Maps

For years I used maps. The Ordnance Survey maps are a treasure of information.  Whether it is the contour lines telling how far uphill you have to walk, or the symbols representing churches, barrows, permissive paths, it is all there.  Road maps are fine as well, though they get rather messy in built up areas.

But here in Todmorden I am geographically lost, where is Manchester in relation to Shipley, why did my daughter have to travel 50 miles to get from one place to the other.  On the canal there is an old sign that says it is 18 miles to Manchester if you walk along the canal path.

Halifax and Huddersfield I have been to because of hospital appointments, Rochdale and Bradford as well, but all by train, bus and Uber, they all look alike to me.  I will never now at my age have the imprint of the area round me, it leaves me feeling lost. Also, I  may put West Yorks as my postal code but I think it is Lancashire, the boundary line crosses somewhere in the town.

In North Yorkshire,  definitely more countryside, we had three towns in which to do our shopping.  Pickering, Kirkbymoorside and Helmsley.  Just two supermarkets, the Co-op and Lidl and life was easy.  Not much traffic either.

Perhaps it is because I don't own a car anymore, I cannot make sense of which direction the train is going, is it going further North or is it travelling towards the South to Leeds maybe.  The place where most of the family seem to change train for London.

I have just seen one of those smart-arsed conservative politicians say to an audience, and  who wants to go to Bradford anyway.  He got a laugh but it was pathetic.

'We Plough the fields and scatter'

No wonder that hymn went through my head the other day  It is the time when tins of baked beans make their solemn way up the aisle of the church, clutched in the hands of tiny children and the vicar blesses the bountiful nature of harvest.  

People gather the riches of the hedgerow, blackberry jam bubbles on the stove and  sweet chestnuts are roasted on the fire. Well some people do, but it is probably dying out as a tradition.  

I don't like stuffed marrow

Sensible use of old stones from the past

Note the scythe

The homeliness of an old church

Yesterday a birthday popped up, it was an old friend of my son, Tian Chen, they both started at Beechen Cliff school together. A rush of memories. As when we arrived at the school for the introduction and Chen rushed up to us and started chattering away confidently to Mark.  His family lived up by the costume museum in Bath and many a night I would run him home.  He would bounce into the house, up the stairs to the kitchen to put the kettle on for his pot of noodles and then downstairs to my son's room and become engrossed in computer stuff.

I remember when he brought his computer over to gather some stuff and the computers were attached to each other, umbilical cord like, and the letters started dropping off the screen off one of the computers.  A hidden virus had erupted and panic ensued.  The early days of computers....

Normanby village barbecue (it was raining) that is why it is in a barn.

5th October 2023

 Well one down two more to go.  I am talking about party conferences.  Just remember to be rich, have a private helicopter in the background, and you won't have to worry about the rest of society. 

It reminds me of a whirlpool, we are all spinning round and round further down into the vortex until kind death grabs us. Okay a bit dramatic but the will we/wont we business of HS2 has finally been settled and the countryside is of course the loser. Having been upended and bulldozed through.

Murrmurrs has written another funny but very sad blog on the fate of the sagebrush lizard in America, you can read it here.  What is it with rich people? why do they want more money all the time.  Oil, fracking and it will be water soon as we begin to run out of this precious substance.  Lets make a profit and fuck the real living world.  

I am using that rude word having noticed how it ran for a brief time through the blogs..  I think it is an ugly word but good for describing a furious reaction.  In this household it is written on three mugs  F*** the Tories, and there is even a ruder word on one mug but I shall refrain.

Soon I will return to the gentler realms of looking back through old blogs, I thought to find the Harvest Festival at the church in Normanby.  It will be sad knowing that it was Jo and David who cared for the church so much who made the displays.  The bright red of apples against the greys of the stone, or the sharp colours of shaggy chrysanthemums and dahlias.  Old fashioned flowers, the chrysanthemums with that sharp Autumn smell.

Now the flowers at the supermarket look bright like artificial flowers and come from far away like South Africa.  Everything is a commodity these days.

A message zooms on my computer, my daughter asking if she should buy fish and chips on the way home tonight.  Didn't even know she had left the house but they are on a train.  An actual moving train without it being on strike.  It must be a joyous experience after yesterday when two hour journey's on buses left both of them exhausted.

The delicate and vulnerable world of mushrooms

Entering the wood

Photos that pop up on Facebook.  Autumn mushrooms at Blake Wood, along with sweet chestnuts.  This was one of my favourite walks.  In spring when the bluebells and wind anemones flowered and then in Autumn to gather sweet chestnuts and photograph the mushrooms.  There is a small video somewhere of the cuckoo's call.  

A small wood somewhere in Essex left to its own wild way, there was even a notice saying that the fallen trees from 1989 had been left in situ to complete their own ecosystem, something that may happen to the Sycamore tree so brutally cut down.  For under the tree and in the soil it occupies there are a million organisms creating the soil.  As in the following photographs as you will see the detritus of dead leaves, twigs and in the end the death of the mushrooms, they all recreate the humus that wild plants survive on.

Sweet chestnut tree

This last photo is of the Amethyst Deceiver, a young juvenile, lavendar coloured but it can seem quite blue as it matures.  Like the naming of moths, mushrooms apart from falling into same species families, can have exotic names.

Here is another mushroom hunt in Essex, Hanningfield Reservoir.

Catching the cuckoo

2nd October 2023

 A new book has just come out by Yanis Varoufakis -Technofeudalism: What killed Capitalism.

An interesting idea to play around with,  the three musketeers, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Facebook's Zuckerberg, hold the reins of power lightly.  Though Bezos has slipped from being the boss of Amazon but I am sure his policies still go on.  So should I read the book?  On reflection no, ideas are there just to provoke us and Varoufakis is someone who likes playing around with ideas.  As a dyed-in-the wool socialist he slightly lets the side down by living in a rather sumptuous way, if you are going to preach socialism go the whole hog.

But Audible is forever trying to make me buy more books. Audible is of course part of the Amazon empire, and although I can be occasionally tempted I have a good library there to fall back on.

Winter warmers: Or at least the Aga, which having been turned off, the pilot light must have succumbed to the storm winds.  The man came, and said the valve regulator for temperature was the wrong one.  My daughter is convinced he is the one that put it in last year.  The central heating also decided to have a little dance of refusal and spewed up cold water in place of hot. And as my daughter was away, Lillie and I braved the basement to attend the boiler.  My role was spider web removal and Lillie's pumping something.  It worked in the end, the spiders are safe but not my slippers!

One slipper was wet inside and I can only presume that Mollie peed in it. Very accurately I must say.  Why did she do it? Could it have been a punishment for me for closing the door on her so that she couldn't do her feline impersonation of Macbeth up and down the hallway in the night?She has a very loud voice and being deaf must need it to be loud! 

Edit: How can I forget what is happening in Manchester.

Sacha Lord has also prepared a welcome for the Conservatives.

30th September 2023

 Well an old tree has been chopped down by a silly adolescent.  A significant landmark in many people's lives.  The idiot got his five minutes of fame and now it is for the authorities to decide what to do.  To allow the shoots to grow from the chopped trunk of the tree, or maybe plant another mature tree (£100,000 quoted this morning). 

It is a sycamore, a tree which spreads its seed with great abundance over lawns, driveways but probably not in the more inhospitable environment it found itself in the Northumberland Park Authorities at Hadrian's Wall.

Sentiment is a fine thing as long as it does not go overboard.  Such news pushes the more serious news out of the limelight and we can once again vent our righteous anger at the little toe rag who thought he was being clever. Robert  Macfarlane the poet says we should plant a forest in the tree's memory.  Though that seems rather going over the top, but more trees are always welcome.

But we can also take action, firstly by signing the Woodland Trust petition and then respecting these givers of oxygen, shade for our streets and just beautiful creatures that take up their space on Earth with such grace a modicum of protection against the vandals who would chop them down.  That of course includes the trail of the HS2 rail from the South to the North which has vandalised so many old woodlands along its route.

27th September 2023

I am so happy tonight, the family matter which has hung like a cloud over us all has been resolved.  What the future may bring is something we don't know but for this instance in time, this moment, the family won.

This is what I wrote last night and that is all I shall say about it.  Because we have to wake up in the cold light of day and face yet another refugee crisis.....crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave of ethnic Armenians surrounded by Azerbaijan' 120 thousand refugees fleeing in desperate concern from the possibility of ethnic cleansing. They lose their homes, land and animals, the stark reality of shifting boundaries and war.  There seems so many refugee camps around the world, that it is as if the Earth itself has shifted on its point of equilibrium.  It reminds me of ants the human race, rushing around being nothing but busy, hostility is the name of the game.

So I shall record the things that have pleased me, Amazon is being taken to court for controlling the market - yah! America thank you.

The Trump problem is also going through the courts he has been telling lies about how much his property portfolio is - tell me about it!

I was watching, it may have been  'State of Chaos' when the presenter Laura Kuenssberg detailed in elegant language our calamitous decline under the conservatives and she said that when Johnson had tried to prorogue parliament the stepping in of the law held at bay the right of government to overstep the right of law.  Johnson was accused of lying to the Queen.  And don't ask where Truss and Kwarteng were in the debate, just read this long wiki report.

Politics parked for the moment.  I shall go and watch some funny doggy antics on a video to clear my mind ;)

25th September 2023 - The Fens by Francis Pryor

The book I am listening to at the moment is The Fens by Francis Pryor.  It is partly an autobiographical book but also about his archeological exploits in the East of this country, Flag Fen Neolithic Causeway and surrounding area, in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire being the most important.  His wife Maisie is also an archaeologist, or perhaps I should say a conservationist for she is the one that overlooks the preservation of the timber.

The greatest find in this part of the country was of course the timber 'Sea Henge' nestling by the sea in the sand at Holme-Next-To-The-Sea.  Couldn't get any easier than that when trying to find the village! The movement of the sand dunes and the tides had uncovered it.

It was an exciting find made in 1998, there is hardly any stone in this part of the country so to find a wooden circle still standing was pretty amazing.  It is not exactly a circle as a stone one would be, more likely a place where excarnation took place.  For in the centre of the timbers was a large upturned trunk of a tree, its roots splayed out.  Excarnation, probably practised in the Neolithic Age was the exposure of the dead body to the elements and birds, not a nice sight.

The tree itself holds a malign force but that could owe more to the imagination that the tree trunk, it needs a name to personify it.

To go back to the book and author.  Francis Pryor also writes, who-dun-it books and now in his old age runs a small herd of sheep.  They have a beautiful garden which is open each year for a charity.  His archaeology is prehistoric and the fenlands of Cambridgeshire and beyond. 

It was the landscape that caught the magic, silvery plants, hedging down the beach path, dunes stretching back to woods, so different to what I had experienced to that moment.  The depth of the landscape flat and wild, going on into infinity.  I can think of long beaches like the Gower or Newgale but there was always a backdrop and an end stop of cliffs.  Flat land just dissolves into the distance.

2012 - Sea Henge

23rd September 2023 - Talking of gods

A temple screen.  Fish swim over the bridge for good fortune. 

Talking of gods: There are many of them Greek, Roman, Scandinavians, etc, etc.  Paul used to have them dotted round the house, little gods for everything.  In the kitchen above the stove, in the library room where he would ring the ringing bowl on Sunday.  I don't think he was religious it was just part of habit and ritual.

There are many temples and gods in Japan, great trees are decorated with rope and the gateway to the many temples through which you enter takes you to a different realm.

Last night there was a shock, a private matter of one of the family who has taken a decision which was very surprising and sad.  I lit candles as a vigil and also as a mark of respect.

I think belief is individual and that we accept whatever other people think is right for it is their decision.

The other day I had an email from Paul's cousin, to see how I was faring.  In it he mentioned that he had an article about Paul's time in Japan. I remembered I had a similar article, but could not find it - despair.  But then I carefully sifted through my bookcase and found it and one day I will copy it on to file to be read.  

A garden Boddhisattva

Who is my favourite god, well it is not Gaia, think I would choose Woden, who has such lovely stories told of him, I shall find one of them soon.  Glad some books didn't go to Oxfam but I took the family silver to them;)

And why I don't believe in gods.........

Celtic Gods

Roman Temple

And I have just discovered a comment from Tom Stephenson below the above 'Roman Temple' blog which I did not answer but it pleases me to know someone recognised the work I put into that blog. Chuckle

You have refreshed my sense of good luck that I live in the middle of all this. I have reset great blocks of stone which were the portal between the Temple Precinct and the Great Bath, finding Celtic artefacts underneath it. I park my car on Walcot Street, and I often wonder what lies underneath it, like the body of Richard the Third in that car park.

Willowed

 Dark and light, equal parts

at the time of Mabon

Fire and earth together

balance, harmony, security

these things shall be mine.

I have no idea where that little saying comes from, but as the year turns we should acknowledge not only the season but the turning of the world as well.

Paganism, of which I have written a lot about, has sort of sneaked in by the backdoor.  People who do not consider themselves Christian take on this new form of worship, but it is interpreted in many different ways.

The rather incongruous 'offerings' at Swallowhead spring which meets the River Kennet at this junction

The old stones know this only too well, as people solemnly gather at their circles, sometimes to watch the sunrise or sunset. It is thought that many stones have a relationship within the landscape but with also tracing the movement of the sun through the skies and the year.  Wander round the country as I once did and you will also find 'offerings' at wells.

The Old willow tree

Not being a social animal I have never quite understood the need to worship anything, rather I would remain calm within the bounds of beauty the Earth shows to us.  The infinitely exquisite life that nature presents to us.

River Kennet serenely untroubled by worship

Tolkien saw Old Man Willow as a troublesome creature, able to grab you in  those twining branches of his.  A tree Ent who had turned into a malign cruel tree spirit.  Do those who leave their offerings at the old willow tree in Avebury think of this, or is the magical happening of an underground stream joining a larger river, a bit like Mother Earth welcoming her child.  See what nonsense you can pluck out of the air!

Well Rishi Sunak, thanks for being a spokesman for the Conservative Party and selling us once more down the river of (what words to use??)

I dismiss greed and corruption, though they are definitely there. But perhaps a shallow selfish need to appeal to the readers of the Daily Mail is it? Climate change is happening, whether by fire or water in other parts of the world.  We have sailed through one more year safely, our harvests safe in store but millions haven't, perhaps we should think of them as well?

I shall light a candle or two because candlelight is a beautiful thing in the dark.  A rather perilous thing to do with Mad Mollie's zooming round the room.

Blogs on Druidism:

Notes;

Earlier notes

20th September 2023

Antique print but not of a flower clock

 The Flower Clock an idea of Carl Linnaeus.

Things that grab your interest as you float by articles on the internet and flower clocks was just one of them yesterday.  It was Carl Linnaeus (1707 to 1778).  Now the logical mind will pick holes in the theory.  Latitude for one, flowers open differently in different parts of the world.  But there in Upssala in Sweden he tried it out, not by planting a flower clock but noting the timing of when flowers opened.  I remember watching an evening primrose unfurl (yes it was evening).  Slightly amazed I watched as it first appeared to open and then shrivel up on itself and then unfurled completely with a flourish.  Of course in this time of climate change flowers will open earlier in the year but will they keep time with the clock I wonder?

Yesterday a tune came on Radio 3, 'Oh what a beautiful morning, Oh what a beautiful day', the corn is high as an elephant's eye' and it reminded me of childhood and of singing this song with my then brother.  The other song we used to sing was She'll becoming round the mountain when she comes" we would sing with great gusto! and she was probably wearing pink pajamas.

Funnily enough my daughter and Lillie went to see 'Annie' at the Opera House, Manchester last night.  Which they both enjoyed, tickets were free as Tom's partner does the PR there.  I did not go  I cannot sit still in theatres or cinemas for more than two hours and facing Manchester is scary.  Still a country girl at heart.

18th September 2023

 

This is the River Chelmer a navigational river, it potters through Chelmsford, and then down by where we used to live. A classic slow moving river bounded on either side by banks of lushness.  To walk down the path when the cow parsley was at its height of flowering was to truly experience the sheer delight of nature.  Irises, bulrushes and water lilies were the flowers of the river.  Tiny ducklings and coots and the solemn sailing by of swans.

From Paper Mill lock we would take the path in summer and wind our way down, sometimes as far as Beeleigh.  Sleek brown horses grazed the field at one point at another was the old church sat quietly by the waterside.

There is one thing that I like about the 'green belt' rule is that people are not allowed to build willy-nilly on any piece of land.  This has protected many beautiful spots.

 I was going to write about dopplegangers.  Naomi Klein has written a book about hers.  Naomi Wolf to be precise, who is often muddled with Klein.  She is a Canadian writer, with an ability to write about capitalism and politics with a fervour that is sometimes difficult to understand but you can hear her in this podcast.

So to the photos to soothe the outside world away......

17th September 2023

 Autumn is definitely here.  Yesterday the Aga responded to efforts too light it and Lillie managed to find the right combination and it stayed lit.  It makes a great difference, that slight feeling of damp has gone'

Also the large cast aluminum casserole pot arrived yesterday.  It was expensive (Lakeland) but will sit nicely on the hot plates of the Aga. As I do a lot of the cooking, the presence of the Aga is a great relief.  I suddenly remembered the other day a sauce Paul used to cook with.  'Blue Dragon'  Black Bean Sauce.  Finely sliced cabbage, spring onions, noodles and chicken if I remember right.  Last night I cooked roasted vegetables and we had a quiche with them. 

Great excitement about Dispatches last night which I didn't watch, all about Russell Brand and his past history.  Sexual misconduct blows through the air with great gusts of exposé material.  How many men are looking back at their past and worrying? Luckily it seems that it is those that have made some sort of name for themselves in the media.

I have no love for Russell Brand, apparently he is one of those right wing conspiracy theorist as well but as I do not look at his videos cannot verify that.

It is funny though, that those faces you experience on television can suddenly erupt into another type of person as well.  Here I am thinking of Neil Oliver, now to be seen with his flowing locks exposing/being part of, other conspiracy theories.  Remember when he just presented history, standing dramatically on a hill with the wind blowing through his hair?

But then life has many possibilities, they have dragged up those 'aliens' again to have a 'proper' look at them, they look so scary I am not even going to put a picture of them up, were they not found by the Nazca Lines in Peru?  False of course.

Perhaps the 'Horn of Ulf' is a better picture, when the Viking Lord Ulf rode from the district round my own village to York to hand this drinking horn along with his lands to the Bishop of York.  He just got fed up with his sons arguing over their inheritance.

Is it not beautiful though, sadly made of an elephant's tusk and made in Italy.  Carved in the Islamic style.

Also, why not this gold jewellery found in 2008 in West Yorks.  As 'Treasure' it belongs to the state, so we can only hope The British Museum does not lose this small hoard!  It dates from about the 7th century to the 11th century

And lastly, but so weird, the four tall gold conical European hats of the Bronze Age.  What wizards wore them and how did they keep them on their heads is my question. 

Calendrical Device?

According to what is written about them, they could well be part of a Sun culture, they are (supposedly) representative of the Urnfield Culture and were buried in the ground.

A reminder: The Lansdown Gold disc 

Also to remember the funny 'Blooper' video of Rupert Soskin and Michael Bott 'The Prehistory Guys' visit to many of the sites I know.

15th September 2023

Saint Caedmon's Cross.  Victorian of course.

Well my daughter arrived back yesterday evening. Slightly panicking that no one would open the door.  She rang my phone three times, and I tried to answer it, but even when I press the green sign it never opens up.  Remember the bad old days?* tring-tring in the corner of the landline phone, pick up, say your number, and then you had a conversation.

Pick up my mobile. Password please firstly. I have put facial recognition on it as well but often the little bugger will say 'face not recognised'. As if.

Technology is so wired up! And we are expected to conduct our money transactions on it, for crying in a bucket.... Anyway I let her in, and she had bought Swiss chocolate bars back and had a good time.

I notice some bloggers are off to the land of university learning, something I admire but won't be doing, my brain is saturated as it is, it doesn't want anymore facts and learning curves, it needs REST.

But if I had to go to university, my choice would be old languages.  I have always loved the Saxon(old English) poetry that has come down in various forms.  The following is 'Caedmon's poem.  A poem made by a farm hand at Whitby Abbey, it came to him in the night.  This is the 11th century Saxon below;

Nu we sculan herian / heofonrices Weard,

Metodes mihte / and his modgepone,

weore Wulderfaeder; / swa he wundra gehwaes,

ece Dryhten. / ord onstealde.

He aerest gesceop. / eordan bearnum

heofen to hrofe, / halig Scyppend;

oa middongeard / moneynnes Weard,

ece Dryhten, / aefter teodefirum foldan, / frea aelmihtig.  

English translation: Although to be honest the above is English as well.

Praise now to the keeper of the kingdom of heaven,

the power of the creator, the profound mind

of the glorious father, who fashioned the beginning

of every wonder, the eternal lord.

For the children of men he made first

heaven as a roof, the holy creator.

Then the lord of mankind the everlasting shepherd,

ordained in the midst as a dwelling place,

almighty lord, the earth for men.

This 7th century Christian poem, said to be the first, may of course be one of the stories that Whitby Abbey manufactured to bring in the pilgrims.  It is also said, that the Abbess  Hilda, threw the snakes over the side of the cliff.  But of course weren't snakes but the ammonites frozen in time in the rock face of the cliffs.

Time to move Caedmon’s Cross? | The Heritage Trust (wordpress.com)

14th September 2023

 What to write?  I have just been listening to Spiegel in Spiegel. Repetitive you might say, but for me the calmest piece of music on this earth, it eases out the frenetic rush of life.  Followed by 'Lost Words' songs and a young girl singing 'Dancing in the Dark' on the streets.  She is joined by a young Italian, who then gives a perfect rendition of the song in Italian.

Well normal weather has resumed, my hands are cold as I type, a little miaow in the corner tells me that Mollie is still alive and I have prepared her windowsill for looking out on the world.

A F/B friend is making her way towards Whitby, through her photos I have seen Pickering and Malton and I can just imagine the crowds at Whitby.  My daughter and Paul did not like Whitby but I did.  It had a vibrancy with the great crush of people and the 101 (exaggeration) fish and chip shops, the smell lingering on the air.

So a few more photos to fill the space

A slice of green marble as a centre pierce

The bridge has been opened to let the taller ships through.  People crowd on either side.

This cliff in Henrietta Street had a fall of soil and rocks.  It moved the shed of the little shop that smoked kippers.

Think this is the 'Jolly Sailor', always full of locals.  Could have been the beer.

Looking back to the other side of Whitby and Grand Hotel

When the cliff collapsed behind Henrietta Street.  A couple of years later further down into Whitby and the same thing happened again.  Six cottages had to be pulled down.

Whitby Mudslides

Traditional Whitby Smokehouse at risk from landslides

12th September 2023

Well not being upstaged by blogger, I shall try once more.  It was photographs I had put on from the past it was North Yorkshire the fabulously named Murk Mire Moor.  A moor that lies in North Yorks, and with standing stones along the narrow lane that bisects the moor.  Now whether they are prehistoric or in fact prehistoric stones moved to lead the traveller through the snow over the moors is hard to say but they follow the single lane.

It is probably one of my most favourite places on this Earth, the sight of rolling purple heather, though dark brown when it has died off, the hill down to the beck and the rowan trees that line the beck.  Lucy always trying to get in the beck and Paul never letting her (she would wet his precious car). 

Here I had heard the curlew and cuckoo, watched a clutch of baby  grouse scuttle across the lane and wondered about the old stones that had once so it is told been a cottage used as a hostel.

Sheep of course are the main occupants this high up.

Ferns and in the background forestry plantation are part of the moors.

An unmarked or chewed fly agaric.  Considering they are poison, something must eat them.

Though no expert I somehow think this is a Russula mushroom

This is a favourite photo.  The moss and fallen branch capture the moment, Jan Morris's 
"square yard" in which you can capture the history of the place.

click on the photos for a better experience.

Three Howes Barrows | The Heritage Trust (wordpress.com) which is on the moors.

Three Howes Barrows

North Stoke: Mirk Mire Moor stones