Autumn?

 

Two favourite window photos from today....

http://btckstorage.blob.core.windows.net/site6645/TyHistory_in_maps_iss2a.pdf

3rd September 2022

Just to record the day up to now.  Walked down the canal path to Lidl to get salmon for tea.  The weather was dull and quiet, the moors above covered in mist.  No geese, just ducks being fed of course and skimming the water with that graceful swoosh ducks have.  Walking back decided to go on to the organic shop and buy a ringing bowl.  The boats along the canal have increased including the monkey statues on 'Carpe Diem'.  One boat had boxes of geraniums on its roof, showing up the sad end of summer flowers on the flowerbeds that lined the canal.  

Fireweed and nettles have taken over from the earlier wild flowers, though the bright yellow of evening primrose shines through.  Yesterday when I walked the canal two butterflies danced in front of me, we almost collided.

Choosing my ringing bowl, which was small and quite expensive.  why did I buy it?  I love the sound it makes reverberating on the air, it reminds me of Paul always ringing a bowl on Sunday.  When I got home and showed it to Lillie, her news whilst I had been away made us both laugh.

A visitation by two Jehovah Witnesses at the front door, she arguing she was an atheist, with all her mother's collection of Mary and Jesus stuff behind her.  Yes it is a collection not a faith!  I told her that my 'adopted' religion from now on was Buddhist.  For me it seems the most peaceful tradition.

Outside Lidl there is an electric charge up point for cars, though I have not seen it used.  But also a large metal container which is made up of lockers for parcels.  Apparently you collect your parcels from them.  First time I had seen it in use today, with a young Asian lad collecting something, and the thought went straight through my mind, the young are smoothly moving into this new territory of digital dominance.  Lillie never carries cash she informs me just uses a card.  The problem of ordering over the internet now of course is the great quantity of cardboard you acquire.

Another witty, clever essay from Murrmurs

Stray story

 Man of the Hole

I am not sure you can link on to this story on Live Science about the death of the last indigenous member of his tribe, who died by himself surrounded by red feathers in a hammock.  Obviously  anticipating his own death.  Tom mentioned it yesterday.  His tribe had been slowly killed by Brazilian farmers.  They had been offered gifts of sugar laced with rat poison - yes think on that.

900,000 indigenous people still live in Brazil, many probably hounded by farmers, tree clearance, etc.  This is what 'growth' is all about.  Gold you want? then lets pollute the nearest river.

There is a film of him cutting down a tree, he dug holes, one inside his hut.  No reason for this, though one hole contained spears, maybe there was some religious rite to it all.

A lonely life.  Like the solitary last  parrot of its species I read about the other day.  He carved his life out of the jungle, the last remnant of his tribe, still by the way hunted by the farmers - what were they scared of?

A hut he is supposed to have built

Rays of Sunshine ;)

 The car as we know it is fast becoming extinct; it is a relic of a former age. Sitting in a traffic jam in a ton of metal that belches pollution and costs a fortune will surely be seen by future generations as not just stupid, but criminal.  John Vidal.......

As Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, Tweeted: "It is immoral for oil & gas companies to be making record profits from the current energy crisis on the backs of the poorest, at a massive cost to the climate. I urge all governments to tax these excessive profits & use the funds to support the most vulnerable people."  Ecologist - Molly Scott Cato

A couple of things I picked up along the way in my reading.  Germaine Greer has been given the bounce. She is out of date and out of focus. Rebecca Solnit I have returned to and will finish 'The Inklings' off eventually.  Lewis and Tolkien had funny ideas on the role of women as well, but in their case we can put it down to nurture not nature!

I had been voting in the Green elections last night and reading the different intentions noted that just like the Labour party split between Corbyites and Starmer, a similar array of arguments also takes place in the Green Party, with everyone vowing to take a more moderate route.  I had voted Molly Scott Cato as a first choice for one of the jobs (proportional representation).  Then came across this article this morning by her.

So the quote by the UN Secretary General is why you see it there.  Do we shake the pension schemes of the retired class in this country, or do we allow those that are poorest to go through anxiety and distress with the possibility of homelessness in their lives.  

The quote about getting rid of cars, will put people's backs up I know, especially those who live in the countryside, and have no other means of transport but I read an interesting article on building more roads means more cars on the road.  I had heard the argument before but in this small country more roads is not an option but pollution definitely so.  

Reflections - Littlestone

Missing my stuff: This blog has been sitting around for a few days,  its photos reminding me of other times and very sad but still..... and after a certain amount of cutting of words it can be published just for the record.

 

A photo often jumps out on me when I look at my albums, it is of the little white saucers used for the paints, should a painting come into the studio.  The paints were housed in a beautiful Japanese piece of furniture, something like a small escritoire but low to the ground for the Japanese people in traditional style would sit on the ground.

They would measure their rooms from the size of tatami mats, a coarse plaited mat.  Bedding would be folded away in cupboards and heating in a brazier type of fire holder under the table in a medium hole made out for it.  This particular fire we kept in the sitting room with a glass top and inside had the round roof finials from temples that Paul had collected over time.  

Well this morning a Japanese film went through my F/B link and it was about the painter Hokusai's daughter Oeio from the 19th century.  This is one Japanese painter everyone should know, for it is 'The Wave' he is most famous for.

I realised as I watched the film how things I was not too keen on figured in Japanese culture.  The dark brownness of everything is due to the fact that timber was used in traditional buildings, our European chairs or beds are not part of the old Japanese culture.

Somewhere on this blog are the glass fronted boxes of the minerals, plants and insects used in the making of paints Paul collected.  The great 'Ali Baba' pots for storing the glue made over ten years. The cupboards would have the special brushes for damping the tissues on the paintings.  For Japanese conservation is not at all like our European paintings, thick with oil paints and varnish and browning in the process of time.

I left all this with his two sons, my downsizing could not see my family being left with it. I hope they treasure their father's legacy and that his grandson Leo eventually inherits it.

So because Paul was proud of what he had achieved in life, he put on his Silbury blog a rundown or perhaps a CV of his life.  He was never wealthy but had a very interesting life I think.

I am not sure if you can link here to the video on Hokusai's Daughter....

  https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/3018009/?

But it is a sweet film and I am sure Paul would have loved to watch it....

Studied art and design at Swindon School of Art, Wiltshire, England and afterwards Japanese painting and calligraphy at Kyoto University of Fine Arts, Kyoto, Japan. In 1966 I was a lay monk at the Zen Buddhist temple of Ryozen-an in Kyoto and practiced under the guidance of its Director, Ruth Fuller-Sasaki and senior monk Dana R Fraser (co-translator of Layman P'ang: A Ninth Century Zen Classic). Also present at Ryozen-an was the author and poet Gary Snyder. Gary Snyder was one of the first Westerners in Japan to study Zen Buddhism and was the inspiration for Jack Kerouac's book, The Dharma Bums. I was assistant conservator (paintings) at Kyoto National Museum from 1969-1980 and Chief Conservator (Eastern Pictorial Art) at the British Museum from 1980-1986. Japan Foundation Fellow 1973-1974 and Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works since 1985.

The vibrant goldfish above story.  Like all folklore, Japan also has it stories, goldfish or fish symbols of luck, achievement, whatever, the fish swims upstream.  This particular painting was at our framers needing some work done.  So when we went in, for a frame for a print of mine by a friend Jane Tomlinson, the man said I will frame your print if you would do something for this painting. A good barter!

Jane also does maps, weather maps, shipping forecast maps and of course the prehistoric stones I love.... Her ability to put everything into a painting is self evident.  Silbury Hill, Wayland Smithy, the Uffington White Horse and of course nature, birds are her husband Moth's passionate hobby as well are in the print below. I know it is a bad picture, I caught the light, but when eventually my stuff comes back to me I shall once more be able to see it.

27th August 2022

 We were talking round teatime the other day about holidays. Andrew and my daughter going off to the island of Mykonos soon.  I've been there said I, a 21st birthday present a long time ago, and my daughter looked a bit shocked.  Well apparently this is one of the 'fun party' islands nowadays, it wasn't in my day by any stretch of the imagination.  I had gone on a boat trip to Mykonos and Delos to see the Greek ruins there.  It had been a rather lonely holiday for none of my friends could afford the trip.  All I can remember that it had been very, very hot in Athens where I was staying.

Holidays are so different today, can you imagine Torremolinos in Italy(or Spain!) as a quiet little fishing village, for it was when as a child we went there.  I remember meeting my first octopus as I swam and flailing wildly for the shore in terror.  The plane was clunky and instead of heading out over the sea on takeoff, went flying high over the mountains, just missing them by feet in my imagination.

John Gray on his trip to Ireland, reminded me of when a friend and I went by car.  They craned my car onto the boat, no slip on and off ramp in the olden days.  We scooted around Ireland, Mary and me, I raced a glass salesman down empty roads, and when we finally stopped and he offered to buy us drinks we said no.  What happened to that old key for the bedroom at a big old house we stopped in.  I had forgotten to give it back in reception, still feel guilty about it.

The world has changed.  I have been watching some Youtube episodes of Nomadic people in Iran.  They live for three months of the year as nomads  but are so resilient and content.  The children scamper round after the adults.  Food preparation takes a long time, there is one incident when the old lady who seems to supervise the cooking, walks about half a mile to crush some large seeds.  It is almost back to the Bronze Age and the querns they used for grinding.  These two stones though have not been shaped and an awful lot of effort goes into the grinding.  Goats wander around and funny skinny hens, one fright for me was when breakfast was served.  As she took the lid of the pot there was the head of a goat.

They are surrounded by cliffs of sandstones, just concentrating on surviving, I am sure there are lots of stories to tell which the  camera man has not caught.  I wanted to know how they paid for their life style.  The men sitting away from the women being served by them made me smile - no feminists there yet!

Survival of the fittest - sod that

Yesterday has been and gone, though a parcel from Amazon arrived, not unusual in this household.  It was an electric blanket for wearing, a deep midnight blue with white attached soft velour.  My dear daughter had heard me complain about being cold when spinning and had ordered it for me.  I haven't tried it yet but what a thoughtful gift.

So here we are, energy bills set to go through the roof and an airhead trying to be our next leader.  Somehow I am reminded of Canute trying to stop the force of the sea, but this brainless creature, only intent on her own grandissement in the play of governing this country.  Sounds familar doesn't it?

How are we to get from this to a reasonable answer of not pushing more people into poverty and homelessness this winter?  The balance for gain and favour in the right wing Tory led faction of this country has tipped the balance and luckily more people are beginning to notice the gross inequalities that exist. 

I can hear the back of the class shouting 'the poor have always been with us',  maybe so, but forcing people out on the streets who are in work and not earning enough money to pay the mortgage, food and heating bills, that threatens the human rights of the people in question.

Change political parties? maybe not, though  our government is old hat, based on two warring sides.  I did flirt with the Co-operative Party but I have to stop my debit payments to the Green Party.  Not as easy as it sounds.

There are the 'heroes' of the hour turning up.  Mike Lynch, Gordon Brown and Martin Lewis shouting the odds.  Strikes will be used as punishment and I have no problem with that but then I am retired ;)

We are really in a black hole at the moment in this country with no sensible leader at the helm..........................

25th August 2022

Not much news but today is results for GCSE exams and Lillie has been on tenterhooks waiting for this day to arrive.  I doubt she has much to worry about and will get into her chosen college - Rochdale easily enough.  Yesterday afternoon she spent baking biscuits and chocolate brownies to take into school for her friends.

She bounces into the bedroom, all dressed up, in black and short tartan kilt admiring herself in front of the mirror.  She has confidence I will give her that and she works hard, but I think it is because of a certain insecurity.  I have told her to concentrate on the positive and not worry about the negative, but I know the uncertainity is worrying her.

Exams are killers, all that time studying, then those exam questions on subjects you may not have studied but choosing others instead. Coffee calls.

23rd August 2022

 

Largest man made mound in Europe, why isn't it more conical? perhaps the Saxons flattened it into a platform as a defensive space.

Photos;

All those years ago I wandered round the Avebury landscape with my dog Moss.  Happy on my own, leaving behind a household for awhile and being alone.... Firstly I lived in Calne which is but 6 miles from  Avebury.  I had stopped in Calne whilst on a hunt for a house in Wales, perhaps it was driving past Silbury Hill that caught my imagination but then my dog was Kim, a large, fairly uncontrollable labrador but who enjoyed walks up to the Lansdown monument.  A monument I could still see, if I found the right place, up on the downs above Bath.

In Calne I was a young widow bringing up my daughter, and when I eventually married again moved to Bath.  But often went back to Avebury with Moss to walk up to the West Kennett Long Barrow.  Here we could sit and watch the sunrise from atop the barrow.

The facade, many bones were found inside, some from the older Windmill Hill site just above Avebury

The long shape of it like a snake upon the landscape.

Avebury itself has the three circles, two inside a larger circle with a very large ditch dug around it.  The sarsen stones are remarkable odd shapes, some seeing some of the stones as representing the fertility of man and woman (now wasn't that coy I obliterated the sexual organs that  show this).

Whatever you see in the stones reflects your anthropomorphic mind wants to see and if you look at the following stones you will see figures and faces just because you mind wants to see them.  But did the hauliers and builders of these stones see them also?  The stones themselves are enormous,  some triangulated in shape, the Cove stones showing something different being very tall.

The Red Lion in the far distance. William Morris who went to Marlborough College, would cycle to see 'The Lions' as he told his parents when writing back to them.

Captured in stone.  The concrete bollards are the missing stones obviously.  Probably incorporated in the old cottages in Avebury

 

The Cove stones

 Note;  King Arthur's Hall soon to have a small archaeological dig to prove its age.

Collecting my thoughts (and blogs)

This morning I started watching 'Children of the Stones' on my computer.  Made in 1976 in Avebury it was a  fantasy children programme.  The story outrageous from today's point of view.  It had that clumsy element of the 1970s  (that time when mobile phones were still to be invented!), yet it was considered excellent television and it still holds that element of fear today with the creepy music background.

The plot was fantastical but one of the strands was the dragons displayed on the font of Avebury church, though in this instant they were referred to as snakes, and I think this particular reference from the series comes from another font, probably one of the Bassett villages.

The whole film about the village of Avebury stirred up so many memories of how Paul and I met and eventually came together through this time that I felt perhaps it was unwise to take the path of memory but I did.  Also I had never felt any fear round the stones or of their magnetic charms, but had captured them time and time again through photos.

 We had spent a week one cold winter there at 'Teacher's Cottage' waking up one morning to snow and wandering round before anyone managed to get to the village, taking photographs. I remember the church opposite the cottage and standing by the Cove stones at midnight under a full moon.

But what we all worked on at the time was, not sure how to put this, but lets say we nagged the workmanship of English Heritage about the repair of Silbury Hill, which had a collapsed void in its centre.  We made our points of view felt through our website 'Heritage Action' and whilst chasing through another blog of mine for fonts, I came across Paul's Silbury blog here.

Which led me on to an blog/article I had written on Heritage Action, in my usual nonsense manner but a certain amount of scholarly thought;) Sometimes I forget my love of Silbury Hill but the event at the time of Skanska's work led me to write a lot...  in fact if I remember rightly I was the one who took the photos of the work.  Paul had quoted the whole article on his blog, which must have made me very proud....

I remember reading how the excavations had uncovered an inner type barrow, with small stones and an analysis of the seeds and environmental evidence had been published as well, in fact there is a blog somewhere on Northstoke about this.

Anyway I found my old Wordpress blog with the history of Avebury church and photos of the font here.  

I will put the link to the video on, it's clunkiness has a charm of its own ;)

21st August 2022

20th August 2022.  Well in diary mode, the day of Karen's birthday.  Lillie baked the cake yesterday, and then her mother wanted a breakfast of pancakes, blueberries and bacon.  This at 5.30 am of course this morning because of the railway strike.  Karen's normal journey into Manchester is a train trip at 8.0.clock, but there is a train strike.  Which meant bus into Rochdale and then catch the tram to Manchester.

We discussed in my bedroom what to have as a takeaway tonight, not much choice, we don't live in America, so it was either curry or chicken/chips.  Cards were opened.  My present is always money, Matilda's card had on the front  something like 'The classiest bitch out'.  This because Karen is always dressed to the nines and surpisingly enough she is not bitchy but more of a surrogate mother to the students that volunteer at her shop.  She is good at her job makes several hundreds a day because she knows the price of things and has a keen eye for fashion labels.

Fashion goes over my head of course, watch the girls giggle at 'Cotton Traders', Ellie had the account at one stage in her PR job! But I reckon we should all dress like the Chinese used to do, in a similar uniform. ;)

Matilda who lives in London studying at Uni to be a fashion journalist, has by some miracle managed to find a flat for four of them, found herself a part-time job and an internship.  So all worries over there, though why interns aren't paid puzzles me.  Ben is styling for some famous girl songstress, who's name escapes me.  So by and by everyone of my grandchildren are either working or studying, so one could almost say - so what is wrong with Britain ;) ;) 

Books listened to at the moment, well I still have 'The Inklings' to finish.  A Phil Rickman for light relief and in my library Germaine Greer 'The Female Eunuch'.  Something I have never read.  I think her appearance always put me off Germaine and her behaviour, which let us say, was way over the top.

But like all of us that got older over the last  decades, we have had to adjust to this new world of a sexual revolution, or quite a few ways of describing your gender.  Feminism has become 'old hat' I think, it is just about arguing for the equality of pay etc and the realisation that ground gained is occasionally lost.

*********************************************************

Today is Sunday.  The geese have already flown over on their way to the canal and last night I heard an owl hooting, so fragments of nature still remain. There is rather a cool article about tourism.  The photographer goes to particularly touristic places takes quites a few photos and then collages them altogether, showing crowded places, when all these people just want to photograph self images alone in a vast natural world.

Last night after the feast we watched 'Absolutely Fabulous' film, not as funny as it could be and we all retired early before the film finished.  There is so much to choose from on the television, especially if there is more than one person in the room, then hours are spent scrolling through the various offerings.  The only thing I watch is the new 'Shetland'.  Plot is good and of course the remote scenery a joy to the eye.  But of course these Scottish islands will become touristic spots, ready for the quick browse tourists off the great cruise ships which dwarf the small harbours of the islands.  

I managed to work out my phone video, and took the moment of the cake coming into the sitting room and.......... even managed to shunt the video onto the family App place, which is one more step to understanding how to upload stuff...

8.15 and my daughter has just dropped into the bedroom says Andrew and herself are going up to Gaddings Dam, Andrew to do a bit of wild swimming... Perhaps I should have taken a bet on that! or should have told them that if the cows are on the beach with their young be careful.

Years ago I watched a cow with a young calf at foot chase a man and his two dogs.  Luckily they escaped, but my Moss would never walk through the field and would always take a much longer route to miss the cows and join me later.  You can't beat a collie for brains...

19th August 2022

Sometimes I despair even of blog writing!  I could write a whole line of swear words as two idiots prance round on the stage of our national consciousness and promise airy-fairy land when we are really in the s**t.  I wander round my links, and shout hollowly WHAT ABOUT the climate change we are experiencing  now this moment, not just us but far more worrying other countries that have heat, drought, desertification and worst of all starvation that hits them. I could show signs of fairly small improvements as we make small adjustments to our energy use.  Manchester installing 2000 small vertical wind turbines on their roads to capture the wind effect caused by cars.  But I know there is a small section of blogland would like it all to be gentle photos of the England of long ago.

So today Anne the cleaner is here for top and bottoming certain parts of the house - spiders beware.... She is a nurse by profession but finds it easier to clean with having young children at home.  I haven't had a cleaner during my adult life but as a child we had people to clean the house and live in to look after us children.   My grandfather was a caring person, so his choices often were not quite as wise as they could be.  

Not publishing, and then thinking better of it.  I just love the song by George Ezra at the moment 'Green, green grass, blue, blue sky, you'd better hold a party on the day that I die'

This weekend is my daughter's birthday, Lillie has said she will make the Victoria cake, Karen has asked for.  Takeway for Saturday meal, and lunch out at a restaurant called Yakamuma on Sunday, which seems to open only a couple of days a week.  Ellie and Tom will be joining us, travelling for everyone is slightly stymied by train stoppages.

Somehow I feel guilty as all the terrible news belts in over the radio that we should all be going out to meals, etc, when the talk is always about how people can't meet the large energy costs and food prices rising.  Perhaps next year we shall be in the same boat, still I will go on knitting blankets and wear a hat of course.  As everyone should know heat escapes through your head! especially if the brain power is limited.... and now to somethings this magpie has picked up...

Think the Johnsons have moved in temporarily to Chequers to avoid not only the wallpaper but the disgruntled nation...

Conundrums from Trump

Sweet

Cows on summer break up at the dam beach

Happier times.  Ben and Lillie playing witches

Question:  Why are working people having to use charity?

The World from a different angle

"Lewis had converted to Christianity, but had problems with the whole concept of religion, he saw faith and belief in gods as a necessity but that the Jesus saga had followed the earlier stories, especially Northern pagan of the dying of the god.  In fact religion was founded on mythological stories carried forward.  Well the 'Inklings' had a very satisfying life of discussion and criticism amongst the hallowed portals of Oxford - being intellectual! Taken from here."

Something sparked when I listened to 'The Inklings, it was the philosophical question of whether there had been any real gods, or is belief to be equated with truth.  So I dived into the rabbit hole of my blog, when years ago I read everything about, what I would call Celtic mysticism.  I have written reams about gods and belief, they fascinated me, I expect because I actually wanted them to be living gods and not of the imagination. 

Capturing Celtic tales, pondering the meaning of Iron Age mirrors, did they have a sacred nature or was it just vanity?  Water as a natural sacred vessel.  Why were Saxon women buried in bed burials what was it all about.  

The answer will come ringing back to me, they believed in 'The Otherworld,' enter the Bronze Age barrow or the fairy fort of the Sidhe and you were away. We have/had Paradise, the Vikings had wine, women and food.  It all boils down to the same thing of course, we are afeared of death and therefore promise ourselves a bright future in the afterlife.

The photo at the beginning is a screenshot from Colette's Bealtaine Cottage, her peace and belief in Goddess Earth, reflects the feminism of today's modern culture of pagan belief.  I listen to her videos  for the peace of the tranquil three acres of woodland she has planted on scrub land.  It is one of the intriguing things following the pathways of the gods to understand how women played an important part.  Even in our Christian faith, may I say it, who had the baby?

So I shall go on gathering these thoughts, thinking of Celtic Portals to the Otherworld, as Colette found when she dug a well in her own Paradise, and also listen to a good friend's voice as he wanders round a favourite well of mine.

And so..how I dabbled at the edge of the portal amongst the gods but at the end found no existence of the presence of a god or gods....

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2009/01/welsh-celtic-story.html

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2014/12/mirrors.html

The World from a Different Angle

12th August 2022

Today we enter another heatwave, though here in the cooler West it is not so bad as down South.  The world continues, the recycling people have been too remove the cardboard, compost food box and the plastic. A bumble bee feeds on the hyssop, which they love, plants have been put into shallow dishes of water to imbibe. Also if you want to see the landscape round here, go to Landscape - Hebden Bridge blog and see how the trees cluster thickly through the valleys.

I mentioned the fields on fire on the Marlborough Downs a couple of blogs ago.  The lady farmer was on the farming programme yesterday, and she said it was a terrifying ordeal because she had no internet connection for her phone and had to drive some distance away to get it.  The dramatic photo of smoke in another incident showed smoke billowing out behind Stonehenge was scary.  The one thing that she did say on F/B was that the neighbours all came to help and it was a neighbour who saved the day by driving round the field and creating a fire barrier.

I am debating whether to buy a small ringing bowl, you tap the side and the clear bell like sounds hovers on the air.  Paul always used to strike the ringing bowl on Sunday in the small room  we called the library, it was beneath the rather frightening hanging scroll of some god, with all the devils clustered around.  I left all these things behind for Paul's two boys and his grandson,  I had no need of them.  Japanese religion is full of scary demons, a bit like the medieval paintings we see on our early churches.  To dominate we must...... scare people to obey??  In one of the prints we had hanging there was a Japanese Geisha girl but in her hand she held a small glass bowl with a large goldfish in it, which I thought was very cruel.  I know that the carp is a symbol of ambition and achievement, perhaps my down to earth mind takes things to literally of course.

The Art of neatness

10th August 2022

I am listening to Celtic Thunder at the moment, five handsome Irish lads that cleverly choreograph their songs.  I will put one video down below, a hymn to stir the soul into action ;)

Yesterday we had two cleaners do a 'deep clean' of the kitchen, new flooring to be put down warranted this.  But we have decided to ask them to do three hours every fortnight.  They did an excellent job by the way, but would not touch the Aga because of insurance claims??  Did not matter anyway and they did give it an extra polish, so the lids echoed your face.

It is good to go back through old blogs remembering the times I wandered around the Wiltshire landscape.  Always I return to the peace of Wayland's Smithy long barrow one Autumn day.  My old collie Moss sitting under the tree, his ball positioned carefully in front of his paws willing me to leave my contemplation of 'place'  and bloody well throw his ball.

Perhaps memory is the most precious gift of all, looking back as family grows up, seeing the sad moments as well as happy and listening to the beat of the drum, though it may call you to action also underlies the beat of our heart.

Heartland

08/08/2022

A paradise Built in Hell

― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“The possibility of paradise hovers on the cusp of coming into being, so much so that it takes powerful forces to keep such a paradise at bay. If paradise now arises in hell, it's because in the suspension of the usual order and the failure of most systems, we are free to live and act another way.”

“This is a paradise of rising to the occasion that points out by contrast how the rest of the time most of us fall down from the heights of possibility, down into diminished selves and dismal societies. Many now do not even hope for a better society, but they recognize it when they encounter it, and that discovery shines out even through the namelessness of their experience. Others recognize it, grasp it, and make something of it, and long-term social and political transformations, both good and bad, arise from the wreckage. The door to this ear's potential paradises is in hell.”

Two quotes on the net from the book I am listening to at the moment.  Perhaps you could say at this late stage in my life I am mulling over the society I live in and what is wrong with it.  And my musings won't please some, so please don't read.

I find the above an extraordinary statement, the way of looking at something from a different angle.  Solnit takes disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and the dreadful collapsing of the towers of offices on September 11th 2001 and looks at the stories of courage and remarkable kindness that people show at the time of great disaster. 

 

Not all run away, they unselfishly help each other to escape, they give their lives so that others might live.  Strong empathy told in a story of a man plummetting to earth from one of the towers, as the storyteller said I held his hand in my mind on that long fall.

One of the other facets of disaster, and here we are talking of American history, is that governments nearly always call out the army to stop the looters and the media will make a great play of this.  But it is in the aftermath that organisations and just ordinary people who help in whatever way they can.  They organise themselves not because of government but because there is a job needing to be done.

So all the talk about society falling into chaos and confusion is not necessary truthful.  The Conservative have sold us better and more police officers in their bids for supremacy - Crime does not Pay.

We are at the moment, world wide, under going unprecedented weather patterns, we expect our firefighters, army and police to bring order to a flooding, or fires, so unexpectedly starting up in fields and in London. But it is the neighbourliness that helps in the long run, kindness is a trait of humankind.

So room for optimism?  I think so, someone was complaining that there was no positive news, I tend to disagree there.  There are people out there finding solutions for carbon capture, capturing the natural elements for energy.  Young students creating plastic barriers that catch that horrendous amount of plastic we have dumped in the sea.  

even on the domestic side, people are talking about heating churches and community halls to keep people warm.  They shouldn't be doing that of course.  If we had had governments ready to tackle the housing crisis and the proper insulation of our old houses, we would not be in such a predicament today.

The price of houses are a scandal at the moment, and the hogging of second homes as well to make a profit from a young person who will never be able to afford a home.  In a decent society poverty should not be on the agenda, but it is.  

Miscellaneous

 Things I picked up through an early morning journey through the net.  All church gatherers and that includes, Sue of Suffolk and Jennie of Codlin Cream, there is a third church gatherer around.  Smell of Water gets to see the earlier churches of the North with Viking and Saxon carvings, so for your edification, two of his Wordpress blogs this morning below.  You might have trouble signing in to Wordpress but you are offered a couple of choices.

https://teessidepsychogeography.wordpress.com/2022/08/02/copper-henges/

https://teessidepsychogeography.wordpress.com/2022/08/05/auckland-st-andrew/

For Yorkshire Pudding, this tickled my fancy yesterday, as a deep sigh of pure sadness went through my thoughts about the terrible choice we have in leaders of this country....

Sean Jones

But I woke up this morning on a very happy dream in the uplands of sun and landscape, cycling on a bike for goodness sake to my car that contained a puppy.  Now make of that what you will but isn't Going Gently getting a puppy soon?

3rd August 2022

All change, or at least the planning for the future.  My daughters house has a lot of stuff, especially furniture some of it has to go.  She bought whilst in Whitby a lot of Romanian antique furniture, which is heavy and decorated with carvings.  But for me the sad part is emptying Matilda's stuff, but she has flown the nest to London and important things are kept.  A builder is coming tonight, to suss out what needs to be done to the house, for instance shelving in the basement out of the way of flooding when it happens.

The weather is slowly warming and I see there is another hot spell predicted.  I walked along the canal this morning, seeing what was coming out, the Evening Primrose, hangs its yellow floppy flowers down and the Oxe Daisy is over, succeeded by ragwort I think.  The geese sit placidly on the water, someone with their little boy in tow is feeding them, and there seems to be a gannet on the towpath.

Went to the Organic shop and spent more than I should.  The Polish baker was just bringing his sourdough bread in, so I was persuaded to buy by the assistant, and I have just eaten some of the olive bread with my coffee and it was delicious.  Proper apples on display, though whether they are English or not they seem a bit early, but not wrapped and shone to perfection in plastic from the supermarket a welcome relief. 

Olives in bread reminded me of the organic shop in Bath at the top of Walcot street, it was called 'Harvest' and was there for a very long time.  Also bought some nutritional yeast just to see what it tastes like and why vegans rage over it.

Stopped off at the library, not to get books but just to mooch, looked at the Collared Bronze Age pots from Blackheath Barrow.  There is a little 'incense cup' skulking in the corner, called this because it is seen as something similar to what the Catholic church waves round you in service.  The explanation here though was that it was the carrier of sacred fire.

Waiting for some more fleece to spin, this time a dyed dark mulberry red and some natural black Welsh and also Moorit (which is a beigy brown).  I have decided to go geometrical, and tackle intarsia knitting, should be an interesting experiment.

2nd August 2022

A Them and Us view.  In tribute to yesterday's Yorkshire Day.  A simplistic television opinion of the divide between North and South in England.  A 1970s, slightly tongue in cheek look I think.

1st August 2022 - Victory is sweet

Happy Lammas everyone, though I would rather say Happy Lughnasadh, the Irish Celtic stories always more interesting than our tame attendance at church.  And a fervent wish that the grain ship which is supposed to leave Ukraine today will sail safely through the Russian ships.

But today we should be celebrating the achievement of  our women footballers who managed to win the game from the German side.  Well it has taken  a hundred years to get here, down no doubt to a few of those middle aged  men who forbade women to play, or at least banned them from their football pitches all those years ago. The story behind the photo below but they did it, another victory along the line.

31st July 2022 - just jotting down thoughts.

"We are declaring a climate emergency. Everyone can, in whatever place on Earth they call home. No one needs to wait for politicians any more – we have been waiting for them for decades. What history shows us is that when people lead, governments follow. Our power resides in what we are witnessing."

Fight the good fight don't give up is what Rebecca Solnit and her writing companion are saying and that is precisely what we should be doing.  Not giving up and slinking back into some hole of hopelessness. Only yesterday I came upon a thread in the Tod Chat of someone saying why don't we create our own energy, surrounded as we are by wind and energy.  Over a hundred replies.  Vertical Axis wind turbines were mooted, smaller than the horizontal wind turbines, they could be used individually on houses and of course along motorways to generate energy.  

Other countries are addressing the crisis, building their roadways to generate energy, making the cost of train fares small to encourage people to use the trains more.  Though in this country the trains are often overcrowded at peak times.  Why the hell  are we spending all that money on HS2, when it could be so much better spent on the infrastructure of revamping existing train services.

We are at this precise moment in time witnessing a government that does not know what to do, so we follow two people vying for leadership, both unsuitable for today's crisis. Take the media hype off them and concentrate on what needs doing urgently now.  We have been lulled into a feeling of doom which will do little to help future generations in their battle to survive.  

For years I have watched the 'sustainable' people craft, individually and selfishly in their own cause though, many ways of producing energy and wondered what about the rest of society when the day of doom arrived.  To be quite honest they used more stuff to create and invent, than was necessary too adding to the piles of waste we already have.

When we talk of using the natural energy around us there is obviously problems when it doesn't work, the wind stays still, the water in the rivers goes low in times of drought and the Archemides Screw will not work, and perhaps James Lovelock is right to defend nuclear power.

James Lovelock was like Rosie in the above video, an engineer/scientist trying to solve problems, they are human, Lovelock now recently dead.  Nuclear power of course is somewhere in the distant future, taking ages to build the great silos that house those dangerous materials.  But scientists are beginning to worry at the speed of climate change and the rise of temperatures, that are setting off fires all around the world.  We have to start doing something now and not put it off whilst two clowns caper in front of us trying to be  leader, perhaps the time is fast approaching, and I don't mean the coming strikes, when we should turn away from government and start addressing these problems ourselves.

Is there anybody there? said the Traveller

 In the face of the coming rise in the cost of living, the Aga was shut down, although it will be used in the winter in this cold house.  In its place we have, all electric, a combination oven, a hob, electric kettle and toaster, which results in a different way of cooking.  My daughter isn't buying herself out of the circumstance just changing the way we do things, the Aga is a great guzzler of gas.

Doesn't the future look doom-laden? who is to blame I wonder, or is it just  a series of events happening together.  War in Ukraine, Putin, the withholding of energy and grain, a government (that is so ridiculous I can't even talk about it!) arguing over its own selfish future and not giving a s**t about this country.  Well I will say one thing, Brexit was an absolute mistake!! It could not have come at a worse time.

But to return to home and the hearth, I can't suss the combination oven.... Lillie is away on scout's holiday and my daughter with her dearly beloved down in Devon on holiday.  I have begun making 'drop scones' instead of the ones you pop into the oven.  The Queen when she was a child cooked drop scones, so I am in good company. A new frying pan, mostly there is only the heavy based Creuset pans to cook with, all garnered secondhand from charity shops, are useless on the hob.  

I have to keep telling myself as I confront the combi oven that it is just like a computer, already programmed, all I have to do is type in a set of instructions and it will work but the rather thick booklet looks complicated....

But just to cheer the page up, this morning I came across a poem, heard and perhaps learnt as a child,  The Listeners - by Walter de la Mere a poem you can almost lose yourself in....

a quiet ramble

 I have just finished listening to English Pastoral by James Rebank.  His tale is full of loss and sadness for the land his family has farmed over three generations.  In Wales it is called Hiraeth, how often I have heard that word on the radio.  It means homesickness and a longing for familiar things.

Most of us having wandered away from home have found ourselves in different parts of our small island, commuting to faraway relatives, sometimes finding our rootedness in a special place, other times we live with someone we love, not a bad choice I think.

But there is a price for freedom, we lose that centre of home with the hearth of security.  Rebank takes comfort in his growing children and going against the land destroying farming methods we undertake at the moment.  It started after the last war I suppose, the drive to produce enough food to feed everyone, but we took a false road learning to destroy an old way of life and what is more sinful destroying the natural world along the way.  Now we weep for the vanishing curlew as the great computer driven machines are oblivious to their eggs laid so carelessly in the open tidy fields.

Of course many people fight for the natural world, in this country we make laws to protect them.  we are probably kinder to our pigs and hens than Europe, having made illegal caged hens and those terrible farrow crating hells for pigs and their young.  Beavers have suddenly found protection under law and they will be brought back from other sites in Europe, the badger is less lucky.  The fox has a smidgen of protection from the hunters, and the dear deer have proliferated with gay abandon, forcing our prime minister to say 'go eat venison'  to the hungry!

Yes the hungry still exist, poverty still lurks at the bottom of our society, no alleviation there still.  We forgot to make rules for society as a whole you might say.  The free let rip of the capitalist state said everything is on the table grab what you can.  A few have grabbed, and now look silly with their greed patently on show. Human society never gets it right;)

So yes it was  very enjoyable listening to his story of the family farm, but his sadness broke through for the rape of our land and yes there are farmers out there who are trying to arrive at a compromise but if our children do not find the wonders of the natural world, then we are responsible.  Rebanks ends with the words 'tell it'.  The story of the land...

Mary Colwell on losing our natural world.

26th July 2022

 A couple of days ago I linked on F/B Ken Williams (shadowandstone) excellent photographs of the exhibits at the Stonehenge Exhibition at the British Museum.  Ken Williams is an Irish photographer who has recorded the prehistory of Ireland, especially Knowth in County Meath.  Sadly I can't link the exhibition photos but they were wonderful, Jennie and an old friend from America commented on them.  Bucky and Loie had planned to come over for this showpiece of prehistory, now finished of course.  Unfortunately the friends they were coming over with were ill and they did not make it so he was pleased to see the photos.

But the point of why I mention this because I remember when we had taken Bucky and Loie to see Sea Henge timber in 2012 at the Lynn Museum, he had made a bit of  fuss about the iron banding and small bits of wood that had been chain sawed out of the timbers, causing the museum staff to phone up presumably the archaeologists who had excavated the timbers.  Here is what I wrote at the time.

Anyway this is a personal record to go in my blog, to remember good friends and a trip down to the Norfolk coast, again in cold weather. 

The whole fascinating history of the finding and then conservation of these timbers can be found here in a wiki.

One more thing, my envy and admiration of all my blogger friends as to their wonderful photography I own up to, but just look at Ken Williams Grange Stone Circle in Ireland (and drool).  This most perfect circle was made with something we all did as children, take a pencil and piece of string and form the perfect circle.  This circle was probably drawn by a pole and a rope.  Could well be a twisted honeysuckle rope, the same as the one  found round the Seahenge timbers.

The large central upside down tree trunk, thought to be for 'sky burials'

In our travel diary for our trip with you 2013, I 

wrote After we returned, P~ sent us an email of the text he wanted to post on his Heritage blog: After a few backs and forths, his post read…

“On a recent visit to the Lynn Museum in Norfolk to see the Seahenge Gallery, it was noticed by our American friends, Bucky and Loie, that in each of the trunks that make up the circle there is a wedge-shaped cut extending the whole width of each trunk, and one or two inches into it. Bucky writes that, ‘Loie noticed a horizontal band of discoloration on one timber. When she pointed it out to me, I started looking at all of them and finding similar bands, at different heights. At first, I thought they might be strips of metal helping hold the timbers to the support posts: there was a tiny bit of space between some of the bands and the wood, as if the bands weren’t tight. Looking at the bands from as close to the timber sides as was possible, it was soon apparent the bands were not connected to the metal posts: light was visible between them. So the bands were in or on the wood. I soon saw that where the bands met the sides of the timbers, they continued around the sides. And the continuations were all triangular. It became apparent that the only explanation for all the different aspects we had noted would be horizontal wedges cut into the wood, and then inexpertly filled with some kind of painted putty.’

“The cuts had indeed been filled and in-painted so, in the subdued lighting of the Gallery, they are not easily seen (which actually contravenes accepted conservation practice as restorations should be clearly visible). Staff on the reception desk at Lynn Museum didn’t know what the cuts were (and hadn’t even noticed them before) but after telephoning one of the museum curators it appears that English Heritage’s original intention was to leave the circle in situ to naturally degrade. In order to get as much information as possible before that happened however a wedge was cut out of each timber (not just the infamous chainsaw chunk from the central bole) for dendochronological cross-dating. English Heritage’s decision to leave the circle in situ was then reversed and all the timbers were subsequently removed for safety and conservation (now unfortunately with slices taken out of them—slices which subsequently needed to be filled in and ‘restored’).

“Other observations at the Seahenge Gallery were that not all the timbers from the circle are on show—the rest are in storage at the Museum with no plans to bring them out for display. This is strange because there appears, actually, to be enough room in the Seahenge Gallery to display them all if things were rearranged. The large (and excellent) illuminated photo of the sea actually dissects the Gallery and if this were moved to a side wall the rest of the circle could probably be displayed (ingress and egress to and from the circle being made possible by having the two halves positioned slightly apart).

“What is really disappointing at Lynn Museum’s Seahenge Gallery is the position of the central bole; it stands in its own case outside the circle, against a wall (so one cannot walk round it) and next to a door which is often open and which reveals another gallery with some kind of fairground attraction in it - very disconcerting, not to mention distracting the visitor’s attention from the central bole and the rest of the Seahenge Gallery.

“The Heritage Trust would like to see all of the circle displayed, the bole repositioned within it, and the door to the other gallery either screened off or fitted with a self-closing mechanism. Other suggestions we would like to make are that the replica cast of the smaller bole is removed (it is not a cast of the Seahenge bole anyway but of another one) and a mirror fitted to the ceiling of the case in which the Seahenge bole itself stands (so that its top surface can be seen from below).

“Money to do these things is always a problem of course but perhaps an appeal could be launched to assist in fundraising. A dedicated collection box at the entrance to the Seahenge Gallery might be installed for this purpose. The collection box at the British Museum for example asks for a £5 donation from those who can afford it; a similar request at the Lynn Museum does not seem unreasonable given that it would help towards aiding the full, and proper, display of this unique monument from our ancient past.”

So, I was irritated by the poor display of the artifacts, in general, and Paul was incensed by the dendochronological slices.

That was a good trip!

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