Away for a bit

Having a holy holiday until Jan 7.


Blessings upon y'all.

HJMW

an interesting new blog

well, new to me.

WitNit.

I like the template especially. (Wish I was hip to html. I really don't like Blogger templates. Never mind.)

I thought his bit on why men don't ask for directions to be fairly good. Straightforward and more or less what I already knew, but good. And I see he also recycles old posts. That makes it OK.

Something I posted a couple of years ago. Thought it time to repost:

*******************

Well, some men ask for directions (not that I've met any).

There is actually a very good and very sophisticated explanation for this fact of male-psyche life.

It's because men are lines and women are circles.

You see, men have a natural orientation to the external, to explore, to pioneer, to manipulate the environment, to play with things, to engage in sports, to talk about politics and football and computers and their entertainment centers and to build complex machines that hurtle other men (and grudgingly women, but only if they don't act girly) into outer space. The line.

Women have a natural orientation to the internal, to nest, to make a home, to talk about their inner feelings, their relationships, what they think about everything, how others perceive them, what people must be thinking. The circle.

Men are comfortable with discovery and problem solving and taking something apart to see how it works and operating complicated remote controls on tons of electronic equipment and not talking about inner things like Why don't you ask for directions. They like the complexity of the external world. They hate the complexity of the internal world. They want the internal world to be simple. Yes, no, right, wrong, let's do this and get on with it.

Women are comfortable with security and knowing that things are in their place and keeping the external world simple, with only a single remote that has one power button, one volume button and one channel changer. They want the external world to be simple. They love the complexity of the inner world. The possible meanings, the subtexts, the implications, the dreams. Men hate that kind of stuff.

So why don't men ask for directions? Cause they like figuring out the external world on their own, they are solving it like a complex time-space problem, thinking about the GPS possibilities and the spatial relations of this street to that highway, and they will only ask directions if they are badgered into it by someone who wants to keep that external world as simple as a remote with three buttons.

Men love having four remotes with 100+ buttons. It's something to figure out and tinker with.

Not that there are many men who could explain it that way... Men are rarely skilled at explaining their own psyches. We hate that kind of stuff...And don't make me say it again!!!

Shooty Thing

I've been noting Kathy's efforts to get a gun license in Canuckistan and every time I go for a walk in the country lately, I hear the sound of shooting.

I really hope someone will give me a gun for Christmas.

A gun and a dog.

More pics and a link later today if poss.

The real joke, of course

is that whenever the BBC is thinking about what CD to put on next and I think London has been nuked, I'm secretly hoping that it is true.

But then I recall that I have nice friends in London and I then secretly hope that they're all taking a holiday in France.

Child of the Cold War, Me.

I laugh because I just realized that every time there is a bit of dead air on BBC Radio 3, the first thought is, "Oh, hey. I wonder if someone has nuked London."

That early childhood training will never never leave you.

BTW: anyone old enough to remember them,

you know those "Emergency Response Test" things they used to have on TV? You know, "This is a test. This is only a test. If there was a real emergency, you would be given instructions..."

Then that long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

then, "This has been a test of the emergency response system..."

you may now return to your regularly scheduled Saturday morning cartoons.

Was I the only one to wonder, "If the emergency came when no one had the TV on, is there some master switch somewhere that would turn them all on so we would know something was happening? How would we know what to do if we didn't happen to have the TV on at the moment the Emergency Response System came on."

It was not until years later that I realized the whole thing was a scam. The "emergency" was nuclear war, and with or without your TV telling you to put a paper bag over your head, there wasn't going to be a lot of point anyway.

I'd be interested to see a study done on people who were raised with the 15 Minute Spectre. You know the one where we were all told that any given 15 minute period could easily be our last. I have often wondered if it resulted in the "slacker" phenomenon where people my age, raised by hippies, simply made no plans for their lives because we all thought there wasn't any point.

I've probably written about this before.

Looking at the pics below,

it occurs to me that the axiom, "Every woman grows up to become her mother" seems to have skipped a generation. I seem to have grown up to become my grandmother.

Cottage Life

My row. I'm the last white door on the extreme right...

...not the really snazzy one across the road...


Inside, almost finished.
Welsh dresser installed, but no pictures hung yet.

view from the sitting room window.

all finished. (Note row of jars of crab apple jam.)

My hidey hole.

Looking up the road towards St. Alban's

Birds of Prey Know They're Cool

I don't know why, but the coolest of all cool birds of prey are owls.

Maybe it's the hunting at night part.

Bread Pudding

or, a message to Jamie Oliver..."You got some explaining to do, young man!"

What do you do with the worst crumpets in the world?

1/2 oz butter
three tbs brown sugar

lining the bottom of an earthenware baking dish

Chop up ten or so of the offending objects, into little diced bits.

Layer over with more little chunks of butter and more brown sugar.

Slice up two apples and add a 1/2 cup of currants. Mix it all gently.

Mix three eggs, 1/2 cup of milk, a tsp of vanilla extract and,
because you don't have any cinnamon, a teaspoon of organic ginger (three times the strength of ordinary ground ginger.)

Pour milk and egg mixture into the pot all over the bread bits.

Shove in a medium to hot oven for, probably, about 45 mins.

Don't know how it will turn out, but I'll let you know.

Ah. very good

Much better.

Got some lovely shots of the village, my street, the row of cottages, St. Alban's, etc.

Stay tuned.

hmp.

is this any better?

hmm...

a bit teeny...

let's see what I can do....



how's that?

Testing new picture methods.



so, does it work?

1. In your dictionary (you should have a print version but the great Lewis and Short is online http://www.perseus.org/cgi-bin/resolveform) the verb “vulgo” means
what?

I don't know about the verb, because Lewis and S. only gives nouns, but it has to have something to do with lots of grubby common people. Right? and an o on the end can mean things like ablatives and datives right? Hmm...still no verb form. Hmph.

2. If the form “vulgata” means “having been made _______”, and if what I said
above about Greecisms, Hebraisms, and inelegant things is true, (which it is), then
what conclusion can we make about Roman Christian society in the late 4th century?

That they weren't really our sort.

Getting back to Latin

First lesson by correspondence:

I have attached the Lesson in pdf. Begin at your own peril; proceed at your own pace. (But remember that it is impossible to master anything without constant application) An e-mail with your answers shall be answered with my corrections and another lesson. Remember to ask questions about anything you like; if you don't ask questions I can't help you!

First question:

1. In your dictionary (you should have a print version but the great Lewis and Short
is online http://www.perseus.org/cgi-bin/resolveform) the verb “vulgo” means
what?

HJMW: "I vulg" or "I am vulging"

from the verb "to vulg" which means...errr...to do socially odious things on the subway in front of little old ladies/nuns.

A bit like "vogueing" but less arty.

The Dog Rule

In fact, I think I'm going to institute a new rule. Anyone coming to visit me, must bring a dog. Preferably a springer spaniel.

Or any type of spaniel.

I might make it a requirement that they bring two dogs, one of their own and one to leave.

Yes, I think I need a spaniel.

There are lots of them around here, but every time I see one, it seems clear that the person owning it is unwilling to share.

"Hey, lady," I am tempted to yell, "you're not usin' that dog are ye?"

note to self

"Hob's Cross" is the place where two world's meet and important information exchanged but, alas, never used.

A lovely day

Woke up this morning to the sun streaming through the wood framed windows. One of those mornings where one feels that everything, including the various difficulties, is just right.

Finished varnishing the little bit of wood floor that separates the sitting room from the kitchen and extends under the stairs, then went out for a stomp. Wellies still working very well. Fields still v. muddy and green, the breeze surprisingly warm for the end of November and sticks of dried and semi-rotted oak abundant.

Rosehips at exactly the right stage where one merely picks them and the place where the stem was leaves a little hole in he skin. You sqeeze out the red pastey stuff and eat it. Very healthy and tasty. Saw a pheasant, in full plumage, as the sun glinted off the irridescent neck feathers. Every time I see one, I think I ought to buy a gun. Lots of wood pigeons around too, and they give me the same thought. I remember the Psalm: "Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped". Guns are expensive and difficult to obtain legally, but I've been wondering lately how one constructs and uses a net...

It's much easier here to think that everything in the world will turn out all right. Easier to remember that there is a God and He is more in charge than we think.

One thing has become abundantly clear, however.

I need a dog. A dog, in country like this, is completely indispensable.

If you're ever in Chester

go to a caff on Brook st...err...can't remember the name, but you won't be able to miss it. It's English.

In it, I got a fry-up for £3.60 that included: a fried egg, toast, fried bread, mushrooms, baked beans, black pudding, two bangers and two slices of bacon, tomahhtos and a mug of tea.

I'm feeling more English by the minute.

And I'm fairly sure I won't want to eat again until next week.

(Could have used a few kidneys to make it perfect though.)

Stay Tuned

I've got photo essays on
the English canals and canal boats;

the ingredients for and the proper way to prepare and consume
Black pudding

and the making of
rose hip syrup;

the fascinating history, natural and chronological, of Cheshire hedges;



and the history of the Rows and Walls of Chester.



Plus, a bonus of
a 14th century church in the ancient market town of Nantwich.

All coming to a blog near you.

Soon.

(And someone remind me to write something about a thing called The Northern Institute.)

O, Thanks be to Voicenet!!

I'm off dial-up and no longer paying per minute for internet time!

Comments! Pictures!

YOUTUBE!!!

Now we can get on with things!

How to survive in the wilds of the Cheshire countryside

when you’ve not finished the kitchen of your cottage and can’t find anything more than a tin opener and earthenware pot.

Plug in the microwave.

Go to Gerry the village butcher and buy four chicken thighs. Open a tin of cream of mushroom soup and a tin of Roma (Plum) tomahhtos. Mix contents of tin in the earthenware pot, chop up an onion with the only knife you can find which is the good bone handled Sheffield steel dinner knife you bought at the 50p shop that says, “by appointment to His majesty” on the side.

Add onion.

And a bit of salt.

Deposit chicken pieces and cover with the goop.

Cover the pot with a plastic bag because you can’t find the lid, and put it in the nuker for 45 minutes.

Dinner is served.

Eat it straight out of the pot.

The next day:

having found a knife and bought some vegetables, take the remaining piece of chicken and the leftover goo and put them in the skillet you got at the St. Alban’s parish jumble sale. Add a handful of Brussels sprouts, a bit of cut up sweet potato which you can now cut without hazard having bought a paring knife. Cut up a carrot and add five slices of English bacon (called backbacon in Canada, and, inexplicably, Canadian bacon in the US) and a teaspoon of sugar to counteract the saltyness of the bacon. Slice an apple into four pieces.

Simmer together for ½ an hour.

Dessert is yoghurt with rose hip syrup.

Oh, baby!

Still here...

I bet you'd all thought I'd found the door to Narnia.

Nope, but I'm still looking.

Last night was the first night in the cottage, and the first in my new Victorian bed. (The matress is new; the bed is old.)

I've discovered some things.

* A flask (in N.America, a "thermos") makes a much better tea pot than a tea pot.

* Milk from a glass pint bottle tastes better than milk from a carton or plastic bottle.

* Central heating is overrated. Our mothers were right when we were kids and wanted to turn the heat up. Put a sweater on.

* That in all the years since leaving England when the smell of tar or pitch would bring back the memory of Manchester, what I was remembering was the smell of coal fires.

* That there are different kinds of crows and the differences are not difficult to learn. The rule is that if you see two together, they're rooks. There are a lot of rooks in rural England.

* That tawny owls have two different calls at night. The female makes a kind of loud sustained squeek. This is answered by the male who gives a deep, low-pitched "Whhooo hoo" that is much more difficult to hear unless you are standing quite close.

* That oak trees are very messy trees and drop large parts of themselves on the ground all the time. Dead oak branches, although rather heavy to carry home, make excellent firewood.

* That rosehips have no pectin in them and if you want to make them in to jam or jelly, you have to add crab apples, or all you will get is rosehip syrup.

* That rosehip syrup is no bad thing.

* That there has been so much manufacturing in the last 250 years, that there is virtually no need to buy new things. If everyone in this country were to give to a needy neigbour or a church charity all the bits and pieces of furniture, household goods and clothes and other permanent things they are not using, every man woman and child in this country would be amply provided for.

The above suggestion would ruin the economy.

Which, in turn, and after a period of adjustment that would doubtless involve violence, social and political upheaval and all sorts of unpleasantness, would result in the end in people being much happier.

(I intend, as much as it is possible, to live as though this had already happened. Except for the internet, which I think would be one of the first things to go in the event of the previously mentioned upheavals.)

* That a solution to the problem of rubbish disposal, which is a subject much in the minds of Britons apparently, who are forced by a multitude of laws to support an absurdly and increasingly arcane system of "recycling" (enforced by fines), is to re-instate "home economics" as a major part of the school curriculum and teach young women the lost arts of cooking and household management. They would be able to cook real food that did not come out of a box or take-away place. They would be able to make and mend their own clothes, which would release them from slavery to fashions.

It would also result in them having more useful occupation than shopping, "texting", binge drinking and buying pre-packaged foods. They would be rendered suitable for marriage and be immune to much of the advertising enticements that hold so many of them in the thrall of "body-image" insecurity. It would also release them from the mental slavery of "modern mores" and feminism.

It would also make men happier.

This would also ruin the economy. (See note above re: "economy-ruining a good thing in the long run.")

* That spending an hour every evening staring blankly into the fire is a much more useful and beneficial occupation than spending the same amount of time staring blankly into the television. In the former occupation it is possible to have Thoughts. With the latter, it is possible only to be exhausted and rendered irritable and anxious.

* That Stephen Fry is much more likely to become a real Catholic than is Tony Blair.

* That London is much better appreciated from a distance...in picture books, say.

* That deep in the heart of many British people is a great longing for the Way Things Were but have been trained at the same time to be superficialy disdainful of the way of life they remember their parents living (no telly. no central heating. no microwaves. no free sex. no free abortion!).

* That we have come to the down slope in the manufacture-and-consume economy. We make too much stuff. We buy too much stuff. We throw away too much stuff. And the stuff we make, buy and throw away isn't worth the effort. I was taken yesterday to a place that sells "architectural antiques": antique furniture, fittings, fireplaces, apothecary bottles, flat irons, sinks, door knobs, saddles, doors, gothic marble altar pieces, copper kettles, valves, telephones, sofas, and on and on...every bit of it was more durable, more beautiful, more useful and lasting and just plain better than anything that has been made in the last fifty years. When a society starts looking at the stuff it is making (and throwing away three weeks later) and being forced to admit that not only were the things their grandfathers made better, but that they no longer knew how to make them, things are on the down slide.

* That there is no way for a woman to look good wearing jeans.

Update - very boring really. Busy but boring.

got a note from a friend on the west coast (I suppose I have to specify now; I don't mean Wales. I meant BC) asking me if I was still alive. Well, anyone reading Orwell's Picnic can see that I've not been gored by a bull or arrested and thrown into a Labour Party re-education camp yet, but I can see it's time for an update.

So, with apologies to Vic, I'm putting most of my email to her up here for the rest of y'all. As ye can see, the news is mostly pretty good. I continue to accumulate pictures but for reasons given below, am not yet ready to post them. There will be more...some day soon.


* ~ * ~ *

I'm looking into a second job so I can continue to pay the rent on my cottage.

I spent the first half of the day there today, just working on the computer and pushing bigger and bigger bits of oak tree into the fire and ladling more and more coal until I had a blast furnace in the living room mean enough to make horseshoes. Took a picture of my feet up on the grate melting my shoes in front of the fire.

The heating system works just great.

The British Telecom guy came today, "between eight and one". Actually, by some miracle, he actually showed up at nine. He pulled a little box out of his kit and clipped it to the phone line. He waved a magic box over it a couple of times and it made a little noise. He went outside for five minutes and came back, plugged in my phone. Tested it with his industrial cell phone, and said, there ya go.

For this service, I will be charged 125 pounds. In Canadian, that's roughly the equivalent of a month's rent. Work is going to be helping me with more than half of it though, so I won't have to sell one of my cousins to pay for it.

Now I have to wait 48 hours before "making a request for a broadband order". (Sort of like waiting 24 hours to wash your hair after a perm? Will the phone line not "take" if I try earlier?). That will take a minimum of five working days. But the last time we tried this, we were told it would take six weeks because this village doesn't have the right kind of internet mojo boxes or squirrels or something.

I'm in blogging withdrawl agony. The only thing keeping me going is the vague hope that it will be over soon, much like the Christian martyrs of old waiting for the fire to die down and go to heaven. But, as C.S. Lewis said, all times are soon to Aslan.

I've had many adventures, including the one with the bull.

I was menaced by a bull, did I mention? While I was out collecting rosehips. It was very scary and cool. They say there aren't any thugs in the country, but they never met this bull.

All my stuff arrived in good order, and there was not a single hitch. We just got in the van and drove to Manchester and picked it up. (Can't find my gloves though and the weather has just gone chilly in the last couple of days.) And they didn't break so much as a single tea cup.

We spent a couple of hours one day and put my bike back together. Uncle Mike said that when he was young, the bomb sites in Manchester were used as dumps and there were always bike bits in them. He said he learned to repair bikes by going around and collecting the bits and building bikes. We reassembled the gear shift and only had two washers left over! An engineering triumph!

I took a ride around the village one night after finishing work. Beautiful. Clean, clear air, smelling of burning leaves, bright bright moon and totally still. The country lanes would be absolutely black without the moonlight; I'm sure I wouldn't be able to ride on them on a dark night. I'm constantly worried that we're going to be killed on the very narrow lanes because you can't see more than a few yards ahead, even in daylight, because of the hedgerows and the extreme windeyness with a lot of very sharp blind corners. VERY large tractors take up the entire lane.

Nothing whatever like Toronto, and the loud bangs you hear are never never gunshots. Just fireworks. The other night, I was told that there is "quite a rising rate of crime in the village." I smiled but didn't say anything about the prostitute who used to work out of the bus shelter across from my bedroom window, the condoms and spent heroin needles littering the sidewalks, the murders, the open drug dealing on the streets, the shootings... Just smiled.

There are actually a few shops in the village. There's the post office, the butcher, the greengrocer/gift shop, the vet's, the newsagents, three pubs, two hairdressers, one cafe that's open in the mornings, the Indian restaurant and a posh thing that used to be a pub but is now "fine dining." That's it. There are a few offices of various things, like the tree-related thing that is somehow connected with the National Trust...I dunno. There are about a thousand people and no one knows how old the village is. There is a natural spring here, and there is evidence that there has been a parish church here since about the fifth century. Some Roman coins were found once when someone was digging out a cellar. The local castle, Beeston, was first fortified in the bronze age. the current Beeston castle ruins date to the 13th century. So it's anyone's guess.

The cottage is coming along. Mike and I are rebuilding the kitchen (he's rebuilding, and I'm mostly handing him nails and holding the end of the tape measure, but I did do a bit on my own yesterday afternoon.) Tonight, he is going over to measure it so we know how many tiles to buy. The landlady, is paying to have the kitchen redone. Apart from that, I'm getting the false ceiling down and going to expose and repaint the beams and re-finish the sawn pine plank floors upstairs. I spent about a week chipping hundred year-old tar paper and six layers of linoleum off the stone tiles on the sitting room floor. The tiles are beautiful, fired from a mixture of the local red sandstone and flint. They have to be at least 150 years old. I was on my knees with a steel scraper, a wire brush, a hammer and chisel and a tin of industrial solvent. But it was worth it.

I have magically acquired almost a house full of stuff mostly donated from the fam, including a pair of big upholstered armchairs and a matching two-seater settee, a "welsh dresser" for china and assorted kitchen gear and an antique drop-leaf table.

I bought some nice rose curtains at the village jumble sale and a low pine coffee table that I'm going to make into a bench for under the window. We got an antique cast iron four-poster bed with brass knobs from the Buy n' Sell for 50 pounds. No mattress though, and it turns out that a Victorian single bed is ten inches wider than a modern single, so we are going to have a bit of trouble finding one to fit. The Poor Clare nuns in Wales I went to visit gave me a pile of stuff too, including a nice little antique chest of drawers and a toaster. The landlady even chipped in and left an electric kettle for me the other day. She's promised to bring round a load of firewood from her estate.

I am impressed with how nice everyone is. and what good manners people have, even in Chester. It is not at all like Tranna, and I would say even better than Halifax. I'm training myself to go around smiling and saying hello and good morning to everyone I meet in the village and in town. Working hard at losing that old Canadian/Big City standoffishness, which would not go down well in a tiny rural village. Results thus far have been quite positive.

It is so frustrating not to be able to post my pictures, of which I have a very large number. I've been working on photo essays of the various things I've seen. Lots and lots of canals. I've really fallen for the canals.

Everywhere I've gone, I've been giving imaginary tours to my friends. I keep looking at things, like the Roman amphitheatre and the 11th century churches and the canals and thinking, "oooo Vicky will love that!" "I must remember to show Ann that."

I took the bus into Chester the other day and it was a double-decker. I sat on the top and it was like riding on the mast of a ship in high sea! I had to hang on very tightly. I loved it but I understood by the end of it why the little old ladies always sit downstairs. And even with the incredible windeyness and narrrowness of the lanes, the bus drivers really careen around the place at top speed. As if the sheep are going to be impressed,. Anyway, it was amazing fun and a really cheap thrill at a paltry three pounds 40 return.

You are not going to believe the cottage though. The entire thing looks like it was built for hobbits. The doorway to the kitchen is probably only five feet three inches high; doesn't quite come up to my chin. I can't get in without bending and Mike, who is fairly tall nearly doubles. In fact, all the older part of Tattenhall looks like it was built by hobbits, abandoned 2 hundred years ago, and then the humans moved in (I think the oldest cottage in the village is the half-timbered one across the street from us that has a sign on it saying "1601").

The church, Anglican of course, isn't one of ours but one of theirs built after the revolution, but only just. The original 16th century tower survives and the rest was rebuilt in the 19th century in typical Enlglish gothic style and it's beautiful. The minister is a really nice man from Zimbabwe, who was a police inspector before becoming a minister. All the best Anglicans are from Africa.

I've met and made friends with the local Traditionalist/homeschooling family and they've started taking me along to the local Latin Mass gigs and are introducing me to the local Trads. Very nice and friendly and fun.

I've been taking long walks along the hedgerows, climbing over stiles and bothering cows, as well as the tow paths for the canals. I walked ten miles to Beeston and back (got great pics!) The place is one vast supermarket, if you know what to look for. On my walk to Beeston, I found a crab apple tree and filled a bag with them. Carried them all the way back. Made rose hip syrup and crab apple jelly and am thinking of joining the Country Market Association.

Someone we know knows the local gamekeeper at the Bolesworth estate who might be looking for beaters during the shooting season. Which means free game. Pheasant and duck season next. You can join shooting clubs, but you've got to have a gun and, this being Blair's New Communist Britain, that's hard to manage. Still, people do go shooting so it has to be possible. Mike said I could have his old Norfolk jacket and I've already bought my first tweed skirt (3 pounds in a charity shop) and I got a pair of Wellies so I'm ready to stomp about and fulfill my life's ambition and become an eccentric old lady.

Got to get to work now because I'm off to London tomorrow for Important Meetings with some anti-choice extremists I know who owe me a pint.

I like London. It makes me happier than ever that I live in Cheshire.

Sorry sorry sorry

Yes, I know, I said I'd keep going, and I will, seriously.

But things are in a sort of holding pattern at the moment, with everyone scrambling around trying to get connected to a broadband hookup. It should be easy, but we are dealing with British Telecom and the remote (hah! in this country, "remote" means eight miles from the nearest town, a very interesting phenom) rural village.

It's all very complicated and has to do with the future of a hairdressing salon on the Rows in Chester; a two-hundred year-old country farm labourer's cottage (soon to be my abode); a periodically striking postman with a large collection of Simpson's and Dr. Who memorabilia; five squabbling children; a wealthy local landowner busily buying houses in Spain; a less wealthy absentee landlady of a house in Durham but who lives in Kent; and the local Conservative party candidate for the election-that-never-was; his wife who wants her dining room redecorated; and a nice young traddie Catholic girl suffering from "ME" or chronic fatigue syndrome who wants to be a music teacher...

You'd think that having been here only three weeks, things would be fairly straightforward, and it would be, had I decided to carry on to Durham according to plan.

But that was a dull plan, and, as anyone who knows me even via the internet, should have realized by now, I hate dull.

Dull is bad.

Went to Liverpool yesterday and took a stroll 'round the Albert Docks. We had to pass John Lennon Airport, and am happy to report that the expression on Uncle Mike's
face at the sight of His Imagineness plastered on nearly every public surface, was as sour and disgusted as mine.

We discussed with great animation our mutual conviction that the 1960's was the era that ended all good things in Britain and nearly everywhere else. Uncle Mike agreed that the world ended in 1968. Happy to report that we are getting on well and are almost point-for-point of like mind on all but religious questions.

After deciding that Liverpool is exactly as horrid as everyone says (Mike worked there for some years) we ditched the joint and went back to lovely lovely Chester and took a stroll down on the river front, watching the happy Cestrians rowing their boats up and down, sculling and paddle-boating; coots; ducks; mums and dads pushing push-chairs; kids lined up at the charmingly Tudor-half-timbered ice cream stand; leaves shushing... Stopped at the tea shop and took our tea outdoors on the riverside where we talked family-talk.

Heaven.

Still trying to forget the horrors of Liverpool, we wandered up the bank and through the park that is home to a ruined Norman church. The ruins backed on to the standing church of St. John, also of the same period. We wandered about and I thought how lovely it will be when we reposess it for the True Mass when all good things are restored.

Uncle Mike bought a book and I dropped a two-pound coin in the donation box. (As long as they're keeping it up for us to use later, might as well contribute, I reasoned.)

It was a lovely autumnal Sunday. (I've learned that when the weather man in this country uses the term "fine", as in "Monday, 15 degrees in the day time and fine", they do not mean what we mean by "fine" what we mean in Canada. In Britain, I have learned, "fine" means "not raining".

Sometimes it means "sunny" but not often.

No pics, but since I've decided to stay, there's no hurry.

I might even wait for a sunny day.

Welcome to Britain...

...here's your cold.

Yep. Snuffling, snorfelling and moaning for two days. Ah well.

Sorry about the sporadic quality of the blogging lately. I really haven't forgotten y'all.

It's just that I only have dial-up and I'm trying to spend as little time as possible tying up the phone here, so I'm restricting myself to just work-related internet time. And dial-up really requires much more patience than I'm used to exercising on the net, especially for posting pictures, of which I have collected many.

Also, I really never realized how much time gets taken up just sitting about chatting and doing family and household-related things when one has a family around. It's new to me, you see.

I was going to apologise to those people whom I have chastised in the past for neglecting their bloggosphere duties by citing "family" concerns and busyness.

I say I "was" going to apologise, until I remembered my all-important blogging rule:

never apologise.

Anyway, blogging will, unfortunately, continue to be light-to-intermittent for some time to come, I'm afraid. I will say that I'm having a ripping time. Went to Nantwich yesterday for a couple of hours. Wandered around St. Mary's church there, built in the early 14th century, and v. beautiful. Got lots of pics.

Attended choral evensong at Chester Cathedral on Friday. Sat in one of the ancient choir stalls of the monks and listened to the 12 girls singing the Anglican chants and pondered how we will be redecorating the place when they finally admit their occupation forces are spread too thin and we can have it back, much as the Romans did in the 4th century when they left Chester. (Things continue to go rather swimmingly for our prospects of retrieving our purloined property.)

Have decided that Durham is too far away from relations and that Cheshire is just too damn beautiful to leave. I've discovered the canals and am looking forward to retrieving my bike and introducing it to the tow-paths. and there were many ducks.

We spent some time going through family photo albums. I have to say that I was somewhat weirded out to see the photo, taken in Alexandria Egypt in 1924, of my great grandmother, holding my grandmother as a newborn baby, standing next to my great uncle Laurie (the infamous family blacksheep and rake) who was dressed in some kind of scouting costume; he was standing next to Uncle Mike's mother, Joan, who as a middle-aged woman had looked after me when I was little and my mother was out at work and who was a little girl at the time the photo was taken and was wearing some female version of Laurie's outfit. Behind her and next to Great Grandmother Doloughan was Mike's grandmother Nan, whom we lived with in Manchester when she was an old lady. We have had copies made of this and other pictures and I will be contacting some of the remaining Doloughan relatives to see if we can fit some more of the geneological puzzle pictures together.

Took the young cousins out to the fields to collect rosehips from the hedgerows on Saturday. At least, I collected rosehips and Sophie and Millie held the bucket, until they discovered it was more fun to jump into cowflops. It was Sophie's tenth birthday party after that, but we managed to de-stem the rosehips and I'll be trying a traditional recipe for rosehip jam this week.

More, much much more, to follow.

HJMW

A Walk in the Cheshire Countryside II

Clamoured over the stile, managing neither to catch my skirt on the fence nor sting my delicate ankles on the abundant nettles.

Wandered along on the footpaths, stopping every ten feet or so to gather up another handful of blackberries. By the end of the ramble I'd probably eaten at least half my weight in blackberries.

Rounded a corner and suprised a cow conference.



Only had time for a short speech before I had to go on. Castle to find. (Besides, I'm fairly sure the cows are Labour supporters.)

Generally wandering towards the ridge, frightened many pheasants (no, I said "pheasants" not "peasants". Peasants are extinct) and thought I'd have to buy a gun and join a shooting club at the earliest opportunity.

Futher on, discovered a mere, crossed by a very lovely stone bridge. Many ducks were present but, since I find duck heckling quite irritating and they looked like they were in an ugly mood.
Besides, the ducks are are more or less on side but have very strong views on banning blood sports, and I didn't want an argument.

Castle to find.

Hiked up past the mere and discovered the secret door. I'm fairly sure it was the door either to Narnia or somewhere equally nice, but though I could unlatch the bolt, the door wouldn't budge. I'll have to come back with a spade and dig around the footing to loosen up the soil blocking it.

Despite my failure to get into the magic fairy kingdom, I did manage, at last, to find the castle.





Looking out over the Cheshire plain towards Chester.

A Walk in the Cheshire Countryside

Started in Tattenhall with Auntie Gill and little Ben in the pushchair. We walked around the local footpaths where Gill was unexpectedly menaced by a giant snail.

Having been rescued from the snail by a passing Curlew, we strolled over to take a look at Tatton Hall, which is now broken up into flats, but still very beautiful, as you can see

Its grounds included a magic well, down which could be faintly but distinctly heard the sound of fairy/elven bells

and a secret garden

Guarded by a pair of bronze rooks, who, one assumes, are only rendered immobile by our having seen them and who were ready to spring to life the instant our backs were turned.

Some of the barns have been converted into cottages (which I will likely never be able to rent)


fronting off a cobble-stone courtyard.

The courtyard turned into a cobble road that was obviously not new. We didn't know how old it was, but, given that this was Cheshire, it could as easily have been laid down by the Roman legionaries as by the Victorians. The path was bordered on either side by hedgerows bursting with blackberries and rosehips.

It ended in a fence with a rustic stile. Gill left me here to go home and give little Ben his lunch and I carried on to see if I could find that door to the magic fairy kingdom I'd heard was around here somewhere.

(Part II, in which Hilary Finds both a Castle and the Magic Door, tomorrow.)

Smells like home

Happy to report that I was entirely mistaken about this:

I think Ynglonde is going to smell funny. Maybe it will be better, (I suspect so) because it is not in the middle of a large continental landmass. But maybe it will smell funny because it's the wrong ocean. The Pacific Ocean is in my genes and I don't think any other body of water is ever going to smell like the right one.

I'm worried that things will be just that little bit different that it will throw me off and create a kind of mental nausea. If it were radically different, like Darfur or Shanghai, it might be easier since I would always be expecting it to be so wildly alien that my brain would never bother trying to compensate. But I suspect England is going to be just different enough to make me wake up every morning and not be able to remember which country I'm in.

I have, as you might imagine, much to report, but am mostly unable to get hooked onto the net, for various reasons, and so the big posts will have to wait.

Suffice for the moment to say that this country smells right.

It feels and sounds right.

The only thing I find surprising about it is that I find it entirely unsurprising.

My uncle Mike said, "It's as if you never left."

I was walking the young cousins home from school the other day and we went in search of conkers (a week or so too early). We were strolling along through a woodsy bit just past the churchyard, when I was suddenly brought to a halt. I smelled the early signs of an English autumn. I don't know what particular combination it was, whether it was just the local leaves being burned with a hint of Jersey cow in the background, but it did that thing of powerfully bringing back a long-lost early memory. There it was. Something so familiar and deeply buried that at the same time, it seemed as if I had been transported back in time, and as if the intervening 35 years had simply never happened.

I'm glad to be back. More than I dared hope in fact.

Many pics to follow.

H

Well,

this is it. Plane time in three hours. No blogging for a while.

Last things

last Vespers


The Father glowing with heavenly light (ie: standing in front of the rose window).


Two Cantors Canting.


The lads are back. Always nice to see the choir full.


The priestlie side of the choir.


tidying up.

(Didn't dare take a shot of the procession, even though it's very beautiful. I'm slow to duck and so would certainly have received a last shot of the Beams up the side of the head had I tried it.)

Last things

Party pics

Went to Paupers on Sat. A splendid time was had by all, despite not being able to smoke.

stepping out. (why have I always got my eyes half closed in photos?)

Pals in the pub.

Things to do today

Attend Traditional Mass at Holy Family Church 11:30 (heh).

Have last lunch with pal.

Bank: - take out draft for paltry 605.00 for shipping enormous pile of stuff
- get $150.00 Cn changed into £10 to buy cup of tea and newspaper at Manchester airport.

Misc:

Buy voodoo doll of Canada Post mailbox and pins (I shipped five boxes of books, a bicycle, clothes, framed pictures, china teacups, a standing tiffany lamp, and various household goods and everything, everything including dealing with customs and landing fees, was 605.00 cn. Canada post shipped two boxes of my hats that weighed less than two kilos for a hundred bucks. The shipping stuff is going to be there before I move into my place in Durham. The hats will take 6 to 8 weeks.)

Purchase Canadian flag suitable for burning.

Purchase sandals suitable for ceremonial dusting off.

Everyone please remember

the following code:

Garnier: 415.

OK?

thanks.

"but no one is going to want the thing; all that stuff is

over and there's no demand for it. Catholics have moved on. Really its just a lot of fuss over nothing."

I have an online acquaintance who has been tracking the incredible explosion of new "old Masses" cropping up like dandelions in summer all over the world.

I sent him a note saying maybe he should try to keep a running tally.

He replies:

I think it is already getting too much for any one person or org to track, and it's not even September 14th yet. Perhaps Mary Krachy (Ecclesia Dei Coalition) will try, but I'm not confident she'll be able to.

I believe the site below was going to try to track the progress as well, but it's already hopelessly out of date.

I think Fr. Zuhlsdorf is making a manful effort, but I'm sure the flood is too much for one person to deal with.

The shipping guy is supposed to come today between 10 am and 1 pm to pick up my books and bike and things to put them on the ship to Liverpool. If he gets here in time, I'm going to go to the first Trad Mass at Holy Family at 11:30, which will be daily from now on.

FREEEEEEEeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd like to announce today as my official day of returning to public blogging life.

The old address, if you haven't already gone there, has undergone a complete refit and is once again, a fully operational battlestation.

The Devout Life, alas, is no more. As I have said, I'm off religious blogging. But there's a whole country to explore and write about now, and I'm ready.

The countdown continues at

Orwell's Picnic ~

I will continue to post stuff that is in a more first-person vein, until I get bored with it, and merge this one into the other one. But I thought I'd keep it here, with the membership restriction removed, so friends and enemies can keep up.

Golly! I'm famous!

I just found out that Catholic Exchange keeps a regularly updated log of my lifesite stories.

Dozens of em.

Jeepers, I hope they aren't too bad.

It makes me feel a little queasy, actually.

Or maybe that's just the Thai peanut chicken sitting funny.

Ooooooh Kaaaaay

I have to admit that my first reaction to reading this

Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have accused the Government of using new equality laws to force them to ordain transsexuals as priests or allow them to become nuns.

was to burst out laughing.

Maybe I'm finally losing it.

Pauper's, Bloor and Bathurst, Sept. 15, 7:30 pm

...because my mum died and now I want to go see who I'm related to...

...because I've wanted to go back since I was a wee tot...

...because there's just more interesting stuff to do there...

...because Canada has become such a pointless self-parodying Trudeaupian wasteland of idiocy that there just seems no reason whatever to continue living in it...

...because there's more politics worth fussing over, more newspapers worth reading, more castles worth visiting, more beer worth drinking, cooler accents, more tweed and more stuff worth fighting to the death for...

Because I really really want to...

I'm going.

Before I go, I'd really like to see y'all and have you buy me a pint.

Except you Mr. Harper.

You, I'd just like to see do a better job of turning this pathetic country back from its inexorable path to Socialist Orwelliannightmarism...not that I'd be interested any more if you did...(I've actually got quite a lot more to say to you, but there just doesn't seem to be any point.)

So, I'm going to go to Pauper's pub (AKA, the John Muggeridge Memorial Pub,) on Bloor St. on Saturday the 15th at around 7:30. I'd love to see you. Y'all. Youse...(when is English going to get itself a proper second person plural!?)

HJW

What's amazing is how much these stories are all EXACTLY the same

"I hope that one day we'll get married and have children together..."

I think the abortion limit should definitely be reduced to 13 weeks. I was only six weeks pregnant when I had my abortion, and even then I had bonded with my baby.

Seeing the foetus on the scan - which you have to have before they will carry out the procedure - was unbearably moving. It was two years ago and I haven't been the same since.

I'd been going out with Mike for a year and a half when I got pregnant. We weren't using contraception and he freaked out. He said we didn't have the money, that it was too soon in our careers, and it would ruin our lives.

At the time, I agreed. My parents divorced when I was young and I hardly saw my father, and that's not what I wanted for my child. I wanted to be married, in a stable, loving relationship, with plenty of money.

We agreed that I would have an abortion, but I was unprepared for how I would feel about my baby, and about how I would be treated at the clinic. There were about 20 of us in at the same time, and we were herded about like cattle. It was horrible.

I had a general anaesthetic, but when I came round I was lying on a recliner chair surrounded by the other girls in the waiting room, many of them sobbing hysterically. It was like a scene from hell. There was pop music blasting out from the office, and the staff were chatting loudly, ignoring us. All I could think was: "Get me out of here."

After an hour, I was allowed to go home. My boyfriend drove me back as I sobbed helplessly. I was bleeding heavily, and two days later I was still in pain and bleeding.

A month after the abortion, I went to my GP to get antidepressants. I couldn't sleep - I felt awful.

Today, I still have a huge sense of loss and feel that we did the wrong thing. Mike and I are still together, although the abortion nearly split us up.

I hope that one day we'll get married and have children together - but I will never forget. Even today, I see pregnant women or happy young mothers with their babies and think: "That could have been me. It makes me cry.

London Memories

When I was a wee little girl, Mum and I were in London for a couple of days seeing the sights and we were in some large train station and got separated. Imagine being less than four feet high, looking through a forest of legs, reaching up to grab Mummy's hand and discovering that she had turned into a stranger and was nowhere to be seen. I did the only thing a sensible five-year old could do and sat down on the floor and started screaming and crying. A policeman was by my side in about ten seconds, patted my head, picked me up and took me over to some wicket or other where the lady paged my mum.

Britain is different now, I understand.

"Hedge-witch"

I didn't realize there was another word for "batty neurotic narcissist perpetual-teenager-who-still-thinks-Marion-Zimmer-Bradley-is-really-a-3rd-century-druidess"

Yes, I'm defiinitely going to use the term "hedge-witch" from now on. Much more concise and fewer hyphens, which I find difficult to type.

H/T to Kathy (who has a new site)

Life's Work

Well, that's done.

New Reproductive Technologies
and Embryonic Research
A Briefing Book for Canadian Legislators

Prepared for the National Public Affairs Office
Campaign Life Coalition. 2007

...

The total in the end was 165 pages, 41,521 words...



...that no one is ever going to read.

Oh well.

Bought a new hat

cause you know,

you can't have too many.

My Future in Britain

The agony of life on planet Earth

"I'm Steve Bowler, and I'm still in love with you..."


so cute...

Ye Bittes of Olde Ynglonde...

are falling off the corpse.

Funnily enough I still want to go live there. Way I figure it, all the things that make Canada is stupid and pointless are going double over there. But it has been pointed out to me that in the case of Canada, there isn't anything else. It's just a stupid and pointless ideology that happens to have attached itself like a giant tundra mosquito, to a particular bit of geography. In the case of Britain, the stupid pointless ideology is there, probably worse than here, but there is also a real country.

Why is Britain still better?

The stupid pointlessness is all there is to Canada, whatever it might have become if Trudeau hadn't stepped in and strangled the baby in its crib. At least with Britain, (so-called) there's a real place there, in addition to the stupidity.




Why England is rotting?

England leads Europe in illiteracy, obesity, divorce, drug use, crime and STDs. Bloody hell

MARTIN NEWLAND | June 11, 2007 |

There used to be a time when taking on the Royal Navy was a bad idea. The force that policed the high seas through two world wars and protected the largest empire ever seen was for years the emblem of British national pride and pugnacity. Which is why it was particularly humiliating for many Britons to witness the spectacle of the navy's finest peddling stories about their capture a couple of months ago by the Iranian Republican Guard to the newspapers. The British had already watched televised "confessions" by servicemen, in which they criticized national foreign policy and admitted to crimes and trespasses they had not committed.

But it was the paid interviews given once safely home that left the nation wondering what has happened to traditional British reserve and the notion of the stiff upper lip. Leading Seaman Faye Turney told the nation of the sheer hell of being reduced to counting carpet tiles in solitary confinement while waiting to learn of her fate (Iranian prisons, one is led to believe, are carpeted). And the diminutive Operator Mechanic Arthur Batchelor complained to the media that the Republican Guard had taken away his iPod and called him Mr. Bean.

It was not long before commentators drew parallels between the behaviour of our fighting personnel and the collapse of traditional British values. The venerable right of centre newsmagazine The Spectator, in its editorial, said the episode "demonstrated just how deeply British society has been corrupted by the twin cults of celebrity and victimhood." These sentiments were echoed by the social commentator Theodore Dalrymple, who said the affair showed Britain "to be a country of very slight account, with a population increasingly unable to distinguish the trivial from the important and the virtual from the real, led by a man of the most frivolous earnestness who for many years has been given to gushes of cheap moral enthusiasm."