Wednesday

I have been working on my 'Lillie' patchwork the last few days, there are yelps of exasperation as I once more stitch a row of motifs upside down, think I am completely spatially deficient sometimes, trying to get owls, flowers rabbits the right way up  but I persevere.

Now that we are post Xmas, people are coming to see the house, some are interested and I realise the move to Yorkshire will happen eventually,  I have fallen in love with the countryside there, not sure when it happened though going back the last few years and the sudden excitement as we left the 'plain of York' behind and motored past the great Horcum Hole and on to the moors that  have always fascinated me.  Also the people, so direct and friendly and of course my family are located there. But with the measure of time  LS has also become attracted to this Northern part of the world, he is the one that does the house hunting on the net, and follows everything with his usual precision.

So we may end up at Church House, next to the graveyard, and small pub on the other side of course!.  My thoughts on this house has been somewhat muted, modern,' magnolied' and rather large for our requirements with its four good sized bedrooms.  But there is also a lot in its favour, an excellent working kitchen, the Newton on Rawcliffe house did not have anything in the kitchen, but one awkwardly placed Belfast sink encased in a wooden cabinet in the centre of the room, and a shared driveway with a distinctly difficult place to park the car.

Church House on the other  hand has a large long sitting room, which needs breaking up to some extent and being separated from the kitchen, but it does have another decent sized room downstairs which we will use as a shared study.  I have already begun to plan the garden here, there are plenty of plants in the front but there are no gates or fences anywhere, even the old brick wall on the church side is low, I can just see my dog and hens flying over into that extended 'garden'.  The first thing I noticed when I wandered in the church yard was the birds in the yews they flitted around, happy in their private space, and there is a window at the side of the sitting room that they can be watched from.

The village itself  Normanby is what I call the usual makeup of houses, no shops, I am reading Blythe's Akenfield at the moment, and the stark contrast of what villages were like, and forget the romantic image of countryside dwelling, in the 19th/20th century is often the time when people lived in poverty and hunger. The transformed villages of today of course require a car to travel to the nearest shops, and hospitals, doctors, etc.

Miniatures

Well one of my birthday books was the above, I have loved making miniatures in the past, whether making things for the Georgian dolls house I bought my daughter all those years back or historical room boxes, so the title of the book was intriguing. Read about a quarter of the book last night (I devour books that's why I keep away from fiction).  Set in Amsterdam in the 17th century, it tells the tale of 18 year old Nella married to a wealthy merchant, as she comes to the city to take up residence in her new home, only to find her marriage is not to be consummated, well not up to the time I have read! Her husband gives her a very expensive 'cabinet house', these were given to wives to introduce them to the running of a home and the things that belonged in the home.

The doll's house in the story is based on a real one in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and belonged to someone called Petronella Oortman, so the author of the above book Jessie Burton has set her story around this cabinet house...

"This dolls’ house is exceptionally realistic. All the contents have been made of authentic materials, and the proportions are exactly correct. The fine cabinet, of tortoiseshell decorated with pewter inlays, was made by a cabinetmaker from France, who worked in Amsterdam for several years. Petronella Oortman was married to the Amsterdam merchant Johannes Brandt."
Rijkmuseum, Amsterdam

Ornate and rather ugly but it reflects the fashions of its time, you can also see a great deal of craftsmanship and of course beauty.

Reading round this book I came across  Uta Frith, psychologist, someone who has explored how our minds work, and that which is relevant to doll houses, the fact is that they provide memory banks, she had one made by her husband and sons, and this is what she would have taken with her on her mythical trip to a desert island....

"My doll's house satisfies my lifelong longing for the good, sober and virtuously industrious domestic life, never achieved."

need I say more on untidy housewives, note how the silver needs cleaning below...

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Edit: By now I have finished the book, and am intrigued by the Miniaturist, who of course is a shadowy figure you never get to meet in the book.  She delivers her parcels of tiny furniture and models of the people who are caught up in the drama and in a way she dictates, or for sees, the nature of the events, but we never actually understand her as a real living person.  This of course, is a good plot line, and the weaving of plots are after what it is all about.'a godlike person moving the chess pieces on a board.

So how do I look back on my miniature work, still have the tools, and occasionally my fingers itch to take up a knife and some wood, and there is a woodworker who creates the different grades of wood you need and also those rounded pieces that I would turn on a miniature lathe to make elegant legs for tables and chairs, but you need space and old tables to work on, something I have not got here.

Did I do it for pleasure? or to transform ideas into 3D reality, or a psychological unconscious act of trying to create the pictures that always buzz through my head, who knows but the idea of a' memory bank' somehow strikes a chord.

Well it set me thinking about 'cabinets of curiosities', a hobby in itself and what had inspired me all those years ago.  Well it must have started when my then mother-in-law Lotta gave me some small silver 18th century things, a table and chairs plus a sledge.  They were all in 1/24 scale, now most miniaturists work in 1/12 scale, so as I never worked in 1/12 they were used as toys in the nursery, being a miniaturist you have to make up stories to go with the setting.  The two little 'chased'  silver pots next to them are pepper and salt, think Persian.  Already because I have taken them out of their rather dark cabinet, I see I could have dated the man pushing the sledge by the clothes he is wearing, there used to be a little man inside but he has got lost with time.  Each object has a story in a past history, -- the star etched with such precision on the top of the table, a shadowy man stoops and concentrates as he uses a tool to scribe with such thoroughness-- the story is  there of course, we just don't see it.  Such things get passed down through the children, and our questioning curiosity is never quenched.......

To illustrate the 'bank of memories', two photographs....  The Hat Shop

These hats, which I made belong, to a little polygonal shop, with a gold cupola on top, the Bath maker was imitating the gold cupola of Beckford's Tower which lies above the city of Bath.  But when I look at these pictures, I see a moment in time, sitting with my daughter in Victoria Park.  She had just emerge from an unhappy relationship, and as we sat in the cold sunshine talking, I collected those little feathers you see on the hats from the outdoor aviary of budgerigars, with her convinced I would pick up some terrible disease from them.  The shop now belongs to my youngest granddaughter and is probably in need of complete refurbishment.  But her great granny Lotta (she who possessed the little silver table and chairs) was also in possession of a Chinese cabinet that she inherited from her mother. Filled with ivory figurines(shocking) and jade objects it dominated the sitting room in its black and gold altar like state.
Slowly a 'female' pattern emerges passing down to our daughters and grandchildren not only the possessions we accumulate but the ideas as well.

Wretched Post Office

Moss

Today is my birthday, don't ask the age, it will never be revealed.... But the last week or so Em who had drawn my favourite dog before Xmas and sent the above photo and I have been lamenting the fact that the drawing has failed to turn up, wretched postal service, maybe it is lost in a vast warehouse somewhere!  To be honest, and I have forgotten to tell Em, a parcel disappeared before Xmas for LS's birthday so such negligence seems quite common.
Both LS and I have birthdays before and after the Xmas season, so of course birthday presents are somewhat reduced, alright when you are an adult but a bit miserable as a child!
But just to say that I loved the photo, and the Post Office had better pull up its socks.  You may not know but the main branch in Chelmsford is the floor above W.H.Smith, not even it's own building, waiting to be served can be up to half an hour.  Our depot, centrally placed, with the 'lost dept' within its depths has also been sold off to Waitrose, so no go there.  There is another huge, sorting office? out of town, which may help, who knows?  All other parcels arrive quite safely from other postal services, when I order tea from Twinings in Ireland, (loose tea) it arrives 3 days later, tracking email on my computer.  Though and here is the rub, the poor man who delivered it only gets 98p from the transaction. 
End of rant...

Moss in progress; I think Em has done an excellent job of capturing the essence of him;  The photograph captured him sitting in the centre of the garden, probably waiting for a cat to walk by without thinking! Though he loved the birds, and from being a puppy would watch their comings and goings in the garden, but could never stand wagtails!

Where is the Sun?

As I try to write something most days, what has happened in the last two days.  Well on Monday we went into town for various things, which is fairly boring, but in the pedestrian thoroughfare were a group of men and women waving several union flags about. My first thoughts, always dramatic of course, gosh the blackshirts are here, fascism is creeping back.  This because I had read of similar events in Germany, especially in Dresden, against immigration, happening on a Monday. There was a police van parked further down the path, so I expect my reading of the situation was right, rather scary was my first thought, BNP or UKIP who knows, though I notice the BNP are fathering other right wing groups.

Tuesday was devoted to quilting, one of those resolutions I had made, the background material had arrived so I cut lengths of edging to frame the funny owl and other 'childish' things I had chosen for Lillie (framed of course in a soft purple), and now my computer sits in front of the sewing machine on my desk, with cutters, scissors and scattered materials, untidy of course.

The other thing that comes to mind, is something that LS said last night, about what prehistoric place had fascinated him and he pulled this one out of the bag, Carn Wnda, Llanwnda, an memories of sunny days in Wales, with the sea glinting in the distance and this cromlech hidden amongst the rocks immediately comes into the mind's eye.  Must be missing summer and of course Wales ;)

Solva Harbour with the tide out

These rocks at Carn Wnda are what Wales is made of!

A weaving mill, tucked somewhere amongst the lanes, still keeping up the traditional crafts.

Wolf Moon of January

Martinsell Hill with its hillfort which the wolves guarded!

Yesterday 4th January, according to North American Indian folklore, was the time of the Wolf Moon, this is the time when the moon is at it's fullest in January.  Chasing this fact came up with the knowledge that it was first mentioned in 1918 in America.  My mind begs to differ so I check my blog and find that the brother's Hubbard had written of a Saxon Wolf Moon in this blog of 2008. Who are you to believe, had the story travelled to America? of course the answer is that storytelling in the world of myth and folklore is the fabrication of imagination built on little jewels of wisdom.  So I'm happy to stay with the Hubbard's view of the Saxon world even though they they got it ever so slightly wrong over Neolithic Dewponds, which as we should know were a much later historic event.  But of course if the Saxon Wolf-Monat is to be true, then the following quote .......

The only apparent ancient one is Oxenmere on Milk Hill on the downs to the north of the Vale of Pewsey. A Saxon charter of 825 refers to this pond as marking the boundary of Alton Priors, which it still does.

so the brothers Hubbard may be right after all, anyway you can buy a fascimile of their 1905 book on Amazon for a reasonable price.

Most existing dew ponds date from the 19th or early 20th centuries, although a few may be 18th century. The only apparent ancient one is Oxenmere on Milk Hill on the downs to the north of the Vale of Pewsey. A Saxon charter of 825 refers to this pond as marking the boundary of Alton Priors, which it still does. It is possible that a pond has been here since that date but only if it has been cleaned out and its lining renewed every 100 to 200 years for Ralph Whitlock estimated that the life of a dew pond is 100 to 150 years.

Quotation from the Hubbard book;

The month which we now call January our Saxon ancestors called wolf-monat, to wit, wolf-moneth, because people are wont always in that month to be in more danger to be devoured of wolves, than in any else season of the year; for that, through the extremity of cold and snow, these ravenous creatures could not find of other beasts sufficient to feed upon. Richard Verstegan, Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities 1673

Martinsell Hill fort

Primulas

The wild primrose - Primula Vulgaris @ Creative Commons

When I put that poem on about the loss of words it set me thinking, what actually do we lose. And slowly, as the music Gabriel's Oboe by Ennio Morricone is playing by my side, thoughts started to form.  The primrose as well as the cowslip was expunged from the Oxford Junior Dictionary...

Firstly there is a sigh of relief as the Xmas holiday and New Year flash past, my mind immediately turns to the soil warming up and the flowers that will appear, already there is a little primrose flowering in its pot, the delicate petals lined with dark undertones.  My mind goes back to the bank of primroses at the old garden, buried deep in the grass their pale lemon petals so delicate, like a delicious confectionery.  My mind dwelt on the fact that we call these fragile flowers primula vulgaris, and noting that the Latin use of the word gives this most beautiful plant a rather dismissive title I turn to W Robinson - The English Flower Garden 1895 to see what he says..

"Of all the Primula family, none excel our native Primroses in loveliness, and they are the earliest of all to flower.  The Gentian and the dwarf Primulas do no more for the Alps than these charming wild flowers do for our hedgerows, banks, groves open woods"....

But of course  there is so much more to this wide ranging family of plants, than the rather badly coloured primroses we find in the supermarket. I can remember a visit to Forde Abbey in Dorset many years ago and coming across the Candelabra Primulas and immediately falling in love with their delicate shades of pink, ( which is I believe P.Sikkimensia)  lining the banks of the pool there, here on what must have been slightly acid soil rhodendrons and azealas formed the background to this old abbey and also meeting for the first time the exquisite blue Himalayan poppy.

Photo @ Forde Abbey

But returning to  primulas their range is vast, from the Alps of Switzerland, to the Primula Sieboldi that had come from Japan.  Or the Auricula, those creatures of a farinaceous nature of the petals (which means the floury nature), and for this description once more Robinson on the subject of these "florist flowers" is apt...

"The florists' favourites are distinguished by the dense mealy matter with which the parts of the flower are covered
they are divided by florists into four sections - green edged, gray edged,, white edged and selfs.  In the green-edged varieties the 'gorge' or the throat of the flower is usually yellow or yellowish; this is surrounded by a ring varying in width, of white powdery matter, which is surrounded by a ring of some dark colour and beyond this is a green edge..."

Auricala, Mrs.Moore

Not a very good photo I shall try this year to scan more on the printer.

If I was to fulfil one New Resolution of this year it would be for a 'cupboard' in the garden to house   auriculas, they need cover from the rain but also need to be out in the cold.  Alongside them would be a blue double petalled primrose, which I have always wanted, they are sterile as far as raising seeds from them are concerned and are propagated by division of the plant.
And where do you get these plants, well there will some in your local nursery, but the ones to fall in love with are at Barnhaven in France, these famous strains of primulas have a history of their own. Starting early in the 20th  century in America, they eventually migrated to England and another nursery  in the Lake District, when the owners retired and the fate of the beautiful Barnhaven plants were in peril once more, they were rescued by a couple in France and there they are at the moment. Losing words like losing plants is a terrible fate, for by doing so we forget history and reduce our sense of the world as an ever expanding knowledge of curious facts....

Sad

Well this is just a poem written, I presume in indignation, when the Oxford Junior Dictionary, had certain words taken out and a 'more up to date' words put in,  the list comes from a Daily Telegraph article in 2008.  Of course looking at the list, and it does seem strange that common words such as bluebell and buttercup get lost, it is the 'nature' element that seems to have been attacked by those who know best! - a pity....

The Committee for Childhood has decreed by Olivia Sprinkel

Young people of today,
the Committee for Childhood has decreed
the following words are hereby deemed
superflous to your youthful need:

No longer do you need to know
the onomatopoeia of babbling brooks,
or recognise the glint of minnows as they dart.

Henceforth, no longer will earthy beetroot
or hedgerow blackberry stain your little fingers,
let’s keep them clean! Our official stamp
obliterates the porpoises who arc
between crystal sea and sky,
the heron standing proud and still.
The conk of a conker being conquered
or the lonely belly-deep bray of a donkey
from across fields far away -
you will not miss these sounds.

It is but childish to hold a buttercup
to a friend’s chin to see gold glow.
And why do you need to know
it is from acorns that oak trees grow?
We will provide. 

Instead, we decree,
these are the frames
for what you see:
bungee-jumping celebrity
is, of course, compulsory.
Your souls will be formed
through attachments
to block graphs and databases.

The Committee welcomes you
to your citizenship of this world! 


For a link to the original article, run your mouse over the title of the poem..

One more for the pot - Buckinghamshire A/S Hoard

Well the Weekend Wanderers Detecting Club came up with something valuable before Xmas an Anglo-Saxon hoard of over 5000 coins in immaculate order ranged neatly on a strip of lead, (folded neatly like a pasty)  the coins are thought to have been buried before the Battle of Hastings and the Norman invasion.  Two coins were identified as the heads of Aethelfrud (the unready) and Cnut.

The Mirror News

Edit; The FLO's perspective;

Happy New Year

May the blue bells always bloom

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen ;'Anthem'  Still going strong and if you can stand nine minutes of him to be found here

Hoar Frost

This morning it is icy cold, hoar frost must dominate the fields round Essex not so much here but I do love this 'winter wonderland' scene, the starlings descend on their bread with a ferocity of hunger, the doves coo plaintively for their seed. We looked up 'hoar in the dictionary to find that Richard Jeffries has used it for hares, and as an extra bonus, though I did not find the quote in question, I find that Edward Thomas has written about Jeffries on his life, etc which is on the Gutenberg site.
So as I am cooking a hearty soup and have decided to try Nigel Slater's Aubergine Cassoulet recipe Some photos from the past..........

Hoar Frost
"Under clear frosty nights in winter soft ice crystals might form on vegetation or any object that has been chilled below freezing point by radiation cooling. This deposit of ice crystals is known as hoar frost and may sometimes be so thick that it might look like snow. The interlocking ice crystals become attached to branches of trees, leafs, hedgerows and grass blades and are one of the most prominent features of a typical 'winter wonderland' day. However, the fine 'feathers', 'needles' and 'spines' might also be found on any other object that is exposed to supersaturated air below freezing temperature."

Hoar; Definition adj

Old English har "hoary, gray, venerable, old," the connecting notion being gray hair, from Proto-Germanic *haira (cf. Old Norse harr "gray-haired, old," Old Saxon, Old High German her "distinguished, noble, glorious," German hehr), from PIE *kei-, source of color adjectives. German also uses the word as a title of respect, in Herr. Of frost, it is recorded in Old English, perhaps expressing the resemblance of the white feathers of frost to an old man's beard. Used as an attribute of boundary stones in Anglo-Saxon, perhaps in reference to being gray with lichens, hence its appearance in place-names

Post Christmas

We also roasted chestnuts on this fire

Well we had a very good christmas, got up fairly early had a conversation on F/B with my daughter and then my son phoned which made my day.  LS said it was the best Xmas he had ever had, we cooked together, my yorkshire puddings came up beautifully, and the very expensive piece of fillet steak he had bought (£14) was savoured by him, me I kept to the vegetables!

We went a walk on xmas eve, and I took photos of the grasses in the small garden that is part of the 'green space' round here.  No snow has arrived down this part of the world it seems more centrally spaced.  The rose above was part of the scene, there were several roses in fact, they must be hardy coming from high mountain reaches.

Today I wake up with a migraine headache, but have ordered two books for my birthday in January, my mind and fingers itch to work!  The children have all emailed their thank you letters, I give them money, on the understanding that it is much better for them to choose what they like rather then receive presents they don't like, and today their is a shopping spree to Leeds planned I believe...  

Strange Japanese statue, she always gets her bouquet at Xmas

Feelin Good;  Naamfon the elephant has her freedom after 63 years working as a tourist elephant, rejoice in this 15 minute video....

Christmas Eve

I have just made some crap peanut butter biscuits, hopefully they will taste better than they look! It is almost upon us and I am feeling a little sad for the family.  It was much easier for us to stay here in Chelmsford, but I miss my son and Ephraim, (when he is quiet of course). The grandchildren will be anticipating Xmas, the tree done, pressies spread around.  They have grown so quickly in the passing years giving so much fun and enjoyment, their parents coping with the problems that today's world beset them with..... And for my partner Paul, who is always by my side and I adore, I am quite happy with him ;).

You will never see a photo of Paul on the internet, he is quite handsome but unfortunately a nasty incident with a photo of his made him declare never again. I am incredibly proud of my son and daughter, my son for his gentle nature and my daughter who is so much more than me, always holding down a job and looking after four wonderful children.  And Darron their father, he transformed the cottage for me, as he has with their houses, a love of DIY methinks. They now have disco lights round their aga!

Me, with my lousy camera, this is a favourite mirror that now resides in my daughter's house

Grandchildren. Some time in the past

Ephraim

Mark in Accra

The family at the Fox and Raven

Due Dates

The cottage on the hill near Egdon had a funny sign on its wall, so LS went hunting out why nothing happened on this particular date, and he came up with the following on someone's blog, interesting is it not. Time not existing is the way I can only describe it, not a true and logical deduction.  But with all this talk of the Solstice, a whole 13 days vanished to make our logical time fix with the cyclical time of our earth, sun and moon.  Yes I know the difference between the calendars but watching a debate take place on the internet about the 56 Aubrey Holes at Stonehenge it makes you wonder if our prehistoric fore fathers had the same problem, especially on dull grey days as we are having at the moment.  For instance, you can celebrate the solstice on the 21st December, but Stonehenge visitors are celebrating it on the 22nd December which is a Monday, the solstice sun lapping over several days....

"One interesting theory I found was that the 1782 is a typo. In 1752, the British Empire changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar calculated leap years differently, amongst other changes (it’s the source of the ‘divisible by 400’ bit of working out leap years). Unfortunately, at the time of the change, the Julian calendar was out of step with the Gregorian calendar, by 13 days. The only way to fix this was to just change the date.

When the dates changed, the calendar just changed September 1752 went from the 2^nd to the 14^th. The dates in between never happened. If you ask a modern Unix for the calendar for September 1752, it shows the dates missing:"

Taken from this site

A Happy Solstice

Moonstone by Christine Bozier

Night airs that make tree-shadows walk, and sheep

Washed white in the cold moonshine on grey cliffs.

             Walter Savage Landor

This beautiful print came in the post yesterday, it is by the partner of LS's brother. Christine.   Keith (LS's brother) writes about ghosts, onto his second book at the moment, you can find him in my blog list under Haunted Wiltshire.  I have a pendant moonstone as well, in its dark green translucent interior you can see tall fir trees  a never ending forest...

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Welcome to the Moon

Welcome, precious stone of the night,

Delight of the skies, precious stone of the night,

Mother of stars, precious stone of the night,

Child reared by the sun, precious stone of the night,

Excellency of stars, precious stone of the night.

From the Gaelic

 As the short days grow towards their zenith and  the Solstice, and slowly the long unwinding of night time begins to turn into daylight, measuring its way  towards spring, the small prayer above always comes to my mind.  It kindles in me a memory at Avebury when in the early days of our meeting, maybe  I should call it courtship,  LS and I stood on a freezing cold night under the great stones of the Cove.  We were remembering  someone from the past, let us call her 'Treaclechops', for that was her avatar, who had died far too young.  I shall never forget the stones bathed in the cold light of the moon, which hung above our heads, the lines of it geological unknowingness carved  into its surface, just like the craters and patterns on the Didcot Mirror.

As LS's brother lives near Devizes in Wiltshire we do not see much of them, but both of them work as volunteers over the weekend at Avebury Manor,  Keith as a guide of course always tells ghost stories of which the manor has a couple, the Red Lion pub further down in the village has the reputation of being the most haunted pub (probably amongst many) in England, Keith has never seen any ghosts at all though!

Hoards - Chelmsford Museum

The  White Horse of Uffington

Our trip on Thursday into Chelmsford for a meal also included a visit to the Marconi building, Chelmsford is where radio began (well maybe), the building is to be developed into flats.  Having some time to kill, and foregoing a trip to the Chinese shop we decided to visit the museum. Chelmsford Museum is  a slightly dull place, could be because of all the Marconi equipment that towers like huge banks of old fashioned computers awash with dials and knobs.  We live in an age now when that tiny square mobile phone in your hand can reach out to the world, but those first morse code dots and dashes was the beginning of it all.

But wandering through the rather dusty history section, which needs a good updating, LS took photos (with his phone) of the gold coins below and my mind is off wandering down the avenues of speculative thought, were these hoards buried in times of trouble, or were they the safest bank around, the dark earth concealing the hidden shine.  Found by detectorists some years back these three hoards revealed themselves to the world.  I like the little story of how the detectorists and the landowner were denied 60 per cent of the value of the coins because....

The Valuation Committee agreed an abatement of the award of sixty per cent on the grounds that the coins had not been reported 'promptly or honestly, as required under the Treasure Act Code of Practice'.  

Mr. Newitt was responsible for discovering all three hoards, two at Great Waltham and one at Great Leighs.  Why the White Horse of Uffington at the top? because if you look closely many of the 'pony' coins have a similarity to the Durotrigian pony at Uffington. Like the enormous Marconi machines taken over by tablets and mobiles, the ponies of the Iron Age were the equivalent of the sports car of today.

The Great Waltham Hoard

A HOARD OF STATERS OF CUNOBELIN AND DUBNOVELLAUNOS
FROM GREAT WALTHAM, ESSEX 

Great Leighs Hoard

Though I love gold, the interest of these coins is in their manufacture, their travel, the hands that held them, part of a history given to those strange Celtic people  who were part of Caesar's army as they marched into Britain and so began 400 hundred years of domination for the British.

Mirrors

Just a news item, though I am thrilled that Em has drawn me a beautiful portrait of Moss, a photo of which she sent last night, but that will come in the New Year.  Today a migraine hovers behind my eyes and it is also LS's birthday, so we are going to town for a meal and to photograph the Marconi Building and hopefully my head will not give way to a full blown migraine!

But the news that the Didcot Mirror was saved from leaving the country is good, not as beautiful as the Desborough, Mirror, Celtic craftmanship at its best, but the curvilinear design is simplified in the Didcot.  There is a quote below outlining some of the uses for the mirrors, it must also not be forgotten that Iron Age men had very fancy hairstyles as well.

Didcot Mirror

 “They would certainly have been prestigious items, owned by few people. Mirrors can be used to reflect light into dark spaces or to signal across distances as well as to apply make-up or check your hair. In many cultures mirrors are magical objects, which reflect an alternative view of the world, or act as a portal to another world, like Alice found in Through the Looking Glass. This may well have been the case in Iron Age, Druidic society, and mirrors may be connected to fortune telling or shamanic activity. While this mirror was a casual find with no archaeological context, some have been found in association with cremation burials, so mirrors may also have had a function connected with death or afterlife.”

Detail on Didcot mirror

Ditto