim-giecel - icicle and hrimrig - rimy. So what puzzled me about the word, it was so similar to rhyme which means 'identity of sound between words or the endings of words.' So we have rhyme - rime; which is medieval or OE, and greek ryuthmos.

Leading on to another similar word but spoken differently, is rhythm - 'measured flow of words and phrases in verse or prose'. Must be modern but I always have trouble with the spelling of both.

A snowy, frosty December last year, the water was dark and crystal clear, reflecting the trees so that there seemed another world underneath the water. The river and its bank and trees, had turned into a fairy land, greys figure prominently against the white with a hint of black, and the twisted shapes of odd branches brings a tone of witches.....

Tuesday and frost

Tuesday and a glorious morning, true cold, with the leaves outlined in frost, and the grass on the green a crystallised icing only broken by footsteps. A collared dove and a noisy blackbird are chasing the magpie out of the tree above as I pass by - robber of nests, though not at this time of the year - the magpie just chuckles and zooms off elsewhere.


The hedge shrub with its leaves outlinedby thick beadings of ice, the sun bringing out the red hue of the stems, bright red berries elsewhere in the hedge and the chattering of the sparrows as they fuss about on the branches.

The thick leaves of the hydrangea in the shelter of the fence have just been touched by old Jack Frost, there pinkness still caught at the tail end of Autumn tells me that they should have had a few more tea leaves this year!

North Stoke miscellaneous

At one stage in my life my blog got deleted, and certain things I had written got lost, but not quite so, some I had printed. One such essay was about the area that lay under the village of North Stoke, the reason I had started the blog, old history still caught in old maps, churches and landscape.

Well something has been niggling over the last few days, stones lost, probably prehistoric in origin which had been used in all probability to provide hardcore for the road to Bitton from Bath years ago; they were there still in an old 1889 map of the area in the field called Mickle Mead, mickle stems from the Old Saxon word micel/micle meaning great. This particular meadow (mead) was adjacent to Holm Mead, another A/S word for water/ocean/sea (land arising from water). In this instance the meadow is adjacent to the river Avon.

The Boyd River, Bitton Barrow and Wick Burial Mound

This little river seems to have started in Dodington (Glos), and made its way across country encountering the M4 on the way, under which it got culverted, it then came through the villages of Hinton and Doynton till it reached the village of Wick and it then ran "in the exceptionally beautiful valley of the River Boyd, the rocks that line the sides of a deep nearly a mile in length, rising in some places to 200 feet, a bright sparkly substance found on these rocks is known locally as 'Bristol diamonds' taken from a 1914 source.

This now is Wick quarry, still being quarried and still an unspoilt 'glen' in some places. If you were to follow the river further on through the flat fields, the Wick Burial mound can be seen, two rather forlorn stones standing there; this burial mound is situated about a kilometre away from the river, and is near to the so-called 'Grandmother Rocks', perhaps marking the site of an old quarry or an outcrop of rocks that no longer exists.

And then of course the river empties out into the larger Avon, by the barrow at Bitton. If we have a confluence of rivers then we also have a confluence of history, for it is here at Bitton that an old roman road goes through (Via Julia) from Bath on its way to a roman port, and that the church of St.Mary in Bitton close to the road is supposedly sited on top of a Roman temple.

Lost Stones;
Things or at least an important part of its prehistoric history has got 'lost' at this barrow, stones for a start, they are there on a 19th century map, 7 in Holm Mead and 6 further along in Mickle Mead. In both fields on the map they trail the hedgerows, perhaps in Mickle Mead they curve down to the river. This is what makes this place something special in the past, the barrow is very close to the church, a site which has not only had a christian religion, but also a pagan roman temple, which maybe goes back to a native shrine, similar to the one at Bath - Aqua Sulis, or even the Silbury roman settlement.

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/38003/bitton.html which shows the closeness of the Bitton barrow to the church of St.Mary...

The following photos are of St.Martins church at Northstoke, note the yews around the church and what is not shown in the photo the stream tumbling down on to the lane by the side of the steps. The second photo shows a 'hollow way' old road, that was probably a Roman road from Northstoke down to Bitton.

Primroses and wool tops

Two worlds, the logical, rational and explained world, the other a subjective world felt through the senses. So that is my bedside reading at the moment David Abram on Becoming Animal and A.C.Grayling on Truth, Meaning and Realism. The latter I can hardly understand for its complicated terminology but catch vague glimpses through the mist of his argument, Abrams on the other hand is succinct and easy to follow. Grayling argues from the mechanistic viewpoint, we can assert a truth, we can even back it up with facts (as known at the present time) but whether its 'truthfulness' holds water against other truths is yet to be seen, mostly we rely on belief in our own judgements, truth is defined in a social framework, an agreement between our human selves, more often than not subjective, factual evidence is taken for 'truth'.

To turn to Abram, we must feel through our senses the world we live in, just to take one aspect, do we live on the Earth, or do we live in Eairth, the air around us that gives us life, the dome of the sky above our heads frames this protective layer of oxygen through which we swim as breathing humans very much like the creatures of the sea.

There are innumerable distinctions to be drawn between the palpable phenomena of this world, yet each particular presence partakes of a common mystery; the unfathomable upsurge of existence itself. Each thing expresses this mystery in its own manner and style, yet each thing is equivalently outrageous, a clump of dirt no less than a roaring, marauding brown bear - each enacting it own tenuous and improvised way in the world, each gifting its own rhythms to the riot of life that surrounds it. Every gust of wind, every note ringing from the bell tower, each staccato step of a water strider along the streams surface has its own subtle influence on the beings around it. Simply to exist, or continue existing, is already active - already a doing - and hence no phenomenon is utterly passive, without efficacy or influence....

David Abram

Pondering this gives me dreams, why did primroses appear in a dream last night; their pale lemon flowers springing from a rosette of leaves, snuggled into the earth around the roots of trees they are harbingers of spring. Perhaps it is the talk of gales, rain, wind and cold weather forecast for this week that brings them to mind. But if I was to explain them, they would for me encompass the natural holistic world that I understand. Place them against the gaudily coloured cultivated primroses you can buy in your local nursery and immediately you spy the hand of man 'trying' to make the species 'better' and failing miserably in the process. The primrose in the wood on the other hand has found it natural place here in this particular spot, it thrives in the ecosystem provided by the trees, the dappled sunlight, the rich leaf mould that has developed over the years - it is at home in it its environment but take the cultivated variety and try to find a spot in the garden without it shouting out to you that it cannot blend with nature.

Its the same with my dyed wools, chemical dyes are often harshly coloured whilst the natural colours extracted from plants and trees will reveal subdued hues. When I spin, the tactile feel of the different types of wool as they run through my fingers tells me a great deal. At the moment I am spinning the soft merino coloured wool above it is to be the weft stripes of a rug I am thinking of making. The warp I have spun out of a cream Devon longwool sheep, coarse, it scratches my fingers, it has unruly little wisps sticking out from the main thread but it will make a good strong contrast warp.

The difference between the two authors can be summed up neatly, I could quote from an Illustrated Flora the attributes of the primrose, its place in the world is governed by photosynthesis with the sun, it transpires through it leaves, it takes from the soil the necessary nutritions for growth.... and yet this says nothing of its delicate colouring, the slight sweet scent, the cool touch of its petals and the way it will tumble in a glass when you bring it into the house. Gerald Manley Hopkins in trying to describe it says...

take the instress of brilliancy, sort of starryiness: I have not the right - so simple a flower gives is remarkable. It is, I think, given to the strong swell given by the deeper yellow middle... Grigson

The understanding of the space around us, the things that assault our eyes when we wander in the countryside, is purely subjective, a feeling, a sensing of the senses, an unconscious feeling that is felt by the mind that all the philosophers in the world cannot arrive at through a tendentious use of language.

Hobby Craft

Completely engrossed in spinning wool, a lovely vivid orange at the moment, that my computer gets little use, except for the work related Journal, which I consider work - news gathering, sorting through stuff, etc.
But this week I have been twice to Hobby Craft which has recently opened down the road, it was a pleasant surprise, a cornucopia of goodies, but exhausting to take it all in. Aisles of buttons, embroidery silks, wools, painting equipment and paper - plus a thousand and one hobby things.
I settled for making a memory photograph album for my son, and I shall do one for my daughter and then eldest grandson; till that moment in time when I acquired a digital camera and became paperless as the term goes, but at least it reduces the enormous box of photos I have.
My ex-sister-in-law and husband was also supposed to come down from London yesterday but Sylvia tripped up over a suitcase and hurt her knee badly ending up in hospital and bed rest back at the hotel. So we went out on our own for a ploughman's lunch yesterday.
I hadn't seen her for many years, though she was part of my 'adopted' family in Switzerland.
I saw her very rarely over the years as she studied in America, then took a job in Hong Kong as a lecturer in child psychology, but occasionally she was at the family gatherings in the summer at Blonay, when everyone came over from the various parts of the world they lived in. Sunday lunch in the garden with a fruit tart from the village bakery, and normally a Thai dish with rice as well.

Leni my mother in law's best friend and bridge partner, (though they were always arguing) Annabel, my other sister-in-law, and her son Marc. All very cosmopolitan, my gentle English father in law Con who worked for UNESCO and my mother-in-law, who was Dutch and ruled the family in a slightly autocratic manner.
We might go over there next year, like West Wales its somewhere I know very well, perhaps take the little train up the mountain behind the village and listen to the bells clonking round the necks of the great creamy coloured cows that graze the summer pastures; the little rail track went past Leni's house, and there is an old photo of her standing by a tall sunflower in her garden, fast fading because its polaroid.

This part of Switzerland had many expats living up on the slopes behind Vevey and Montreaux, there were two English churches as well, mostly attended by the people from Nestles who worked here my father in law was a church warden as well so that the English vicar would also come for lunch as well.

Fondues are still a favourite of both grown up children, a treat at Xmas for vegetarians and also raclette, potatoes with cheese melted over, and eaten with plenty of pickled stuff.

Buzzards and ploughing

Some of the following photos are very stark in the blackness of the earth, but that is how it was when we went to the river Terling yesterday. The farmer was ploughing the field into a great sea of black ploughed ridge and furrows, the soil gleamed as it was turned, wet and heavy by the river. The powerful tractor was pulling a plough with great teeth that tore up the earth. No team of horses could have done that job without a great deal of labour, and though this disturbance of the soil is destructive, it brings forth a harvest next year. Red hips draped over a fallen tree, the sloes still gleaming amongst the copper turning leaves. A cluster of mushrooms clung to the opposite bank, but difficult to get to through the swathe of nettles.
The two buzzards (my totem bird) wheeled in the sky harassed by a crow, they turned and glided on the thermals, twisting away from the crow, the cream underside of their long wings catching the sun. I am fond of their lazy slow flight, their indifference to the mobbing that occurs from the crow family. At this particular spot, and note Essex does actually have hills and is not flat everywhere, the field had been sown, and a long line of 10 pheasants made a slow procession from the woods into the field. In other fields, the grey of grouse blended in so well with the soil, that they were almost like stones.

A furrowed sea

black soil gleaming in the sun

Ghosts - the Spirits of England

A rather good book for this time of the year, of course if one was cynical, just the right time to have a review written about it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-spirits-of-england-2119329.html


"England is a haunted country. Several explanations, for the ubiquity of the ghost in this land, can be offered. Alone among the countries of Europe, England is bordered by original British (or Celtic) nations. The popularity of the English ghost tradition – the English see more ghosts than anyone else – is deeply rooted in its peculiar mingling of Germanic, Nordic and British superstitions. The English are also in many respects obsessed with the past, with ruins, with ancient volumes. It is the country where archaeology is placed on national television, and where every town and village has its own local historian. Ghosts therefore may be seen as a bridge of light between the past and the present, or between the living and the dead. They represent continuity, albeit of a spectral kind."

'The English Ghost: Spectres Through Time' is published by Chatto & Windus (£12.99)

"How Dare You" - hunting

Well this is not going to be a 'class' rant, but the video below fascinated me as to how a particular man behaved in response to being videoed by an anti-hunt person. I had used this video to illustrate the mindset of the people who are probably behind our conservative government's plan to sell off 50% of our forests to private investors (yes you heard right!) for development! and of course a loosening of planning laws is also coming along in its wake. Give them power and we're back to privatisation of the worst kind, the free for all (that is if you are rich) to 'own' and develop - this in our overcrowded tiny island, with all the powers we have put in place to protect our wild places, moors, forest, woods as a sanctuary for our indigenous animals, plants, trees and birds.

I suspect that the conservatives will not get away with it, for all their weak kowtowing the Liberals should and hopefully will speak out...

So what about the video, the person who is filming (an anti-hunting moderator) confronts our 'John Bull' character on his piebald horse? who gets into a rage and seems to splutter 'how dare you' several times because he can't find anything else to say, except such foolishness as to demand why is she filming on this bright morning at 7.45. She has, sadly for him, the right to be on a public lane. Also, her car has been boxed in by the followers of the hunt, this confrontation is of course a common stance in this particular war.

It is the sight of grown men and women on large horses that is so extraordinary, a little fox crosses the road in the background, that is what they are hunting, a small chestnut coloured creature who lives out in these fields in Gloucester. What is his crime you may ask? well maybe he's been killing a few pheasants, but millions are bred, either in this country or they come from France, reared in the woods from young, and then shot at as a 'sport' - there's plenty to go around. Oh and pheasants are not difficult to kill, being rather slow and clumsy to flight. It can't be hens the little fox is after, most of our hens are well protected. So this 'vermin' that must be exterminated by a hunt and a pack of dogs is really only there for the pleasurable exercise of killing!

The good thing of course is that there are people there standing up for the 'rights' of the fox, the bad thing? well maybe its the foul mouthed abusive language that tumble from the mouths of the hunters, who must know that they are in the wrong.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meXZAotDfMA

Money Could grow on trees

The end is nigh

Well at least for my computer, which has been crashing lately; it needs replacing, so I have been copying email addresses, passwords and anything that needs saving to my external hard drive.

But the solid sound of a book hitting the floor as the postman delivered the mail through the letterbox this morning -David Abrams Becoming Animal and my Resurgence magazine means that at least I shall have plenty to read in the future!

Going out to find a new computer fills me with horror, I shall end up with a laptop of course because it will give me more space on my desk; I need at least two desks, a large table for ALL my other work, and another bookcase, space is always at a premium.......

Whether it will hit my access to my blog I am not sure, only remember Bovey Belle's trouble when she could not access her blog, we will see.

What else has ended? The marvellous radio programme A History of the World in 100 Objects, no more will we listen to the mellifluous tones of Neil Macgregor, or the rather good intro music, its finished on the note of a solar powered lamp and charger. There was a lot of discussion on the radio last week, sheer surprise at the dullness of this last choice to go out on. But Macgregor's choice was inspired for in the selfish world of this supposedly 'first' world, in which we think the technology of whizz bang internet mobile phones is the bees knees, he had chosen a small lamp and a charger for mobile phones for all the people in the rest of the world (one and a half billion) who do not have access to the unlimited energy consumption we have in the form of electricity. Solar power is of course the greatest energy source on this earth, it empowers people in the 'third' world (I do so hate that expression) to be educated and to conduct business.

And an interesting article in the Financial Times.. by Andrew Roberts, ending with the following words.....

"MacGregor could not have skewered our pretensions better; we too often think ourselves superior to earlier inhabitants of the planet simply because of the chronological – and all too swiftly altered – accident that we are alive. Look at the photographs of the majestic centaur and Lapith on the Parthenon Sculpture (440BC) or the Augsburg mechanical galleon (1585), and then fast-forward through the centuries to our own green plastic solar-powered lamp and mobile phone charger.

Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8076036/A-History-of-the-World-in-100-Objects-by-Neil-MacGregor-review.html

Fungi in Blakes Wood

Don't ever eat Boletus

If the tube-mouths they are red

Stay away from the amanitas

Or brother you are dead

The beautiful gills of a mushroom, I laid the camera underneath it and then just clicked. A walk in Blake's Wood this afternoon revealed puffballs, mushrooms and fungi. In actual fact it should be Sweet Chestnut Wood, for everywhere the ground was covered in the spiky pale green shells of the chestnut tree splitting open to reveal the four nutlets inside. A couple of people were picking bags full and I now know where to find the biggest nuts. Seems I will have to do a little research into what to do with them, apart from roasting on the fire, I collected a large pocketful of them.

The mushrooms were incredible it really has been a good year for fruit and nuts, and the mushrooms must love the damp weather we having having of late.

These two photos of white mushrooms were close together, so they may be one and the same species, note the bluish tinge in the above


Red agaric mushrooms, pretty but poisonous of course, no dainty fairy sat underneath



puffballs, apparently delicious to eat when young and still white inside, but as they grew older, and develope a dark green inside (the spores) no good for eating.

Sweet Chestnut tree

Strange creature the puffball, a lot of the mushrooms were nibbled, even the fly agaric, it has a stem but belongs to the puffball family...

Strange but maybe a puffball, bad photo

This has a cracked surface, could it be a russula? to answer myself no, but a decent mushroom book might help!

last words by Gary Snyder..

So here's to the mushroom family,

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

October Sunday

Its been a quiet week, I have deserted my computer except when necessary, the soothing sound of my spinning wheel, with the slight click of the foot pedal is more to my keeping; no continuous news on the radio just the birds in the tree outside. Listened to the harsh cry of the crow, and thought of Hughes piercing poetry on the bird. Listened to the gentler sparrows as they chirrup themselves awake in the early morning, the blue tits are back, and also the grey collared doves feeding greedily as the weather turns colder.

We have'nt actually been anywhere this week except to town, and the only highlight there was sitting in the mall drinking coffee at Starbucks with the swirl of people passing by. A young lad brought out a tray of chocolate pots which he gave away to customers and passers-by, and it was lovely to see people surprised and happy to receive something free.

Checked on my sitemeter to see what people read, popular are my two blogs on romano/celtic Bath and genii cucullati and I noted how unfinished they are! Up comes photos of the snow I took last year, and I begin to see what a good idea a blog is, for we can look back, it is a visual diary that records the daily events though of course it is also public and so has to be approached with some caution.

Thinking why my thoughts turn to Celtic Britain, it must be to do with the time of year - Halloween - the rising of the dead from the grave yards, if you would believe the folklore! At Whitby the Goths taking to the streets dressed in black in celebration of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula, a fairly longwinded and boring book, but the base tale for all those later Hammer horror films. Photos from about three years ago, show an ageing goth cult, but perhaps it would be interesting to go into their history as to why they dress up in such sombre fashion.

The 199 steps up to the Abbey with the tramp of thousands of feet daily

Whitby street full of tourists

Goths everywhere

They posed for my camera

This photo needs some explanation, it was taken on a drive out over the bleak Yorkshire coast, in actual fact what you see is the footings for a great bonfire on bonfire night in this little cove, an event which is attended by many. What you don't see is the bleakness of this area when the local steel works closed down (Corus). The little village with the allotments stretched up the hill looking forlorn and poor. This calamity four years back, is being echoed today as we head for massive cuts in budgets and jobs. Yesterday in the Guardian, the sad sight of a horse tethered on an Irish housing estate hungry and with skin disease, they are talking of culling the starving horses that have been turned out by their owners because of the so called Celtic Tiger having died a miserable death. People are paying for the foolishness of their governments and greedy bankers who gambled with our pensions and savings; sadly heads will not roll, its just the ordinary people who have to pay.

Spinning and miniatures

The river on the 10/10/10, beautiful sunny day and the dragonflies were still hawking up and down, the water is so clear....

Here is my favourite stallion, terribly muddy though you can't see from the picture, he needs a thoroughly good brush. The water meadows are living up to their name, and old water courses, presumably to the mill are flooded, the ground is very boggy. We could'nt make it over to the pub but had to walk all the way back.


At last my spinning wheel is settled, working beautifully after oiling, the wool being spun is Shetland, though I could have sworn I ordered Jacob wool! It is slightly harsh but very easy to spin from the tops. The big cardigan I decided to knit from it has a band of fair isle, this merino wool, not sure what I dyed the lighter grey with but suspect it was one of the Japanese dyes.

Dolls house also came back with a tumble of furniture inside, this from the nursery and the kitchen - think I shallphotograph the little books more closely, as they are made from blocks of wood, filed to give the illusion of the inner pages and then painted in gold. Should I get back to miniature work? but somehow have too many things to do... the little plate rack at the back has holes drilled by the tiniest of drills..

Bridestones

Earlier in the week listening to Melvin Bragg talking about Ted Hughes' book of 'Birthday Letters' about his wife Slyvia Plath and the very last poem that did not get included in the book set me thinking.

The poem was written 35 years later, and describes Hughes anguish at the death of his wife, there was of course also guilt, when he picked up the phone that day and heard the terrible words 'your wife is dead'. The poem got printed in the New Statesman, and an article in the Guardian can be found here detailing its find by Bragg.

Well I'm not going to dwell on that particular poem, but another one in his Remains of Elmet book of poems which went through my mind when thinking of Hughes and marriage, a line which says "And marriage is nailed down" to be found in his Bridestones poem.

A short resume of where the book and poem is coming from needs some explanation. Elmet is one of the small British/Brythonic kingdoms of the early medieval ages. Elmet is to be found probably in West Yorkshire and by the 6th century would have been conquered by its greater Northumbrian neighbours Deira and Bernicia, as they became christianised from Kent. It is in many ways a 'lost' kingdom of pagan origin and this is why it appealed to Hughes. Bridestones of course remind us of the pagan Brigid goddess. To discuss pagan goddesses one must also go back to the mothers, often seen as the three hags up North, and his book is around this theme of the natural world coupled with an apocalyptic vision of the world, taken from William Blake and his poem Jerusalem. Such meanderings of course can best be judged by reading about the subject matter and Ann Skea, seems to have written an extraordinary amount on Hughes, her review of Remains of Elmet will fill many of the answers in....

The Great Bridestones

Scorched-looking, unhewn - a hill-top chapel

Actually a crown of outcrop rock -

Earth's heart bone laid bare.

Crowding, congregation of skies.

Tense congregation of hills.

You do nothing casual here.

The wedding stones

Are electrified with whispers.

And marriage is nailed down

By this slender necked, heavy headed

Black exclamaition mark

of rock.

And you go

With the wreath of weather

The wreath of horizons

The wreath of constellations

Over your shoulders.

And from now on

The sun

Touches you

With the shadow of this finger.

From now on

The moon stares into your skull

From this perch.

And a slightly different version for the opening line..

(Holy of holies - a hill-top chapel)

Endings and beginnings

Its early in the morning, the darkness has crept in so quickly the last few weeks that there has been no seamless change from summer to autumn and we still have days of summer interspersed with the changing weathers of autumn. No mist this morning like yesterday, but the heavy clatter of rain as it falls through the leaves of the maple, and the wind rustling through the tree hastening their death as they fall to the ground

Behind me is my spinning wheel, brought from my old home last weekend, the beautiful embroidered silk dragon and a couple of quilts will be folded neatly into a cupboard, the old house is sold, its garden lies forlorn and overgrown, the apple trees still full of fruit, but my intelligent beautiful Moss is well and I give thanks for that.

I expect the house will have a radical makeover, it did a marvellous job in its time, it housed children and students, animals of various sorts, but in the end all that work became too much.

So on Sunday we loaded my son-in-law's land rover with the bits I considered valuable and parted on amicable terms with my ex-husband, another phase of my life finished.

I would like to go out walking along the river, but the rain stops that for the moment, when we drive to Chelmsford over the water meadows I often glimpse the gypsy horses in the distance, out in all weathers their lives little changed. I need to visit a couple of churches perhaps to record their past, to see the patina of age fading gently into their stones, to wonder if there is a 'pagan' heart still lurking in those selfsame stones, to find the Saxon grave or the stream that nourished the people who settled so long ago.

It has grown light, the dark browns and reds of the maple tree fill the window with colour, funnily enough I can't stand red leaf trees, but had one in my last garden dominating the centre, soft greens are more to my liking. This tree here normally houses a couple of collared doves at night, the magpie will come and jump from branch to branch noisily sometimes, clumsy old wood pigeons rattle around, and lately I have heard the long tailed tits song as they hunt for insects on the leaves.

So winter gathers in, a time for fires, christmas to look forward to with my grandchildren, games to buy to keep them amused and another bookcase to buy for the three boxes of books I bought back with me!

School days

Me sitting next to my half brother Peter

Wandering through my Facebook 'friends' I noticed someone was collecting the past history of his family. Now genealogy does not really interest me, mostly because I have a complicated family background and its just too much hard work. I only have three photos from my childhood, one of which is the above. It is the tea or breakfast after my confirmation at the convent.
Firstly it must be stressed I never believed in any god from the year dot, curious from an early age I questioned everything that was told to me, but obviously under the strict rules of being schooled in a time when you acquiesced in what your elders taught you, I was a model pupil!
The covent was a Dominican one and in Brewood, Staffordshire, checking now and the lovely old building and grounds I knew have been replaced by a modern red bricked elite school for girls.
Its the photo that is interesting, it must have been taken in the library or the Mother Superior's study where I had to learn the catechism by heart for the event of the confirmation. On the table four candles for us girls, boiled eggs and thinly buttered bread our feast, with cups of tea in fine china. There is a little tableau in the centre and 'holy pictures' anyone who has been brought up in the Catholic faith would recognise the scene; Hunt's Light of the World I think was probably the bookmark in my new prayer book for the occasion. I am sitting next to my half brother Peter, he wears the grey uniform of Tettenhall College, where he went with my other half brother Barry, so we were all either day boarders or proper boarders at the time.

The ceremony is rather frightening for children, you are, or become brides of Christ under the foolish rituals of the Catholic dogma, the nuns lying prostrate on the floor during the ceremony in the chapel, the photo probably singles out the pure relief we girls would have felt having tea after such an ordeal. I suspect my feelings towards the recent Pope's visit was one of anger for the harm that has been perpetuated in this very paternalistic faith.

You can also tell from the photo that the Mother Superior was very kind, I was a day pupil for some time, but when a family break-up occured became a boarder. Convent life for us girls was strict, our every moment was accounted for, from getting up in the morning and going to chapel, - I had to have special dispensation from the priest to have a cup of tea and biscuit for these early morning rises as I had a tendency to faint if not fed! Through the school day, till that sad moment when the day pupils left and you felt very homesick, then we would have some tea and then back to the classroom for an hour or so of homework. Freedom came in the evening, and was the best time of the day, we could read or sew and would have some supper.

Crocodiling in pairs on Sunday, my first chance to go riding at the local stables, was cruelly brought to an abrupt end one chilly cold morning, when I became ill, and for a couple of months was very sick, and being nursed by the nuns, all I remember of food was toast and Bovril drinks to keep my strength up, I emerged a very much skinnier person than the photo above and I remember coming down the steps in the large hall with a nun to meet my grandfather and his new wife.

Interestingly behind my head is a reflection of some sort of the photographer, though there is no mirror and could be an overlay, or perhaps even a ghost!