16th August 2025

 

The Bride Stones

Strange aren't they? They lie above our valley on the moors, geologically shaped, wind-swept over millions of years, they accrue folklore.  Though the folklore of Bride stones in England is quite common.

It was Andrew this morning coming back from a long walk, he had walked up to the stones and remembered that I wanted to visit them.  Well we are renting a car for a week soon and he suggests we all go there.  Facing you, the long skinny necked rock is the bride and the smaller stone next to her the groom.  You can read a much larger description here.  If I had to pick and choose a legend for the stones it would be the Brigid legend, yes I know she is an Irish goddess but 'up North' the Iron Age tribe was called Brigantia, which has a closeness of wording.

Isn't it strange we now use You Tube so much more than actual (what do you call it? terrestrial television maybe) to watch ordinary people taking us on visits to different places.  Explaining the history of their localities, explaining craft work.  Showing us their gardens and animals, that we have quite forgotten to sit down and watch the box.

So yesterday two old friends from the Darkside of the Moor  appeared in my subscription list.  No I have never met them but they make me chuckle.  Are they camp? will I be shot down for even asking that question? Life has become a tricky negotiation path through The Mores of today.

My other favourite video is The Mindful Narrowboat Vanessa and Zephyr her dog give a delightful view of the canals up North, and she illustrates her day so brilliantly in her notebook at the end, that for a moment in time you are making a pot of tea, sorting the biscuits with her and giving Zephyr his treat.

The third I will mention is of course The Last Homely House, though the less frequent The Last Homely Garden is just as calming.  Perhaps that is the secret, in this fraught period of time we are living through a sense of calmness is needed.  I was even thinking about a retreat at the Kagyu Sammye Ling Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, think that was the last holiday Paul and I had in Eskdalemuir just over the border in Scotland.  But sadly my religious zeal is nil, so presumably I would be a hypocrite in my untruthfulness.

Rebecca Solnit hits out (once more) at Trump.  All news leads to him unfortunately.

Now to check the red light highlights to see you get to the right places!

Protest in the Cotswold

 Well when the middle-class of The Cotswold community take to the village green too protest, then Vance, and of course our Labour government better take heed!  True, there are not many people, but then there have been enormous marches all over the world against the fascist regime that seems to be developing in America's government.

13th August 2025

Things that tickled my fancy yesterday

That's it!  Lidl is out of favour.  We now have self-service tills with all their silly bits and pieces.  I shall get the 'baggage department' wrong every time.  AND need to take my other glasses, perhaps I can claim stupidity and going blind as an excuse.

That was the bad bit, the good bit was the man bicycling past as I crossed the crossing, he wished me good morning, and further said 'and a happy one to'.

Arrived back with the shopping, to see a rather bedraggled butterfly trapped between the curtain and the window. But Andrew rescued it and it flew away into the heat of the day.  It has just turned 9.0. clock I wonder what else the day holds.

This morning I though bloggers were like the sailing yachts you see skimming into harbour, sometimes racing other times sitting hold the ropes for the sail as they pull the boat around to catch the wind.

Exploring films and this one came up.  Anyone who knows the magical children's Green Knowe books, well this film is based on one of them.

11th August 2025 - films

L.S. Lowry - Going to Work

Two films I have recently watched.  Both from BFI and both so British it just oozed off the film.  What do I mean by this, perhaps 'clogs on cobbles' will give you a better explanation of the deep sense of atmosphere of old England.

The first featured Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave - Mrs. Lowry and her Son, 2019,  brilliant performance from the two actors.  I will presume you know Lowry's work of the working North.  His work always struck a note with me coming from the Black Country as I did.  I saw the people come tumbling through the gates at home time.  Some on bikes, others walking out of the big factories of the time.  A fast moving crowd eager to get home.  No fancy cars, except ours maybe, my stepmother with her red hair in the sports car as she waited for my father Maurice.  Who was the chief engineer of the factory at that moment in time. I suspect she was showing off but that is another story.

Mrs Lowry detested her son's work, burn the lot she told him and he so loved her  that he almost did it but luckily he continued with his matchstick figures conveying the starkness of working life.

London became interested in his work, and Mrs Lowry's friend's husband bought a painting and then she acknowledged his work but with that small minded attitude that hopefully was being left behind as we galloped towards the 60s.

The other film, again with a much younger Timothy Spall in it and this time Brenda Blethyn, the actress of course who plays 'Vera'.  This film was called 'Mysterious Creatures'  It was an independent film, original and rather stark in its story, which sadly was true.  Told the tale of a couple with a daughter that displayed Asperger illness.  It was made in 2006 when such things as Asperger and Autism was coming to the fore.

It was such a sad story, the girl miserably behaved towards her parents with her temper tantrums when she could not have her own way.  She drove them towards bankruptcy and suicide.  Suicide was achieved by the father but the mother after three tries goes on to accept her fate.  It seems from the Wiki though that both women went on to live separate lives.

Both films can be seen on You Tube.

The Lowry Trailer for a taster.  Can the North get any bleaker? ;)

Edit: And behind the song there was a another childhood song The Ally, Ally Song.

10th August 2025

 Well I am going to write about something very sad.  Apparently in Whitby last week four suicides may have  taken place within the week, though equally one of them could have been a cliff fall. They went over the cliffs, somehow it seems a strange occurrence but the police will investigate and for some background the Daily Mail and all its tat gives some idea of where the deaths took place.

Whitby is a strange place, holidaymakers flock to its hilly streets.  Fish and chip shops abound along with many restaurants and of course every other cottage is a holiday home.

Yet the town is overlaid with a scary story of Dracula and the black dog racing down the 199 steps from the abbey.  Goth weekends and also second WW2 weekends when everyone dresses up and parades around the town.

I have many photos of the place, it is where my daughter and family lived for awhile.  It is where I bought a small cottage for a time and wished that I had kept it......  So here are a few photos, I shall continue the theme of Whitby for a few more days.

Acanthus at Pannett Gallery

Back of the Pavilion

The Pavilion

Pannett Art Gallery

The funeral horses on a very windy day

They didn't pull  the carriage up the hill but arrived by horsebox!

The ruins of Whitby Abbey

From St. Mary's churchyard and haunt of Dracula looking over the town

A little cat who used to visit the cottage

Teeside News

6th August 2025 - Bringing forward

An Ash tree up on the Bath Downs.  Do you have a special tree?  I am hundreds of miles away from my tree.  It has had barbed wire fencing wrapped round it cruelly, the hooks digging into the bark.  I have told this tale often but it is Odin's tree, the great Scandinavian World Yggdrasil tree with all its legend which is an Ash tree, powerful and strong.  Nine leafed twigs, a magic number, though of course there can be 11 or 13 leaves.  Magic just doesn't have to be confined.  But conversely in folklore, if you found an equal number of leaves than you were sure to find your love by night.

Gilbert White (1720 to 1793) talks of shrew-ash (shrews or fairy mice). Shrews apparently ran over the cattle and stiffened their limbs.  The cure was to entomb the little shrew mouse inside the trunk of an ash.  A branch off the tree when stroked over the cattle would then cure them!

I hate to bring sex into the room but Aubrey Burl says this, and he is a great hero of mine.  Well in winter when you look at the buds of the new growth, you will see a large bud with two smaller ones on either side.  This is phallic and was why the Ash tree became sacred to Odin.  Do I believe this? well it is a nice addenda to the story, and talking of stories, have you met the Man in the Tree, a good Celtic tale of nonsense.

A celtic story to tell, this again features Finn, who was walking through a wood one day and happened to spy a man sitting at the top of a tree. A blackbird on his right shoulder, and in his left hand a bronze vessel filled with water, in which swam a skittish trout, and a stag at the bottom of the tree. The man would crack a nut, half of which he ate himself the other half he gave to the blackbird. Then he would take an apple out of the bronze vessel, half of which he ate himself the other half he threw to the stag below. Then he would take a sip of the water in the vessel, as did the stag and the blackbird - they would all drink together.
The followers of Finn asked who this disguised hooded man was. Ann Ross speculates that this 'nurturer of animals' could be attributed to Cernunnos again or the romano-celtic god Vosegus, who has some of the attributes of the man in the tree.

Ash is strong

I haven't got a tree here in Yorkshire that somehow appeals to me, though when I sit in the park at Hebden Bridge, waiting for the hour of my optician appointment I look up to a fir tree with its many branches and feel its age and I wonder can it feel mine.

Trees are a gift, their presence gives us oxygen to breathe, clears the air and most of all calms us with their presence.  A new forest across the Western side of England is to be created so the government says.  It will take in Wiltshire, Gloucester, Mendips and the Cotswold.

2007 -  Winter Poems

2008 - Celtic Gods

4th August 2025

Baby Blue and Baby Pink walking shoes. I spluttered.  Even more so when the price was mentioned.  I have agreed to wear them, and hopefully I won't trip over them.  Andrew ordered them to get me walking again.  "You said you did not want dark shoes" he said......  At least they are not 'naked' shoes I mean who goes out  in undressed shoes?  Is the world getting madder or have they just run out of ideas.

 

Falling in love with a place - Hutton-le-Hole

 

 

The place to be.  How often I see this as I flick through the news.  Well what about Hutton-le-Hole.  It is probably situated in the most beautiful part of the North Yorkshire moors.  Its village neatness framed by the moors. I typed Hutton-le-Hole in the search box and came up with a mix of blogs.  Weaver of Grass, my dear Pat, following me on my journey and time in North Yorkshire.  Do we have to have sad memories all the time I wonder as we get old.  There was my darling Paul, always ready to drive Jev the car to our latest exploration.  I gave him a new lease of life as he left behind his familar place in Chelmsford.

I chatter to myself quite happily on my blog, it is my blog after all and as Virginia Woolf says No need to hurry. No need to sparkle.  No need to be anyone but oneself.

So whenever I worry about what to write and I was definitely more erudite in earlier years I buckle my sword and allow myself to write what flows through the mind, tackling sadness along the way ;)

A Perfect June day -2016

Saturday Walk 2015

An Afternoon drive to Hutton-le-Hole 2015

North Stoke: Wednesday 23rd August - 2017

Douthwaite Dale Amble 2018

A Perfect June Day 2016

31st July 2025 - Rudston Monolith - General jottings

 A favourite blog of mine, though not in blogger land is the Smell of Water.  One portion of Yorkshire is the East section, where a great number of prehistoric sites lay hidden under the surface and he has recently  visited the great Rudston Monolith.

The Rudston monument set amongst the gravestones but still dominating the church

 Rudston monument.  Is it the largest standing stone in England? I think of have read of estimations of a third of the stone underground.

Also I learn from Smell of Water blog. that the underlying ground is limestone and chalk, which creates a similar landscape to the Wiltshire one with its chalk winterbourne rivers.  And that the Gypsey Race starts somewhere near Duggleby Howe, a Neolithic barrow but with a Scandinavian name from later naming by the North influence. 

Duggleby Howe

Valentine's Day

Rudston monument blog

Note: Julian Cope of Modern Antiquarian fame wrote this about the area and it is wise to dwell upon his words.  Yes he is one of the figures from a past post- punk music (never listened) but he is intelligent and used to live at Avebury at one time.

"I am staring at the monolith from below the sacred hill altar.  It is much easier to get a perspective without that huge church against my butt.  From here, the mound dwarfs the church, as it should.

Rudston is an eerie place, built precariously on an ancient past of true psychedelic intensity.  Each village along the Gypsey Race has some tale to tell. But here it pitches in to tell some awesome and unorthodox mystery.  If Avebury is the Great Reconciler, then where are the cursuses?  Rudston and its environment fits well with the Avebury complex:  The chalk, the flint, the vast earth monuments, the disregard for time and perspective, all caught up in these enormous civic monuments".....Julian Cope, The Modern Antiquarian"

Cursuses are enigmatic features of prehistory, a straight trackway across the landscape, were they used for racing (no) or ceremonial walkways, but we will never know.  But they are found all over the country, we even had one by our house in Chelmsford - The Springfield one, running next to the river.

Link: Mike Pitts on 'How to write a book part 3

30th July 2025

Cheddar Gorge from the air.  Borrowed from Wikipedia

Something less heart rending than the last blog, a walk quite a few years back on the Mendips with my good companion Moss.  

The Mendips is the place you can find early Paleolithic people, in the caves with the bones of animals long extinct from now.  Like Sutton Bank, rock cliffs rise out of nowhere, it is spectacular driving through the Mendips you can also end up at the Cheddar Caves, haunt of a witch of course and the place to take young children to see stalagmites and stalactites.  Also of course, if it is still there, the cheese company.

  The interesting thing about going back on old blogs is that the writing and speculation has moved on further and I was interested to read the PDF on incense cups found in these barrows.  I think of them as the Catholic thurible which is waved round during the service, but there again their use might have been completely different.  Below is what I wrote in a catch-up, and there are two articles on the funerary or incense cup as well.

Yellow barrows at the back, the Nine barrows following the ridge behind me and two odd barrows between them I think, though there is an aerial view on this Wiki.

The eight Ashen Hill barrows

The Nine Barrows, two must have disappeared over the ridge.

Barrows are reflections of a culture, long gone now, we can only speculate about the effort that went into digging and then covering these mounds, obviously reverence for the departed but also these people emotional needs, sometimes the remains of flowers are found, alongside a treasured dagger or necklace of beads.

Now here is for me one of the most obvious of barrow cemeteries to be found in the Mendips, there are in actual fact two sets of barrows, the Ashen Barrows (8) and the Nine Barrows following the ridge of a hill, ceremony is obvious, were they following the lines of a track way? Were they showing respect and reverence of the ancestors as they passed?  I find these photographs please me still, the excitement of first glimpsing as I and Moss trudged over the fields, the bullocks to be negotiated, and then the golden grass  crowning the barrows in the distance.

Digventures

(51) Aldbourne and the Enigmatic Funerary Cups of the British Bronze Age

IF

If I ruled the world I would take my UN soldiers into Gaza, confront the Israeli soldiers and take over food distribution without a second thought.  I would ride over the lies of Netanyahu and his right wing friends. I  might even jail the politicians who are holding back from calling the man out for not understanding what the phrase 'right action' means.  They are  there to govern not mouth useless words that do nothing.  And yes I know where all this started on 7th October, it was a most horrible and cruel day, and I am not in any way antisemitic. 

What I see is hatred and genocide.  Anger should be a useful emotion, all over the world, including Israel people, there is  protest against this cruelty, we are to have our hearts broken with children who would be in heaven, where there is food rather than down on this Earth.  FFS what does the Israeli government think the future is going to bring to them, when they face the hatred and anger of the people around their country, the future will be exactly the same as it is now.

War is a game, we as humans end up with too many people on this Earth, so we battle to reduce the numbers, our young sons and daughters pay the price.  The radio chatters behind me, mellifluous voices are talking of the immigrants coming ashore on the boats.  There is a programme coming later about the RNLI - Royal National Lifeboat Institution saving the lives of the 'boat people'.  They do not judge, they save the lives of these people because it is the right thing to do.

I started this blog because I went to get some bread from the freezer down in the basement, I looked down into its packed surface and thought of those Palestinian people fighting for food that is denied them.  We who have plenty need to share with those who have none.  The Palestinian people are not second rate humans they are equal to all of us and should be treated so.

Article

Masochistic Tango and other things

 Another person has hit the buffer of death - Tom Lehrer, at the age of 97 years old he has left this world.  And now Radio3 is interspersing their classical music with his songs.  So let us raise a glass to a sanely simpler time when sarcasm was not frowned upon ;)

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Something else I picked up this morning.  One of Wales most famous poets, R.S.Thomas was written about in The Observer.  (Shock horror you are reading The Observer says Andrew, it is a right wing paper) please note that an occasional article from the Observer pops through my tablet but the paper does not besmirch my computer ;)  Anyways to get back.  I love this Thomas, the other one is Dylan,  he is so moodily miserable he suits my character.  But I have lost his book of poetry.  I have written of him elsewhere though. Thomas was also a favourite of Pat of Weaver fame. I think the following poem is  good  for it reminds me that as a child I went fishing in a Welsh river but it also reminds us when we first meet death.

Song for Gwydion

When I was a child and the soft flesh was forming
Quietly as snow on the bare boughs of bone,
My father brought me trout from the green river
From whose chill lips the water song had flown.

Dull their eyes, the beautiful, blithe garland
Of stipple faded, as light shocked the brain;
They were the first sweet sacrifice I tasted,
A young god, ignorant of the blood's stain.

R.S.Thomas

Also, another favourite.....

The Island,

And God said, I will build a church here

And cause this people to worship me,

And afflict them with poverty and sickness

In return for centuries of hard work

And patience. And its walls shall be hard as

Their hearts, and its window let in the light

Grudgingly, as their minds do, and the priest's words be drowned

By the wind's caterwauling. All this I will do.

Said God, and watch the bitterness in their eyes

Grow, and their lips suppurate with

Their prayers. And their women shall bring forth

On my altars, and I will choose the best

Of them to be thrown back into the sea.

And that was only on one island.

Heads

The Hexham Heads!

Not sure that teddies or soft toys had anything to do with  Albanian dictators but it was an interesting talk.  Albanians seem to tie to the frontage of their houses such soft toys as a good luck symbol which wards off evil.  One fact I did not know is that at some stage in our 20th century history, toy koala bears were made from real koala fur!  

But there was also a small exhibition at the Folklore centre of the Hexham Heads.  Two boys in the 1970s had found two small heads in the garden.  Now you can understand the interest these heads garnered.  Were they Celtic or belonging to some prehistoric era.  No is the answer to that, a person who had previously lived in the house had made three heads from what I think is concrete, because that is where he worked at the time in 1956.  

Of course a folkloric myth took centre stage over the heads and I can't find a sensible picture of them now, with all the woo-woo around them.  

As I have always been fascinated about Celtic culture and the head being an important part of the rituals.  The Gauls were  a warring lot, and liked nothing better than to hang from their horses the heads of their deposed enemies.

There are two temples in Gaulish* France you can see the head cult at Roquerpertuse temple with another temple with the same cult not far away.  Here there are pillars with niches which would have held skulls inside and of course the recording Romans and Greeks also wrote of them.

The bottom two are janiform heads in London

Three heads at Roquepertuse 600 -140 bc

The pillars of the portico with cavities for skulls. 111-11 bc

The two headless figures (why?) are warriors seated in Buddha style. 

Going back to the tale of the Hexham Heads, it seems they went to Anne Ross the writer of that most erudite book - Pagan Celtic Britain for an explanation of the heads, but whilst the heads were in her house strange things happened.  Like a man/wolf ran out of the house.  Do I believe this?  Can't say that I do, she probably made up the story to get some publicity for her work.  If I remember right she wrote a book with an ex policeman about a bog man, the books title -  Life and Death of a Druid Prince, perhaps explains she was going for the more lurid punchline.

It was a definite rabbit hole this morning I have been down 'wishing trees' (I have always talked to the trees;) and coins pushed into trees (and stones) for luck.

* American dictionary translates Gaulish to Goulash.  Struck me as funny.

 And just to end the Japanese Torii gate which 'floats' on water, or seems to, also had coins thrust into its wood which meant it had to be repaired.

Talks

 

Albanian Soft Power: When Teddies fight back

The fall of a communist dictatorship introduced Albanians to capitalism – disastrously. This talk shows how the people updated traditional folkways to deploy consumer-capitalist products for protection.
There is a talk at the Folklore Centre today - Teddies fight back.  One has to admit it is an original take on the subject of communist dictatorship, I hope John Billingsley pulls it off.  I have a teddy bear sitting on a top shelve, he is next to an ugly doll I made.  The bear is there to remind me of a young Tom on Bath Station when his mum refused to carry his bear.  He is in a miserable mood and drags the bear along the ground cross at his mother who is pushing a push chair with loads of stuff hanging from it.

So what is the 'soft power' you ask? It goes by the name of Apotropaic Power.  I presume the bear wards off or is a protective magic, a type of magic intended to turn away harm or evil influences.

I missed this talk last Saturday because of visitors, Icy Sedgwick on Northern Spiritualism - Talking to the Dead in Manchester and Newcastle.  I expect it was 19th century ghosts ;)   I read somewhere that Ozzy Osbourne  ( he has just died) of Black Sabbath fame was also obsessed by a haunted farmhouse in Wales.  Did that influence his music I wonder?The Folklore Centre is hitting a barrier of no money sadly and is only opening on a Saturday at the moment, I wish I knew the cure for magically conjuring up money, but unfortunately I don't.
Not sure this true but it is a funny spoof on the state of our roads...