Changing the clocks

Well the clocks are back, some of ours went back yesterday, so that going from room to room disorientation took place as you slipped from one time zone to another.  In this household we also have another clock in the kitchen telling Japanese time as well - so be it, the artificial telling of time as the earth spins round.  Tomorrow it will be Halloween, time for the 'Wild Hunt' to take place, and I've written about it elsewhere but I came across it in Alan Garner's Moon of Gomrath which I read last night.  I love children's books, and of course Garner's telling of tales round Alderley Edge are classics, but slightly disappointed with the writing, Tolkien does it better (who can beat him) with his breadth and expanse of other worlds, Garner has raided several Celtic books for his character's name, mostly Irish, the Children of Danu comes to mind.  Perhaps I'm a bit of a trainspotter when it comes to reading books, or perhaps I should'nt read children's book.

So my next book is the more sombre Bill Mckibben's Eaarth, back to my  green reading which I have neglected the past few months.

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2009/10/wild-hunt-at-halloween.html

Halloween has actually gone downhill as an event, the 'youf' round here tend to throw eggs at the windows of people's houses, and the girls in Whitby desperate to go 'trick and treating' are not allowed of course in case they frighten old ladies, etc. Bring back the 'Wild Hunt' ;)

Not commenting on other blogs

This is not rudeness on my part, only I find it impossible to do! It started when google demanded of me a gmail account, so I filled it in, but this blog has always been through my yahoo account. So what happens, when I go to answer on someone's blog, press the appropiate 'send', the message comes up that I must sign out and come back under my other account....I do, but get the same message on the other account. I suspect if I was cleverer would be able to overcome the problem, but then sadly I'm not.
So apologies to everyone, but I do come and read your blogs!!

Whitby

Sheep of course everywhere on the moors

Back in Essex, after a comfortable drive back, the last couple of days have been taken up with washing,etc.

The cottage is in the hands of the plasterers now, chimney mended and hopefully the roof will not display any other problems, though there is mutterings about rotten wood under the guttering!

It was cold in Whitby and gale force winds for a couple of days but the cottage was warm, if somewhat unfurnished and bare of carpets, but carpets and a sofa will arrive soon, and the beds have already arrived.

My son-in-law D has beautifully painted all the old stripped paint surfaces, and done a thousand and one jobs in the process.

holcrum Hole

We came over the moors from York to Whitby, and they are bleak if the sun isn't out, a palette of browns and greys, with blackened surfaces where the heather has been deliberately burnt back.  Passing the Hole of Holcrum, a great bowl of greenery, caused not by a meteorite from outer space but the steady drip of water, drop by drop over the millenia.

Whitby is as crowded as ever, fish and chip shops abound, it's like a northern Southend but of course much prettier.  We do the usual rounds with the children, tea and chocolate cake at Sherlocks, a very Victorian teashop, with books everywhere and LS and I go to the Magpie Restaurant, not for fish and chips but they do a great range of other fish like squid, turbot and halibut.  The restaurant is so popular that people queue for hours to get in, and it has a deserved reputation.  The 'proper' way to eat fish and chips is with mushy peas, white buttered bread and a pot of tea and most people seemed to be eating this when we were there.

The sofa was, at last, found in Middlesborough, which is about 35 miles from Whitby, and you have to drive through Teesside, etc. We also took the coastal road, that took us past Skinninggrove, a small village set by the sea, now having a somewhat derelict air as the steel industry that employed so many people has gone. Each year they have a great bonfire display, a couple of years ago it was a Viking ship burnt, last year I think it was a dragon.

But to Middlesborough, an enormous shopping complex/mall, the first person we see there is 'Jesus' from Whitby standing by a hot dog stall, and D says he has probably walked all the way.  A strange thin man, who does indeed look like Jesus, thin face, long hair and beard, probably Italian he mutters unintelligibly to himself, but is well looked after in Whitby, showering at the sports centre, and collecting his daily allowance of money from the bank, where he lives I do not know.

The problem with shopping with three other people, is that everyone has an opinion on what they like, and I cannot choose too well, but Laura Ashley had a sale on, so we eventually find one at half price which seemed to suit everyone.

A view down Brunswick road, just off Flowergate

Brunswick Road with its three churches clustered together

Whitby at night

Going down the valley to Beck Hole,

Yorkshire farm house up on the moors

Skinninggrove -Teesside

Skinninggrove

The girls

Books

Of late, my reading has fallen by the wayside, not sure why but probably age, but I have determined to rectify this omission, giving up certain duties elsewhere, LS is also starting a new blog on conservation as well, which should be interesting when it is finished.......

Recently I read an article on a blog Musings from the Bike Shed about the new phase of  'wild or wilderness' writers, and it sent me back to my books and reading Amazon reviews about these writers.  Well this is not a critique of those books, but a general reshuffling in my mind of what is good and what I find bad.

Firstly I have always enjoyed the early 20th century writers, Susan Hartley, Edward Thomas, Massingham and Richard Jefferies come to mind and their approach to country writing, the thought of wildness had not crept into their imaginings although Jefferies novel "After London or Wild England" touches upon the word.  The English countryside was as perfectly utilised in their time as it is today, the wild places that modern day writers allude to are the bleak mountain ranges of Scotland or maybe Wales, land that is unfarmable (if such a word exists), so we have moors such as Exmoor, Dartmoor  or the Yorkshire moors, tourist havens for the walker or seeker of history or plants.  Nothing is wild, none of these places has ever escaped the tramp of feet in this small island.  And what of the mass of little islands that cling to our coasts, Scotland with its Shetland and Orkney, tiny islands like the one I came across the other day with its dozen feral cattle left behind by the last inhabitants of the island, or even St.Kilda, again an island emptied of its people, small stone houses set in line on one small street now falling into decay after the evacuation of its tiny population.

But I'm starting to move away from the subject of books, which are part of the background of my reading .  So first of all Gary Snyder, an American writer, who loved his countryside and evolved a philosophy that embraces such a wide canvas of nature writing, that the damage we do as humans is sometimes missed in his writng.  At the bottom by the way I shall print his Smokey the Bear Sutra, which always make me laugh, but in his introduction to the sutra ( A Place in Space) to the concept of a bear god he says this,,"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsating of great volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain" part of the sutra and somehow very different to the concept that people like Robert Macfarlane brings to the subject, sometimes I think of certain  people as the Munro gatherers, see nature as  in need of taming, Macfarlane does'nt do this fully but its the male streak of 'macho' man sleeping out in the cold on the highest mountain, proving his toughness that sometime underpin some modern writing.

 I'm not sure that Snyder's reference to Fudo Myoo as a bear god in Japan is a true one, but he says that the statues are found by waterfalls and deep in the wildest mountains of Japan.  Fudo has surpassing power, the power to quell all lesser violence. Snyder of course spent time in Japan in the 60s as a monk as did LS, so my late introduction to all things Japanese is kindled in this household.  Not altogether happily as demons and all kind of terrible depictions can be found in the scrolls and Japanese artwork around.!

This sutra brings to mind what I have been looking at today the protest in Wall Street, the turmoil that the rich and greedy have bought down on our world, wonder where it will all end?

SMOKEY THE BEAR

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.
Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display--indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;


Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:


all true paths lead through mountains--


With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;
Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;


Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;


Indicating the task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes, master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.


Wrathful but calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him...
HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.


Thus his great Mantra:
Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana Sphataya hum traka ham mam


"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND BE THIS RAGING FURY BE DESTROYED"

And he will protect those who love the woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:


And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:


DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.
Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.


Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT
...thus we have heard...
(may be reproduced free forever)

 To be continued; These thoughts on books will probably  meander on indefinitely ;)

After London, Wild England
http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2007/12/christmas-reading.html

Bevis
http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/05/bevis-by-richard-jefferies.html

The cottage

Wonders of technology, or at least phones that take photos;
The scaffolding is up after all this time!!

Blogs can be about anything, political viewpoints, personal viewpoints, mine seems a weekly record of what is happening in my life.  For instance no mention has been made of the Whitby cottage for ages, but it is part of my day to day thinking (and getting things) as it is slowly refurbished by my son-in-law.  Painting is almost finished, so we, LS and I will be going down in a few days  to take down some stuff, which I buy slowly in anticipation.  Bedlinen, plates, a rug from Middle Mill, towels and that is just the light stuff!  A painting for the wall occupies my mind, there is a modern artist's work - Nicki Corker in the Reading Room in Whitby which sort of takes my fancy, rather than the brown tinted old worlde photographs that are quite attractive for old cottages.
Today, friday, a text message brought the news that the scaffolding was actually going up to mend the chimney, my joy knows no bound, 6 months I have waited for this, water leaks from the chimney down into the top bedroom and it has worried me all this time, though it could be blocked drain pipe - there are plants growing out on the back wall drain pipe which is inches from another wall.... Carpet for the middle bedroom so we shall have somewhere to sleep (air beds) the real beds are coming at the end of the month.
My beloved hasn't even seen the cottage, so I regale him with tales about our neighbours in the small yard, not sure that he will appreciate living in such close company but at least it will more interesting than suburbia I tell him - hopefully.
I have furnished, in my mind at least, past ownership of the cottage with a captain, think its to do with the Georgian influence, an upgrade so to speak.  He might have sailed one of the whaling boats that feature in the Whitby Museum prints and models, rooms full of that delicious 'junk' from past ages.  Whaling was one of the past industries, something that is not condoned at all nowadays thank goodness.  I remember reading a lot of books when I was a child about the North which must have featured whaling in it somewhere, Captain Marryat comes to mind but I'm not sure he went up North...

Clear brown amber of Abbot's beer at the Cat's pub.

This looks like the dreaded honey fungus, (we did not take a speciman to our knowledgable fungi expert!) in the garden

Hunting mushrooms

The wood

Hanningfield Reservoir

Yesterday we went on a mushroom foray, lecture perhaps would be a better term.  The weather was beautiful, and the woods almost had a magical air to them.  The unseasonal hot weather is a boon, though tomorrow winds from the west will arrive but we have had a few classical Indian summer September days.  We wandered round the edges of fields, bullocks and sheep grazed calmly, the grass in many places was still covered in  dew and was thick and rich. Our guide was an expert, and of course did not talk about which was an edible mushroom, its just too tricky in this quick trigger world of compensation.  One man did collect the Amethyst Deceiver for the stew pot, these were my favourite coloured mushrooms, delicate hues of lavender buried deep in the coppery-brown undergrowth.  We came across one of the stink horns, a rather small example but there was also a creamy 'egg' from which they emerge, this was found by a small girl called Fern, who happily hunted and tackled the brambles to bring out the mushrooms buried deep in the woodland floor.

Bracket fungi, common earth balls (got excited about these), apparently though they are poisonous, very inconspicuously buried in the leaves.

We eventually made our way back to the centre, it was a three hour session, and he laid all our trophies out must have been about 60 or 70 different species on the table, and we wandered round looking at them.  The ones I remembered are the spindle mushroom (being a spinner of course), the milk cap, apparently as there are so many of them, if you nibble them gently and the lactose is extruded (the ones you are sure about of course) the different tastes will tell of their potency, there is a peppery one out much fancied by gormandising mushroomers!  Shaggy parasol is another I can now identify but to be honest it would take a whole lifetime to really learn about these strange creatures called fungi, I think he said they are fauna more than flora, because they eat everything, in microscopic form anyway. 

LS took a photo of our guide dressed in his green camouflage jacket, he was an expert in his subject and if he could not identify something he would say so.  Pottering around old woods looking for fungi is not a bad occupation my only worry about it all was the actual picking of them. were they rare....

Bracket fungus and the black blobs above are 'King Alfred's Cakes' fungi

Closer view

Not sure

Spindle mushroom

Shaggy parasol



half full

earth balls

Amethyst deceiver

Another one

Autumnal Equinox 21st to 23rd September

Slightly late but the soft warmth of September is still here and as I wonder whether to buy some winter primroses for the garden, there is also the added bonus of log fires and candles as days turn to long nights. Pagans call it Mabon, after a god, but the more important festival is of course Halloween at the end of October.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cell

John Keats - Autumn

Moss at Wayland's Smithy, waiting patiently for me to get up and go

Wayland's Smithy tomb in Autumn

And something I wrote a couple of years ago......
http://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/waylands-smithy-restoration-in-the-1960s/

Expeditions

Travelling to London yesterday from Chelmsford our train goes through Stratford and past the Olympic's shindig, and also of course the newly opened Westfield Shopping Centre, featured in some pretty bad advertising on TV. I doubt that we shall stop one day in Stratford to go round the mall even though it has 70 restaurants, it looks terrible and I DO NOT windowshop, preferring (when I need clothes) to shop online. But it looks pretty ugly from the outside as well.

We had gone in to see an old box that needed repairing, the box housed 6 beautiful 15th books, so it took us to the area around Christies and the antique shops there displaying their wares.

London terrifies me, when I have to travel on the tubes, the packed density could easily turn me into a gibbering wreck and the press of people is terrible. Of course when you emerge the same thing happens humanity everywhere, different languages and noise of traffic.

So we made an early retreat and ended up the good old Fox and Raven back home for a pot of tea and a meal, the relief was tangible, sitting next to the big  table that the family always sit round when they come down and the old magnolia tree outside, a climbing frame for children.

Piccadilly Circus

Olympics Stadium

Westfield Shopping centre

Old pub with modern buildings on either side

Calmer photos from the weekend, we went back to Ulting church, our first visit had been in the cold of winter a couple of years ago, and though we often see it from the other side of the river, there is no walking path on the left hand side.  Two fisherman with enormous lines were fishing on the other bank, apparently there used to be eels in the river as well at one time.  The church is locked and was restored in the 19th century, so inside it must be typical Victorian, but it is a very peaceful and tranquil place at the end of a green lane.  I have written of it elsewhere, there is a lot of pudding stone in the fabric of the church, the 'living rock' of pagan times....

Ulting Church

Long forgotten and stacked neatly

Pudding stone rock, conglomerate pebbles

Ulting Church previous article

Saturday, 17th September 2011

Another week passes and not much happens, we've been for walks and I did set myself the task of naming some of the yellow flowers that appear at this time of the year.  Ragwort of course, and fleabane maybe and also yellow chamomile which I never took a photo of but reading Grigson on the subject of these flowers rather took me away from identifying them ....

This time we went to Sandford Brook, you park by the ford, and go into the Reserve there, slightly spooky place, because there is always a few cars with single men hanging around, for what reason I don't know but I can make a pretty good guess...

The brook has the choked weed appearance of the little river Ter, pretty, but dying, policeman's helmet flowers line the banks along with reeds and it feels that someone should come and clean the brook out.

We also went a long walk at Paper Mill, met up with some Greek dogs, rescued and sent over to this country for rehoming, they were all bounding along quite happily.  Further on Jack, a labrador who spent a lot of time leaping into the river after his stick, his owner sat by the bank as Jack tore up the grass at his feet whilst excitedly chewing a very long branch he had found.  Dogs seem to have the gift of play and his owner commented that the walk along the river path was the most peaceful one can find.

What else, we crossed over a little concrete bridge built 1951, to see what was on the other side, and discovered a field full I think of mangolds, something I had never come across before, I'm sure it was Mangolds that Tess of the D'Urbervilles was cutting in Hardy's book. Anyway I purloined a photo from the Creative Commons, apparently the plant was only introduced in the 18th century, and what was so obvious was the spinach like leaves (you can eat them) and the large bulbous root.

This video is funny it was put on F/B by Rupert Soskin, he and Michael Bott created the very good Standing With Stones CD, this other video is funny but scary, its called "World Collapse Explained in 3 Minutes" and as the last week we lived through doom and gloom on the news, puts it neatly in place....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOzR3UAyXao&sns=fb

Marina Hyde also cleverly  gives  a slightly different interpretation on the term 'rogue trader' in the Guardian, so you only become a rogue trader if you lose money? so what are you called when making money in the same business? makes you think when the police take him away to be tried, still you should'nt gamble with other  peoples money!....

Jack trying to get out of the water

You can see I've fallen in love with him

The brook

Mangold from Creative commons

Autumn appears

What is the first sign of autumn I wonder, the answer for me is those large spiders that scuttle across the carpet, you catch the movement out of the corner of your eye as they head for the skirting board and then the sofa.  They come in from the cold to the dry, too hibernate or maybe too die?

Could of course be the torrential rain and winds that whipped through the trees yesterday, the first autumn storms, or maybe even the starlings who seem to have departed elsewhere a few days ago.  There are hundreds round here, feeding on the green in front of the house, bright plumages gleaming in the sun.  Perhaps they have flown to France to see if the weather is better there.  The little sparrows are still around, soft brown furry balls hopping around, squabbling at the seed holder for first place. And in the last few days a couple of young collared doves have come down to the lawn.  Feeding on the lawn the other day, one of the young magpies came down and marched up slightly belligerently to the young doves, mother and father doves immediately flew down furiously to protect their two and the young magpie squawked and flew away.  Young magpies do not grow their tails for quite a while so it has been a bit strange watching our two hop around practically tailess.

I note friends are harvesting the wild fruits, we haven't been yet,  but it reminded me to look up the time of the sweet chestnut harvest, for there is a wood not too far away with plenty of old trees and of course mushrooms - too record not eat, though we have signed up for a mushroom lecture/walk in October.

It seems I should find an Autumn poem but there is sometimes a tinge of sentimentality that I dislike in 19th century English poetry, shall have to find my Welsh poet - R.S.Thomas out for real misery, so skirting past Tennyson and Shelley, two short snatches from the Geoffrey Grigson's anthology Cherry Garden; The following poem sounds almost Saxon with its reference to wolves...

Slieve Gua - from the Old

Slieve Gua, craggy and black wolf den;
In its cleft the wind howls,
In its denes the wolves wail

Autumn on Slieve Gua; and the angry
Brown deer bells, and herons
Croak across Slieve Gua's crags

Rushes in a Watery Place - Christina Rossetti

Rushes in a watery place,
and reeds in a hollow;
A soaring skylark in the sky,
A darting swallow;
And where pale blossoms used to hang
Ripe fruit to follow.

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2010/10/fungi-in-blake-wood.html

A walk to the pub

Walking down to the pub - The Fox and Raven (the old Barnes Farm) and capturing bits and pieces, so much yellow of the flowers in the fields that it would be impossible to record it all.

But the borage stood out, though strangely the pale pink of the mallows dragged the colour out of the vivid blue. Tall teasels illustrating the complex world of plants. Great dragon flies hawked (describes them so accurately) up and down the river, rising noisily from the vegetation when disturbed. I've written about Barnes farm elsewhere, but the gardens of the pub still reflect its old history, the tennis courts now turned into a car park, the large old magnolia tree, glorious in the spring, and which always calls the children to climb it when we go there. We were there last weekend, large table for the family lunch, steaks for the carnivores, and fish/chips for the girls.

I expect you would call this interface between town and countryside, or even suburbia and countryside, a very ordinary typical brown site going into green belt, the wearing away of the edges of the green belt as new houses appear but the tranquillity of the river still captures the essence of the past, the intergration of mill and old farm buildings still there but changed into homes and restaurants...

  

Clash of cultures

It calls to mind the other news that is going on in another part of Essex - the Dale Farm gypsy encounter where the council is trying to evict part of the camping site. Joan Bakewell writes in the Telegraph - Why can we never abide gipsies and those with no fixed abode? .  There is no answer of course, prejudice is often deep-seated, and the gypsies's traditional values clash with modern values that espouse bricks and mortar as a safe bet for one's money; education as a way to gainful employment.  But its funny that in our society that makes so much of our history, think of all those 'great' houses that we pay to visit, that we can't find a solution  to this problem of allowing the gypsies a safe haven somewhere.

Lord Eric Avebury (champion of many causes) has said this.....

In the afternoon I had a visit from Sean Risdale and Matthew Brindley of the Irish Travellers movement in Britain. In spite of all the excellent work done by the ITMB, and their success in lobbying the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), it looks as though Dale Farm is at the end of the road and the evictions will be going ahead some time in the next few weeks. The CERD issued a statement yesterday criticising the evictions, see below.

The really sad thing about this disaster is that if there hadn't been a change of Government last year, there was a good chance that the Dale Farm question would have been solved, with some of the residents going to sites in other Districts within the county. As soon as Secretary of State Pickles announced the end of regionalism just after polling day, scrapping the target number of pitches for which planning permission was to be granted in every local authority area following a laborious process which had been accepted grudgingly throughout England, the rest of Essex said either that they weren't going to provide any land at all for Travellers, or that they were going to take some time to make up their minds what to do. So the families in the 51 pitches to be evicted, including pregnant women, the elderly, disabled and small children, are going to be homeless when their dwellings are carted away on low loaders and put into a store somewhere. Its an £18 million caastrophe, causing immense and unnecessary suffering.

And just as a note; a government e-petition on the eviction has only 6 signatures so far...

Borage and mallow

Face masks to keep the flies away

Roses round the gate

Borage, not captured well by the camera but the blues reflect a beautiful sunny day

Queen bee amongst the lavender at the pub

Lavender hedgerow always full of honey and bumble bees

Corner of the mill down the cul-de sac to the river

Should be two large reddish brown dragonfly flying down the river but of course the camera missed them!

Teasels