Benches and Butterflies

The Tale of a Bench; Could be told in pictures, but on Saturday, some lads moved a bench from one end of the green to our end. putting it on the mound which is such a great attraction to children and adults.  As time went by we kept an eye on it, the council man this morning did not take it back to its usual place, probably H&S, or different people to do this job.

Many people have sat on this bench, over the last couple of days, it was even toppled over this morning by the boys going to school, but righted mysteriously sometime later, probably by a dog walker.  Fascinating said I, it reminded me of a moment in time when you could leave books on a bench and they would be picked up by a passer by and recorded by some organisation on the net, it never actually caught on round here.  Could be that the bench got here under its own steam, deciding it wanted a different outlook on life, its days are numbered of course, the council already knows about it absconding!

Butterflies: One thing I notice about this part of Essex is that there is no brimstone butterflies at this time of year, the garden in Bath always had them, echoing the daffodils which they had just replaced.
Orange tips are around in the garden as are the holly blues, always difficult to catch with their wings wide open showing that lovely deep blue.

At the woods the other day was this peacock butterfly basking in the sun...

This morning a sparrow hawk flew low over the green, I had been wondering why our doves seemed so spooked, the hawk was probably the reason, and we only have one coming down....

A Journey to a Far Land

I have just fallen in love with these beautiful shepherd dogs, a life style so different from ours, but am not sure that I could live on mutton stew for life but the simplicity  of the shepherds seems a long way from ours.  On facebook I have a couple of Indian 'friends', and wise Bula Imam is one of them and it is a delight to wander round his landscape of India and listen to his musings, it was from him that I found the following link. 

http://www.tagiko.com/a-journey-among-the-central-asian-shepherds-at-work

And to our world; Standing Stone comes from Bath, my home city once, and he in the tradition of all good protestors went up to London to video the protests that took place on Saturday.  There is some dissent in the country thank goodness, notice the police have refined their tactics as to 'kettling', a rather cruel practice of holding people for hours on end.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtxqVc9XHM

Sunday, 10th May - Never write in Stone

Where is the green and promised land I though might exist one day, actually I did not, even the Green Party hardly know where they are going.  But what has troubled me and plenty of others is the 'false' and scary nationalism that erupted under UKIP, and the stark silliness of Milliband and his stone; never ever write in stone! Stick with prehistoric cromlechs, they have managed to survive the millenia.  That is of course what Milliband lacked, maturity, the ability to tackle the real issues of poverty in this country, do I see 'zero contracts' on his tablet of promises, all I see is a vagueness  of aspirations projecting into the future, actually I am quite sorry for him, he is a 'geek' who could not even find the rhetoric to name his values.

LS wants to go up to Yorkshire to see the house, though I am not sure it is a wise move, as we should be moving at some stage soon.  Though the village is tiny, just opposite in one of the cottages there is a lady who will alter our curtains, and a husband who will put up curtain rods - joy, we have spoken to her on the phone, friendly and chatty....

It is weird how matters are conducted these days, mostly through emails, though there are always  actual papers to sign to formalise everything.  When we clear out the clutter of old correspondence, which is a boring affair, it does at least remind you of past times, but who can scroll through thousands of emails to find a (yes I do file in folders) particular communications, and where is the fun of a beautiful House of Commons letter from your MP when you decide to pick up pen and write your grievances - all gone.

I am tentatively looking at dogs in rescue homes online in Yorkshire, dearly love another collie but we will see, there does not seem to be many walking areas in the village, though you can walk by the river.

Coetan Arthur Cromlech hidden in a rocky landscape

Self  belief

Saturday 9th May

Eddie Procter in his blog 'The Wake' sums up the feeling of the few who viewed with mounting despair the Election results yesterday, there I was waiting for a shake-up in the voting patterns it did not happen. We are condemned to five years of Tory servitude, my heart sinks, as the constant
background chatter of the commentators adjusts our nation's thinking to the 'safe option'.  Three leaders down, does not break my heart, I wanted a different pattern to appear.  Chaotic maybe, honest definitely, the ability to  look back at the 'State' which governs us and to really  put it through the wringer of truth, but no we get politicians who will sometimes lie, compromise on what should be done, but will we get fairness?

Enough, I have just found another character to love, John Thomas Blight, 1835 to 1911 antiquarian and draughtsman, he ended up mad in Bodmin Lunatic Asylum and finished his life there. It sounds a terrible place, but did improve in later years, John Clare the poet comes to mind, where does madness lie I wonder?  And why should I be thinking it on this post election day?  Two of his drawings he was also interested in the churches of Cornwall and illustrated books for them as well.

Two books to explore as well;  The first on Cornwall, the second on Dartmoor.

Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place by Philip Marsden

The High Oak; A Journey Across Dartmoor by Jamie Grant, David Harbott, Marcus Noble and James Richardson... though at £25 the price is steep.

bluebells in the wood

starwort

honeysuckle

wood spurge

Two videos, as usual not very good, perhaps one day I shall treat myself to a camcorder.

https://youtu.be/dsboV7Pn3os


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg-Mgck1IFI

Thursday the 7th

Statue in the garden

A bit of nostalgia;  Last Saturday was World Naked Gardening Day, now I do not think many people actually participated, especially in this country but it gives me a break from Election day and to go back a few years when we wandered round the gardens of a house in Malmesbury next to the abbey, where the owners did in fact work naked in summer and are famed for it, in fact I saw a photo of him on the net a couple of days ago.

It was a very hot day and this was my first digital camera, and a lot of the photos have my thumb in them sadly, but not a bad camera till it succumbed to sand in its innards, must have been to the sea side.

Tom looking rather ghostly

Is that a Norman arch from the Abbey?

Roy quietly sat at the top of the stairs

And if you want a moral story to come out of this, the couple at Malmesbury Abbey House divorced last year, not often you get to write 'divorced naked gardeners'  ;)

5th May - cuckoos

5th May, and there is talk of cuckoos on the radio, so doing a 'search' on my blog records that we heard cuckoos on this exact date last year.  Pottering is the blog, and I see the bluebells are almost over, whereas last week the flowers were just starting.

Woke up early to the heavy downpour of rain, and when I fed the birds this morning, the doves were soaked, their feathers dark grey.  Yesterday I sat out in the sun and recorded what I saw, you will just have to imagine the bees I am trying to capture and never do.  But that thin strip down the side of the house which is left to follow its own way, has had small dark violets, bluebells and the wallflowers that always grow wild in the front, plus of course the red valerian coming into flower.  Wilderness even in the smallest part of the garden just happens, but  you must stay the hand from weeding and acknowledge the wild flowers.  There is also the yellow poppy, which I dearly love for its bright lemon colour, the buds are still at the hairy stage before they burst into too brief a flowering.

Maybe these bluebells go back to an earlier woodland here.

tiny dark violets with their heart shaped leaves.  When I was a child you could buy bunches of violets.

Flashing by in the background is our male blackbird, the starlings always send him off in a rage..

Langtang and (oliver the brown bear)

This is not Oliver but a happy moon bear snoozing in the sun at the Animals Asia Sanctuary in Vietnam,  this is Oliver, 30 years kept in a cage for bile extraction, rescued in old age for a happy retirement. Watching this six minute video with its soothing music and Oliver trundling around finding food made the politicians go away with all their ridiculous nonsense - almost over thank god.

Sentient beings, we forget that we are all animals in this world, and I reach to David Abram's book 'Becoming Animal' for words, and of course another reading of his books.

Voice, the breath's tooth

Thought:the brain's bone

Birdsong; an extension

of the beak. Speech

the antler of the mind.

Robert Bringhurst

As spring unfolds around us, occasionally we should look back at our own western culture from the other side of the world and weep for its stupidity as our politicans concentrate on wealth and acquisition as if that will give us any protection from natural disasters as has happened in Nepal, or indeed happiness.
I have been reading about the village of Langtang deeply moved by this account given by two young female English archaeologists as they escaped to the comparative safety of a hotel with their guides. They are now trying to raise funds for this now destroyed village.  Nepal is such a beautiful country but geographically almost impossible to get from one place to another.  There is another earlier fund for a Buddhist Tibetan monastery, and the people of Langtang before the terrible earthquake wiped out their village were collecting stone and wood from high in the mountains for restoring this monastery, I wonder if it still survives?

"Langtang Gompa was founded by the Tibetan lama Mingur Dorje, a highly respected and renowned Gelung-pa master, and reincarnation. The monastery was sited overlooking and honouring Langtang Lirung mountain (7234m), a local god in pre-Buddhist Tamang culture. Extensive Thanka murals cover the interior, concentrated on the eastern second storey and dating from the original construction phase. Following six hundred years of dedicated use, the Langtang gompa has reached a state of dangerous disrepair."

For now I shall concentrate on what is happening in one small part of the world, and take pleasure in the small, unimportant things ;)

Link to the PDF on the Langtang Monastery

Edit; Langtang completely wiped out by the earthquake - BBC news

Saturday 2nd

Almost empty, today I packed the dolls house furniture, my mind finally accepting that we are on the move soon.  Three boxes, a lot of memories tumbled out in their packing. Georgian house from Tridias toy shop, 30 odd years ago.  A traditional toy shop at the end of Walcot Street, long walk from the centre of Bath, now my grandchildren have technology to play with, all those fabulous hand puppets, Brio trains and wooden toys are tossed aside for games on the computer, they move on.  At least the house can have some jobs done to it whilst empty.  The curtains, the doors that need sanding down, and the front door wrenched off by Tom, when he was about 4 years old, now this year he is finishing his university course.

LS said, 'you haven't written anything today', probably because my mind was so full of memories.  I took him on a mind walk down into the city of Bath on a May day.  Bath has a music festival in May, the churches, Bath Assembly rooms, Guild hall and a host of pubs all host different venues.  The walk would start from the village of Weston, past the' millioniare' Weston Park, then through Victoria Park, strolling past the avenue of acid pink cherry blossom, then down through the cut to the Royal Crescent, which also hosted  musical events on its lawn, straight across to The Circus through the back alleys passing the Guild Hall, and the large antique centres, now probably closed down, where you could get a cup of tea in their small cafes.  Then the top of Milsom Street and the shops.  Jollys the department store dominated one side, the other had a small herbal shop called Culpeper, where you could get everything in scented oils, they ranged along the shelves, including the 'Bach' range, does 'Rescue Remedy' work I wonder.
But to return to the tiny furniture I so carefully packed away, little cakes that Claire in London had made from clay, a tall candlestick holder made by another friend who lived by Carew Castle in Wales, our group was active at one stage, creating in miniature the things needed.  Tiny birds that once must have belonged to Lotta's children, a small ship from Solva, my favourite seaside place.  The 'nursery where I had made a 'push trolley' for the baby now lacks the tiny bricks I had made, reminding me of the alphabet bricks I had cut and decorated for my daughter.
Yesterday it was the last clearance of the loft, loads of magazines thumped on the landing floor as LS threw them down, all Japanese art magazines,

They will probably be thrown away, which seems sad but there are two big boxes of them and they are not making the journey to Yorkshire.

Our china will be packed more neatly..

Friday 1st May

What takes my interest in the news this morning, firstly the three leaders were trounced pithily by the 'audience' of Question Time yesterday evening.  Did not watch it, my cup is full to the brim on politics, but was glad that an intelligent  questioning audience showed up these effete, so-called leaders for their weak rhetoric.

What moved me deeply, and made me realise what trivia we expound in this so called Western culture was this report of two British archaeologists and their escape to safety with the help of their Nepalese guides.  The tragedy became apparent when the village of Langtang was struck by a landslide of both boulders and then a mudslide, a community wiped out by this terrible earthquake which seems to have engulfed so many villages in the foothills of these Himalayan mountains.

It is the small tragedy in the greater misery, brought home last night by Channel 4 news and the bewildered small Nepalese community nursing a badly injured water buffalo, as the ruins of their homes lay around them, and members of the families who had been killed in that moment when the earthquake struck, already cremated.

Simon Jenkin Guardian article;
                                                   -----------------------------------------
Free Food in Todmorden in The Observer

But for now I will move on to a way that British people are moving out of this political nothingness to take back some control of their lives.  In Todmorden where my daughter and family live they grow food in the streets. Round the Police station, in the square, along the canal, people have been planting and tending verges and beds of vegetables, it apparently has spread down to Hebden Bridge just a couple of miles away.  It has grown into what is called 'The Incredible Edible', and they have seen many groups from as far away as Japan coming to look at the system.  A small start for an idea that is gathering force in some towns.

 

Passing time

Normanby; hardly a village more of a hamlet, you can see the curved river, which has been banked

Lunch time;  We wait for a removal firm to come and give us a quote in half-an-hour, already had one - pretty expensive moving, says she quietly.  The last two days has been the clearing of the loft of empty boxes.  LS has collected every box for the last 30 years or so it seems, he chucks them down I take them downstairs, and then they are flattened and tied up for  recycling for the.....

Recycling centre which has the most badly labelled containers, nothing is logical.  The great 2 machine, lives right at the end, in here you put everything that is completely unrecyclable, it chobbles them up mattresses, old furniture, I am intrigued about what comes out at the other end but you can't see it, our polystrene 'hundreds and thousands' go in there, several bags of them.

Good news this morning is that the Environment Agency has just emailed back to say that Church House only has 1 in a 1000 chance of flooding, and they will send us some documentation for insuring the house, though LS already has an insurer lined up.

There are moments when we both panic about this move, is it not a bit late in life to move but I come up with the 'adventure' side of the move and all those places to visit.  End of May is roughly when it will take place!!

Betwixt the church and the pub, the plot of land before it was built on

Tenuous threads

Having delved into Bladud's past history and come to the conclusion, that Stewart had taken a small acorn and from it derived an oak tree, I will leave my reading on that subject alone for the time being.  

One of the things  that happens  when musing and writing blogs, is that occasionally, you get emails on the subject you have written about.  This happened with Rievaulx Abbey, someone interested in the old 19th century illustrations.  This weekend someone wrote to ask about my first in-laws, they had stumbled on a blog of three years ago about Past Ghosts.  It appeared that my Dutch mother-in-law's family, (father and grandfather), owned  a boat building company or two in the 19th century.  It was almost like the book I had read recently called The Miniaturist, about guilds and the Hague in the 17th century. My daughter has even got a painting of the Hague with old Dutch houses that she inherited, the painting that is not the houses!  Sometimes I worry about what I write, but take care not to use the subject of the story in the title, it seems with all the search engines getting better, nothing can go unnoticed.

So I shall devote myself to a Breton Celtic saint, mostly for his name and the fact that he has, as all good Celtic saints do,  given his name to a number of churches in France, Cornwall and Wales.  I came across him because our friend in Cornwall, has joined up with 'Cornish Safari's' organisation which takes mostly American tourists round the prehistoric sites of Cornwall.  And they have both been plotting out tours and walks of Cornwall over the last two months, the industrial tin mine walk from Minions to Crows Nest looks really interesting. But first Saint Wynwallow's church.

Saint Wynwallow's church

'First comes David, then comes Chad

Then comes Winnol roaring like mad'

Old Norfolk rythm

So I shall start with Abbot Gwenole 457-532, and the several names he goes under in Wales;

Gwinwaloe, Winwaloe, Onolaus, or Wynwallow as it is written in Cornwall....

Now Breverton in  The Book of Welsh Saints says he was the Breton founder of the great monastery of Landevennec in Cornouaille in Brittany, Landewednack on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall and the nearby 'Church of the Storms at Gunwalloe, and quite a few other churches have been named after him.  There is quite a long history on him in the book, from which I will pick that which most interests me.  It is said that actually he may have come from Britain in the 5th or 6th century, after St.Patrick appeared to him in a dream and he built the monastery at Landevennec.

There are the usual legendary stories about him, at Locunole, the saint apparently built a hermitage by the turbulent River Elle, which is dominated by a mass of huge stones, The Devil's Rocks.  Satan tried to get rid of the saint from this place but was tricked by the saint to let him stay there.  So to the photos, which I have permission to post. All over Britain, there are these stylish rural churches, their history written in stone, this church is rather a lovely amalgam of styles, mostly 15th century but having a Norman arch.

Sunday and Bladud

Creative Commons photo

This funny statue is of King Bladud, founding father of Bath, it has a date of 1699, but is thought to replace an earlier effigy of a guardian of the city.  This legendary figure gives credence to several stories, though it is not always wise to believe Geoffrey of Monmouth tales (1130 AD)!   But that does not mean that Bladud was a complete myth, there are earlier stories of this Celtic king.  Where to start, the story goes he was sent to Athens to be taught, catching leprosy there, so on his return back to Somerset he is found herding pigs thereby the story of the pigs wallowing in the hot mud of Bath which then cured his leprosy.  Or the fact that he made a pair of wings and tried to fly, as the following  photo shows, or has Icarus the Greek god somehow got into the tale?

Creative Commons

Rob Stewart argues that Bladud or Beldud within the storytelling built a temple to Minerva, also called Belisma, apparently Minerva is closely related to Brigidda, or the Celtic Irish Brigid as we know her, which leads to the term 'bright' 'light' or 'shining' and that Bladud crashed on the Temple of Apollo, the god of the sun. If we were going to go into the etymology of Sulis, it does have parallels with Sol/Solis the Latin word for sun.

Here I must add a note, for up on the downs above Bath, the gold 'sun disc' had been found in one of the Bronze Age barrows, so an old religion  still at this sanctuary of the hot springs perhaps?

Stewart goes on to argue, that Sulis is The Eye of the Gap, (the 'eye' from which the waters come) and the title of his book.  But also goes on to say that a Latin word Suillis means 'pertaining to pigs'.  So of course here we have the famous magical Celtic boars leading the king to the healing waters, which  comes from the Otherworld/underworld (or from beneath the ground).

I shall play with words further down but for the moment tell one of the tales, we have a tale of a Celtic king/hero, morphed into the Roman/Greek tradition of gods, goddesses and heroes. The Twrch Trwyth of Wales  is a good start to an understanding of the part of the Bladud tale, and of magical boars that lead you to death, warfare maybe...

Stewart says that there should be three parts to Bladud's tale, the first of course when he arrives back from Greece suffering from leprosy and is led by the pigs to an alder moor, this is placed in Swainswick, a small village outside Bath; another tale tells of him being employed as a swine herder by a local farmer, and that he enticed the pigs who were diseased by laying a trail of acorns for them to the hot waters so that they may be cured and in turn he was also cured

The second part of the story is missing according to Stewart, this is where the hero battles with the monster with aid of the goddess Sulis and wins.

The third part has our hero who now has magical powers being able to fly from the Temple of Apollo and being killed in the attempt, this can be interpreted as winter approaching and killing - the sun.

The various ways of spelling Bladud are Blaidydd, Bladud, Bladuth, Baldud, Beldud Bladus Bledus, spelling was after all during the medieval period a slightly haphazard affair.

The root of the word Bla, Bal, or Bel was an ancient word apparently for the god of light or fire.

As for the second part of the word Stewart gives the following possibilities.... Dud

DYDD: Welsh - Day

DUD: Gaelic - A word or sound/gloomy and black

DIA: Irish and Gaelic - a god

From the Welsh Dydd derives...

DYDDIO: to judge or reconcile

DYDDIWR: Mediator or arbitratot

Another possibility (and we can see where Stewart is going with this one)

DRUIDA: Gaulish

DRYW: Welsh

DRUWID or DERWYDD: a modern interpretation

So that is how theorising goes ;) are we any wiser at the end of the tale, did the translation tumble through the centuries, being re-interpreted again and again to fit into the tales of the storytellers, but are we then to believe that Bladud was a druid at this religious Iron Age sanctuary before the Roman baths, who knows. 

Information taken from The Waters of the Gap by R.J.Stewart

Notes; Mick Aston Essay on The  Bath Region

           Dobunni Tribe of this area

Coffee time

The 10 0 clock fix of coffee, which I have needed the last few days, the mug and cup rearranges themselves nicely in a pattern of soft colours, at odds with the brash red of the old coffee pot...

So much reading to do this weekend, Resurgence magazine has arrived also Permaculture, and then there is the Saturday Guardian, with various articles on the forthcoming elections, and photos of the would be canditates looking ridiculous.  Will the young vote? I doubt it,  if you have ever read Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, that is how Westminster looks to most of us now..

"At the centre of the earldom is the vast, largely deserted Castle, whose remaining inhabitants centre their lives on the ritual surrounding the ruling family of Groan. The castle is described as being like an immense island of stone, its every outline familiar to the inhabitants, who know: "every bay, inlet and headland of the great stone island of the Groans, of its sheer cliffs, of its crumbling outcrops, the broken line of the towers". Dominating the ivy-covered, crumbling castle is the highest tower, the Tower of Flints, which is inhabited by great numbers of owls. The castle is so huge that most of the inhabitants do not venture outside except for certain ceremonies. Outside the castle, clustered under the northern walls, is a hodge-podge of mud dwellings inhabited by the "Bright Carvers", whose only purpose is to carve elaborate objects out of wood and present them to the Earl. "

well maybe not everyone but certainly to me, politicians trying to be 'one of the people,' in their kitchens, in schools and on the shop floor, is, frankly the most embarrassing bits of news you are likely to see.

Mike Pitts at the British Museum exhibition on Aboriginals - Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation is probably the most interesting thing to date...

Friday 24th April

Hot water flowing from the Roman well at Bath

I want to get back to writing about Celtic stuff, but other things have to be done.  So, my favourite story of the Otherworld, this is taken from The Mabinogion,

'Peredur rode on towards a river valley whose edges were forested, with level meadows on both sides of the river; on one bank there was a flock of white sheep and on the other a flock of black sheep.  When a white sheep bleated a black sheep would cross the river and turn white and when a black sheep bleated a white sheep would cross the river and turn black.  On the bank of the river he saw a tall tree; from roots to crown one half was aflame, and the other green with leaves'  

This is the balance of duality in the Celtic world, you pass from a state of death to a state of life, simple really, the duality in the Christian church is of course  between heaven and hell, a much scarier prospect.  That is why the Iron Age cauldron is so important, and why it is depicted on the Gundestrup Cauldron of a man being held down in the 'cauldron of life'

For an excellent description of the Gundestrup cauldron, John Hooker in Past and Present Tensions fills in the details...

The above photo is of a Roman conversion of the hot spring, but the local inhabitants of Aqua Sulis before the Romans arrived would have seen a steaming hot spring, coming from the depths of the underworld, perhaps it is a stretch too far of the imagination to see the hot springs as a renewing force but its magic would have made this spot a religious sanctuary.

There they are the pair of them, Mark and Ephraim, thought the Mafia had arrived! First time I had seen them dressed in suits, (expensive American stuff I was told but bought in a sale) seems the meeting went quite well, and after a lot of chatter they drove back to Bristol, sad to see them go.

Catching up

The Wellow Brook

It is Earth Day today, or so I have been led to believe by Google; did their little quiz - What animal are you - ended up a Woolly Mammoth, practically extinct, but I'm happy with that!

Yesterday we both finally realised that the move is on, our buyers are perfectly happy with the survey on this house and are moving their solicitor to act fast, not too fast I hope.  Tidied up the shed, stuff to be taken down to the recycling centre, my bike to give away to 'freecycle' though it has only been ridden once but I took a cropper first time out, scarred my forehead and can't see me riding along country lanes, prefer to walk.  Also have been clearing my cupboards, photo albums stripped of photos and thrown away so not too much bulky stuff to pack.  Large files of notes from when I studied all deposited in the dustbin.  There is a feeling of lightness in my life, hopefully I won't regret chucking things.

This is Rievaulx Abbey, not my photo, but someone else who   had asked about  the 18th terraces and view points that apparently surround this abbey nestling beneath the hills, so as a record to remind me of what to look for when we go there.

My son with  Ephraim's children, Fitnat and Pearl

My son is coming with his friend tomorrow, Mark is a computer developer, or should that be a software developer.  Anyway they have developed another project, and are coming to London to discuss it with a large civil engineering firm, and then visiting us in the evening for a meal, have not seen him for ages. So excited about his visit, moving up to Yorkshire means he will be able to travel by train from Bristol to York fairly easily, that he will do so remains to be seen.