Finding the narrative - Ghana

Ephraim is from Ghana, he is also  part of my life I am a sort of adopted mother to him, he is the friend and one would almost say brother of my son Mark.  They met at university, have schemed these last ten years to make their fortune writing computer programmes, and they both live in Bristol. Ephraim was married to Sarah, and they have two children and so every fortnight or so a great batch of photos arrives by email of Ephraim's weekend's taking the children around one of the many places that Somerset has to offer be it Longleat or Stourhead.

On my external drive, which I managed to make work last weekend, are not only my photos but theirs of the great trip to Ghana, where they spent over a year writing programmes for various businesses but  did not make their fortunes! 

Whenever I look at these hundreds of photos of a far away country in Africa I realise there is a story to tell, it is not one of unhappiness but of people living their lives within the confines of the place where they are born, very much like our lives coping within a framework of the deck of cards we are handed out.  Life is difficult within our Western culture yet easy viewed from such far away places as the poorer European countries of Poland, Romania etc, to immigrants we offer a better future (though this may not be necessarily so).
In the town of Accra I see our 19th century history, there is poverty, mixed with wealth, people selling goods from the side of the road, according to Ephraim who can argue (and does) very articulately about the corruption of the Ghanian politicans, and the laziness of the men, and do note there is a lot of photographs of women working, less so of men.

Ghana is one of the upcoming countries of Africa, it has rich resources and a potential for moving forward, two of Ephraim's aunts work in America as nurses another aunt is married to a successful businessman, I met her once when she came over and she was collecting a whole container of goods to take back to her country; not sure how my gardening books contributed but she was a gardener as well.....
What Ephraim captured with his camera is of course a record of how he saw his country but his snap, snap, snapping that fills my drive is a fascinating recording of a moment in time.

  

To celebrate the life and death of Nelson Mandela music by Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Being Childish

Which is what I am, sadly have a 'wicked' tongue as well, as I pull to bits the world I live in..... But today, Sunday, a day of peace in my mind and relaxation, the first thing I hear on the radio is the hymn 'O Come Emmanuel',  and immediately I know Xmas is on its way.  You can bombard me TV wise on endless adverts telling me that christmas is coming and I take no notice, but the long drawn out Emmanuel brings me back to childhood and boarding school at Brewood Convent.  Cold mornings, crocodiling down to the cold village church to endlessly, repetitively singing this hymn because we could not get it right has scarred my soul forever;).

It brings back the rather lovely buildings and grounds of the convent, so that I see the great staircase, the cold dormitory and the refectory where we ate cabbages liberally laced with caterpillars.  I could not have eaten much of these meals and would 'fill up' at the tuck shop, which sold chocolate bars, etc.  The best meal once a week was supper, cocoa and a bacon sandwich.  We would sit in a warm hall supervised by a teacher, sewing or reading, homework had been done before tea, as we were left sadly by the day pupils who went home.  I think I did not believe in God from the age of 7, having worked out that the one god was in actual fact many gods, but my time at the convent was well spent, even though I had to learn the catechism by heart, the nuns were kind and nursed me through a serious illness at one stage. Such a close association with religion, early morning visits to the chapel to pray, does make you think and strive for some kind of spiritual truth but that has always alluded me, it may have given me this interest in churches and saints, always trying to understand the peace and calm to be found in a church.

To the childish things, yesterday we invited some neighbours with their two young girls for a cup of tea, they have the same house as us but had never lit the fire in their sitting room.  So the two girls were allowed to light our fire and one sat entranced in front of the jumping flames.  They all explored the house with enthusiasm, no one seems to know round here what LS did for a living, so the studio was a great surprise for them.  The children played with the dolls house even more intrigued by a box of mostly broken miniature furniture so I gave them a roombox which they can make stuff to go in.  The father, who is a deputy head at a school was fascinated by my spinning wheel, so he knelt on the floor watching the action of the wheel as I spun some wool, with me trying to remember the technical names for all the bits and pieces that makes up a wheel, the action of spinning is like driving a car, automatic and unconscious, the fingers reacting to the 'feel' of the wool.  In all it was a pleasant afternoon.

Holidays

This is just an experiment to wish American friends a Happy thanksgiving today.  Jacquie Lawson is a bit naif but I keep my subscription up for the grandchildren  who love them and actually enjoy some of them myself and I think it is so clever!

Well it works for me ;)

Odd bits and bobs

Collecting bits and pieces, the Cotton Patch ebrochure which looks interesting and is of course all about patchwork material, it is a 'flipping book' fascinating to play with.  Also how about this bed, all hand made, even the wooden headboard by one person called Rachel. The blue wing came via F/B loved the colours and the detail.

Wing of a Blue Roller by Albrecht Durer 1512

And to go with the oldest bog body in Ireland on TV last night there is this piece of music on 'Pete Marsh'

better known as The Lindow Man.

As you can see not much to write about, winter has set in, have uploaded all my photos on this laptop to a new memory card, so tiny it has to be kept in my jewellry box, and even managed to get the large box external hard drive to work as well which has many old photos - a triumph.....

To remind me of the trip to Germany,  a scroll neatly tied, and unrolled with a flourish at the meeting at the German museum

LS correctly using the Japanese methods of tying the knot

My Moss up on the Wiltshire Ridgeway in front of a bronze age barrow

A small Lillie with a large umbrella

Bog butter

The Wood

This is Blakes Wood that we went for a short walk the other day, surprisingly the lane at Paper Mill lock was flooded, heavy downpour in the night presumably.  Today the wind blows cold and nearly all the leaves that are in such splendid colour on the header now lie on the lawn, winter is here.

Apparently, according to the Daily Mail, no I don't read it but gathered the link from another forum has predictions that the Ragnarok, or the world ending is about to happen on the 22nd February 2014.  This rag of course spends most of its written news in dramatic headlines that are not very truthful, but there are several good photos on the page and tidings of a mini-ice age!

But to get back to the wood, it was very muddy with a thick mulch of leaves along the path, young foxglove plants promise their flowers next summer, and the sweet chestnut husks, so very like small hedgehogs, litter the path, we picked a bagful, and had some after roasting them in the oven, they were small but good. I suppose the taste could be called 'mealy'.  According to my book, you must soak them in water for 24 hours with a few drops of vinegar so that the light ones can float to the top, dry them properly then store layer by layer in a bucket of sand.  There were a few trees down in the wood from the storm of a few days ago.  The house down below, with its tall chimneys and blocked off windows is a curious mix must try and find out its history.

Along the muddy path

Soft greens and copper leaves

A clearing in the woods

The beige of bracken dying

Sweet chestnut

3 windows are blocked due to the 'window tax'

Tall chimneys

On Stones

News out today that 11 'bluestones' at Stonehenge have been pinpointed to a particular spot or outcrop of rock called Carn Goedog on the Preseli hills, probably of no interest to anyone, but one of my favourite spots on this earth... it is a bit like a nail in the coffin of all those who argued that the bluestones got to Salisbury Plain by glacial movement which I have never believed.  A moment of homesickness for a fabulous place and one of the main prehistoric settlements in this country....

Landscape and Perception

Brown

The header is the maple tree flinging out one last burst of colour before the leaves fall, so a theme of brown comes to mind, a colour enlivened by the yellows and oranges of Autumn but I do not necessarily like, my love of course does! One or two of the scrolls that hang up in the house are on a background of brown, one has evil creatures, probably 'hungry ghosts' who are terrible.  The one hanging up in the studio is on the risque side, probably due to the fact that the British Museum's 'Japanese Erotica' show is on.  We saw some of the prints when we were there a couple of months ago being prepared but we are not going to see the exhibition... I shall put two photos on of the dark scrolls but not of the other;), the old scrolls used real minerals, somewhere on this blog I have taken photos of the cases of the dyes, both mineral and insect, and apparently one case is medicinal.

The wool was a pleasure to spin as  there was silk mixed in with the merino, and I am spinning tussah silk at the moment to be plied with merino wool and then dyed.

Plovers flying against a rising sun

Mixed colour top ready for spinning

Spun

There was only 200 grams and I made gloves and a hat.

Brown bread fresh from the oven

http://wovember.com/2013/11/18/cecilia-on-working-with-wool/

"Heaven balanced on a grass blade"

Llanthony Priory attributed to Creative Commons photo

The following poem by Allen Ginsberg is long and he was under the influence of drugs when he wrote this, so why did it capture my attention.  The history of the poem by this American writer in the 60s is far too long to write about but when he wrote this poem he was on a visit to Llanthony Priory through the little valley that winds its way to Hay-on-Wye.  I know the area well, walking round the old ruined priory, trying to find the house/chapel of Eric Gill further down the road, who probably designed the font I am writing in at the moment and is most remembered for his sculpture work.

 Capel-y-Ffin; Attribution: Dara Jasumani Creative Commons.

Ginsberg had come down with his publisher to a weekend cottage and to 'chill out' on the way he had visited Tintern Abbey, that glorious ruin of the past that has had many a poet winding his words around the old stones that are magnificently arranged against the backdrop of a tree lined hill with the River Wye running past.

he Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking towards the East Window by J. M. W. Turner, 1794

The poem is beautiful, pastoral springs to mind, his intense bonding to the natural world through the influence of drugs a revelation.  It made me sad as well, remembering my cousin who was also on LSD at the time, and sitting with him when he had been brought back from one of the squats in London where he had been traced down to by his father.  Barry had also tried to tell me the experiences he had seen whilst under the influence and I had never understood till reading this poem.

J.M.W.Turner's painting of Llanthony Priory, taken from the Tate Gallery website

Turner's romantic painting features the wild dramatic nature of Wales, the priory set about by a raging river and backed by those ''sort of'' mountains, the Black mountains, though in truth they are little more than hills.  Walking up that hill behind the priory one visit, I came across a dead sheep fallen into a stream, just skin and bones, it was a very desolate picture but sometimes this is how I see Wales, rock, water and death, that of course is the influence of the chapels ;)

All these photos I have hunted on the web, including the poem but in actual fact it was Landscapism blog that introduced me to it, for which I am very  grateful and say thank you......

Wales Visitation

White fog lifting; falling on mountain-brow

Trees moving in rivers of wind

The clouds arise

as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist

above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed

along a green crag

glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—

Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught

but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,

of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,

the wisdom of earthly relations,

of mouths; eyes interknit ten centuries visible

orchards of mind language manifest human,

of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry

flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny

bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—

Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower;
network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self

the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating

heard in Blake’s old ear; the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness

clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—

Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!

All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind

undulating on mossy hills

a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels

on the mountainside

whose leaf-branch tendrils moved a sway

in granitic undertow down—

and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees

and lifted the grasses an instant in balance

and lifted the lambs to hold still

and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave

A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,

a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,

the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean

tonned with cloud-hang,

—Heaven balanced on a grassblade.

Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,

One Being on the mountainside stirring gently

Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,

one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,

one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering

to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down

through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—

No imperfection in the budded mountain,

Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,

daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,

grass shimmers green

sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,

horses dance in the warm rain,

tree-lined canals network live farmland,

blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,

pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—

Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,

Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!

Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,

each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,

myriad-formed—

Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped

doubled down the stem trembling antennae,

 look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare

breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—

I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,

smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,

tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—

One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath

moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,

trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,

lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught

hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,

Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart

Calling our Presence together

The great secret is no secret

Senses fit the winds,

Visible is visible,

rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,

gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala

Cross legged on a rock in dusk rain,

rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,

breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,

Heaven breath and my own symmetric

Airs wavering thru antlered green fern

drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,

Sounds of Aleph and Aum

through forests of gristle,

my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,

All Albion one.

What did I notice? Particulars! The

vision of the great One is myriad—

smoke curls upward from ashtray,

house fire burned low,

The night, still wet moody black heaven

starless

upward in motion with wet wind. 

Allen Ginsberg

Fragments

I have been busy spinning silk and wool this week, knitting some gloves and a hat from one lot, so life is quiet and we have not been anywhere.  Yesterday a friend asked to be a 'Flickr friend', funny world we live in, now people can prowl through our photos from all over the world.  Anyway I decided to put some more photos from my computer on there, a job I hate but it is a permanent record.  The other week another friend asked me to join her on LinkedIn, think that is what it is called, anyway I filled in the necessary detail, and then up pops a Brazilian language student from years ago!  How, says I, did she notice me, penny dropped access to my email list but actually I can't find her on it - mystery.

All the fuss that has gone on since Edward Snowden revealing the extent of the plundering of information on the internet by the security services.  It passes most of us by, we are just caught up in the mass of useless selling in the form of advertising that flows through, our names harvested  for on a brief hope we may buy...

I spent a good hour with my daughter on the phone on friday, she seems so happy with their new house though her husband is stripping every room in the house, luckily the start of building works begin next week with the installation of heating, and then plastering can begin as apparently the wallpaper held up quite a lot of the old plaster.

She would love if we moved down there, preferably next door, but our hearts are definitely not in Todmorden, LS refuses to contemplate it and this part of the world is difficult to get close to, think it must be the dark dour nature of the stone and brick used for the houses.  But it has a train station to the big Northern cities, so the children should be able eventually to find jobs - when they grow up of course.

Some photos that made their way to Flickr, fragments of people, which I do not always post, but there are lots of stories in our lifetimes......

LS's cousin's cottage in Cornwall, we are aspiring to this!

Bucky and Loie at Pentre Ifan last year

To a burst of sunshine on my old rigid loom

The Autumn apples waiting to be juiced

To friends and wandering round stones this summer

Maldon and Essex 's creeks

Mundon church, must get coal

Frank and Margaret, she has lived in America for 40 years, but comes from Lampeter; two hours chatting in Costa Coffee in Bath

Jeannot and Annabel, my ex-sister-in-law whose birthday it is this week

Part of the family, chocolate cake and colas, or perhaps another meal in Whitby, the two boys with their tired mum.

Mundon Church and petrified trees