1st December 2021

 There is not much to write about Burnley, a shopping mall that was looking a bit tired, you could see the line of development from the top of the bus.  Small terraced houses near the centre, just a yard for a garden, the old working class houses for  those that worked in industry, the sameness is somewhat pleasing but dull to the mind.  Then we come to the classier upmarket semis of the 1930s, not sure, then the fringed scatter of bungalows in larger plots. Landscape is strange, we take a hill out of Burnley and the bus gets slower and slower as it creeps up, reminding me of my camper van which  I verbally prayed that it would manage the hill out of Bath.

It is the underlying rock that gives shapes to the ground into large hummocks, and then we disappear into the valley, and the bus is assaulted by the tree branches as we pass.  There are corpses of trees that have fallen in the storm and have been dragged to the stone walls.  Up North, is beginning to remind me of the Midlands, or the Black Country, where industry and houses melded, and especially towns slipped into each other with no greenery in between.

The clinic set up for the booster vaccinations was run by many volunteers, it was a bit like a game of musical chairs, or desks, for I did not sit down for long but stood for an hour with my daughter, we were both grateful for the efficiency, and for the patient nurse, who as always went through a long list of questions about my health but did it with a lovely smile.  Today I am tired, my arm aches, though not much and I haven't listened to any news, as the government fumble and mumble through this pandemic - it's a pig ear that is all I know.

I am listening to MacFarlane's 'Landmark,' it is about the magic of words, words lost in time and language but today he talks about Nan Shepherd, 'The Living Mountain'.  I have read Shepherd on the Cairngorms.  I must say her book struck me at the time as rather cold, but to makeup for quick judgments I have bought the audible of it.  And promise myself to concentrate.

30th November 2021

 Daughter arrived home safely, think this is a photo of the lane down to Lindisfarne to which they travelled to.  Just a slight tinge of jealousy here, I would have loved to visit the 'Holy Island' and savour the atmosphere.

Snow disappeared overnight, we are now having a warm day before the next batch of cold returns.  One thing you can always depend on is changeable weather in Britain.  Mostly power has been returned round here but not up on 'the tops' or the moor  The stranded visitors in the Tan Hill pub have been rescued.  Probably reluctantly, they had had a good time and have already planned a reunion next year.

Lots of reassuring talk on the radio this morning about the booster vaccinations but it is not necessarily working to order.  We are off to Burnley this morning to try for the booster.  My local appointment was cancelled, due to the loss of power over the weekend is the excuse.  No vaccine there last week or this week, so it is not as easy as the government official (Gillian Keegan) is prattling on about.

I see the Labour party is having a spring clean and changing the furniture around, can it be they sense blood? Are we really so fed up with Tory rule, that those who vote labour will return in their droves. 

Should have started with the thought 'living on the edge'.  The radio has become a faulty receptor of our phones, zoom meetings and the jangle of various phone tunes - was it ever like this?  Yesterday alarms boomed in the 'Today' studio and they vacated the building for half an hour.  Do we live in a state of panic, I noticed when the electricity went off alarms started everywhere, and then when it came on they started up again.  Lots of people on the social chitchat did not know how to turn them off!

29th November 2021

 The day always begins by going through blogs - so keep writing everyone.  But today in my email two stood out, one was The Smell of Water, with its stone by stone description of this old church at Kirklevington.  Marvel at the stories told in stone, Odin and his two birds Hugin and Munnin and how he hung from the Yggradsil Tree.  The comparison is made between Jesus and Odin, a fascinating thought to play around with.  The other blog is a local landscape expert, and I can see the makings of a book in his writing.  He photographs the bleak scenery round Hebden Bridge, at least up on the moors, taking his young son on these walks, and once more I learn a little more about this area.  He gives the title 'Field Studies' but I see something much more lyrical in his writing.

I have been unsure in my new surroundings, not quite liking the scenery, which I find bleak but I will accustom myself to it.  I do not feel the presence of prehistory here as much, though there are Bronze Age barrows up on the moors, but I have a feeling that they are like on the North Yorkshire moors scattered around and if you have seen one rounded hump of soil you have seen them all.

Wandering through my photos I leave you with two thoughts............

Whatsover things are lovely think on these things.

Must say it strikes the right note ;)

Edit; Well algorithms must chase us around for on F/B a memory of Great Canfield Church here, came up with the two ravens of Odin.  Some clever person who had written a book on the subject, wrote to me and explained the crossover period between Pagan and Christianity. I quote him...... 

Particularly like Great Canfield with its Odin carvings. I'd suggest a Danish influence here, rather than Norse (there are few Odin references in Norwegian place names. They're much more common in Denmark and southern Sweden). I'd expect more pagan symbols in Essex than anywhere else in the south-east. It became a Danish kingdom under kings Anwynd and Oskytel shortly after 878. But whereas Guthrum, who took over East Anglia, was baptized in 878, Anwynd and Oskytel are not mentioned as having joined him in baptism. It would seerm, therefore, that Essex remained under pagan rule somewhat longer. Essex already had a Saxon tradition of Christianity, of course - and, in your pic, we see the fusion of the two cultures. (Be careful when reading modern books on this subject. So many modern historians include Essex in East Anglia. But Guthrum had split up from Anwynd and Oskytel at Exeter the previous year. Essex was a separate Danish pagan kingdom until c.896). We get a lot of this stuff in NE Yorks. Here, we had Danes settling on the Wolds, and Norse settling round the edges of the Moors about ten miles to the north. They didn't get along - the Danes fought two battles with the Norse for control of York. So now we're left wilth a hotch-potch of Anglo-Irish-Danish-Norse symbolism - pagan symbols on Christian crosses, Christian symbols on pagan gravestones, and so on. I wrote a book about it once, but nobody wanted it. Every publisher or agent I wrote to said the same thing : fascinating subject but too specialized for our catalogue. In the end, I just threw it in a drawer and forgot about it. I liked your horse too. It's always depicted looking backwards - we don't know why. There's a good one at Lythe, just north of Whitby (which is markedly Norse, so the symbol seems to be common to all Scandinavians or it wouldn't also occur at Canfield) with a wrestling scene behind it - we don't know the significance

28th November 2021

My daughter has gone to Alnwick* in Northumbria, not exactly the best of time to go beach walking.  So we have been messaging each other.  I had said is it not ironic that on the coldest day of the year the electricity cuts out?  Well it was Storm Arwen that of course did the damage, and as I watch the news for Yorkshire, I see moors covered in snow and impassable in some places.  Then of course, The Tan Inn, highest pub in??? is already hosting people for the night who got stuck up there.

A small blip in the smooth motion of things.  But think about it, the three large supermarkets closed to Saturday shopping in Tod.  How could they open when the tills don't work and we all use cards to pay. My granddaughter out to find matches said airily when I offered cash, don't worry I have my card.  The young don't handle cash.  No matches, no open shops, so we rummaged around in drawers and came up with a gas lighter and I kept a candle burning all day - the Eternal light, the everlasting flame which was kept on the altar of the goddess Sulis in Bath.

I played servant to the fire in the wood burner, watching the small logs flare up into flames to die down again amongst the coals (non-smoke) and thought about the olden days when ice crystallised inside on the windows,  We have an Aga run by gas in the kitchen so cooking was perfectly alright.  But this is an old house with tall ceilings and draughts by the million, it was cold.  And yes I did think of all the people stuck outside in camps or on borders out in the freezing air and I counted my blessings.  They are you and me, an accident of birth left us fortunate, we should extend the hand of help and do something about them.

Thanks to the work of the engineers electricity was restored by 4 o clock, hot water, hot radiators, even television, which I haven't been watching but watched a film called The Mother.  Did not get a good review for this 2003 film I must admit I flicked over the sex scenes, not that I'm getting straight laced in old age but because I like Anne Reid as an actress.  What I loved was the relationship with her two children, elegant Londoners now living the life of well off selfish middle class youngsters, and then the daughter wanting to hit her mother in the face because she had it 'so easy' in her life.  Times change and it would seem not always for the better.  But that is straying down the avenues of feminism.

* I had great problems with saying Alnwick, thinking that it spelt Annech but though you hear my version the spelling is different.  Welcome to the English language.  It reminds me of the English vicar in Switzerland, who would always argue that  Cirencester (sai ruhn seh stur) was said ciscincester, he was wrong.

Eagles buzzing over Somerset

Looking from Solsbury Hill.  In the distance Freezing Hill with its inappropriate stand of poplars

Would you believe it? I have so missed my Bath walks over the downs.  Did Tom's eagle really fly over Solsbury, the Iron Age hillfort you have to slog up a steep hill to see.  Overlooking the A46 this is where the Cotswold hills slowly come to a halt.  The landscape round Bath, at least on the North-East side, is beautiful, if you were to follow the little lane below from the village you would come to St.Catherine's Valley, secretively beautiful.

Actually we should not be too surprised that eagles are flying round the Somerset area there is enough space for everyone. The following video is such a joyful expression of song and excitement it always lifts me.....

So to days of walking long gone now.   I remember the walks I took with dear old Moss as we discovered the hidden landscape, for under all that scenery past lives had played their part.  Romans had come to  Aqua Sulis, Goddess of the Waters, to heal themselves in the hot waters.  The old tracks still remained, the battles fought on the high ground Royalists against Cromwellians still marked, even when you look over to  Bristol in the distance the old first world war teaching trenches carved into the hillside.  Prehistoric man had also left his mark around Bath as well in Bronze age barrows.

 Obsession with maps....

25th November 2021

We are heading for an Artic blast, in other words cold and probable snow.  I am rather glad I invested in an oil radiator heater rather than heat the whole house, I just heat this room.  Mostly as I knit (a warm jumper) I listen to audio books. Just finished Phil Rickman - All of a Winter's Night, before that John Lewis Stempel - The Wood,  and now I am listening to Rebecca Solnit - Men Explain things to me.  I have decided I need to read up about feminism, after all I live in a feminist household. I notice that Tasker has her book 'Wanderlust' on his list for Christmas, I am just ordering credits for audios at the moment but will go for her book on 'Orwell's Roses' when it eventually appears in the spoken word.

So who have I chosen for my feminist exploration?  Germaine Greer went out the window, in your face I do not want. But Virginia Woolf, (A Room of my Own), Lady Hale (Spider Woman), Melinda Gate (The Moment of Lift).

It is weird this old world how things change over time and especially our own particular time on Earth.  We live in a state of anxiety I think not just the times dictate that but because somewhere in our primitive past we needed too fear everything. I have overcome my nervousness of going to the large medical centre and even managed to get through on the phone for my booster vaccination which happens next Monday.

The tragedy of those immigrants drowning in the English Channel haunts the airways, do we love tragedy that much? This is happening in other seas elsewhere, the world is on the move, economically we are trashed by the environment. Pull out your fingers and pull up your socks?   What can we do about it all?  Nag our politicians of course, don't get stuck on foolishness of Peppa Pig.  What is needed of course is getting rid of corruption that starts with the individual and slowly makes it way to infect the whole broad swathes of government, society is infected as well.  Perhaps 'survival of the fittest' should be put to one side. Capitalism needs a rest. 

Or we should just close our eyes and hearts to the suffering, draw up the drawbridge and indulge in another Christmas, at least we may have our family around us  Came on the following Norwegian video.  It is rather sweet, falling in love with Father Christmas our hero is sad.  A sort of grown up video we should do more of in Britain.  Santa Gets a Boyfriend

22nd November 2021

Monday comes with icy fingers.  Visitors have gone.  My darling eldest grandson bought his new  (and hopefully permanent) love to see us.  Life goes on.  HMGuest also came for the weekend, so we sit on the wobbly school benches round the table and I marvel that I have reached an age to see my grandchildren grown up.

This morning I am listening to Susurrations, and listen to words that still have so much meaning for many people.  Listen to the sound of trees,  and wander along with John Claire, Edward Thomas and Thomas Hardy amongst the susurration of leaves.

I picked it up on Paul Knights landscape blog, he writes of the  area that I am living in now, he seems to live near  Hebden Bridge and vividly describes the landscape, and I see he also mentions another blog on my side list which is Patrick Laurie's blog Bog Myrtle and Peat.  Laurie's book has been published, Native, Life in a Vanishing Landscape.  Like me he is sad about the decline of the curlews, my most favourite bird of the moors.  Their cry always captures me with a sudden wrench of despair or joy I cannot tell.

Eskdalemuir

Patrick Laurie's farm is in Galloway, a landscape we visited, four years ago maybe. I remember staying in the Tibetan styled huts overlooking a river.  We had gone there to the Tibetan Monastery, and I had been intrigued by this retreat, often though of going there myself.  What stops me.  Well no religion for a start.  And the thought that I don't need to find myself which I consider a great conceit by the way, I quite like making my soulless way through the universe without trappings.

I see many links but they are for myself to pick up in later times.  A record of what happens now.

Edit; Instructions about sitting on school benches. ALWAYS SIT IN THE MIDDLE.  The times those bloody benches have catapulted people onto the floor is fairly numerous ;)

20th November 2021

 I think this  cartoon says it all on the Northern experience, by Matt.....

But don't be greedy, our beloved leader has spoken! There is always going to be people that want everything at once!  As one who saw the destruction of woodlands along the HS2 as a bad thing, I cannot say the stopping of the vandalism  is anything but good but realise a lot of damage has been done already.  Then of course the North needs a decent rail service linking up the towns and cities lets see how this is tackled.

Anthonore Christensen (Danish painter) 1849 - 1926 Forest Lake with Water Lilies in Bloom and Numerous Insects, 1869

To softer places, this painting caught my attention this morning,  romantic, I love the watery theme, wild plants and the exotic white water lily carelessly float together.  Life and energy fueled by the sun, perhaps it would be better to look for the 'numerous insects' that the artist has painted in.

follow the Vicar of Bray down the rabbit hole

'Still, it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an anti-social act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground. And even if one in twenty of them came to maturity, you might do quite a lot of harm in your lifetime, and still like the Vicar of Bray, end up as a public benefactor after all.'

Coming on new ideas and resilience.  This morning I happened upon the American Rebecca Solnitt, she had written a 'long article' in the Guardian.  Her arguments about fighting back over the great problem of our future under Climate change  is to the point, and of course stresses that it is up to all of us to bring about change.

She has written quite a few books, and from what I can see of the titles that she has written are around her life.  She is criticised by  one critic of going from one story or incident to another without joining the thinking of how they relate to each other.

But her latest book is interesting, it is about Eric Ernest Blair or using his pen name George Orwell and his gardening experience.  Whenever we speak of this author it is with reference to  social conscience writing about poverty in the times that he lived but there is no lightness of touch, or what he did when he was not writing.  

Well Rebecca Solnitt, decided to come to England to explore what she wanted to write about.  It was about 'Orwell's Roses', he had carefully noted that he had planted 7 roses, some fruit trees and two gooseberries.  So 80 years later she went to the  rented cottage in which he lived for a few years to see if they still existed.  Maybe they do for there were still roses there but no fruit trees.

The book itself according to this article is not wholly focussed on Orwell but meanders from subject to subject in a loose manner. What of course it brings to mind though is a different aspect of Orwell, a man who was both practical and in need of a break from the rather heavy subjects he wrote about and of course his great love of gardening

Actually meandering from subject to subject appeals to me, it is what I call the 'magpie mind' taking the glittering jewel like words from the page and thinking about them.

Many of us love roses, flamboyant or elegant they display with an extravagance few other flowers have. They clean the soul.  There is even a rose bush on Orwell's grave.  I have planted many in my lifetime as well as fruit trees, and whilst reading came across an essay Orwell wrote on 'The Vicar of Bray', a clergy man who changed his opinions and loyalty to ever who was governing at the time.

Sunday 14th November 2021

Walked down to the park on a sunny blue sky morning yesterday.  Everyone was there, dogs being walked, children playing in the playground.  Small boy  football teams being assembled with freezer boxes of food for afters. The house and estate of the Fieldens went eventually to John Ashton, who left this estate to the mayor of Todmorden  in 1910. The ruins of his house are still etched in the grass somewhere at the back.  You can walk up through the trees to the moor above, though what goes on in those woods may halt your step ;)

John Ashton sold Centre Vale mansion, the parkland, cricket field, Ewood Hall, Carr Laithe and Platts, for £10,000 to the mayor of Todmorden, Edward Lord. After much argument and an inquiry, the estate became the property of the Borough Council ,to be made into the town’s public park.  Bet there is a story there! taken from here.

Weirdly before the park there is one of those old fashioned cemeteries.  Trees shadow the path and the grey lichened faces of the gravestones greet you.  Rather spooky on your own, and in the trees above on the hill an old church, looking very redundant stands, as always with old churches, with its feet out of the way of the floods and river.  I will explore one day, there looks to be a road up to it and probably a path from the cemetery but it is dark and overgrown and I would rather be out in the sun.

Bright sun, so dazzling it makes one blind and then the cool dankness of a neglected graveyard.  I stepped on graves and thought of the people beneath, long gone, their lives lived.  The pattern of the seasons still covered the ground with Autumn leaves, bright yellows, russet red and then the stark bareness of skeleton trees as winter approaches.  Strangely I have been reading, in that which calls itself news on my tablet, is that snow is expected in this month. Worst in Scotland I think but now the Earth conference is over we can only wait for the future, decisions have been made but now they should be adhered to.

On this day:  Matilda will taste the delights of rice pudding with her friends.  The song and dance about this must be recorded.

'The Hermit of Trieg, Scottish television.

13th November 2021

 Can the weather get any duller? the skies sort of leaked all day yesterday, not proper full on rain, no, more like a leaky tap.  The Canadian geese and ducks seemed to enjoy it down by the canal and as I wander past the enormous medical building, I wonder if there is a somewhat different agenda going on for it.  Like many centres the doors are closed and operated by voices letting you in.  The building itself, enormous and with many rooms for different treatments, sits like a white elephant on the landscape, understaffed and underused.  Will this eventually be turned into a private practice? People complain about not seeing a doctor, or able to get through the phone to speak to anyone, we have all become so needy in this time of Covid.  Luckily Boots the chemist runs a pharmacy from the building and here you can get prescriptions.

Yesterday I watched a Guardian video of immigrants stuck on the border between Belarus and Poland, pawns in one of those ghastly games Russia plays.  The immigrants arrive at the border but held back by soldiers, they live in the forest, burning the felled wood, but hungry and cold and in need of medical attention.

We praise the fallen from the last two world wars in the last few days, and yet there is a grim reminder of what the world is really like elsewhere.  Whether it is war or climate change, there is a great movement of people around the world fleeing that which is terrible in their countries, or maybe just being economic immigrants - and do you blame them?

Perhaps I need a softer subject to write about at the moment!

Eat the planet, or eat the rich?

How's that for a tricksy heading, well I am not going environment after all.  Though eating does play a part.  But as words dominate the computer so we should record them.

Well in the  hours of the night when I wake up I read whatever is on my tablet.  Last night it was the Smithsonian news letter.  It had a story about an island off Alaska called St. Matthews, uninhabited, bleak and treeless it was one of those stopping off points for sailors and I believe American soldiers camped there during the second world war to keep an eye on the world from this vantage point.  Russian hunters killed 900 polar bears for their fur early on, and of 1500 reindeer who lived on the island, it went down to only one remaining lame female who outlived the terrible weather but eventually died.  It was written with the dash of the explorer spirit and was a good read.

Yesterday Yorkshire Pudding revealed that he had been to Easter Island for a holiday, and the selfsame fate of course also befell this island, the inhabitants ate themselves out of food and chopped down the trees for wood, so that was eventually no wood for heating their food or for building their boats.  Think about it. 

Is it not a parable for us at the moment, as we use every last resource this planet has to offer in a vain attempt to gain everything we desire?  The book this information came in was written by Jared Diamond - Collapse, I had read it years ago and the fate of Easter Island had caught up in my memory, especially the hens they kept in small stone chicken sheds!

Food: we went out for a meal yesterday to 'Honest Joes' the three of us and our 'handsome male guest'. It struck me how many different cuisines we can eat in this country, my daughter had Ethopian food the other day.  But at the restaurant two had an Italian pasta dish, I had Greek Meza and the HMG had a kebab.  Which came on what looked like a swanlike thin stand.  Hanging there was the threaded meat and underneath was all the other food.

Strangely it made me think of fondues, the thick creamy cheese sauce, always without the Kirsche Liquer, for I never found it in the supermarkets.  The small squares of baguette for dipping and the range of' sour things to cut the richness of the cheese.  Nostalgia plays a great part in food, what about raclette, the melting of a special cheese over potatoes, both meals have to be accompanied by wine.  But I haven't seen a Swiss restaurant in England, although I have cooked a pancake mixture of eggs and vegetables in Japanese style on the table with a hot plate and eaten real sushi by London's best Japanese chef, yes I wasn't impressed but smiled sweetly and ate my first bite of raw tuna.

I see Marks and Spencer are doing well in the share prices, food as always, clothes a notch up from drabness.  We don't get 'posh' Waitrose around here but my daughter says the richer sides of Manchester, where the top knob footballers live, they are two a penny, Waitrose that is. 

I am missing my spinning and my books.....

Edit; it is an interesting chapter from Collapse by Jared Diamond

8th November 2021

 Well, nose down, geography lesson for me today.  But on a much happier note yesterday an old friend from the past got in touch through F/B.  It was lovely to hear from her, it brought back memories of parties in London and Oxford, of kindness and poverty of course.

The other day Matilda my granddaughter in London left a voice message on her phone at night for her mum.  It was full of pathos and I had laughed at her predicament.  She was cold, very, very cold, the one hot water bottle in the flat had been taken by her flatmate and her extremities were numb.  No her mum did not fly up with another bottle.

Those were the days, cold flats, sleeping on floors at friend's houses.  Our children and grandchildren think they are the only ones who experience such times.  It also brought back sad memories of our mutual friend dying far too young.

But mostly the memories are happy, staying at the folly mill in Rousham for Xmas, S was always a good friend through my widowhood, and now here we are two grannies with our young grown up, one living down in the South West with moorit sheep and me 'oop  North' as she said.  Could have done with some of those fleeces though for spinning.  Antiques united us, S has gone on to write a historical book and still dabbles in paintings as well, which means restoration.

As I grow older the memories float around like the round Earth, the memories flow too easily but also happily.  

Bloopers - Standing with stones.

Stoney Littleton Long barrow, and though you cannot see it, one of the stones at the entrance is an ammonite stone.

I can't resist it! Pat has just mentioned her Langdale Axe found on the farm.  Part of my life was devoted to prehistory.  The old heavy  stones hauled from quarries to stand in lines or circles, or to build a Neolithic tomb, they excited me.  It was the immense old age of the stone first used by man as a tool or covering for their dead.  They stood on the landscape, enigmatic, holding the secrets of the past.

A polished greenstone Langdale Axe is a thing of great beauty.

So Pat's mention of an axe brought to mind Michael Botts and Rupert Soskin's epic journey round this country visiting prehistoric sites.  I have sat quietly spell bound on the Preseli Hills knowing that this was one of the pathways from Ireland to England that our ancestors trod.  I will believe quite happily that the bluestones of Stonehenge came from this area, how they hauled the stones to the sea is beyond my comprehension.

Stonehenge, Avebury and Stanton Drew I have wandered round, in all kind of weathers, one favourite just outside Bath is Stoney Littleton Long barrow a place of retreat for me when home life got too much. There are thousands of sites around, and if you would venture to Europe, as far away as Russia or even to Japan you would see the same fashioned cromlechs that you find in this country.

So a 'blooper' short video of the two above.  A blooper video by the way Pat is all the bad 'takes'.  As someone who has dug in all kind of weathers, traipsed over moors in cold and rain I know exactly how Rupert Soskin feels.  Though I expect he has never stood on Hadrian's Wall with a kicking baby still inside him as I did, and wondered if I was about to give birth in the cold.  

Standing With Stones, the long movie is also there as well, with the funny bits cropped.  It never made it as a television programme, but the two of them seemed to have a good time in their camper van. The Langdale stone quarry is difficult to get to, and is featured at 9 minutes into the Blooper video, in the mist.

Hope

I see two things noted down for another blog, one is George Monbiot, a radical green environmentalist and the other is 'Slow the Flow' the art of slowing the waters down that run down the side of the hills  in Caldervale to join the rivers down below in the valley.  

The valley floods with a regular beat but people do fight back, installing new paved flooring, stripping back the plastered walls to the stone or brick, bars on wheels, so that when the flood water rushes through, all they have to do is scrub down the surfaces.  There are many volunteers who plant trees and work on the hills, old and young they create dams and swales to make the flow of the little streams zigzag down the hills and soak into the soil under the trees.  Communities work.

I had seen the same sort of work at Pickering to stop the waters from the moors gushing down into the town and flooding.  Slowly but surely beavers are also being introduced to wild places around rivers to start their damming exercises.

Little 'brown jobs' disappearing. The Twite or though Google kept finding 'Twitter'!

I hears on the radio this morning the sad fate of the twites, and laughed at their name, but the presenter in a few words described his sorrow at how the loss of the seeding wildflowers due to farming practices had caused their decline.  A small brown bird with a blob of red on its behind. Nothing much to write home about (or even  blog) but this  little creature was on the way out.  I have even read of elephants evolving without tusks, will they beat the Earth decline though I wonder.

Still I headed this blog with 'hope' because even as they bluster and promise us the world at the latest conference, and then dine sumptuously after having flown or driven in cavalcades of cars to show their earnestness, we must cast these useless politicians aside and actually do something useful ourselves.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/06/twite-or-pennine-finch-on-brink-of-extinction-in-england

Thoughts

Rubbish and the disposal of.  Each day many of us sort our rubbish.  It stacks up next to our sink, plastic, tin and cardboard, it is then sorted into its relevant bag to be recycled. Perhaps the reason why we see so much plastic waste in the sea is because the plastic is not recyclable.  Blindly, as if led by fools, we still manufacture and use plastic, the supermarkets would be sunk if they did not have plastic and goodness knows what to wrap around their products.

Incineration: In England currently 10 percent of municipal waste is incinerated. By comparison, the European average is 17.3 percent, and Denmark incinerates 56 percent of its municipal waste.

Plastic: but according to National Geographic, an astonishing 91 percent of plastic doesn't actually get recycled. This means that only around 9 percent is being recycled.

Of the 26m tonnes of waste produced in the UK, 12m tonnes are recycled, and 14m tonnes are sent to landfill sites. This gives us an average recycling rate of 45%.

Recycling in other words could be a great con, made to make us feel happier for the other polluting practices we make.  This American article will give you the idea, simply put, if recycling doesn't pay its way it will just get dumped, and maybe it is easier for the environment (and cheaper) to just dump our rubbish in landfill. 

I can't resist, Bullington Boy at his best, do you ever feel that he is just talking crap? It is a bit cruel I must admit, but he deserves it sitting next to David Attenborough with no mask.

And a photo which is causing some controversy also, mostly about dating though.  The Nebra Disk, a prehistoric homage to the stars, sun and moon.  Crafted many moons away and still as stunning at it was when it first saw the light of day.  An online lecture on it from  Devizes Museum in Wiltshire.

The Nebra Sky Disc (inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register) is the oldest concrete representation of the sky in human history. It is a testimony of the extensive networks of the Early Bronze Age reaching from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean seas. A new special exhibition in Halle, in co-operation with the British Museum, summarizes the research undertaken within the last 20 years. Outstanding loaned items from the Wiltshire Museum are to be seen next to the Mold Cape, the Danish golden ships from Nors and the golden hat from Schifferstadt.

BBC news on a new exhibition about Stonehenge, though of course the disk was found in Halle, Germany.

1st November 2021

 I start with John Constable's Stonehenge, it represents a historic collapse in time and even today we are not sure what it is for.  Yes we give it a religious aspect,  but it could also be a meeting place of the tribes, a market place to take their animals to.  We have no firm evidence of its role in life, and yet Constable has painted it so masterly that we can see the foolishness of humans and their dreams captured in the fallen stones  Do we just fizzle out?

There they are discussing the imminent fate of our Earth at this conference, we as a country are headed by a vainglorious idiotic prime minister, it almost spells disaster before they even get down to the nitty-gritty.  Because of course there will be fudge and compromise.  This particular problem has been a part of our knowledge for the last 30 years, conveniently shoved on the back burner because it interfered with our way of life.  Even now they procrastinate, Canadian tar sands, Australian coal, as also coal in China to keep their economy going.

So do we sit back and enjoy the show? I think not, an awful lot of nagging is required of our politicians. We have to give up this notion of growth, it is as simple as that.  It has been an interesting time in the media as they follow the score, lots of heroic talk but it is action we need from everyone.  If we are to steer our planet to being safer for future generations then it is up to us to speak out and definitely not to say, well I won't be there to see the collapse.

I love John Constable just as much as I love my country, but romanticised views are not really the truth,  The pretty country cottage did not always exist in Victorian times, we imitate but do not understand the history.

The foolishness of Shatner having his 10 minutes in space probably underlines it all, an act of gratification for him, can't someone tell the poor bugger that it will takes decades before we will even find that 'other' home in space.

I'll finish with another Constable, Old Sarum.  It stands fortress like on its hill with a great history that runs through it.  From being an Iron Age fort, then Roman and eventually medieval, when it housed a small settlement and a cathedral.

Birthday wishes as Halloween draws near

 Happy Birthday Pat

 A vase of  flowers to remember summer.  Keep on blogging and delighting your readers and may your birthday on Sunday bring family and friends closer together.  

Love Thelma xxx

29/10/2021

Halloween approaches and as I look back through my blogs and see the Wild Hunt might very well be out on the night or Odin riding across the sky on Sleipnir his eight legged horse, I gather the stories on this damp dull day.  We have up to now escaped the wretched flooding that Cumbria is experiencing, we must be sitting on the edge of the persistent rain but there has been only one alert.

Well what about dancing - Celtica and steampunk.

2012

This tale I find funny;  In the Vale of Glamorganshire, spirits roamed the churchyards at night, and the bravest villager would don his coat and vest inside out, reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards as he walked around the church a number of times.  Then he would walk up to the church porch and place his finger in the keyhole to prevent spirits from escaping!  It was also believed that apparitions of those about to die could also be seen through the keyhole.

And the tale of trick or treating? Well in other parts of Wales, youths would dress up in girls' clothes and vice-versa and groups of young people would wander from house to house in the dark chanting verses and soliciting gifts of fruit and nuts..In other areas men would dress up in sheepskins and blacked their faces and were given gifts of nuts, apple and beer.  These groups were known as the

gwrachod  (hags, or witches) and were meant to bring good tidings and expel bad spirits from the household.

And as the celtic 'old year' disappears, on this last night it was a tradition for a local Ladi Wen (ghost of the white lady) too appear, but then in North Wales it was more often the terrible Hwch Ddu Gwta (tailess black sow - another celtic tradition).  Bonfires were lit on hillsides, apples and potatoes were roasted and the watchers would dance and leap through the flames for good luck in the forthcoming year.  Stones were thrown into the fire, and as the flames died down, everyone would rush home to escape the clutches of the great black pig.  If you found your stone in the morning in the fire then luck would follow, if not misfortune would follow...

Tales told from T.D.Breverton - The Book of Welsh Saints.

25/10/21

 A quiet weekend, all by myself and the television managed (again) to lock itself out, this time the internet.  Lillie came back rather tired, it had been cold sleeping out on the moors, no salt for the pasta either but the assessor meeting them at Hebden Bridge, said instead of walking the last couple of miles along the canal they could catch the bus and gave them their bus fare. 

I cooked her favourite meal anyway knowing she would be miserable.  Yes I have taken some cooking duties over but get frustrated by how few vegetables I can use.  A teenager who doesn't like vegetables, a daughter who has reactions to mushrooms, onions and garlic, not forgetting peas and sweetcorn.  But talking of meals, Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater rule supreme amongst the cookery books.  I like Nigel for his easy way of just putting food together with a handful of this or that.

I did his tarragon chicken on Friday, take the leftover carcase of one chicken, pick all edible meat off and including the jelly in the pan, then add Dijon mustard, tarragon, handful of cheese, and cover in cream.  I would say at this point stir until everything is mixed.  Put in a gratin dish and cover with breadcrumbs.  Have you not noticed how Panko crumb has replaced the golden British crumb, we also use old fashioned crumb from the loaf.

Each morning I read 'Tod chat' and find out what has been happening. The little black cocker spaniel has been found in Leeds of all places but is now safely home.  The bus timetables are causing great distress by not running on time to service the train services which are not working due to work on them.  Sounds normal doesn't it.  An interesting moan from someone, who complains that LIFE IN TOD is not as it was when she worked down the mill! It is all those Southern 'foreigners' I suspect.

What else, well private cams have revealed a somewhat sad lad trying people's doors in the middle of the night.  Dogs have become the new thing to steal these days of course, cars less so.

Finished  'The Road to Wigan Pier,' all I can say of Orwell is that he is a feisty writer, must watch my 'H's  I have picked Naomi Klein for my next solemn read, though I notice John Lewis Stempel has a dozen books on offer on Audible. 

Through some of this writing I have been conversing by writing messages on my phone to my daughter, isn't technology a wonderful place.

George Monbiot - Miracle of Reduction  don't read if you are anti-green.

23rd October 2021

Blissful ignorance

I am to be left alone this weekend, everyone departed this morning, my daughter to stay with friends and Lillie to do her Duke of Edinburgh award.  6 girls trekking for 6 hours across the moors of Yorkshire.  She has bought her tiny packets of cereals for breakfast, the word is she must eat solidly these two days, such as pork pies to keep up her strength.  I on the other hand have been left with Teddy the whippet who managed to get Coco Krisps out of the cupboard yesterday,  stuffed most of them and has now left his diarrhoea mark in the hallway!.. Wasn't it good granny came to stay?  Forgive the bitterness;)

To return to Sue's post of yesterday, in which a great number of people replied.  What it does say is that we have it good in this country, if we are a certain age and have enough money in the bank to nurse us till death.  But sadly the young have... as we had when younger... a difficult time in getting on the ladder of life.  The pandemic has been handled fairly, people complain about lack of face to face with doctors and of course the cancellation of many operations due to it but unfortunately we can't magic more doctors and nurses out of the ether.

Climatic change is taking place, there can be no argument there, we see it all over the world, our troubles are small compared to islands that sink beneath rising tides, countries that experience 45 degrees heat.  Basically we can nag our government to take more actions, which we must, but it also depends on individual responses as well.  Nagging is boring, gluing one hands to motorways is painful, we limp along as always waiting for some divine hand to retrieve the problem.  But in all truth we shall (probably not) live through the worst of it.  It is just part of being human.

So what is local news, a pretty little black cocker spaniel is lost up by Stoodley Pike monument.  The children from my granddaughter's school were approached by anti-vaccine couple in the park.  Surprise, surprise the children want the vaccine and tore the leaflets up, the heresy has spread from Hebden Bridge.  It reminds me of the Chartists preaching their wares as well.  Dissenters unite!

And sadly the market is not doing as well as expected, could be that the roadworks are not helping, when you have  one road leading through narrow valleys, congestion becomes endemic.  Flying taxis anyone?

Someone said yesterday look up to the trees when you find the valley too narrow.

 

Knitting but not as you know it

 A romantic look at this country, you would probably not have been pleased with the tar sands of Canada video so you are spared that but there is evil out there to.  Remember 'Peak Oil' well it has transformed itself into 'cannibalistic oil', it costs more and more to produce, so eventually it will reach a quarter of its production cost to produce.

A video this morning from my favourite knitting programme - Fruity Knitting.  Mother and daughter, the mother is Australian but lives in Germany interviews people concerned with the production of wool and knitting travels to England.  So in this short half an hour, you will glimpse Cumbria then back across the border to Yorkshire for a quick tour of Haworth (Bronte) and then Yarndale festival, and then  to meet my favourite old man Kaffe Fassett.

  Enjoy, I would also point out that there are men knitters as well;)

20/10/2021

Over the weekend I acquired a new chair.  Well not exactly new, it had been destined for the rubbish tip.  I can now sit and knit and listen to Audible in comfort.  It is a beautiful chair, recently upholstered and it would have been such a pity to just throw it away.

So I sat and listened to James Lovelock and 'Novacene',  an imaginative and clever construct of what could happen in the future.  Well us humans just might be on the scene, kept as pets though by the Cyborgs.  Lovelock is a bit like H.G.Wells, imagining himself into the future but an entertaining read and I would not be surprised if AI just may take over, we will see.

The trouble with using Cyborgs of course is all the evil ones we have seen in television programmes, getting to actually like them is difficult.  The idea reminds me of a film I once saw.  The spaceship had become lost in space it had a garden on board, which was tended by two astronauts.  They eventually die, and it is left to the two little robots to tend the garden, a rather sad ending to the film.

I have always liked the theory of Gaia, the Earth functioning as a whole body creating and healing its many wounds that we inflict.  Today we are being brought to heel by the complicated mess we have created.  In many ways it will be interesting to see if short term thinking based in greed will win the day,  But Lovelock's optimistic story for the future, even though we become a second rank entity, tells us that the enormous sweep of our planet's history may swerve in a different direction than what we might think.

19th October 2021

Don't be downhearted, be optimistic. look forward to the next generation fighting for Earth's survival.  Yes I watched 'Earthshot' last night.   As the winners took their prizes of a million pounds to fund their work, I was happy at the positive attitude of the young, sad for those who did not win but the creative spark is still there in the human race.  So may the corals rise once more to grace our seas, may the forests be replanted, and may we all stop using plastic and bloody well think about our response to Climate Change and how we can help.

The change will be massive, today the government talks of £5000 grants towards heat pumps, though of course, as always there is a lot of controversy around them, they are very expensive for a start.  I watch the chatter on 'zero waste' as people try to come to terms with what they are actually using and the source of all the materials used just to make the ordinary items we use every day.  Most stuff that comes into this house is environmentally thought about but it would be good to see everything sourced ethically.

 It is somewhat ironic having watched greens working out how to reduce their footprint on the planet for years, to see that we have now been brought to the edge of the cliff and asked to look down at the mess we have created of this planet.  Greed may lie at the back of it, but now of course annihilation comes forward to haunt us and the need for future generations to have a place to live in. We must be confident that they will win and not the idiots like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson who **** the world up with outward reaching ideas to other planets because they have dirtied up this planet.  End of rant ;)

Thoughts

 Inconsolable Sorrow;  Listening to Mark Tully this morning on 'Something understood'.  The following music came on, and I remembered the times it had stopped me in my tracks as I stood to listen, and suddenly it took the words inconsolable sorrow to a new meaning.  The knowledge that sadness goes on forever, it is an emotion you can visit again and again for it runs like a river through the body.

And no I am not being emotionally unstable but reflecting on the pain we all have to live with through life whoever we are.  Tully was talking about mindfulness, a new look at meditation.  For someone like me meditation doesn't work, my mind, a bit like my body, jumps up and down with thoughts and things to do.  Sitting doing nothing is not in my makeup.

It brought to mind  a photo of Paul sitting quietly by the river with his head turned to gaze down into the water, and I remember the calm of his face and the peacefulness of the water, a happy memory.

So other stories came to mind the one of the man who gave his life to feed a hungry tigress and the colourful beetles that decorated the imagery of the Asuka temple  I had come across some of these beetles in one of the specimens he had collected in big glass fronted drawers. 

Enjoy the music, stop and reflect as Spiegel im Spiegel, plays its monotonous slow beat, let the hurry out of your soul and be still and silent and perhaps think of roses;)