Good things and bad things.

My dear friend J phoned up yesterday evening, we both have problems with our phones but it was lovely to hear her chatter.  She has had the same problem with Daisy's garden centre bringing the wrong stuff, instead of one pot of a dozen sweet peas, they delivered 12 pots.  Also had one of those Jacquie Lawson cards from a friend in America, she lived in Lampeter, and when we were young we went out dancing in Aberayron, and then she moved to America with her husband and only occasionally came back to England.

In the background the radio only has one subject, criticising the leader of America at the moment, but the subject of this virus dominates the airwaves all the time.

Quibbling now, there is not enough testing but that of course means because the testing gear needs to be structured to meet the demand.  But one thing must never be forgotten and that is a lack of humanity.  For all those who say a 'few thousand old people death's will not be important' that sort of thinking is the downward  slippery slope of morality.  Care homes have been neglected, perhaps because because they were not thought of as important, but their workers are also front line workers and need testing quickly.

Next of course is the 'economy' it will bring devastating effects world wide and also in this country.  But remember this (tongue in cheek) the Conservatives are fighting for their own survival, so in a way they are fighting for ours!

But a moral question: If large quantities of vaccinations come on the market, where should they go?  For instance morally it would be kinder to see they go to places like Africa and India because of their much larger populations, not diverting them like a president, who thinks nothing of taking other people's stuff to further his own career.

 Back to 'fluffy' things  Here the sun shines, as life springs with a strong force, nature is oblivious to suffering of course.  My small kitten is settling down to the garden, follows the bantams around and plays with them.  She even snoozed on the step of the french doors in the sun, think she needs a flea treatment though.  My friend in Cornwall wrote yesterday, he raises working collies and has a new pup in training, and I can just see him with his few sheep in the large field he owns with Spottie on a lead.

The calm aspect of an Eric Ravilous painting...............The sweeping curves of the downs, very female you can almost see why in prehistory the Mother goddess was worshipped.

Easter Monday

Well I went off and found this little snippet of a video.  The little ones's Scottish accent is so cute, not a word I use often, but still.  I definitely wasn't as articulate as that at her age, and probably never questioned Jesus's relationship with Easter eggs. But enjoy.

 

Simon Thompson on his blog  mentioned stitchwort on their blog, a plant I look out for every year, and because I am being lazy about blog writing, collected my old blogs links......

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2010/05/bluebells.html

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2016/05/thursday-12th-may.html


https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2009/12/idle-flowers-by-robert-bridges.html

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2007/05/silbury-hill-seeds.html

Happy Easter everyone - let there be a good harvest this year

      

Apples and pears for a good harvest.  I remember planting Orleans Reinette with the Reverend Wilkes nearby.  Sex starts with Spring!

A rose with words that I can't read!

Each photo will tell its own story, the one above I sent to my daughter this morning, did not work properly but we spent a good half an hour on the phone chattering, three of the above are practically grown-up now.

Heroes

This assistant head teacher is delivering food to some of his pupils, weep for such selfless acts.

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-news/hero-teacher-walking-over-fives-3988622

Good Friday again

Beautiful videos from Liziqi, she must be the most hardworking person on this earth.  Everything is handmade and if you explore her videos you will see food prepared with great skill and artistry.  It seems an idyllic life but lots of hard work, and one thing you will gather from this is the limited amount of materials that the Chinese (amended) had in past history to work with.  Indigo dyeing is probably one of the most difficult things to do, the 'resist' method of translating a pattern laborious, you will see the process in the video before this, but the above video shows the material she has made.

Went shopping yesterday, mostly for the animals, stood our two metres distance over the bridge to the Co-op, and only a few were let in at a time to the supermarket.  There were empty shelves and less green grocery, but still plenty to buy.

It was the curlew yesterday, the tale of the cuckoo will be the next.  Each year I find the old blogs and reread that which I wrote several years ago.

Not forgetting hares at Easter

Sitting Hare - by Charles Tunnicliffe (1901 - 1979)

But the c    

The story of Saint Melangell and her little hare

 Story of Saint Melangell and her little hare. She was the daughter of King Cufwlch and Ethni of Ireland and she fled to Wales to escape a forced marriage. She settled in Pennant at the head of a valley, and whilst one day sitting in a clearing she heard the sound of a hunt, dogs and horses galloping up the valley. This was Prince Brochwael of Powys hunting hares. As she sat a hare came into the clearing and Melangell hid it in the sleeve of her dress to protect it. When it peeped out the dogs fled, and so the Prince gave her the land on which he hunted, and she lived at Pennant for another 37 years and no animal was killed in her sanctuary. Hares were known as wyn bach Melangell or Melangell's little lambs, and to kill a hare was an act of sacrilege.

This story is taken from "The Book of Welsh Saints" T.D. Breverton, and there are other versions of the tale. But at Llanfihangel-y-Pennant near Llangynog is probably the site of her foundation, because on the church's medieval rood-screen are little hares.

1795 drawing 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melangell

Of course it must not be forgotten that the term Easter comes from the Anglo-Saxon Goddess Eostre as Bede states here;

The English Months. In olden time the English people – for it did not seem fitting to me that I should speak of other nations' observance of the year and yet be silent about my own nation's – calculated their months according to the course of the moon. Hence after the manner of the Hebrews and the Greeks, [the months] take their name from the moon, for the moon is called mona and the month monath. The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; February is called Sol-monath; March Hreth-monath; April, Eostur-monath; May Thrimilchi... Eostur-monath has a name which is now translated Paschal month, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. (Eostur-monath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a dea illorum quae Eostre vocabatur et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit.) Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

Resting Hare by Andrew Hartington




Paintings courtesy of Brigit Strawbridge Howard

What I picked up today

I notice Brigit Strawbridge Howard's favourite bird is the curlew as it is mine, their bubbling sound on the moors makes the heart stop beating for a while.  So before I get to the nitty gritty of today, something to soothe the battered breast if not the battered ear.

Water's Edge Curlew by Scottish artist Claire Harkness

https://soundcloud.com/curlewmedia/curlew?fbclid=IwAR2Se6lP6GpIuN4fpIPVPfioDYzkkIIZyB17TMSFnQJxlkE9kLmuHKghI5Q

Will there be change? A question that flutters in the air, look at the article on how - Lockdown has Laid Down Bare Britain's Class Divide. Class divisions are reflected in the space of a house or garden that we may live in. Parks are for public use, they were brought in by the Victorians to ameliorate the tight squeeze of living in a town or city, closing them down may not be the most sensible of actions. Like everyone I wish Boris Johnson full health in the coming days, but nurses are not necessarily happy with the choices that have been made, and the slogan 'May they never be deemed 'low skilled again' bites home. Especially when in a care home in Whitby all the staff, care workers have locked themselves in with their charges. All over the country there are acts of supreme unselfishness that should humble us and question what is important in the scheme of things.

Did Capitalism work?? yes for some but many others lagged behind. Greta Thunberg, asked the question, if it only brings a virus to topple the world, we can't be living in a very secure environment, or words to that effect.

Easyjet and Branson of Virgin fame should examine their consciences, Supermarkets are putting profit to one side and working with the public to see that everyone is fed. Paying out obscene amounts of money to CEOs is not the right answer nor squirrelling it away in the Virgin Islands so that you don't pay tax. Not all bad, one CEO Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame is apparently going to donate one quarter of his money to the Corona19 fight.

Virgin Atlantic - Asking for a £500 million taxpayer bailout from the government.Virgin Galactic -

Moving Branson's $1.1 BILLION stake into tax havens.Verging on the ridiculous - The behaviour of some companies & bosses during this crisis.…

A  congratulation from our police force, Ryedale communities are 98% staying at home.  Actually I feel sorry for all the delivery drivers.

Stretching the imagination

Climbing up on Solsbury Hill
I could see the city light
Wind was blowing, time stood still
Eagle flew out of the night

Bread and scones made this morning, and some gardening this afternoon.  Our local garden centre, has advertised online all their new vegetable plants for sale, so I ordered some, he delivers round here.  I had different plans for this year, moving away from this house but now we are all stuck in limbo and so I must stay.  I started digging the small patch where I had planted potatoes last year, and got some more new ones out of the ground, an added bonus.

As a bread maker the need for yeast is important, nothing much online, so I scouted around the sourdough videos.  Watched with shocked horror this artisan chef make his loaf over surely must be a whole day.  He kept coming back and turning the dough from four directions, very precise.

Palm Sunday last Sunday, and it made me remember walking up Solsbury Hill on Good Friday years ago, it is a good walk up a steep hill but I met all these people walking up with a very large cross.  All happy and talking to me as well.  The second photo is of a maze on top of Solsbury Hill, it overlooks the A46 out of Bath, where also many years ago there was ructions about it being enlarged and this maze was drawn in the grass by the tree protesters.  More to be found here.

 

I have always liked the juxtaposition of Pagananism with Christianity, where  'space' can offer many religions.  Of course, Christianity went round stamping on all the other religions but it is like stamping out a fire, small flare-ups still continue.
Enjoy the romping video of Peter Gabriel below as he also finds Solsbury Hill a place of great inspiration, and no we never had eagles in Bath!

Getting round to monday

a bit of scare this morning, I felt unwell, it had started last night, but it is just what I call a sick headache, which are married I think to migraines, those wretched headaches that will make you bring your stomach up and lie in darkened rooms cursing any noise.  Messaging my daughter about the jigsaw site for Lillie, I had said it was weird feeling lonely and it brings home all the complications of being ill.  Well I am getting better, and don't have to sort my will out!  So what did my magpie instincts pick up today.  Loads of photos I have,  realising that my need to walk, explore and research has been an ongoing passion in my life.  Lots of lovely photos of grandchildren posing and pulling faces for the camera, and above all a realisation that life has been very kind to me.  We cannot measure the good things against the bad for both must come our way.

Is anybody in there?

Lillie was a fashion queen who always chose her own clothes to wear, those furry boots went through summer.  Anyone recognise the 'L' sign - you're a loser, a bad habit she picked up

The family at Gruyere a couple of years ago, somewhere I have a photo of me, my daughter and Marc her cousin about 40 years ago near the same spot.

Proud granny hen with three grandchildren

Lillie not talking to anyone, not eating her food, this was the era of sitting on the naughty step! she will hate me for this.  Matilda at an earlier time and about the same age, once sat in this doorway, after having collected her doll to cuddle and made herself comfortable - howled.  

Paul having to come to terms with little ones...He never quite understood how these two girls worked out the code on his brief case in under a minute. But if you will choose your birth date?

Perhaps tomorrow I will write something sensible, I can hear the long tailed tits moving through the garden and I resent a day going by without doing something in the way of work, but then............ there is nobody to see if I have vacuumed or not ;)
Playing with jigsaws link  recommended by a blogger friend.

Sunday 5th April

Have just been for a walk with Lucy, and startled the heron who was in the field the other side of the river.  Well life is not so solitary, yesterday a cockerel and hen invaded the garden, they belong to Nelson I am sure as his hens are often to be found wandering the verge side.  The cockerel I managed to get through the gate yesterday but the hen sits glumly behind the oil tank this morning.

Tried to watch 'Independence Day' yesterday, but a disaster movie was too much!  And as an aside, just checked, and the Labrador dog Boomer survives. The American film industry does a good style in apocalyptic movies, just not the right mood film for the moment unfortunately. Perhaps 'Little Women' would have been a better offering.

Later of course!

Photos I can't resist, Lillie in her younger days.  Have worked in the garden and weeded, no seeds anywhere but I have found nasturtiums to plant, got the stray hen boxed in and with a lot of wing flapping managed to get her over the fence, peace now reigns in the garden but not in the house as Radio2 chatters its rhythms out.  It may not be a joyous time, but aren't people wonderful, and I do truly think for all those 'key' workers, remember to vote for extra wages for them next time around.

Strangely happy for once

I woke up this morning to the sound of the radio at 6ish, I do not sleep well at night, so often have the radio on during the night.  It was a nature programme these two young people and their three young children were self-isolating at home in the garden. And the two adults were talking about the swans, geese and red kites in their Chiltern garden next to the river.  It was a perfect moment of how times have changed, as broadcasters stare down from assorted rooms (often small) rooms in their own houses and talk to us.  Just one of the changes we experience in this time of self-isolation, and it is a very pleasant change.  Will, when everything returns to some sort of 'normal' this be the future?

I gathered myself together at 6.30 and get up to the sun rising in the East an orange tinge to everything, my little kitten 'Green Eyes' was already peering over the wall for breakfast, so pot of tea made, I went into the garden, the sound of the woodpecker drumming away in the distance.  Fed her biscuits, opened the doors to the chicken coop.  My two nameless bantams have been supplying me with delicious small eggs, deep yellow yolks that colour homemade mayonnaise and cakes the colour of a daffodil.

Yesterday, the man from the garden centre left his box of green grocery on the door steps, with food also for the birds, half my bill covered that.  But as my feeders twirl merrily on the whirligig clothes line at least I shall have entertainment of an avian form.

Rod the gardener comes today to cut the lawn, he will either come with his daughter or wife to do a speedy job (mmm).  He will stand the necessary space needed from the front door and I suppose I will place his money on the doorstep.

Life goes on but in a different way! virtual tours will be resumed later.

More photos - Coggeshall

A tithe; To pay or give to the church 10 per cent of your income. That is how the churches and monks of England flourished, the first taxes of course.  The medieval peasant paid with his labour, maybe some chickens or a calf, it was called serfdom, or perhaps feudalism..  You were tied by ownership of land to your lord or abbot, not quite slavery, you did have some rights of course.

So a tithe barn had to be large for the gathering of crops and the preparation of the crops, winnowing for a start.  I can think of two great tithe barns, one was at Bradford St. Avon in Wiltshire, the other at Coggeshall Abbey in Essex.

Again the wonderful timber work inside has born the brunt of centuries of farming. 

I remember this visit not just for visiting the few remaining buildings of the old abbey but for the garden we passed on our way and the lovely old mill we found at the end of the green lane.  Still untouched by the hand of modernisation, protected by their listings.  The abbey was to become Cistercian, and did not have a very exciting history, and at the Dissolution only had 6 monks living there.

I think this must be the St.Nicholas chapel

]I have a weakness for the yellow of laburnum shrubs.

Farm buildings now, but early medieval brickwork interspersed with flint

Essex mills are all very similar

In Essex the plastered houses are often painted with soft shades of  pink or other colours, and  may have pargetting, a form of patterning on the plaster.

As Yorkshire Pudding says, the styles of building belong to the different areas  within the landscape and of course the materials you find in these areas.  That is why the beautiful honey stone of the Cotswold is found in those tourist rich villages.

A Zombie love Affair = George Monbiot

The commons are neither capitalist nor communist, market nor state. They are an insurgency of social power, in which we come together as equals to confront our shared predicaments.

Thursday 2nd April

Medieval timbered houses.  Lavenham in Suffolk.  I remember visiting this town on a cold day, funnily enough there are no photos of the church of St.Peter and Paul, but we definitely went in because I remember someone cleaning up the bat mess on the floor.  Bats are of course privileged creatures and not allowed to be exterminated, even if they do mess up our churches.  As a matter of interest Lavenham was one of the richest towns in Medieval times because of the wool trade.  One of my interests is the construction of old houses and the diversity you experience round the countryside.  Wood, plaster, stone and brick gives ample opportunity for originality.  The lopsided appearance of timber built houses has an extra appeal as they always look as if they are falling down.

You will notice that the buildings have an overhang, this is called a 'jetty' and there are several architectural reasons for this, but my favourite is that when the contents of the 'piss pots' were thrown out of the top windows you could protect yourself by walking next to the house.
The inn is called the Swan, many pubs are, and it must be to do with the fact that a swan was eaten during medieval times by Henry viii. I always remember in the television adaption of 'Wolf Hall' written by Hilary Mantel, that king Henry killed one of two birds on the lake and ate it, it was perhaps symbolic of his ability to divorce his wives, for as everyone knows swans mate for life.  Luckily swans live under royal protection and now no one can kill them.

The Swan Inn

Who cannot love a fierce dragon

I find this beautiful silver grey wood beguiling, but wonder if the wood has been bleached?

Herringbone brick inserted. At a later stage?

Being content and looking round old photos,

I notice there are some with time on their hands. As we face the shock of the news each day and are contained in self-isolation in our homes.  In some homes the cry goes up 'what can we do'  I am sure there is plenty to do, we have electricity, tvs, radios. and computers.  And of course those two useful things at the end of our arms called hands.  We are not stuck in a Syrian refugee camp with limited medical care, or in India traipsing back 100s of kilometres in fear back to our villages.  We should not however feel complacent about that, but extend compassion and money.  Was it Hockney who said there is one thing certain after birth and that is death.

One of the silly games that are going round on F/B is putting up a photo of the sea, why I am not sure.  The sea is beautiful but one of its magic senses is sound, the soft swish of the waves back and forward on the beach over the sand or stone.  The above are all from Pembrokeshire, cliff walks on sunny days.

Carreg Samson

And Moss at Carreg Samson

Yesterday the doorbell rang, there stood the postman 6 foot away with a pile of (mostly junk) mail on the ground between us.  He asked if I needed anything which was most generous of him.  Then a little note came through the door from Natalie the window cleaner, saying to phone if we did not need her. Though I must say she does miss corners, I would not stop her for anything, we pay by BACS and a brief conversation is all that's needed, and no I don't have the courage to say anything about missed corners!