Christmas begins

For Christmas past

They come the children, bearing gifts.  Ben's  clients   can afford Fortnum and Mason, champagne and chocolate truffles along with a Panettoni loaf.

Matilda brings herself, draped elegantly over the Aga.  The Aga is the centre of the kitchen, we cook on it, dry clothes, warm ourselves.  And if you are me get cross because of the body in front of it as you try to cook. Lillie goes off to Manchester to see 'Hambleton' with friends, and my Xmas request for the new 'Indiana Jones' film to watch on the television on Xmas day is filed and promised.

Mollie stomps around somewhat surprised by the influx of people, she has a meow that almost sounds like 'what the hell' but she welcomes the visitors.  Tom brings his good nature to the table and listens to his siblings chatter.

presents giving in Xmas past

And perhaps for remembering old friends in the village of Normanby, the church where no doubt Jo will ring the bells on Christmas Eve.

Also something silly.....

Yesterday I went through my blog picking out the annual Xmas writing, though as I approached the last year or two it became sadder.  But one excellent thing about blogging is that like a diary you have everything to hand to laugh and weep about and too remember.

So thank you all blogger friends for being there.  And I think the future holds promises of a better time as long as we make the effort to change it.

 XXX

22nd December 2023

When the heart turns back towards summer.  Can it be that every time I have opened the back door it has been raining?  I watch the rain drops splash into the puddles over the road. The swish of the tyres as cars turn into the old people's flats and wonder if I should seriously think about applying for one as maybe I don't won't to face up to another town.

Actually this England could donate its rainfall to the Panama Canal, which is experiencing less rainfall.  Could be climate change or it could be the El Nino effect, you have your choice, those who believe in the climate change or the natural result of El Nino.  Whichever ways, there are cargo ships stuck in the seas around the canal, which has reduced its number of ships passing through.  Why? well the lake that tops up the canal when the locks are emptied is also losing water at a fast rate and as it also has to serve the population around this area - who wins.

It means of course all those essential, and not so essential stuff, is being delayed unless the boats takes a much longer route. Perhaps we won't have so much from China, which maybe not a bad thing.  And we shall learn to mend, reduce and just simply not have a new computer, phone or car.  Perhaps the end of the Western world as we know it! (in parenthesis) Just popped that in, a new word a day doesn't go amiss.

I have the tune to go perfectly with the mood.  Christina Rossetti got it right.  So to that 'heavy rain' lurking malignantly in the corner of my computer, this is what Christmas is all about.

Counting blessings: 

And note. We have just passed the Solstice and the light will begin to lengthen, also the volcanic eruptions have decided to calm down in Iceland - not all bad.

The sun rather mistily came up as well at Stonehenge.  7000 people went to see this Solstice happening.

Christmas Greetings

A Merry Christmas to you all XXX

Anton Pieck ( Dutch painter, artist and graphic artist) 1895 - 1987 Reis van de Koningen (Journey of the Kings),

And who are the three kings? Jasper, Balthazar and Melchior.

A favourite early carol. And if you go on to the next video, a man in a funny hat will explain all to you. Mind you, he is American! so take with a pinch of salt.

But if he doesn't turn up, try this.

Traditional meals

Christmas Meal;  This morning I was making my vegetarian stuffing, gravy and red cabbage for the meal on the day. It will all go into the freezer, alongside the chicken.  Turkey is not eaten.  The thought escaped this is what I would call now a 'peasant' meal. 

All the bits and bobs that go with the bird.  Do people make onion sauce and bread sauce I wonder? Skewering the onion with cloves to flavour the milk.  Well I haven't, no one would eat such things in this household.  Xmas pudding, Xmas cake is off the menu as well, as is mince pies though we got half dozen for the brandy butter and cream.  The young just simply turn their noses up at it. 

I turned to Margery Hartley's compendium of 'Food in England' but she makes no specific mention of Christmas and doesn't like turkey anyway.

We bought goose fat and brandy butter plus 'pigs in blankets' yesterday, small trimmings but not the tiny sausages I remember as a child.  Do people put rashers of bacon across the bird when cooking, a charred deliciousness. Our poor chicken gets a lemon stuffed up its backside.

The grown-up children will eat the carbohydrates such as potatoes and Yorkshire puddings but will turn their noses up at roasted parsnips and sprouts.  I still like Xmas pudding with cream and brandy sauce but it will be too much anyway.  Perhaps next week an apple crumble, still the best thing since sliced bread.....

They say that the first turkey in England was eaten by Henry V111 in the 16th century.  I shall never forgive that king for killing a swan, one of a pair that swam upon his lake, just to give pain to the other swan. The turkey is on the whole an ugly bird with that great red wattle.  As a child on holiday in Wales I would bring the turkeys in, in the evening, getting them out of the tree in which they were roosting.

Roll on Christmas

 Did I ever think as I grew older that the State of Britain would become so miserable?  Each and every day there is news that food banks can't keep up with demand.  Tents on the high streets.  Luckily the government proposal for the councils to clear them fell on deaf ears, and that the shop keeper throwing water over a homeless man was sufficiently humiliated.

So roll out the charity once more, we are heading back to Victorian England.  With people forced from rented homes by Article 21, which has still not been rescinded by the government - why not?  People who cannot afford the higher mortgage rates are suddenly finding themselves homeless - thank god we have got Travel Lodges sited round the country.  That was sarcasm of course......

O dear I forgot, Rwanda and the boat people, which is really doing the government's heads in and their main topic of conversation. 

Many people will of course have a marvellous Christmas, they have managed to slip by the destitution that may face the next generations.

Funnily enough I don't think there is a conspiracy theory out there, something, like the great swell of a wave, the rich are closing ranks, and such people as Baroness Michelle Mone having made their money from scamming the latest pandemic, are now arguing their innocence, having spirited their winnings to off shore islands.

Rant over because it will do no good ;)

Simon Jenkin's article

A Birth Day - Bartlow Roman Barrows

It would have been Paul's birthday today

2008 visit

17th December 2023

Today it is summer gardens.  This one in Kirkbymoorside.  Houses backed onto the main road, but behind the houses stretched long gardens.  This garden was visited on an Open Garden Day and it was very hot. 

This is what I call a lifetime garden, evolving and maturing over the years and there did not seem to be a weed in sight.  Though at the bottom of the garden there was a small wild garden. 

a smattering of would be Xmas cards

Cards have been arriving, so I must look for those non-existent addresses for cards, which I never write down in the address book, so if family is reading this a pretty address book would be really appreciated.  I have a birthday on the 9th January so I tend to fall slightly flat on that date.

It is good to hear that Jo's four cats in their barn are still happily ensconced even though D won't let them come into the house and that they have finally settled on a dog after two and half years of looking.  

I do miss the village and my friends there, but once Paul had gone and I could not live in  an empty house, I had to move and now live quite happily with my family.

So looking for a suitable photo through the masses of albums I have managed to accumulate, except for the early ones.  These reside on an old large external hard drive and I am scared of  putting it on this computer.  Sadness is mixed with quiet happiness and a realisation of a full and happy life.

A Japanese bodhisattva for compassion

Roses - a complete form

chrysanthemums and a good Harvest festival

Lucy for indulgent laziness

The pagan Rudston monolith struts its defiance against the church

Avebury

14th December 2023 - Was there a saga in the fall of the Xmas tree?

Carrot Top by Thelwell

The slightly surreal this morning: The Xmas tree fell down in the night, so Lillie informed me at 6.30 this morning.  My mind immediately saw fat fairies tumbling the tree.  Not sure if I am being woke or anti-woke  there but fairies don't really exist do they?  It reminded me of when my daughter was young and a piece of music came on the radio, which I saw as fat fairies dancing.  Follow through on my thinking and a Thelwellian image came to mind, I do love plump little Shetland ponies.

There seems more political humour around today and not that fun poking gentle humour that would make you laugh out loud.  Xmas presents always included Giles cartoons, with grumpy, witchy old grandma sitting in the corner glowering evilly on all the festivities. Is that me now I wonder, still I have a better dress sense than her!

Poetry: trying to be serious.  I have read a lot over my lifetime, some poems I have loved, others not understood.  A poem reflects the time you live in, and may not be understood a couple of hundred years later.  I am not really into Keats for instance and the storyline of St. Eve is too complicated but this morning when I was running through my blogs I came across Bensozia writing on Taliesin.

Taliesin, maybe a particular person or he may indeed be several, his writing is like riddles, going back to a Celtic age of intricate design, so why not their language as well.  From the 6th century his writings were interpreted in different ways, added to, woven into other myths, till the real Taliesin somehow got lost in a swirling river of other people's thoughts.

12th December 2023

Before I go to do some shopping I must write something.  My saints have rather fallen by the wayside.  I am stuck on Gilda, maybe the first historian to record history in this country.  But he was in such a bad temper about those British kings I am not sure he deserves a place. 

History I suppose should be about facts and not one's own individual interpretation of it.  Also what has struck me on reading the 'Lives of the Celtic Saints' is the fact these early ones were really part of the upper echelons of society.  Their fathers taking on several wives and having lots of children.  So people what do you do with too many offspring?  Just farm them out to the nearest monastic house and set them preaching along the highways and byways.  It saves the territory for the eldest son to be heir.

The landed gentry still do it!  Unfortunately, large private parks and houses are expensive to keep up, so the National Trust stepped in. 

Will there always be such easy solutions in this war torn world, as I type they are talking death by starvation in Palestine on the radio.  It happens elsewhere of course we just do not note it down in our consciousness.

Ukraine is being forgotten, dire warnings from the Ukrainian side that should we fail to deliver the weapons of war to fight the Russians, we too will be standing at the gate of war.  What, or who do you believe?  I note that the BBC uses the word 'Verified' whenever it gives out news. For which I think we should be grateful.

So, having been woken up by Mollie once more in the middle of the night, for food.  My mind wandered and I thought of the language students I had looked after many years ago.  They came from Brazil, the Arab States, Europe.  I heard how it was to live behind the Berlin Wall, or live an isolated life in Siberia.  The Japanese girls, there were quite a few.  Sometimes sad in a strange country, the three I took to Ikea one weekend, who were overawed by everything they saw.  And next weekend got a taxi to go back to the Ikea in Bristol.

The ones who wanted to stay, and the loft room that became the overspill for many of them.  That loft room had a life of its own, my daughter was there with small Tom at one stage after a breakdown in a relationship.  My son and his two friends when coming back from a year in Ghana shared the room till eventually my then husband threw them out, two at least of course.

So I shall get out that big box of photographs and see if I can copy them on to this computer.

"I haven't got my head in the sand, it is just that the world has turned darker".

Summer garden from long ago

This poem is what Greenpeace put up to remember the poet Benjamin Zephaniah after his sudden departure from this Earth.  I have just been listening to 'Desert Island Discs' and the music he chose, he was a Rastafarian, something of which I know little of, except for the dreadlocks, but his choice was mostly for the words.  Funnily enough the one record he did choose as his favourite was 'Take Five' by Dave Brubeck.  I think it is the only jazz music that I really like! I came to it early and whenever I hear it on the radio, I stop, and listen.

But in one of the interviews on radio 4 he mentioned that he had a Corkscrew Willow tree, which grew quickly and had almost covered his shed in the garden.

Well that brought back a memory of my friends Roy and Sybil and their tiny cottage and long garden.  Sybil, a very good friend who I would visit often gave me  cuttings of a willow and the Corkscrew willow.  Just put them in a jar of water and they sprouted roots and so into the garden they went.  They grew like Jack's beanstalk and I was delighted with them. Zephaniah mentioned that the tree only lives for a short time, which in fact mine did, but he reckoned his had lasted a long time. 

But it brought back happy memories of sitting in Sybil's garden having lunch or tea.  The day when we buried her German hound under the bench.  She had sat at the top of the stairs in the cottage, nursing the old dog whilst he slipped away and the burying of him in the garden was a fitting thing to do.

Summer garden

8th December 2023 - To Witter

My daughter and granddaughter left the house at 6.40 am this morning to catch the bus because the trains in this corner of England are on strike today.  Consulting her phone Lillie says, the traffic is already beginning to stack up along the road to Rochdale.  This is because a sinkhole has appeared in the road.  Living in narrow valleys served by only one road going through them, traffic jams happen.

The infrastructure in this country is bad, I was going to use the word appalling which is probably a better word, but it has sadly gone down under the present government - money not spent.  Though here I must add, that locals get their knickers in a twist over every delay by traffic lights for the mending of the road.  We are a small country - full stop.

Natural disaster is bad, but the word natural is exactly that, so flood warnings are in place where rivers run high.  Water companies instead of spending money on cleaning water, they would rather pay out big dividends to shareholders, are dumping our sewage into rivers and the sea, rather than treating the sewage.

Yesterday on the news people in West London had to sit miserably in cold, dark trains that were not moving for several hours, all because of an electricity failure.  Sometimes December is just a rotten month for some of us.  

Pat's 'imagery' blog came to mind when I saw a baby crying its heart out in the dark carriage.  Everyone's face was lit up by their phones as they stared down avidly into its contents.  Suddenly I remembered a similar time when coming home from London to Essex, the train broke down in the snow.  We had been to see a show and had had left my baby daughter in the hands of a competent babysitter.  I paniced full time imagining the babysitter going home and leaving Karen alone in the house.  Of course she didn't but the parallel between that time and this - no mobile phones in the olden days to reassure us.

My daughter works in the 'Northern Quarter' of Manchester, a sort of 'in' sophisticated place to be in, home to night clubs and restaurants.  Well just down the street from her shop Chanel Metier d'Art put on a show, it was of course blocked off so that the public could not see what was going on but the celebrities were there in full force.  Lots of security.

But the tale here was of Hugh Grant and his wife and of their generosity to a plumber in Manchester, who avails his service for free to people who cannot afford to get work done.  Grant gave £20,000 to the plumber. 

Now whether that was out of the goodness of his heart or a ploy to get noticed heaven knows! But this article from the BBC gives a good idea of the happenings.  The organisers built a roof over the street, someone said it looked like a glass house.  Who says Manchester is not a bright and upcoming city of the future?

Edit, here is the video of it.  Very 1960s. Short skirts, long jackets.

6th December 2023

 

Why did I buy this??

I am knitting hats at the moment, engrossed in the rather lovely wool of John Arbon, rather pricy but muted colours I love. The world whirls round and there is nothing I can do to make it better, except sign umpteen

things.

The heating went a few days ago, of course it did, what would you but expect at this time of year.  We can pump up the pressure every day for a couple of hours hot water and the plumber will be here next Monday, so no great deal.

I should be doing another saint, but my heart isn't in it today.   Outside I hear the sound of birds as dusk starts to fall, reminding me that we circle in real time and one day the Earth will return to our warmer spring.

Back to the 'Witch' book being read out aloud, did not realise that the whole witchy thing is experienced in every country, especially such places as Africa.  The tortures used to get you to own up to being a witch (should I use the term wizard for male I wonder) are the usual nasty things.  Damned if you are and damned if you are not.  

I heard an intriguing thought the other day.  In fact calling people with the term sorcerer or witch, is a way of getting rid of them.  So your next door neighbour maybe has land you covet, or a wife.  So denounce them as having caused the illness in your cows, or some bad luck with your crops.  For women over 40 years old and past the menopausal stage they were not good for anything.  This of course also applies to old people as well. 

When women became a singleton in the olden days, they became  just an extra mouth to feed.  This was emphasised by the more modern pagan witches who are always in touch with their inner beings, this is put down to misogyny of course.  The eskimos practised something like this, leaving the old to die in the snow.  Don't worry, it happened ages ago.

4th December 2023 'F'

Today is 'F'  Though the name I pick is known by a more popular name.  It is Ffraid, better known as Bridget (Sant y Brid) of Irish fame and of course keeper of the everlasting flame.  Her dates are c.450-c.525.  She founded the first abbey of nuns at Kildare in Ireland.  But in Wales she was known as Ffraid Santes, also interestingly, Bride's Bay that encircles so much of the coast line I love in Pembrokeshire, is named because of the links between Ireland and Wales.

Breverton say of Ffraid that probably because of the large dedications to this saint in Wales is because she replaced the Celtic Goddess of fire at earlier times.  Therefore the legend (or truth) of the perpetual fire at Kildare was kept burning for a thousand years may have some significance.  It is said (a lovely turn of phrase) that Brighde, is the Celtic mother-goddess.  She is invoked at the pagan festival of Imbolc on the 1st February at lambing time.

The fire-festival was called Brigantia, a tribe Up North was also called Brigantes and  probably covered the same area as Yorkshire, though on reading the etymology on the name, it could have had a different meaning.

The story goes that whilst talking to a dying pagan, she took the rushes from on his floor and wove a cross, these Saint Bridget crosses we still have today.  They protect the home from evil and want.

I have been listening to 'Witch' on BBC Sounds, a modern discussion of how today's witches live in our society.  No, no witchy hats or sexual cavorting round fires, they operate just as ordinary females.  Perhaps their role as midwives and healers did become the focus of misogyny and then the dreadful purge of supposed evil witchery.  I notice Professor Ronald Hutton has written a book on the subject, and it is on Audible.  So I shall listen to it, it is long, he is a very erudite writer.

I am at the moment listening to Wendell Berry, I always think of him as an American pioneer, he is an environmentalist, writer and poet and also a farmer.  The book is called 'A Place on Earth'.  So often quoted the following......................

I shall have to stop, Mollie has worked out how to leap from the settee to the desk, and paws on keyboard leave long lines of double dutch.

'E' or an approximation of it.

 

Wuffing Kingdom of East Anglia and Beyond:

No not madness when I am supposed to be writing of 'E' and start with Wuffing, but what a word I just could not leave it and it is of course Anglo-Saxon.  And one of its Kings was Saint Edmund died 870.  His body said to lie at Bury Abbey, which was founded by an Anglican martyr king Sigeberht.  Edmund was done to death in a pretty miserable way by the Danes which you can see in the mural above, which just happens to be in Pickering church North Yorkshire.  Along with several other wall paintings.  I think they had been covered over with white wash but were restored.  The martyrdom of Saint Catherine painting (think Catherine wheel fireworks and flinch) is also there.

Edmund's expression seems to say 'oh dear' but the cruelty is there to be seen. You can find the original photo here, pretty bad photos but I have seemed to have cleaned the above photo on this computer.  Technology always on the move to be better!

Of course 'E' encompasses the Easter debacle, a movable date today between March 22 and April 25.  But was debated and strongly fought over by the Roman and Celtic church.

Humour

 I am a sucker for a funny cartoon, or the memes that appear every where. Yesterday a cartoon with a man sitting at his desk with a zoom meeting going on his computer, and the cat on its back taped to the floor to stop hthe cat doing the 'computer walk'.  Childish but then isn't most humour?  We have entered a constricted age of humour, somehow their are 'police wordsters' around pulling at every thing we say.  Perhaps it is just the young putting their elders in place, perhaps it was wrong to laugh at some things, I definitely did not laugh at some of the comedians around.

But now we have to be on the ball, and watch what we say, or there is likely someone will find, one small error in what you think of as funny.    Readjust the brain! Can I though at this late stage?  I loved the political satire on 'Have I Got News for You', it goes back to the 1960s "That Was the Week that Was" but does it actually get us anywhere?

I had an email yesterday from a friend in America with a link to a funny article, here it is if you want it - 19 Old Cold Words to get you Through Winter.  Thank you Bucky.

Anyways, on this first day of winter according to the present calendar of dates (the church messed around with it a couple of times).  Let us welcome the snow, we are apparently going to be engulfed in a storm of snow over the weekend.  It did snow yesterday, rather sparingly, and already in the East on the coast, the roads round Whitby and Scarborough are getting snow bound by Fylingsdale.  But closer to home, Sheffield seems to be the coldest town with minus degrees through the day.  We have a slight smattering of snow on the ground.  I am not going out.

Guess which ex-prime minister this was?

30th November 2023 - Celtic Saint D

Well continuing the alphabet of the Celtic saints with the letter 'D', there are plenty to choose from amongst the Welsh saints but then of course I had forgotten Saint Dewi or Saint David Patron saint of Wales.  Dates of birth are given variously, starting from 460 to 520 and then death between 544 and 589.

But first I would like to write something else.  My viewing figures have just shot up in the last few days.  Well I like to live a quiet life on my blog, pottering around with anything that takes my mind.  I think the reason for the over the top figures is dear Weaver, who wrote a comment.  Can I just say that Weaver and myself have known each other through our blogs for at least as far back as 2011.  I admire Pat and am shocked and saddened by her latest news as everyone is, but I know she has a stamina which I envy and will come through strong. My feelings on the subject is that we all just carry on as usual.

So back to St. David, or maybe his headland which I have wandered over so often, tracing life back to the far reaches of prehistory.  His name is dedicated to many, many churches, even the famous Kilpeck one, though twinned with St. Mary.

He was canonised by the then Pope in the 12th Century, probably because he fought against the Pelagasian Heresy (it was rather a good heresy) and ensured that the Roman Catholic branch took power over Christianity.  Till of course King Henry V111 decided otherwise in this country.

St. David was a vegetarian, I suppose veganism was still to come into being, and David was known traditionally, as The Waterman as he and his monks were ascetic teetotallers and vegetarians.  Hmm, patron saint of vegetarians!

The more you read of these saints the more you understand the weird.  In this I mean the old customs and saint days - the hobby horses and dressing up or being a 'mummer'.

For instance, on the 12th March (old St.David's Day) in the Gwaun Valley in Pembrokeshire, the wax candlestick on the table would be replaced by a wooden one, signifying that supper could be eaten without candlelight.  And one should not forget the leek, an emblem of Wales.  For it is said that he told the Welsh soldiers to put leeks in their hats so that they would be recognisable on the battle field.

Breverton writes an amusing paragraph on the medical use of the leeks in the middle ages.  I won't go there, but if you want children, eat your leeks!

St David The town, is probably one of the smallest towns with a cathedral.  It lies in its hollow next to the ruins of Bishop's Palace.  The roof was apparently robbed by an English bishop in the dates of 1536-1538, the time when the monasteries and abbeys were brought down in the Dissolution.  He wanted the money to pay for his daughter's wedding!

St. David's Cathedral with the Bishop's Palace in the background

Ruins of Bishops Palace

St. David's Head - Warriors Dyke

Caedmon's Hymn

The 19th Century  Caedmon Cross

Now let us praise Heaven-Kingdom's guardian,

the Maker's might and his mind's thoughts,

the work of the glory-father—of every wonder,

eternal Lord. He established a beginning.

He first shaped for men's sons

Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator;

then middle-earth mankind's guardian,

eternal Lord, afterwards prepared

the earth for men, the Lord almighty. 

There are plenty of Celtic saints with names that start with 'C',  Cadfael, Cuthbert, Colombo but I shall choose Caedmon, who wrote the above hymn whilst at Hilde's Whitby Abbey.  It wasn't always called Whitby, the original name was Streoneshalh, but after the Northern invasions it was called  Whitby - White Bay.

The story told by Bede in his book - An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, is that Caedmon, a poor cowherder and also illiterate composed the first hymn.  Bede translated it in Latin but other translations were Saxon, so if you know anything about Saxon writing of the time, each line of a poem is divided into two.  There are plenty of videos either singing or saying this hymn, but it is a rabbit hole that one fears to go down.

At one stage I fell in love with the sober tones of the organ, and also strangely enough with the chanting of monks.  There is something soothing in such music.  My records years ago reflect this, but then the old records are a thing of the past.

Looking at the Breverton book and I see that he says that the very first carol service in 1878 was held on Christmas Eve and was in Truro, Cornwall, he says

"The earliest carols were pagan chants and dances associated with fertility rites and the passing of the winter solstice".  Some carols are as recent as the 19th century, whilst others refer to earlier times.  Interestingly, the carol Partridge in a Pear Tree, is a symbolic way of teaching children, who could not go to church the basics of the bible.  For instance - Two turtle Doves - Old and new testament.  No wonder we love carols, well I do at least, the spontaneity of singing the 'Holly and the Ivy' or 'Away in a Manger' is a bit like the nursery rhymes of old.

The old Caedmon Cross

28th November 2023

We may have snow, my news feed talks of a 'snow bomb' where are the journalists coming from today?

Snow: it is that white stuff, beautiful until it gets walked upon, then it goes down into a sludgy mess.  People complain, their cars get stuck, the roads and pavements gets gritted, and as we sprinkle salt on our steps to stop the icing up, it becomes a nuisance.

But I have been away to the far reaches of Shipley, which is roughly about an hour away on the trains.  That is if they are running of course.  One notice up on the train board, was that the train had not left the depot and immediately this train had a personality, and I saw it sulking in its shed because it hadn't got its favourite driver.  Roll on Thomas the Tank Engine.

But its bleak out there in Bradford as you cross from one station to another. I marvel at the great retaining walls that protect the tracks from landfalls.  I marvel at the great Victorian buildings of this civic town.  They tower above me crushing the human spirit and carrying the message it is only money that can build in such style.  We pass the rail arches, last time there were tents housed in these dark holes, and my daughter would not let me take photos because I was so angry about them.  This weekend they seemed empty, but she reckoned they would be back at night.  She and Andrew had come by one night when the food van was there and she said hundreds were there, maybe we could reduce that figure down to a hundred but this is England in the raw. 

Andrew is such a good host ;) food delicious.  The flat overlooks the canal in Shipley, and so one is entertained by cyclists, runners, dog walkers strolling along the path and once I had told Andrew to fill his bird feeder immediately, for the small flock of sparrows that live in the hedge below.

We went to Salt Mill, I have written of it elsewhere, a great cathedral of a place, once dedicated to the thrum of looms.  Wandered round its vast interior and had tea and cakes in its brightly lit (and warm) cafe.  On the ground floor, there is a generous display of art books, I would call them 'coffee table books' to impress one's visitors, and I bought a couple of cards of an artist Simon Palmer, who had a space down there.  Mostly his artwork is about trees and landscape in an individual style.

Ascending from the Bridge - Simon Palmer

It was darkening outside but as went down by the paintings and drawings on the wall there was the most beautiful music.  A choir reverberated from the tall ceilings and it caught the heart, people stopped and just listened.  A magic moment.

26th November 2o23

I'm off to the outer reaches of Shipley.  I think the family feel I have been neglected somewhat so need an outing. This is written 'tongue in cheek'. What about Mollie you may say, well she will just have to have one night without me.  I shall leave the duvet folded back, for that is where she likes to sleep during the day, Lillie will be here to feed her.  So she can't come to much harm.

It is very cold the little temperature gauge down below says 0 degrees and it feels like that.  Maybe we will get to Salt Mill, though it is a bit of a walk to go there and I can just imagine how cold this enormous building will be.

Below is a photo of Puala Ubin in Singapore, it often flips up on as a screensaver.  Its radiant green and stillness a balm to the heart.  You could sit by the side of this pool and dream your life away.

We are still in the time of the 'ceasefire', hostages on one side and prisoners on the other side.  There is now talk of usage of language in describing the actions of both sides. Sympathies lie on both sides, a criticism on Al Jazeera by BBC journalists.  I would probably argue on the side of the BBC that it is difficult given hundreds of reports to always use the right language.  Don't we all have that trouble?

The above reminds me something I read once about the mountains and lakes of Tibet.  That in their religion, the man was the mountain and the woman the lake.

25th November - Saints 'B'

 Well I have already covered two saints who's name begins with 'B'.  In 2009 I found Beuno, very cross at the Saxons moving in with their terrible language and vowing to move deeper inland.  You can find him here and he protects Curlews, though he is not doing a very good job at the moment.

Then there was Brynach, let us think of him as protector of cuckoos in his church at Nevern.  Renowned for its Bleeding Yews, the church is pretty old and the story of the cuckoo flying back maybe just a story but funny how these things still cling to the folds of Saint Brynach's robe.  Anyway, you can find his story here.

But there is a third with a very similar name to Brynach, not exactly a saint but a king, King Brychan.  According to his story he fathered 24 male children and 24 female children.  One's suspicions grow at exact numbers, magic numbers in the Celtic period are more likely to go for, 3, 7, or 9.

He was the first king of Brecon after the Romans left, the girls (all 24?) led saintly and virginal lives 'dedicated from their youth to religious observance'.  But both sets of children seemed to have become saints and their names are all given by Breverton, though there seems to be some marriages in the family.  His wives were, I think they should be mentioned for their heroic ability to have so many children  - Eurbrawst, Proestri and Rhybrawst.

Though the legend of the 24 girls is wound through a very Celtic story assigned to a river.  That they remained virgins and on their deaths were transformed into rivers flowing into the River Severn (Hafren).

Breverton gives their place of living as on a crannog (fortified island) in Llangors Lake in Brecon.  This according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 

The written word was the task of monks, many books may have been copied, almost like ledgers of the names of people in the small tribal areas of this country.  Some of these books were obviously lost to Viking raids and various warfares, but what remains, either copied or original gives a visual impression, of often battles, but just as importantly, the 'royal' nature of the families.