The Case For Indulging In Passions

I have it on the best authority that being obsessed can be a good thing.
Let me explain:

Twice in the past twenty odd years I have been close to extinction physically, once with kidney failure and once with cancer; both came out of nowhere, both hit me practically overnight. The first time my immune system got the wrong message and turned on me instead of protecting me, while the cancer sneaked up  while I wasn't paying attention and simply fell out of me one morning.

Neither occasion was pleasant. Both had nasty treatments and subsequently caused other problems. It also was not true for me what they say about being seriously ill giving you such a shock that, if you are lucky enough to survive, you change your life and henceforth live each day 'to the max'.  That only lasts for a short period; personally, I  was soon back in my slothful ways.

Reader, fear not: this is not going to be a tale of woe about ailments, but rather a short guide on how to get over them.

GET PASSIONATE!

The more obsessed you are with a healthy pursuit, the better your chances of survival.

Beloved and I had not been together for long when nephrotic syndrome hit me. After years of solitary struggle I was madly in love, deliriously happy and high on passion, literally. Stays in hospital were nothing more than annoying interruptions of this wonderful state of being. Doctors and surgeons insisted that I must be hospitalised three times in one year, but they did let me out to get married and have three days off for good behaviour afterwards. I must have bored the nurses and doctors rigid with tales of my good fortune during that time; in the end I became something of a mascot,  their favourite bad penny, in and out like a yo-yo.

By the time cancer struck I had got used to being in a twosome; my attention had shifted focus. Among other things, I had become passionate about  gardening; having moved to the countryside and acquired a large patch made that entirely necessary, as well as a great pleasure.

I was again extremely fortunate that I hit it off with my oncologist/surgeon and during the full year of treatments and visits we became firm gardening buddies. This continued for as long as I had to see her, every aftercare session turned into a discussion on our progress in the garden, hers and mine.  She was as passionate about gardening as I was, in fact, her narrow and delicate surgeon's hands were rough and calloused from tending potatoes.

On both occasions the medical staff congratulated me on my attitude towards being ill. Being positive helps, although there are times when 'being positive' is more than the patient can bear and letting go temporarily is as healthy as being strong. Remission or survival are not always the outcome, death is always on the cards too.

But my oncologist actually put it into words for me, she said: " I find that those of my patients who have a focus away from the cancer, who are passionate about something, something that they find totally absorbing, have the best chance of survival".

Musicians On Out-Of-Town Engagements

Mud From A Scraper

No. 3 in an occasional series.

Musicians on Tour

- between rehearsal and performance -

One of the least popular features of the orchestral musician's life is the out of town concert, or gig. This usually involves early rising, a long coach or train journey, the expense of buying meals, and a late return as well as the customary rehearsal and performance. For all this, the player receives little extra remuneration.

There is invariably great anxiety about catching the return train, and it is accepted that the last movement of the last work in a concert is always played faster than on any previous occasion. The conductor may object to this, but is usually overruled. Experienced musicians have a wide knowledge of the shortest route from every concert hall to the nearest station, via some public house.

Touring may consist either of a string of provincial concerts spread around the country, or of a longer period in just one or two towns. The first kind is generally detested, as the player is away from his customary haunts, and is not long enough in any one place to settle into a routine; the second is more easily tolerated and some musicians may even enjoy such a sojourn as it provides an opportunity for making new acquaintances and playing on fresh golf courses. Whatever its effect upon musicians, touring is a long-standing custom, part of their contract. A beneficial side effect of touring is that it boosts sales of recordings.

The main problem attached to visiting strange towns is that of finding reasonably priced accommodation. Alas, some musicians welcome tours as a justifiable excuse for getting away from wife and home, and, in common with sailors and commercial travellers, tend to have a sweetheart in many towns. Such players rarely have accommodation problems.

Musicians pay one of their few tributes to culture when working out-of-town, for no beauty spot, abbey or historic building in provincial towns is left unvisited. The purpose of this is two-fold: to be able to say they have been there when asked by curious grandchildren and also to help prove to suspicious wives that they have really been away on a job at all. Most take their cameras to add evidence to their stories; some have even been known to hand these to accomplices to take pictures for them, when their motives for going out-of-town were less than professional.

My World - Front Doors in Valley's End

Farm houses, cottages and other dwellings have hardly changed over the centuries in Valley's End. There are no big houses here, no manors or gentlemen's estates.  The village boasts no outstanding buildings, but a charming muddle of houses and shops on a small scale provides a very intimate atmosphere. All the houses in this post are in the 'new' part of the village, planned and laid out by the Normans in the 12th Century, when the Castle was built. The 'old' part, clustered round the Norman Church, goes back to Saxon times, although here too the oldest remaining buildings are no older than the 16th and 17th Centuries.

17th century farmhouse

A Woodcarver's workshop in an old barn

 17th Century cottage 

 18th CenturyCottage

 17th Century Cottage

 19th Century Cottage

 19th Century Cottage

 18th Century Cottage

 Victorian Cottage

A new porch on an 18th Century Cottage

If you want to see what other photographers have come up with this week, go to That's My World.

 

Countess Bluebird

WILLOW'S MAGPIE No. 67

Once upon a time, in the olden days, when men were men and women pretended to obey them, there lived a cruel and violent nobleman in his chateau. He was thought to be immensely rich and known for his weakness where young girls were concerned. He had been married many times; nobody knew what had happened to each previous wife; it was said that he had  packed them off to foreign lands with a chestful of gold as compensation for their dismissal from the marital chamber.

His name was Count Bluebeard, on account of his very dark and long beard, which he kept tucked into his shirt collar most of the time, because he was apt to trip over it when he was in a hurry.

Bluebeard was once again on the look-out for a new wife and his choice fell on one of the pretty daughters of his neighbour;  Marie, the youngest of the girls, agreed to marry him. In spite of her youth, Marie was madly in love with a poor lute player and while the marriage negotiations were going on between Marie's parents and Count Bluebeard, she and her paramour hatched a plan to outwit Bluebeard.  Part of the contract was that Marie would receive her chest of gold before the actual wedding night, to sweeten the sacrifice she was about to make. 

It was Bluebeard's habit to give a lavish wedding reception for each new wife, with a banquet as the central event, where he usually ate and drank himself senseless.  Music played a part during these celebrations and Marie asked if she could be serenaded by a young lute player of her parents' acquaintance during the banquet. Bluebeard grumbled, but her parents insisted that their daughter's wish be granted, so he gave in. It was all the same to him what the wench did for the few hours before the wedding night, afterwards he would soon teach her to fall in with his wishes.

The chest of gold handed over, the wedding ceremony duly took place. Marie kept her fingers crossed in the folds of her dress the whole time. 

As was his wont, Bluebeard ate and drank until he fell off his chair, Marie watching him all the while. She kept a clear head and the lute player kept his down, in order not to arouse any suspicion. Marie's father also sat at the table, keeping an eye on the room. 

When Bluebeard lay on the floor, Marie's father, the lute player and Marie herself dragged him out of the hall and ostensibly into the marital chamber, where she was to await her lord's re-awakening and subsequent pleasure. However, they continued to drag him out of a secret door leading from this chamber to a special dungeon beneath it; this dungeon was the horrible place where all Bluebeard's previous wives had ended up, kept prisoner for evermore.

They tipped him over the edge into the dungeon, where his wives were waiting to torment him as he had tormented them.

Marie and the lute player, however,  left the country and lived happily ever after. They never felt guilty once and the chest of gold came in very handy to augment the salary of a moderately talented lute player.

MAY MISCELLANY

So far the season is a very mean one. There's not nearly as much colour as in previous Springs in this garden. All I have is  poppies and alliums. The harsh winter has created countless bare patches which I have so far not filled. I'm still hoping that some of the shrubs may recover and shoot from the root. Even the roses, those stalwarts of my garden, have suffered horribly. An English garden without roses? Unheard of. In less than six weeks' time we are due to open to the public. I hope the visitors will have something to look at. The gardeners among them will understand why I may have little to offer, and commiserate, others might not.

I wonder if my lack of success in the garden this Spring is anything to do with sex, or rather the lack of it. In a 'Miscellany of Garden Wisdom', under 'Folk Tales And Fable'  I found the following passage:

Sex, Fertility and Plants.

Indulging in sexual intercourse among crops was a custom which occurred frequently in many places throughout America and Europe. Ritualistic copulation was so performed to increase the fertility of plants.

Sometimes pregnant women were employed to plant seed, the inference being that their own obvious bountifulness would transfer itself to the growing plants. Similarly, pregnant women hugged trees to induce healthy growth.

o-o-o-o-o

The Sun enters the House of Gemini.

The man born under Gemini shall have many wounds. He shall lead an open and reasonable life, he shall receive much money, he will go in unknown places and he will not bide in the place of his Nativity.

His first wife shall not live long, but he shall marry strange women. He shall be bitten of a dog, he shall have a mark of iron or fire. He shall pass the sea, and live an hundred years and ten months.

The woman shall come to honour; but she shall be aggrieved of a false crime. She ought to be wedded at fourteen years, if she shall be chaste and endure all peril; She shall live seventy years and honour God.

As well man as woman shall augment and assemble goods for their successors; but scantly shall they use their own goods, they shall be so avaricious.

The Kalendar of Shepheardes 1604

Both Beloved and I are born under Gemini and I can guarantee that every word of this assessment is true. But I shall make damn sure, that he will marry no stranger woman than me.

Stop The Race, I Want To Come Last.

Stress, pressure, lack of time, a recurring mantra for anyone of any age nowadays,

Racing from appointment to appointment, we rarely find a window of leisure. Technology helps to save time, but there’s the danger of becoming technology’s slave. We feel we need to do more and more in ever fewer available hours. The demands of employment, family and many other commitments can make us feel like hamsters on a wheel. Round and round we go, never getting anywhere.

I once complimented a shopkeeper on how calm he always appeared, in spite of the stressful life he so clearly had and the many demands on his time, including the care of a disabled wife. "I may look calm to you", he said, "but under this counter I'm treading water like mad just to stand still".

I frequently come across people who bemoan this endless pressure and say they want to slow down, and spend more time enjoying themselves. Well, there’s a whole leisure industry dedicated to telling us how to do this, to fill our time most efficiently, to organize our leisure hours, pack in as much as we can and gain the most benefit. We go on holiday and tick off museums, churches, galleries, stately homes; we need to see the sights prescribed for us by others. After work, we pursue leisure activities, all kinds of indoor and outdoor sports, cultural activities, group activities; we must keep going, must keep the grey cells active, must get fit, must achieve, must do, can't let up; mustn't get rusty, if we stop, we might never start again. Hamsters on the wheel of pleasure.

What is wrong with being idle, being quiet, being on your own? What is wrong with going for a walk, not with a particular aim in mind, just a walk, leisurely, noticing nature all around you, thinking idle thoughts, however rambling? Sitting in a café and watching the world go by? Spending time over a newspaper or book? Instead of jogging through the park, why not stop, sit on a bench and feel the sun on your face and watch children and dogs; take time out to be kind to someone, chat with a lonely, maybe elderly person. Why not?

Since Beloved and I went to live in the country we meet more and more retired people who say they have never been as busy as they are now. They can’t understand how they ever found the time to go to work. Having lost the routine and personal importance of their productive working life they turn into the phenomenon of the hyperactive pensioner. Don’t laugh, I’ve seen them in action.

How sad and what nonsense this is.  I don’t believe in the truth of the saying “The devil finds work for idle hands”, or the German equivalent, “Leisure is the root of all vice”. The Protestant work ethic has much to answer for.

Time is the most precious gift we have in this life. As we get older, we feel it running through our fingers, we want to hold on to it, slow down the passing of it. Running ourselves ragged isn’t going to do that. The adventure of a new life in retirement demands  careful appreciation. Leisure is important! In Greek philosophy, to have achieved freedom was to have the leisure to do nothing. (For men - not for women and/or slaves, but that is another story).

I am not advocating that we become cabbages, couch potatoes; you know me better than that. What I am saying is that for myself I would like to learn how to live my remaining time wisely, meaningfully rather than always on target, to concentrate on the job – or pleasure – in hand.

What I'd like to learn is to sit, get off the wheel and dangle my feet instead.

To give my soul room to breathe.

My World - Bishop's Castle.

A few miles from Valley's End lies undisturbed  and peaceful the small, friendly town of Bishop's Castle with fewer than 2000 inhabitants, probably including cats and dogs. 

In the early medieval period a number of 'planned' towns were established in South Shropshire, based around Norman strongholds and earlier settlements or religious sites. Bishop's Castle is a good example of this development: its settlement pattern, laid down around 1280, remains remarkably intact to the present day.

Today this sleepy little town has neither castle - except for a few ruins - nor bishops, although it once had both. The Saxon lord Egwin Shakehead sold the land to the Bishops of Hereford who promptly built themselves a castle, hence the name of the 'modern' town.

The pace of the town is as unhurried now as it has ever been, the very steep High Street originally lead from the castle in the upper town to the church at the bottom end. It has a variety of small family-run shops and dwellings, with  many interesting facades, ranging in age and period from a medieval half-timbered cottage with dormer windows, through Elizabethan dwellings, also black and white, to handsome Georgian houses in mellow brick as well as solid Victorian buildings.

The House On Crutches, now the Town Museum

Yarborough House, stuffed to the rafters with second hand books, old vinyl records and CDs.

It also has a coffee shop where you can study your purchases and possibly decide to buy a few more of each. Jock, the owner is an excellent wood turner, I have one of his huge plates crafted from elm wood.

The people of Bishop's Castle have a whacky sense of humour. Many houses have 'interestingly' painted facades, like the spotty one next door to the fish and chip shop.

Another of the fashionable attractions of Bishop's Castle is a shrine for 'real ale' enthusiasts, the Three Tuns Inn and Brewery at the very top end of the town on Salop Street, a pub with an unpretentious frontage but with its own brewery next door.

The Three Tuns Brewery produces excellent ales, the 'Cleric's Cure' among them which is served in the pub, together with a few hearty dishes from the menu.

The Three Tuns' brewing licence was first issued in 1642. Part of the present brewery is of 17th Century origin, which would make it the oldest working brewery in Britain.









This is just one small town nestling in the South Shropshire Hills.
I'm enjoying this series, it gives me an opportunity to appreciate the peaceful rural world I live in. It is so easy to become blind to the beauties surrounding us on our home ground, my thanks to the people at
That's My World who gave me the idea to look again more closely.

Books, Books, Books

WILLOW'S MAGPIE No. 66

Books.
Willow has given us books this week.
What is there to say about books?

Books are treasure trove,
Books are life-blood,
Books are best friends,
always were, always will be.
Immersed in a book there is no loneliness,
time itself flies or stands still, whichever pleases you.
The whole world is yours for the taking.
Adventure, laughter, tears, excitement, sadness,
all the pain and all the joy in the world,
can be found in the pages of a book;
the wisdom of the ages to quench your thirst.

Favourite books, much handled books,
shabby and dog-eared,
their bookmarks old postcards with spidery, faded writing;
books with ancient lettering,
bought from a stall on the river bank
on a sunny Sunday morning;
Found in mouldering second-hand bookshops
smelling of old glue, dust and stale air,
and borne away triumphantly.
Books with broken spines and cracked leather bindings,
yellowing books, books with crinkly, crackling pages,
ready to crumble to dust themselves,
unless handled with the utmost care and devotion.

New books, shiny, garish paperbacks,
promising a quick easy read on the train,
on a park bench, in the garden,
while standing at the stove stirring tonight’s broth.
Piles of them, filling up every available space
on your walls, whether bedroom, bathroom, or hall.
Cookery books, gardening books,
teach-yourself books,
help-yourself-books,
books for every purpose and to every season.

Books.

I wouldn’t be me without books.

The Open Window

There are others in the waiting room,

rehearsing their symptoms.

Enter here and you become a patient,

broken, ailing, someone who needs mending. 

Hoping for relief, a pill, a kind word,

hoping for a good day, 

when the expression ‘bedside manner’

is a synonym for kindness.

Trying not to listen to their conversations, 

the repetitive chatter of the radio,

the disembodied voice of the programme's host 

and his relentless cheer irritating my consciousness.

Why I have come, I couldn’t say.

I need no help, I am whole, I am strong.

I have nothing to say.

A flood of words to prove the point.

The healer’s face, kind and compassionate, 

listens intently, 

eyes clouding over, softening.

Her quiet voice probing.

I look away.

I will not cry.

Haunting memory, long-buried pain, 

‘face me’, they cry, ‘see me’, ‘feel me’.

A helpless child revisits aching loneliness. 

Thoughtless words cut deep, the wounds unhealing.

See, 

she is falling,

catch her,

hold her close,

comfort her

help her. 

Accept the hurt and,

strong now,

heal the child you were.

The time will come

when all is well.

A window opens.

My World - A Walk In Muted Colours

Few people, even in the UK,  know about the beauties of the English Border County of Shropshire; I feel privileged to live here and  have decided to sing its praises in these pages. South Shropshire is a particularly quiet, very rural part of the world,  far from busy crowds and the hustle and bustle of modern cities. The Shropshire Hills have been granted the status of AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) as well as Area of Tranquility.

Today I shall take you on a walk starting from my doorstep, it doesn't take me two minutes to get out into the fields.  Although this is mainly sheep farming country there are also a few arable fields. 

At this time of year hedgerows, meadows and pastures are bursting with wild flowers, there isn't a path or lane whose edges are not embroidered with frothy Queen Anne's Lace, also known as cow parsley; 

Here and there patches of stitchwort insist on putting the cow parsley in its place and show off their white stars.

  

White and yellow are the dominant colours at the moment. A field of buttercups is a wondrous sight, particularly when interspersed with the red seedheads of grasses.

At this time of year rape fields predominate, the colour is almost fluorescent seen from a distance.. On a sunny day the smell is quite overpowering, not very pleasant.

Even our narrow tarmac-ed lanes are edged with flowers. Here we have golden spurge, Welsh poppies and wallflowers. There are also ladies' mantle and purple columbines, all of them self-sown. Once you have them, they will quickly spread

.


Whenever I leave the house or return to it, this is the first sight I see: the castle ruins. We have a gate leading directly into the castle meadow and Benno regards the castle grounds as an extension to his garden.

Hawthorn, or thorn apple, is used extensively as a hedging shrub or tree round here; the flowers are fully out now, framing fields and country roads in  billowing white clouds. I like the sweet smell of hawthorn,
so I snapped off a few twigs to take home and put them in a vase. They won't last long, but I find them no less beautiful for being ephemeral.

My walk today says hello to the people at That's My World who all show off places and photos they are particularly proud of and which they want to share with others.

The Birdman

WILLOW'S MAGPIE No. 65

At the end of the lane, on the edge of the Forest, before you climb into the wilderness of bracken on bare hillsides, with only gorse and bramble thickets here and there covering the land and very few discernible paths crossing it, you come to a clearing. In this clearing, leaning against a rocky overhang, stands a dilapidated, ancient caravan surrounded by the detritus of open-air living: tarpaulins, plastic buckets and basins, wooden bins, a rusty bicycle, an iron wheelbarrow, piles of logs, cooking pots and pans, tools for many purposes, axes and spades and saws and hammers, all of them discarded by civilization and lovingly collected. There is a jeep which hasn’t been on the road for decades, how it got here is anyone’s guess.

Strewn all around are rough-hewn benches and chairs and a few tables, in various stages of completion, made of sawn logs nailed together. The sort of furniture that you’d put in a hidden corner of the wilder reaches of your garden, if ‘rustic’ is what you are after. You’d probably not sit on the benches and chairs very often or for very long; genuinely ‘rustic’ and comfort don’t mix.

The whole site almost has the air of an abandoned rubbish tip, except that there is also a heap of smouldering ashes in the centre of the clearing, which allows you to realize that this is somebody’s ‘home’.

As you stand and stare, you become aware of a tremendous noise all about you, a cacophony of sound, which is difficult to attribute, quite overpowering. As your eyes adjust to the semi-gloom of the clearing amidst tall trees, both coniferous and deciduous, you notice an endless flickering of small bodies hurtling between the trees, landing and disappearing, reappearing and taking off for another perch. Birds,  hundreds and hundreds of birds share the clearing with the occupant of the caravan, a man, shaggy and shabby, dirty and dressed in ragged clothes,  but tall and strong and weather-beaten.

Frank the birdman has finally joined you. You simply have to stop and talk to him, he will not let you go, even though you might now want to be on your way.

Frank seldom sees people up here and makes good use of them when he does. His nearest neighbours have long given up on him, in fact, he and his encampment have become a thorn in their flesh. His life story is an interesting one. He and his family once owned the farm down the lane, they were prosperous enough to scratch a decent living from the land, sheep farmers, like many round here, with a few arable acres thrown in. He and his brother inherited the farm, but fell out with each other within a few years; the farm was lost and they had to sell. Frank soon enough lost the proceeds from the sale too, he is not very forthcoming about the reason, although there are still people living round here who remember. Frank got into the jeep, towed the farm labourers’ overflow caravan as far as it would go, bought the useless plot of land where the jeep stopped dead and became the birdman of Clun Forest.

He lives off the sale of his rustic ‘furniture’ and a state benefit payment; it might even be a pension now. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there is not also a little left-over nest egg. Frank has no hesitation in asking passers-by for contributions to bird food; summer and winter he feeds his birds. His rusty bicycle takes him round the supermarkets of the area, who let him have stale loaves of bread for pennies. He also buys many pounds of the cheapest lard, dried fruit and anything else at the end of its sell-by date, flour and grain at cost price. Some of the local bird-watchers help him transport the larger quantities, otherwise he struggles on his bicycle to get  supplies in.

Frank needs little for himself, the one and only luxury item in his caravan, where he lives summer and winter, is a radio. He likes a bit of music, he says. I am surprised he can hear it over the din the birds  make.

Mother's Day With A Difference

Photo via Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service

It must be Mother's Day somewhere in the world;  I see that there are many moving tributes to mothers around blogland. I am so happy for all of you who remember your mothers with gratitude and love and whose children remember them equally lovingly. There can never be enough love in the world.

When my daughter was small she decided to do something special for me on the day, and bring me breakfast in bed. She was a sweet and dear little thing, an absolute treasure. At the same time she was independent-minded and capable from an early age. She usually spent the long holidays in Germany, with my parents, and I'd hand her over to the stewardess at Heathrow who then handed her over to my parents in Dusseldorf airport.  For the flight she had to wear an official card round her neck, giving all relevant details, like name, address, flight number, etc. 'Unaccompanied Minor' was the official title. This cardboard sign never lasted long. and by the third time she flew across she absolutely refused to wear it. "I know the way now", she said, "and I don't need this sign at all. I am not a refugee child".  It probably isn't funny now, but it was then.

Anyway, on this particular Mother's Day she was going to make me breakfast and bring it up to me in bed. At some ungodly hour I heard her clattering down the stairs. Sunday morning was my only chance ever for a lie-in, I was not best pleased about the early start. Cupboard doors opened and slammed shut,  the kettle clanged against the kitchen tap. I could hear her arguing with her brother, never a good sign. The  smell of burning toast reached me, followed quickly by the lid of the kitchen bin snapping shut. Then there was silence, the arguing had stopped and I heard only sounds of someone being busy in the kitchen. I forced myself to stay in bed.

When her footsteps thumped up the stairs I was ready for her. The smell of burnt toast still hung in the air, I was hoping the toast itself had been disposed of. She burst in "Surprise, surprise, Happy Mother's Day, mummy, I made your breakfast. You can have a nice lie-in".


She was carrying a tray with a plate of burnt toast, a pot of cold tea and a pot of marmalade. "How lovely, darling, thank you so much".  She was so pleased with her efforts, beaming all over her face.

I sat up and tucked in while she watched.

The smell of burning was getting stronger, it was more like cloth burning than just breadcrumbs. I sniffed the air. Something was definitely wrong.

By the time I got downstairs and into the kitchen, the towel draped over the grill attachment over the top of the cooker was in flames. It was drying there and neither of the children had thought to remove it before they cooked the toast in the grill pan.

Stupidly, I grabbed the burning towel and flung it into the sink, then snatched another towel off the radiator and smacked it on the flaming grill, extinguishing the fire. I was lucky, the grill pan was clean and fat free and the towel quickly burnt itself out in the sink.

As a mother's day present we went out and bought a toaster.

C IS FOR CATHARSIS

Catharsis, n. purification of the emotions, as by the drama according to Aristotle: the purging of the effects of  pent-up emotion and repressed thoughts, by bringing them to the surface of consciousness.


Catharsis describes the result of measures taken to cleanse away blood-guilt—"blood is purified through blood" (Burkert 1992:56), a process in the development of Hellenic culture in which the oracle of Delphi took a prominent role.

Modern parlance has words we might prefer, both of them starting with C: closure and cleansing.


Since the death of Osama bin Laden media reports have expressed awe, shock and horror, overwhelming surprise at the suddenness of the news in spite of the ten year gap between 9/11 and his death; we have seen jubilation and celebration; more recently there has been hand-wringing and breast-beating at the manner of the killing; the Archbishop of Canterbury has professed himself as 'uncomfortable' with the shooting. Questions are being asked about the exact course of events, the legality of events, the infringement of Pakistan's sovereignty; the wisdom of  burial at sea, the advisability of withholding pictures of the dead body are being discussed. The first conspiracy theories are emerging, disbelief and doubt are surfacing; the compound where bin Laden apparently lived for the past five years without knowledge of the Pakistani authorities has become a place of gruesome pilgrimage, a tourist attraction.

Fears of repercussion are growing, we are told we must be vigilant and aware of the dangers to security.

Newton states in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy:
Every action has its equal and opposite reaction.


J.R.R. Tolkien said in The Lord Of The Rings, Book Four:
Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.


No doubt there will be many more questions and very few answers, there may be tensions between nations, harsh words and sabre rattling; there will always be those for whom nothing that is said or done will be right, but of one thing I am absolutely certain:

Osama bin Laden is dead and for the people of New York, the families and friends of his victims, and the vast, overwhelming majority of the people of the United States there has been catharsis.

The Day The Mountain Caught Fire

WILLOW'S MAGPIE No. 64

The day the mountain caught fire, I took you out on to the verandah. Holding you tight, I showed you the smouldering flames and you laughed happily. Fire was kind; you had seen fires in the grate which kept you warm and gave you light; you had already seen the first  fires lit in the garden, which baked apples and potatoes for you. Fires didn't frighten you then,  fire was good, as fire had been for the first ancestors of modern man, who learnt to control it. Traces of fire had been found dating back to the earliest stone age, nearly 800.000 years ago.

You cried and struggled in my arms when I turned my back on the burning mountain, you wanted to watch the flames and the smoke rising into the yellowing skies; from time immemorial man has been fascinated by fire, you, at the beginning of your own life on earth found a deep well of primitive delight within you at the sight of the burning hillside.

The day would come when fire on the mountain would become a noble enemy to be watched closely, to be fought and mastered;  when you would join your father and brothers in that dangerous task, when you would risk your life to keep your home and those you loved, safe.  Your fascination with fire would never cease, you would learn to live with it, make it your willing servant, but you would also learn not to trust it.

My World - Green Man Day 2011

Once again, Green Man, armed with nothing but his stout staff, must battle the fearsome, sword-wielding Frost Queen for supremacy on the bridge at Valley's End.

Inevitably, he wins; there would be no Spring and no May Festival otherwise, which would be very sad. So all the shouting and clashing of wills on the bridge is worth it, although it does seem rather silly at times; but then, that is tradition, they say, like the Morris Dancers, the Mummers' Play, the Maypole Dancing, the Marching Bands and Drummers, the duck races on the river, and the folk music groups. It brings the tourists and there is the fine sound of jingling tills to accompany the festivities.

Just for the weekend, sleepy Valley's End is transformed into a lively centre for music, street theatre, tradition, colour and fun. Children love it. The meadow below the Castle becomes a huge playground, with stalls selling everything from food to folk art.

Boys having fun tumbling in a small pool in four huge balloons called Ecoplay Waterwalkers,

whereas these medieval sword fighters and jousters don't appear to enjoy themselves very much. That Knight seems to resent me pointing the camera at him.

The Castle ruins remain unperturbed, they've seen it all before; they've survived since the 12th century and will, no doubt, be standing here for a few years more.

Every village fair needs its beer tent, tea shop and food stalls, here is the board of just one of them. Fine dining it isn't, but Benno will have a wonderful time tomorrow sniffing out whatever fell off paper plates or was dropped by excited children.

That's My World is the inspiration for this post.