el_staplador

- robin
- blue tit
- pigeon
- house sparrow
- jay

Other wildlife
- grey squirrel

Save Canterbury's Roman museum and Westgate Towers museum. Because closing museums is a Bad Thing.

Recognise that chronic pain and chronic fatigue are conditions that can cause incapacity for work. Because forcing people to work when they are physically incapable of it is a Bad Thing.

Save the Albany Midwifery Practice. Because a midwifery practice that respects the women it works with is a Good Thing.

And here's a very good post on feminism, Islam, and the veil. Thanks to lizw for the link.

I'm not wildly keen on Lawrence's novels, but I do like his poetry. First, this, which I'd not encountered before seeing it on Bishop Alan's blog.

Demiurge

They say that reality exists only in the spirit
that corporeal existence is a kind of death
that pure being is bodiless
that the idea of the form precedes the idea substantial.

But what nonsense it is!
as if any Mind could have imagined a lobster
dozing in the under-deeps, then reaching out a savage and iron claw!

Even the mind of God can only imagine
those things that have become themselves:
bodies and presences, here and now, creatures with a foothold in creation
even if it is only a lobster on tiptoe.

Religion knows better than philosophy.
Religion knows that Jesus was never Jesus
till he was born from a womb, and ate soup and bread
and grew up, and became, in the wonder of creation, Jesus,
with a body and with needs, and a lovely spirit.


Also, having nothing in one's house that one doesn't know to be useful or believe to be beautiful is all very well, but is a little disheartening when one loves all one's mugs and then three of them go at the handle in the space of a month. One was an eighteenth birthday present, one was utterly gorgeous and probably unique; it was tall and thin, and had a tiny stubby handle half way down, and was painted in browns and olive-greens with a fantastic Aztec-style bird, and the last was one of a set I had as a leaving present from my last choir.


Things Men Have Made

Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into
are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing
for long years.
And for this reason, some old things are lovely
warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.

Things Made By Iron

Things made by iron and handled by steel
are born dead, they are shrouds, they soak life out of us.
Till after a long time, when they are old and have steeped in our life
they begin to be soothed and soothing: then we throw them away.

I have

- phoned the tax office. May be getting some money back - hurrah!
- registered with the doctor
- made two appointments
- planted two lavender, and one each of sage, lemon thyme, and what is probably marjoram, plants
- moved the bird feeder from the back porch to the back gate, in the hopes that the birds will be more interested - though if I see the squirrels taking advantage I shall move it straight back again
- tidied up the back yard

There is a robin in the tree, and there are bulbs coming up in the garden. I am happy. Perhaps I should move to compressed hours and do this every week...

Actually, lunch today cost me three pounds, and I haven’t eaten it yet[1], the reason being that, as I was patiently standing in line at ye olde takeaway delicatessen, waiting for my soup, I was accosted by a charming lady who offered to cut my hair for free. She was, it transpired, on trial at one of the more upmarket hairdressers, and was required to show her art. Yours truly, never being one to turn down a free ticket, said why not, live dangerously, etc, and came back from lunch twenty-five minutes late (she swore blind she’d only take half an hour, and I didn’t let her straighten it, either) and with rather a fine bob, with layers. My hair has never previously been judged thick enough to sustain layers, so that’s quite exciting. I will obviously stay late to make up the time.


But I’m wearing a polo-neck top, and many of the hairs that have come off are between a quarter of an inch and an inch long, and are blooming itchy with it…


[1] Fortunately colleague brought in muffins to celebrate his birthday, and the vending machine dispenses instant soup free, so I haven’t been starving. It's probably a more balanced diet than locusts and wild honey.

Argumentative Church wine evening last night. Good fun; I defended the honour of the internet against all comers. It wasn't as interesting as it might have been, on account of most of those present not having waded any further in than Farcebook, while I was burbling away in the corner going 'yay blogging' and trying to convince the more nervous that the internet is not in fact populated entirely by murderers, or any less or more safe than the real world, being as it is part of the real world, while at the same time emphasising the fact that if you put things on the internet, people can see them.

(So, chaps: have you found me yet? First Upp3r R00m1e to comment gets a prize. Note the paranoid precautions employed to make the name of the group less susceptible to Googling.)

Also, Paul Cornell, you're awesome. And we're selling the CTonymobile, if anyone's after a car.

A note to the following line in the new Arden edition of Shakespeare's Henry VIII:

Half your suit
Never name to us. You have half our power;
The other moiety ere you ask is given.

"Shaheen suggests a tentative relationship between this ostensibly magnanimous remark of Henry's and Mark 6.22-3: 'And the daughter of the same Herodias came in and danced, and pleased Herode and them that sate at table together, the King said vnto ye maide, Aske of me what thou wilt, and I wil giue it thee. And he sware vnto her, Whatsoeuer thou shalt aske of me, I wil giue it thee, euen vnto the halfe of my kingdome.' Shaheen observes that '[a]lthough the spirit of Henry's words and those of Herod are the same, the comparison of Henry and Katherine to Herod and Herodias' daughter is strange, and at first glance appears to be farfetched' ... he notes that there are no known parallels for this passage in any of the other sources, and concludes that Mark is drawn on without heed to context. Yet the reference may be deliberately grotesque: if Henry were invoking Herodias's daughter, then this might both imply that he wishes Katherine were young and beautiful and suggest that he is on the lookout for such a dancing girl. This might then provide a mythic underpinning for the encounter of Henry and Anne during a dance."

Might I venture to suggest that the relevance of the story of the downfall of John the Baptist to the story of Henry VIII's first two marriages is marked, but has got very little to do with nubile dancing girls?

- Wear sandals in January.
- Travel to London for a performance that lasted all of forty-five seconds.
- Climb out of a fire escape in a floor-length dress.
- Sing grace after dinner.
- Sing grace after two different sorts of booze.
- Hurt my shoulder doing up a zip.
- Climb up an extremely narrow staircase to a gallery with an extremely low rail following two different types of booze.

And all of them in one night. It was a good night. And we got away with it.

Part of this morning's passage:

I write to you, my children, because your sins have been forgiven for his sake.
I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is and has been from the beginning.
I write to you, young men, because you have mastered the evil one.

To you, children, I have written because you know the Father.
To you, fathers, I have written because you know him who is and has been from the beginning.
To you, young men, I have written because you are strong; God's word remains in you, and you have mastered the evil one. [1]

The commentator talks about light and love for a bit, and then says: "It is a clear consequence of becoming a child of God that we have new brothers and sisters in the family of God and we are to love them. How seriously do we take this? John addresses particular groups and manages not to leave anyone out!"

Let me repeat the last sentence: John addresses particular groups and manages not to leave anyone out!

Hello? Hello?

I can give John the benefit of the doubt, being a product of his time, and possibly a Gnostic, and not knowing any better (and, for that matter, not claiming that he's not leaving people out), but Elaine Duncan ought to know better. Time for a change of Bible notes, methinks.

______
[1] 1 John 2:12-14, New English Bible, which is what I've been using recently. The whole passage was 1 John 2:3-17. The commentator appears to have been using the ESV, which I don't have handy, but, for comparison, here are the same verses as rendered in the NIV:

I write to you, dear children,
because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
I write to you, fathers,
because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you have overcome the evil one.
I write to you, dear children,
because you have known the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you are strong,
and the word of God lives in you,
and you have overcome the evil one.

And the Authorized Version:

I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake.
I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.
I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.

I have decided to wear my wedding dress to the dinner on Thursday. My ma reckons that it will be reasonably easy to remove the chiffon overlay, which will render it sufficiently unweddingy. I could do with hitching up the train in some way, too, though. Shoes are not a problem; will have to think of something to do with my hair.

I have resolved to take it into work and, if it is not raining at 4.45 on Thursday afternoon, I will change at work, and if it is raining, I shall risk the loos at the venue. Amusing as it would be to wear full evening dress to work - particularly since 'work' is currently a trade union - I shan't. Tony is going to, but then It's Easier For Men, Isn't It?

Here is the menu:

Grilled Scallops & Tomato Tart
Lavender Oil & Sherry Drizzle
Selection of Breads

***

Rose County Lancashire, Charolais x Black Angus, grass-fed Beef
Pink Peppercorn Sauce, Sweet Potatoes Dauphinoise
Field Mushroom Topped with Stilton Bread Crumbs
Roasted Shallots, Green Beans with Toasted Almonds
Crushed Carrots & Swede

***

English Apple Quartet:
Brandy Snap Basket with Apple Sorbet
Apple Trifle - Millefeuille - Apple Crumble

***

Rich Roast Coffee

***

Wines

Riesling 2008 Jean Geiler Vin d’Alsace
Chateau Cadillac Les Gourgues Bordeaux Superieur 2006
Ruby Port & VS Cognac

And whose tomfool idea was it to sing Grace after dinner? I foresee disaster. One can only hope that the Worshipful Redacteds will be even more sloshed than us.

***

I have set up a feed for ancientandmodern, my hymn blog. It can be found here.

That cut-and-paste meme, revisited

I don't want to talk about cancer. I want to talk about people - because every single one of them was - is - a hell of a lot more than the disease.

My grandmother, whom I just remember. She lived downstairs at my parents' first house. She kept dried cat food around for the cats, and I would go and eat it - it's quite tasty, actually - and she would read to me out of the Kate Greenaway treasury. And, while in my memory she is a shadowy 'Granny' figure, I know that she was quite a remarkable person. She met my grandfather working for the League of Nations, and claimed that General Franco proposed to her in the Canary Islands, before he became General Franco. She could not cook at all.

Grandpa - my mother's father - another remarkable person. I remember being a little afraid of him, possibly because I didn't quite get his sense of humour. I think it may have been rather like mine is now. He was the illegitmate child of a girl in service, and was fostered out to a lady called Mrs Gush, and goodness knows she needed the money that fostering brought in, for all that she did her damnedest never to let him know about it. But he was bright, and he got into grammar school, and then university, and eventually became a teacher. He married and had three daughters, and then, when the youngest was one and a half, his wife died of polio. He fought tooth and nail to be allowed to keep the children, and if he hadn't I wouldn't exist, because it was through his second wife, Sally, that my mother (the youngest daughter) met my father. Sally brought a daughter of her own, and they had three more, and they somehow managed to keep nine bodies and souls together. His great passion was the writings of Junius, and he genuinely believed that, had it been generally known what he had found out, the history of the British Isles would have been entirely different.

Suzie, Sally's daughter, the middle one of the seven, was, I think, always the odd one out; perhaps it was just that she suffered from not being quite so ferociously clever as the rest of the family. But she was a lovely person, quiet and peaceful, and an extremely talented musician. She lived in Sussex, and I saw quite a lot of her towards the end of her life - which, for different reasons, was a difficult time for me. The last thing we did together was to see a performance of Godspell at Chichester, and that's a wonderful show. But she wrote her own show, an adaptation of the story of Ruth, and after she died some of her friends performed it. We went to see it; it was good.

Heloise, my godmother, I've talked about a lot. She was a wonderful person, too. She was the daughter of my father's godmother; our two families were friends for generations. She had an amazing life; she lived on a kibbutz, in a squat in Vauxhall, she appeared on the front page of the Socialist Worker. All this was before I was born, of course; throughout my childhood she would turn up at our house, usually with James or Andrew in tow, clear everything off the kitchen table, and turn anything and everything that there was in the kitchen into a fabulous meal. She loved food. She was astonishingly beautiful; she had blonde hair, cut short, and always wore dangly silver earrings. She walked the Camino de Santiago, along with Andrew, and John Murray, and I'd never have done it without that example. Do you know what she was fighting at the end of her life? I'll tell you. She was fighting for better rights for refugees, for asylum seekers.

There are more. I haven't talked about the people I know who are suffering the disease today. I haven't talked about the people I only knew slightly. Do you know what I'd like? I'd like everyone who cut-and-pasted that meme to do this, as well. I don't think anyone deserves to be defined by a disease. I don't believe that cancer was the most remarkable thing about any of them.

In a couple of weeks the adult portion of the choir is being transported en masse up to London to sing grace before dinner for the Worshipful Company of [redacted], because one of my fellow altos is being installed as Master. We get dinner out of it, and a chance to wear pretty frocks...

...which is a problem. I have two evening frocks of a suitable length (i.e. full), neither of which fit me any more. We went round the shopping centre on Friday; it was horrendous, and I couldn't find any dresses. I have two options:

- run around Guildford in my lunch hour in search of something in the sale, ruining my digestion and my nerves;
- wear my wedding dress and have done it. It's not as if it's white.

The second option is sorely tempting. Of course, the whole choir would know, having been present at its first outing, but meh.

***

I must soon, in consultation with steelgoldfish85, pick a date for our joint 25th birthday party. We have already decided the most important element - namely, that it will be fancy-dress. I am sorely tempted to go in top hat and tails, as Marlene Dietrich.

'Kittens are cute! People should not stomp on them!' - an enlightened person.

If you believe that kittens are cute and shouldn't be stomped on, repost this sentence in your journal. Together we can feel better about the fact that we don't stomp on kittens!

93% of people won't repost.

Which expresses only one, maybe two, of the issues I have with that meme that's going around, but I don't particularly want to go into it at the moment.


The 'What did you eat?' meme, seen most recently in the company of wellinghall:

Today

7.20am - 1 cup tea
9.15am - 1 cup coffee
11am - 1 cup coffee
1.15pm - 1 jacket potato with cottage cheese; small dish bean salad; bottle apple juice
2.15pm - 1 small square millionaire's shortbread
3.30pm - 1 cup coffee
5.10pm - 1 packet Nice'n'Spicy Nik-Naks
6pm - 1 cup tea
7pm - 1 ham and pineapple pizza
8pm - 1 jam doughnut
currently - 1 cup peppermint tea stuff


Yesterday

10am - 1 cup tea
11.30am - couscous, with butter
4pm - salmon/cucumber sandwich
5pm - 1 cup coffee
7pm - ham waffles, peas and cheese sauce (was quite pleased with the waffles, incidentally, but burnt my finger on the waffle iron. My fingerprint feels all smudged now.)
9pm - 1 cup lime/ginger tea stuff

I need to do something about the coffee. It's not even proper coffee. I also need to do something about breakfast, but I have gone off toast (again) and am still not keen on cereal. Also I prefer to spend the ten minutes it would take in bed...

I've just finished the latest Sarah Waters. It hit home - closer than I was expecting, and 'home' is the operative word. I may say without giving away too much of the plot that it deals with a family in reduced circumstances in a house that is too big for it. So far, so I Capture the Castle. But my goodness, did it resonate. I grew up in a huge house with no money to keep it up. I remember the bulging ceiling in my bedroom, the crumbling sheds, the overgrown kitchen garden, wearing my dressing gown all night each winter, and, under it all, there if I scratched for it - which I never did, not wanting to face what I'd find - the guilt, the knowledge that even if all six of us worked our fingers to the bone we'd never be able to keep it up.

(Title of this post notwithstanding, I feel that I should make it clear that I did not grow up in one of the Stately Homes of England. It was merely a biggish Victorian house in the country, with about three acres of land, and it was too big for us to keep up with.)

It was a wonderful house in which to grow up. Large and old (not really old, only mid-nineteenth-century) as it was, it never felt creepy, not to me; some of my friends may have felt differently. I remember only one screaming nightmare, and I know exactly what prompted it. It was a friendly house. The landing was big enough to operate a train service along, the raspberry bushes, neglected as they were, never failed, the Fish and I spent a whole summer running a 'public' from inside the Cart Shed. There were two staircases; you could run up one and clatter down the other. The cats and the chickens could roam free - and so could the children. I didn't want to go.

Of course we had to go, and in the long run it was worth it, though the result of cramming the family into a space that was probably half the size was predictable enough: separation, not - at first - of the amicable sort. The whole thing was predictable enough, I suppose, from start to finish, from leaving Winchester to arriving on the Isle of Wight, and the ten years in between that were my childhood. I hardly remember Winchester-as-home, and in 1999 everything changed and I had to grow up all at once. Those ten years, though, they were good years. Of course there was the money problem - there always was - and there were cracks that one didn't want to look at too closely that weren't just the cracks in the plaster, and we were a mile away from the nearest place that might truthfully be called a 'village', which worsened my existing tendency to introversion.

I am wondering at my parents' habit of buying houses they can't keep up with. My mother seems to have learned; her current place is, while messy, not actively collapsing, and the garden, such as it is, consists mainly of cliff. My father, though, was brought up - not to live beyond his means, exactly, but he never learned how to live within them in the event of their becoming less generous. It's worrying, particularly as he gets less good at the practical side of life. Melbury is smaller than Walford was, but there are still bits of it that are threatening to fall off. Oh dear, it's depressing. Perhaps there's a reason that I don't throw up my hands in horror at the thought of living in rented little boxes made of ticky-tacky for the rest of my life.

I believe in God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary

I got terribly stuck on this one, because thinking about the Holy Ghost makes my head hurt, and I couldn't separate conceived by the Holy Ghost from born of the Virgin Mary, which I suppose makes sense, really: they are two sides of the same coin. Fully God and fully human. (Incidentally, this is why I am not convinced by the Immaculate Conception: if Mary isn't an ordinary human it's all a bit of a let-down, really, isn't it?) Actually, what the Apostles' Creed gives us in its whistle-stop tour of the Life of Jesus is the mechanics of Fully God and Fully Man: conception, Holy Spirit; birth, Mary. (And I do not see that it matters whether, or for long, Mary was a virgin; the important thing is that this child was the Son of God.)

I heard a very good (though extremely short) sermon for the Annunciation once, likening God's love to rays of sunlight focused through a magnifying glass into one immensely powerful point. I'm not sure whether or not I like the image, but it seems to have been an enduring one. I think of the Holy Spirit working more as flame than as wind (thinking about it, wind is the result of fire, anyway) and squeezing that divine fire into the little space if our universe is... yes. Bound to result in something amazing.

And then the birth is a very human experience. Messy, and not something about which one is meant to talk at the dinner table. (Other people's dinner tables, anyway; ours was usually covered with proofs for Midwifery Matters, but you know what I mean.) Blood, sweat, tears. Probably swearing. A work of creation that costs something. (And of course I work that backwards, and conclude that the creation of all that is wasn't a walk in the park, either.) But anyway, 'born of the Virgin Mary' puts it very much within our human experience.

As I've suggested recently, this whole concept is something that blows my mind; it's the centre of it for me, and I think I've given up hope of being able to explain it coherently. And it really is terribly important; it's what makes it make sense for me to be a Christian, and not to be anything else.

Hmm. The point of this exercise was actually not for me to go 'Wahrgarbl I don't understand this!' but there you go. Pontius Pilate next. He should be easier.

Except in Church Porches: Astorga to Vega del Valcarce (24th - 28th April 2007)

Yves Massarde: I understand you believe there is some sort of plague coming out of Mali.
Dr Frank Hopper: We don't like to say "plague".
Yves Massarde: What do you think it is, then?
Dr Eva Rojas: A plague. - Sahara, 2005


GENERAL: Away, away!

POLICE: (without moving) Yes, yes, we go.

GENERAL: These pirates slay.

POLICE: Tarantara!

GENERAL: Then do not stay.

POLICE: Tarantara!

GENERAL: Then why this delay?

POLICE: All right, we go.

ALL: Yes, forward on the foe! Yes, forward on the foe!

GENERAL: Yes, but you don't go!

POLICE: We go, we go

ALL: Yes, forward on the foe! Yes, forward on the foe!

GENERAL: Yes, but you don't go!

POLICE: We go, we go

ALL: At last they go! At last they really go! - The Pirates of Penzance - W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan


The next morning we discovered the downside to staying in the wonderful Albergue San Miguel in Hospital de Orbigo. Our rucksacks had been invaded by bedbugs. 'Chinches,' the hospitalero said with resignation, and produced some potent and no doubt deeply environmentally unfriendly spray. We sprayed half-heartedly, promised to do it again later in the evening, and set out.

( Warning: even more image-heavy than usual )

I love winter sunlight. The first lot are all from Winchester; the last is not.
( Read more... )

Dull post, this: just letting people know that, when they ask whether or not I would care to be on Filter X, my response is always 'yes, if you're happy with my reading it'.