A Brief interlude

Apologies for straying into the land of politics.  I blame it all on John Crace and Marina Hyde of Guardian fame, they make me giggle.  Taking life seriously I do not.  Also today is the 6th January, anniversary of the attack on the Capitol - I would call that history?

So some photos this morning in celebration of good news, though I guess it will all unwind sometime in the future.   We left Europe but in doing so we lost subsidies to the farmers, well that loss is going to be made up by a lot of money being handed out for 'rewilding'.

So a lot of tree planting, peat habitats restored and hopefully our rivers and streams will be cleaned out and not used as dumping grounds for either sewage or run off of toxic pesticides and herbicides from farms.  Fingers crossed.

So some past photos to remind me that there is still wilderness and that plants still thrive in unimproved grass land. And to listen to, Christopher Lloyd - a Well Seasoned Garden.

Toadflax

Ladies Bedstraw

Malmesbury Abbey garden

Sybil's garden

Large hunting dragonfly in Bath garden

Rebecca Solnit review of 6th January 2021

Random thoughts

No more politics for a bit.  It will all pass.  Matilda has got herself into a muddle again with a leaking washing machine and dropping her washing out of the window into next door's garden.  Things they get up to in London!

Well gossip is the thing at the moment, Prince Andrew setting off in his £80,000 Land Rover this morning must be biting his nails as to the verdict on the contract Virginia Giuffre signed with Epstein.  A sort of 'get out and go' card.  Funny how things come to haunt you years later;)  Actually the Queen might be footing the lawyer's bill for him, we can't blame her, he is her favourite son after all.

Trump and offspring's  have been asked to turn over papers in what will probably be a fraud case over property.  Poor lambs to the slaughter!  The 6th January looms large on the horizon, interesting radio programme on the 'Coming Storm' in America.  First part was the story told round the Clintons, and QAnon and the weird 'shaman (now incarcerated in prison) who was part of the rowdy mob that invaded the Capitol.

I think the attack on the Capitol was unstructured and whipped up by crowd politics.  How much Trump was involved remains to be seen, even his daughter pleaded for him to do something and stop the riot whilst he sat in a room watching it on television. The lack of police and military to defend a governmental office was very striking, but what did Trump hope would come out of this.  Will 'the steal' feature again?

3rd January 2021

Each year, Royal Knights and Ladies of the Order of the Garter gather at St George’s Chapel in Windsor for a colourful procession and ceremony.

Watched by crowds of onlookers, they walk down the hill to the chapel from the State Apartments, dressed in blue velvet mantles, red velvet hoods, black velvet hats and white ostrich plumes.

Pat asks me whether I am not shocked at Tony Blair being made a Royal Knight of the Order of the Garter.  It passed me by these handouts.  Some are corrupt of course, I believe Prince Charles has been caught out handing a knighthood to an Arab noble. And goodness knows how governments reward the backhander entrepreneurs in this country with lordships.  I think it is called corruption, egotistical could be another answer.

The Queen has on her own initiative chosen Blair for this honour, last British prime minister was Sir John Major, his scandal was slight, Tony Blair's took us into a war where many lives were lost.

We don't punish the rich it is as simple as that.  They very rarely end up in prison, that is for the common prisoners.  Make a lot of dough and fuss around with charity and you are in!  Plus of course there is a deeply religious element in the Blair family and the Queen is a believer as well.

I don't question her authority to do what she did, I think her duty tells her to do these things.  She is a stickler for royal show, and this Order is only a spectacle of pomp and ceremony and has nothing to do with the governing of this country.  !4th century mumbo-jumbo in our present modern century.....

Books: John Aubrey

John Aubrey - My Own Life by Ruth Scurr:  I came across this post today on Bensozia's blog.  Though he wasn't terribly inspired by the book, the life of Aubrey as seen through a diary written by Scurr, he gives a fascinating abstract of the book.  One to be noted and the question asked?  Why and how these men born of noble families always managed to survive without money and heavily in debt.....

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I see another person who carries on the family tradition of untidy luggage.  My daughter staggered out of the house this morning with her bag packed.  They are off to Edinburgh for a week. HMG went to uni there, nostalgia calls.

Cathedral of Industry

Some more photos from our trip.  The landscape over the moors does not settle on my soul easily.  There are formations I do not understand, probably quarries.  As we reached the topmost part of the moor we looked down into the deepest valley with seemingly no bottom to it.  Whereas the Hole of Horcum has a wide expansive area of farmed land in its depth, here the steepness was abrupt.  It reminded me of the dreams I have when I wander around in landscapes fairly familiar but scary in their steepness and water.

The Salts Mill building, now designed by one of Tasker's family relative, hit me with its massiveness.  Impossible to take a whole photo, phallic chimney and towers and studied plainness of windows.  But, and yes I know it is an UNESCO site, the decor inside was beautifully crafted to host the foibles of a modern society.

In the restaurant I had to visited the loo, and had to walk down a short corridor with large prints of Corbusier buildings and that brutalist Russian stuff.  Subliminally trying to influence me was my first thought.  But such architecture relied on machinery, the straightness of line was thanks to skilled workers and new machinery (do I dare say this - someone had given the adults lego!).

At least Titus Salt was trying to make working conditions better for his employees.  

On a very windy day we walked round the park and viewed the United Reform church also built by Titus.  Not to my taste, it is Italianate in style, but striking.

 

There is so much history to read up on, that really one only needs to google information, here is one source for instance.

Good photos

Salts Mill

Well I got it wrong yesterday, we went to Saltaire, to the largest mill ever built in the world.  Built by Titus Salt - philanthropist. politician and entrepreneur in the 19th century.  Now turned into a fabulous gallery for works of art, think David Hockney.  All those acrylic paintings now grace the long weaving rooms artfully lit.

Driving out of the valley, the steep 'B' road went on forever, past terraced houses fronting the road, weaving windows galore, one wonders what happened to all these people as the great industrialised mills opened up.  Eventually we reached the top of the incline, and the bleak grey moors. 

 

Saltaire is where our HMG lives and he is so proud of the mill it is place of calm I think for him, and I can see why. The colourful work of Hockney contrasts beautifully with dark grey flagged stone floors and dark ceilings.  It has a welcoming atmosphere.  But the mill itself is massive, how on earth did those Victorian ancestors of ours think so big?

The show of paintings capture the seasons of the year, over the same length of the lane.  Most of us who walk have been along such a lane, their unfolding of their natural wonders of wild flowers, hedgerows and bird life reminding us of why we walk towards that green tunnel of trees in the distance.

There is also a camera eye view of the lane in snow, the photo images are broken up into squares and each square is just a little behind the square above.

Down on the other floor are expensive shops.  The kitchen shop wares laid out along the full length, it struck me as first world emptiness - weird.  On the ground floor gorgeous books are laid out for your perusal but none of us ventured to look.

Only one restaurant opened and very busy when we went back for lunch, luckily our table was reserved.  Garlic mushrooms for me on top of baguette, as soon as they were ordered, the dish was wiped off the blackboard, so I was lucky.

There is a large antique emporium, a bit scary to walk around because of the signs saying all breakages must be paid for.  Plenty of pretty jewellery but antiques have passed me by now.

Happy New Year everyone

 So on the brink of the old year we are about to step into something different??  Well a voice rings out 'be ready to leave at 9.30, today we are going to visit Heptonstall.   Hopefully it is not flooded in Hebden Bridge, the town we must go through. The  flood alarm went off last night.  Perhaps there will be cake and tea as well as grave stones!

Yesterday our handsome male guest, he prefers that name by the way, must give him a little flip of the heart... arrived and cooked  delicious spiced chickpea patties.  Lillie went a scouts walk out of the valley and up to the moors, came back soaking wet but happy with her new walking boots.

I picked two memes which made me smile this morning, the second is the 'aftermath' of the Christmas holiday.  Recycling teeters on top of the washing machine which itself sits on the entrance down to the black hole of Calcutta, or the cellars.  Evacuation of humidifier last night and fingers crossed the pump works if it does flood.

Like birthdays, Christmas days and New Year Eve, it never feels different when the day takes its festival name, only the turn over of the calendar will tell us different.

And to Paul who made me so happy for the last few years, and who always read my blog to see what I was thinking.  It may be another year without you but you are still there deep in my heart.

So Happy New Year everyone - lets keep blogging.

Dedicated Followers of Fashion!

 

Raw music but tells of happier times.  When the young vied with each other to out dress.  Pat finds the High Street lacking, but then the weather is awful as well.  Those in anoraks are just wearing 'sensible' and cheap I can hear my daughter muttering who owns a wardrobe of beautiful clothes.

28th December 2021

I read a lot of blogs, from one I took this view of the 'Woke Society', he is by the way 100% left in his thinking, so I was somewhat surprised to read his version of this controversial word.  My own reaction to it is that we interpret as we see fit and according to our own biases.  Yet I can see in his analysis the thinking of younger people, who have not as yet learnt to be tolerant.  Woke in fact has become a catch-all phrase to describe something you don't like at the moment, and by being 'correct' in the eyes of your equals and group.  I think he pinpoints it in "diversity of thought is not". After all how can you have a discussion when you are not allowed to speak!

Woke Identity - Identity Politics

• Society is intrinsically racist/sexist/patriarchal and colonialist and must be destroyed in its present state.
• Inclusion and diversity of appearance is good, diversity of thought is not.
• Class politics is unimportant, and so is the 20th century.
• Wrong think must be punished, for which there will be no forgiveness.
• If you disagree with any of these thoughts you are a fascist, racist, white supremacist, Nazi.
•  taken from here:  Left in New Zealand

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Today I saw that E.O.Wilson had died this month at the age of 92 years old.  You may ask who is he, and I would reply famous for the study of ants and making the environment a better place for all the species that are finding it difficult to thrive..  I only ever bought one book of his, and, truth here,  found it dull but it is this painstaking scientific studies that open the world to us and make it possible for us to battle against the onward tide of plastic into our oceans and our degradation of land.

"Dance me to the children who are asking to be born"

“Migration” is a central concept in both population genetics and archaeology, but its meaning has evolved in divergent ways in the course of the development of these disciplines.  Population geneticists use “migration” to refer to any movement of genetic material from one region to another which would see even low-level symmetrical exchanges of mates between adjacent communities as representing migration, while archaeologists restrict its use to processes that result in significant demographic change due to permanent translocation of people from one region to another. In European archaeology, discussions of prehistoric migrations have become fraught due to the ways in which theories of migration were exploited politically in the early-mid twentieth century, when movement of large numbers of people over short times was sometimes argued to be a primary mechanism for the spread of ethnic groups and archaeological reconstructions of such events were used to justify claims on territory."  taken from here

A Christmas thought:  Betsey Louisa who was my biological mother.

A couple of months ago I mentioned that I was a 'war baby' and then whilst my granddaughter was sifting through her respective ancestors she had put  the name of my birth mother on the tree.  It resulted in a surprised query from a member of another family - how can that be?

Correspondent followed,  and it worked out that my mother had been staying with her sister in Wolverhampton at the time of my birth, facts merged and my notional half brother informed me that there were seven siblings I had never met, I had been accepted.

I was as a baby adopted by my patriarchal grandfather and his Belgium wife Catherine, my father never actually acknowledging me had married someone else after my birth.  Those were the times. I wrote to B and he sent me photos of the family, but we had decided not to pursue the relationship so late on in life.

So surprise yesterday when he sent a Christmas message, and another one this morning, in answer back, it sent me thinking.  Apparently I have my mother's eyes and dimples and she at Xmas always collected great quantities of food (similar in this house).

Betsey Louisa

DNA is the in thing on these Ancestry sites, and as a present my daughter has received a kit for Xmas. I have little time for chasing my own history, we have arrived, nothing can alter the facts.  There is general teasing as to what this kit will find out.  I know I only had two children, after all I was born in a time when babies were taken from their mothers and back street abortionists existed - you were careful!

What is more interesting is the waves of immigration that happened over the centuries and the information that is coming out.  From Lucy's time we evolved according to the records but the Brexiteers never accounted for immigration, this makes me laugh.  Our bloodlines are from that continent next door.

I know my mother was Irish, she made the journey across the sea just like those prehistoric persons I imagined trekking across the Preseli Hills.  There is enormous movement of people around the world, at the moment, climate change, economic difficulties and as always war.  They don't really want to be on the move, they want a democratic home country and a home to live in with their families.

Anecdotal story; Listening to the radio the other day and this story came up.  Again someone had sent off their DNA to learn of their genes.  One other person also popped up as well, so the woman got in touch with the man, who really wasn't interested but what had turned up in the test was that their was a Jewish element in the blood test, which he denied as ridiculous.  And so began, by the woman, a tracing of history as to why this particular gene had appeared.  Well both people were born after the war, and their fathers had come back, physically ill and obviously not able to produce fertile sperm.  So the mothers had gone to a Mayfair clinic and had artificial sperm injected.  But, and this where it gets interesting, the donor was the doctor's husband.  The study eventually revealed that there was somewhere between 50 and 60 siblings born of this man and they have now formed a whatsapp group.  Remember the bible - and Adam begat ...........................................

Cheddar Man.   Born 10,000 years ago, he may come as a surprise!  Read about him here.

World's oldest family tree revealed

Science unknots so much fascinating information, humans are intensely curious but perhaps Darwin started a train of thought that will lead us to true understanding and hopefully compassion when we look on those helpless people wandering the world at the moment.

26th December 2021

How was Christmas? Wonderful, noisy of course with four young adults, the meal was perfect as my daughter rushed around the kitchen, and Ben did not quite eat the 15 Yorkshire puddings, he claimed he could.  

At one stage I broke down in the morning because our guest brought beer to the party, and as I glanced at the bottle nearest to me, its label was the Japanese beer. - Asahi.  Sending a stabbing arrow of sadness through my heart.  For you can guess who often went out of his way to find it in pubs.  But  tears pass and as my daughter said it was as if Paul was also here, a bit like the robin who visits to those saddened by the death of a loved one.  

Presents galore, tea and biscuits from Fortnum and Mason, Coffee from Liberty and Tom (up North) got me Betty's tea and patisserie.  My daughter bought me a wallet, which you can't read my debit card through and tanning done by vegetable tanning.  God those vegans get in everywhere;) Also I now own a quiche tin or two, a favourite of mine but nothing to cook it in here. Not forgetting Lillie's calendar, because I can't seem to keep track of everything in a busy household.

From the presents you can gather that I like my coffee and tea, either freshly ground or loose in the pot for tea.  They are a lovely bunch of children, making their way through life and this was the first time for many years we had celebrated Xmas together.  Also of course my daughter kept in touch with the Swiss side who were also gathered together for a meal, as photos shot from either side.

Last of course was the dog Teddy who had a brilliant Christmas, helping himself to two packets of biscuits and smashing a glass dome under which resided a nativity scene.  Presents were slightly chewed as well but they remained unscathed.

24th December 2021

I stood on the doorstep yesterday, smiling sweetly, for the photo the delivery driver was taking.  Another parcel delivered safely, though of course then had an email from my son, mum have you picked up the parcel.  This from the Post Office.  Yes of course I had, another bit of paper gone missing. Dozens of parcels has gone through the household and I am definitely looking forward to AFTER Xmas.

So what made me smile yesterday, was it this sweet little card from Leo, specially printed by proud dad of his artistic attainments.  Leo is Paul's grandson, I have a whole ream of photos when Paul went up to visit him in London.  Paul was so happy, though he always wanted them to come down to the cottage to see the animals, sheep in the field, old Lucy and the hens.  Leofric, what a strange name my daughter said, but Paul suggested it and he named his children with old Anglo-Saxon names and Kennard and Yuki use the shortened version - Leo. Old English names changed slightly to modern use.

As my third grandchild arrived yesterday, seemingly in a solid relationship, the talk turned to baby names.  I mean he was surrounded by four females!  Matilda had the most to say on the subject and we discussed growing up with a name that parents have given us as children and probably taking the names from the current personalities.

Bored children yesterday in my room

Matilda is dithering around changing her surname so that her initials will strike the right note as a journalist (though god help her children when she names them).

They are singing the dirge like hymn 'Emmanuel' on radio 3 at the moment and my mind immediately races back to a very cold church in Albrighton, where we as convent girls would trek to practise singing, again and again, this hymn at Christmas.

Not quite the day before Xmas

Inversion over Bath

Outside I have just heard the Canadian geese fly overhead to patrol the canal, there is also the sound of the refuse collectors clearing the rubbish.  These are the unsung people who make our lives go round, we sing the praises of nurses and doctors but there is a whole tranche of people who need to be thanked for the service they do for the community.

Wild garlic scenting the air

The house slowly fills up, today it will be Tom, tomorrow Ben, the Omicron hovers like a dragon in the sky waiting to strike, as friends of both of them trigger the virus or don't.  But I listen to 'positive' news, will make my New Resolutions too write of what people are doing to offset the doom and gloom we are experiencing.  Blame some of it on the weather of course as we breeze past the darkest day.

Yorkshire beck

Rebecca Solnit seems to be taken to the heart of the Guardian, and is doing podcasts of what we can do rather than sit on our backsides and moan.  I note from the BBC there is a lot of falling out amongst families as the news and then their values impact on relationships between older parents and the younger generation.  All I will say is stop contemplating your navel buttons!  There is far more terrible stuff happening outside in the real world.

Ruined building

Virginia Woolf - a Room of Ones Own - is what I am listening to at the moment.  Love the way she potters around in her mind, mulling over the thoughts that filter through, whilst at the same time walking and being aware of her surroundings.  I find the same habit of  seeing people and wanting to follow them and see how their lives unfold, but that of course is impossible.  A few words spoke to me yesterday, it is from Christina Rossetti poem, The Birthday - the metaphor for me is how we grow old, heavy with memories, though in actual fact she is waiting for her love.

My heart is like an apple tree,  

The boughs bent heavy,

thickset with fruit

A Rowan tree.  Plant them for the winter birds who visit.

And lastly, music, the tribute to 'Lost Words'. Blessing.

 Blessings on all those that walk the Earth. 

Ancient mass migration transformed Briton's DNA

A rare gold wrapped jar may reveal the early splendour of Medieval England.

Christmas Greetings

 

Merry Christmas and a brighter New Year

Love from Thelma xxx

"The sun flowered briefly on the stone."

A video specially made for Winter Solstice of Maes Howe Chambered Cairn on Orkney.  This 5000 year old Neolithic monument also has the sun shining down the passageway.  Explanation by a professor about the tomb, interesting expert on the many runes that have been carved on the walls. Also poem which recited in the dialect was very special.

The video keeps starting 15 minutes in, so go back to the beginning.

And then there is Tolkien  taken from Tom Bombadil............

Get out, you old Wight! Vanish in the sunlight!

Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,

Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!

Come never here again! Leave your barrow empty!

Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness,

Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended.

Happy Winter Solstice

May the Light be with you:  Today, instead of Stonehenge and its gathering, a much more distinctive arrival of the Turning of the Year.  This at Newgrange in Ireland where the sun finds its way down a long passageway to illuminate  it.

Already we are unsettled by this new variant of the Covid virus.  Omicron rushes through the population with indecent haste.  The government holds fast that we will have a Christmas, but each and everyone one of us must make our own decision. 

My granddaughter came back yesterday from visiting her friend and flatmate in Manchester, worried that they would both not be able to make it  back to London, and that she would have to spend a couple of months in Tod.  She mentioned two cases of Covid, one of a 12 year old and one of primary school age that she had heard of.

So it is a clever bugger this virus, we need to take the precautions the scientists are telling us but enjoy the festival of Christmas, just less hugging ;)

And if you want stories to wile away the hours.  Binnorie and Gelert will be found here

Rainbow Plates?

Rainbow plates: I bought these plates because they were pretty, and then was informed by my granddaughter they represented the notion of Rainbow people who exist and go under the acronym of  LGBTIQ.  Now firstly let me stress I do not know the complicated relationship in which gender issues have splayed out.  All I had bought was some plates. 

 Apparently the colours of the rainbow have been painted wrongly says GD L,  be that as it may.  But having bought another two so we had six, GD M dropped one yesterday.  L who is very practical went and bought another two immediately and I thought what a sweet gesture, so that we can all have the same plate on Xmas day.

I am 'woke' to many things, especially social injustice, and how the world operates but such things as gender displacement has passed me by.  The girls will talk of boys wearing skirts, M especially as she studies at a fashion university, saying they can come in in all manner of things.

Thinking about in my day, mini-skirts, crocheted dresses (yes mentioned in crochet lesson;), and the boys with hairstyles and clothes that I giggle at now days, what I see is of course the young in their 'peacock' mood, showing off to the opposite sex.  But as far as LGBTIQ is concerned experimentation in their sexual role in society until one day they arrive at a point of who they are.  Though I think that there could be a more scientific logical reason for sex change.

I love watching the two sisters together, sometimes the temperature boils over the top another time loving acts for each other stresses the strong underlying bond.

Sunday - Day of the Sun

Today I heard an intriguing story on the radio.  When Father Christmas was 'executed'.  The Catholic cathedral of Dijon was witness and assassin to this in 1950.  They, the canons, took an effigy of Father Christmas, hung him and then burnt him in front of  many children.

Why you may ask: Perhaps it is because Catholicism is a strict religion in fear of the pagan element of this festival.  For the return of the sun was part of the celebration.  Nowadays the festival it is just a hodge-podge of commercialism, with children writing lists of what they want.  But do the children know that in Rome round the time of Saturnalia, children were offered as sacrifices for a good harvest year.  So maybe they have every right to demand compensation.  

The story told this morning finished with the happy note, that the town council would have none of this nonsense, and declared that Father Christmas would address the children at 6 0 clock from the roof of the Town Council building.  France is of course a secular country, but it is interesting to see how stories weave themselves round each other.

Taken from;

Levi Strauss and the Execution of Father Christmas

Uncommon Ground

18th December 2021

Duloe stone circle in Cornwall

This morning in my comments there was a spam comment, a long one selling tablets for suicide.  Well I have never had one of those before, quickly deleted it, don't want it in the public eye.  Shocking is of course the word you would use but heat seeking? to anyone who feels low.

Listening to Jodo Mitchell at the moment, thank you 'Rumours of Peace'. Still love the 'Yellow Taxi' and thinking about how she wrote the songs trying to express herself as a modern feminist?

This is also what my granddaughter said of herself yesterday, she doesn't cook either as a feminist.  Practical granny, are you going to starve then?  We conjure up all sort of notions in our heads and then find the world will not play ball ;)

With two girls at home, the airwaves are filled with music, Xmas songs, someone has found a whole channel on Heart dedicated to all those terrible songs of the past .

I note Cro has ventured on a slippery slope of questioning the world as it is seen  through the eyes of the younger generation.  Fatal of course.  History is often built on lies and adjustment, that is why there are so many historians trying to root through to the truth.

Avebury stones on a cold morning

 So what photos today? standing stones maybe telling of longevity, that the stones keeping a watch on the world remind us of our frailty.  Pause for a thought, is the next wave of Omicron serious, will there be other waves of different variants, have we been overcome by a superior force?  No it is not funny I know.

My daughter writes a large food list for the coming event of family gathering, only just realising that Handsome Guest, (he will have a name one day,) has a car which can carry everything! joy.  No lines of children hauling heavy bags from Lidl or Morrisons, you have to giggle occasionally.

Big Yellow Taxi

17th December 2021 "How did I end up in Yorkshire?"

I am so glad living in this country that we know how to use the vote.  Spectacularly in this latest by-election when the Tories got slammed in the voting booth for a government that leaves a lot to be desired.  We unite as one and put a Liberal in.  If Boris thinks he can run a country on his crooked manoeuvring - the lesson is learnt.

But for now I find solace amongst my photos,  in the happy faces of family and friends, tomorrow is Paul's birthday and I come across a picture of him lying on a bed laughing at me as I gingerly pick my way around the distinctly grubby carpet of a Travel Lodge.

He always demanded an expensive present, a trip somewhere, this time Stonehenge (in the cold of winter for goodness sake).  The grand opening of the new Stonehenge centre, with its funny little trail of carts to take you down to the stones,  In the damp and gloom of the weather, we wander round the circle, I gather photos of the Pagans, who are (as always) protesting about free entrance, it was raining and they look ridiculous in their long white robes.

Soon it will be Solstice, the time of the sun standing still and then the slow process back to summer.  

Who was it that taught me about the cult of paganism, to look at the world with wide open eyes and not be taken in by any  cult.  Professor Ronald Hutton, with the professionalism of a true scholar in his book 'Mistletoe and Blood'.  It is wise to remember that we love the drama of a religion, the stories that cluster around, especially the one we are approaching.  I have never quite worked out the modern day cults, for there are the nature followers as well, but they rarely do harm and appeal to the inner being as well.  But for others, the 25th December is not the celebration day but the 21st December when the light begins to return.

Paul was very mystical, at one time he wanted his ashes symbolically scattered over Silbury Hill but then fell in love with Yorkshire and the village we lived in and chose the little Japanese Bodhisattva goddess in the garden instead.  Happiness to him was sitting on the bench in the front garden on a sunny warm evening and drinking a beer.

16th December 2021

 

Diary through the pandemic;  We live in interesting times let it be said.  My worry the last few days has been listening for parcels delivered, we are almost there, except for Lillie's bag from France, they keep giving different messages to its arrival.  Funny thing happened yesterday evening, my son emailed that he had a mysterious parcel for me delivered to his home.  My mind flies along scams for I know all my parcels and  not this one.  I get up in the middle of the night and look at my emails.  Another email, sorry Mum it was the fudge I ordered you, I put on the wrong address.

Do I always consider the worst outcome? Today the by-election, the Tories are hopeful they will scrape through with a reduced majority.  I saw a funny video by 'Led by Donkeys' with Ted Hasting taking down Cressida Dick, this countries sharp wits are already winding up to take down the government.

Today is the day of Lillie's play, we all have been issued with tickets but I don't think I will be going, though apparently all the social distancing and ventilation has been adhered to.  She is also on tenterhooks about her bid for a place abroad next year, probably Africa, a government scheme.  I think there are four from her school applying, I hate to think of her disappointed but we will see.

So hurry on Xmas so we can get on the other side of it and into calmer waters.

15th December 2021

A funny thing happened on the way back from shopping at Lidl.  I stopped the traffic.  No of course not in that way but by dropping my purse in the middle of the crossing.  Horns honked at the kind man at the head of the queue who held the traffic back, a passing van shouted out Oi love, you dropped your purse.  How did it happen? lousy newish Lidl bag had come adrift at the seam, allowing my heavy purse to seamlessly fall through!

But my walk along the canal was refreshing, geese, both white and Canadian, plus ducks eyed me up and down for food.  I am somewhat bereft of birds.  I hear each morning the blackbird singing its heart out, the jackdaws sit on the eaves of the houses round here and squawk.  The other day I saw a robin for the first time and also a little grey wagtail, bobbing his way down the street. 

I heard this morning that the greenfinch is disappearing because of a disease transmitted through their feeding stations - wash, clean, sterilise. In the night, because I did not sleep well, listened to a podcast.  The interviewee was Robert Macfarlane at Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire.  He talked about the 'Spells' book, no not a book to cast spells but memories of words.

Matilda is coming home this afternoon from London, already a message from my daughter, that her friend she shares a flat with has just tested positive, so Matilda must first take a test when she comes into the house, though her last test was negative. Both my daughter and I have had the booster, mine two weeks ago, we missed the rush thank goodness. When will it end?

Parcels

Yesterday news summed up succinctly by someone on social media

"In case you missed it. Today's cock up. They gave the NHS 4 hours warning that they'd need to do 1 million boosters a day, the booking website crashed cos nobody thought to upgrade it, and we ran out of lateral flow tests within 3 hours. Vote better."

Not forgetting of course that Johnson decided to go all presidential and gave a statement out of government and the realms of parliament. He's got balls that man!

Returning to Xmas festivities. I am anchored to the house for the opening of the door to the many parcels that keep appearing. Today it is UPL? with no tracking device apparently, so it is an all day affair.

Yesterday the book I had ordered for my son was gently rejected and he said mum could I have these two books instead. So to my Amazon account I ventured to authorise return and the ordering of two new books. A flutter of emails and now he has the necessary information to take the first book down to Spar at Chelsea Road, the mention of which shot a pang of homesickness through my heart. The world is weird why take an Amazon parcel down to the supermarket?

It was funny yesterday, a white van parked outside the house, so I was on alert but then a washing machine was unloaded with great difficulty, and my heart began to sink at the thought of having to refuse it and it being uploaded again. Luckily it went further down the street.

My heart goes out to all those delivery drivers, rushing from one place to another, many from other countries as well. Look at the tracking sometime, 93 call in places for one, it is disgraceful. Before your finger presses down on 'buy' think about it, and I also include my family here. (And me of course)