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."

Ox O!

2 Oxtails
3.4lt (6 pints) Water
2 Slices Ham
2 Carrots
2 Turnips
3 Onions
1 Leek
1 Head Celery
1 Bunch Savoury Herbs
25g (1oz) Butter
1 Bay Leaf
12 Whole Peppercorns
4 Cloves
2 tbsp Ketchup
½ glass Port Wine
1 tbsp Salt

Cut up the tails, separating them at the joints.
Wash and put in a saucepan, with the butter.

Cut the vegetables into slices and add them, with the peppercorns and herbs.
Add 285ml (½ pint) of water and stir it over a sharp heat until the juices are drawn.

Fill the saucepan with the water and when boiling, add the salt.
Skim well and simmer very gently for 4 hours or until the tails are tender.
Take them out, skim and strain the soup.

Thicken with flour and flavour with the ketchup and port wine.
Return the tails, simmer for 5 minutes and serve.

Time: 4½ hours.
Sufficient for 10 persons.
Seasonable in winter.



Instead of skimming the fat (a time-consuming and annoying task) I let the whole thing boil together until the fat had separated and the meat was falling off the bone. Strained and reserved the broth, fat and all.

Into the fridge with the broth and leave overnight. Separate the meat and the veg. Toss the bones and excess fat; exeunt veg and meat to the fridge for overnight cogitation.

Next day, peel off all the hardened fat which will have conveniently all floated to the top and congealed there. Heat the broth which should be a nice jelly (sign of lots of healthy marrow protein). While it's coming to a boil, draw off some and add to reserved cooked vegetables in a blender. Blend until liquid and add to the soup.

Doctor to taste with port, ketchup, oxo cubes, brown sugar, etc.

(No dumplings were used in the making of this soup.)

It's Sunday

and that means, it's the day for sitting around in your PJ's watching nature shows on TV.


One of God's guppies.

Naytchur

Kinkajou ~ Not what you're thinking

How to move to another country

I think it's very important, when moving to another country, to decide ahead of time which public figures to hate. It makes conversation that much easier.

I'm finding Jeremy Paxman very irritating.

nother note to self

take hats to work Mon.

note to self

Stick a definition of Principlism into the glossary of philosophical terms.

On the other hand...

there will probably be unlimited quantities of Stilton cheese in this town,

and it seems likely that I stand a much better chance of seeing these guys play live over there than here:

Important Moving-to-another-country rule: do not move to Finland

Everyone there looks like Morticia Adams

Am in the process of securing a living establishment

in Durham though an online flat rental website. (Well, of course it's an "online website" you nit. What other kinds of websites are there?) and I'm both relieved and terrified.

I really am going to be moving to a whole nother country...and in less than two weeks.

Yoiks! Whatever took hold of me to do this?!

Anyway, I've been running through the things that are worrying me:

Things are going to smell funny. How a place smells is very important, though almost never noticed. Ever since coming to Toronto five years ago, I've felt out of place, weird and uncomfortable. Just a while ago, I figured out why when I went back to Vancouver. This is the middle, and as I have said, people are not supposed to live in the middle. I know I'm not supposed to live in the middle because it doesn't smell like the ocean. The entire place has a pervasive, though almost indefinable not-smelling-like-the-ocean ambiance that has made it very uncomfortable at a deep subconscious level. Always a niggling sense of being in the wrong place. Like having your clothes not quite fit properly.

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.

The other thing I'm worried about is that I won't be able to go shopping. I won't recognise any of the brands or types of things in the shops. I will look for tea and not know which kind is good and which is Tetley.

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'm also quite worried I won't be able to find any pickled herring.

Just putting it out there...

Andrew Coyne asks,

Why is Canadian politics so moronic? It isn't that our politicians are especially stupid, as people: Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff are all intelligent men. They just behave like idiots. It's institutional, a culture of vapidity that drags even the best down to its level.

I submit that the answer lies in the New Canada.

A country that is of no earthly consequence, that doesn't, in short, matter a damn, is going to be stupid, vacuous and pointless.

Canadian politics is stupid and pointless because Canada is stupid and pointless.

More Native Ynglysshe Music

Seth Lakeman

The Plot Thus Far

A note to a friend, whom I've not seen in ages and who I think I will probably not see again for a long time:

She asks how it's going.

Ann and I have moved into a condominium in North York that she is renting from a parishioner friend of ours. I've donated almost an entire apartment's worth of furnishings because I can't afford to have it all shipped. Taking my bike though. Can't do without the bike. And the 'cello, even though the only thing I learned to play was the C major scale and the eight notes of the 'cello piece of Pachebel's Canon. And a couple of Christmas songs.

Apart from that, I've contacted the long lost relatives in Cheshire and they will be picking me up from Manchester airport and putting me up long enough to sleep off the jet lag. After that, it's off on the train to London on the 22nd to go to some weird posh do. A memorial Mass, in the traditional (what we now must call the "extraordinary" , thankyou Pope Benedict!) rite for Henry IX, de jure king of England and a reception with some famous a titled people. I understand Henry was a direct male-line descendant of James the somethingth, the last Catholic king of England. Cardinal Henry Stuart, brother of 'Bonnie Prince Charlie', Stuart claimant to the British throne. Anyway, I have already fallen in with thieves who are inviting me to this annual celebration of English Recusantism.

A very posh thing that involves one of the ancient Catholic chapels in St. John's Wood, and the wearing of hats, the drinking of tea/expensive sherry and, doubtless, the eating of very small sandwiches with the crusts cut off and cut into interesting shapes. So, I'm very happy to say that my plan of leaving Canada and going to live in a PG Wodehouse or Evelyn Waugh novel, seems to be working out famously.

To that end, I am taking my hat boxes with me on the subway to work tomorrow and am going to mail them to a friend of mine who lives in London so they will be there in relatively good order when I arrive on the 22nd ready to hobnob.

Everything else will be going by ship to Liverpool in a portion (1.3 meters cubed) of a container, for the paltry fee of 700 Canadian dollars. They will even take care of the customs forms for me. After that, I have to figure out a way to get it from the Liverpool docks to wherever I will be living.

I've decided on the North East. Fewest immigrants, highest population (according to 2002 statistics) of people born in Britain who call themselves Christian and go to church more than once a month. Decided particularly on the city of Durham. It's got a cathedral, (currently in enemy hands) built by William the Conquerer. And an 11th century castle that you can stay in as a B&B.

I talked to someone on the phone from Consett, a former coal mining town just "on the edge of the Pennines" and was surprised when I could not understand anything he said. It was like a Yorkshire accent, but kind of more so. Geordie they call it. I'm told the Geordies are the "nicest people in England."

Thinking of giving up journalism in favour of becoming a mad hatter.

Tough call.

The plane leaves the following Wednesday night, late, and arrives Manchester 11:20 am, local time.

And that will be that.

They tell me that there are 63 million people in Britain, only about 1.2 million of whom are mad Islamic savages. It will take me years to alienate 61.8 million people. Possibly even decades.

After that, I think it will have to be Malta.

How are you?

Now that's a hat!

For Karen ~ the hats of Howard's End

Always loved this one

Last Chance to Mock

I will be holding the last Canadian court at Pauper's Pub on Bloor st. deep in the heart of Annex enemy territory, just a bit east of Bathurst. Saturday Sept 15, from 7:30 pm, until they throw us out for drunk n' disorderly behaviour.

Everyone on this list is invited.

Things that Drive Me Nuts about the "Catholic Revival"

Was just mentioning to John Carriere the other day:

JC: I just don't understand the frumpiness that seems to grip so many of the young orthodox Catholic women of today...
1982 drab turtle-necked nun-chic with a single dab of ill-chosen colour in the middle of her squinty, tight-lipped pucker.

HJW: One of the things that I'm most fed up with about conservative catholicism is the pervasive styleless-frumpiness-as-moral-virtue meme that runs through it. You meet so many of these hags parading around in wretched flowered turtleneck t-shirts and polyester skirts with sneakers blathering on about their brilliant and horribly maladjusted homeschooled children...

It's like a variant on the anti-intellectualism that parades itself as the moral high ground in the pro-life movement. It just makes you want to quote Aristotle in front of them even more. Same with the shapless-plaid-jumper people. Makes you want to invest in a Balenciaga suit and silk stockings. It's a shame you never met me in the winter. I have the most gorgeous black wool coat from the 50's that I wear with a BIG fur collar and a very expensive black hat. Scares the hell out of the pro-lifers. Makes me look very glamourous in a kind of New York socialite-as-murderess way. I just need a long cigarette holder and a pair of stilletto heels I'm ready for the next national pro-life conference.