The Hilariad

Walk to Maiden Castle

2008-04-23T16:30:00.002+03:00

Part II

From the entrance to the Bolesworth Estate, the road goes ever on and on...

and up.

Lesser Celandine hide in the grass and nettles in the verge, like sparkles on water.

My mum used to say that you can tell the moment when spring really starts. For weeks the dark brown bulbs of chestnut buds have been forming and growing. Then one morning, they leaves have all flopped down and it has begun.

Jews ear fungus. Edible, I discovered, and I think popular in the Far East where it is sold dried.

Sat on a stump at the top of the hill behind the Bolesworth Estate, looking back whence I had come. You can make out Tattenhall in the distance, but more important, the weather catching up to me. The hills in the far distance are Wales.

...and up and up...

The woodsy bits at the top of the hill are the crest of the Sandstone Ridge. A morraine of rock and rubble pushed up by the thousand foot-high ice sheets that once covered the Cheshire plain. (No photo of latter, sorry). The ice is responsible for much of the shape of the terrain here and for the type of things that can be grown. It picked up boulders and rocks from miles away in Cumbria and Scotland and left them desposited all over. Some of them are local landmarks and some, it is said, were the site of pre-Christian ritual sacrifices. The ice also carried with it lots of smaller bits of rubble that its great weight ground down to a very fine powder which was deposited all over the plain. This formed a clay that still prevents drainage, which is why the fields are often flooded and where the meres and pools come from.

Oak wasp galls.

Very unusual to find farm buildings of wood here. Almost all the farm outbuildings are solid brick or sandstone. The feeling it gives is one of great permanence and dignity, something I always found lacking in Canadian rural areas, other than Quebec. These people have lived here a very long time and clearly intend to remain another thousand years or so.

A case in point. This little barn was clearly expanded at least twice. You can see the places where the newer brickwork was added to the older building in two stages.

Being chased by the weather as I climb higher up above the plain. Gorse bushes always remind me of the Winnie the Pooh story where Bear tries to get to a honey bee nest with the help of a balloon lent to him by Christopher Robin. The plan failed when Bear found that, although he could see the bees and smell the honey, the necessity of holding onto the string meant that he could not reach it. The problem of how to get down became serious. Christopher Robin was, sadly, forced to shoot the balloon, which deposited the hapless Bear into a Gorse bush.

We have to go up there?!

Yes. But not before we get a pint.

Some of the farms on the way to Burwardsley.

Other walkers, complete with all the Walker Geek Gear, looked decidedly long-nosed at me in my sturdy tweed skirt and wellies. I let them get well ahead before I started talking to myself again.

It seemed like miles and miles. One of the things about walking everywhere is that it gives one a deep appreciation of the seriousness of the land. In a car, one just whips past it, careless and unheeding like Toad in his automobile. Walking forces one to take seriously the distances and matters like food and water, tired feet and hills to climb.

Burwardsley cottages.

Everyone was out digging the gardens.

Many cottages have brightly painted doors. Often this particular shade of blue or bright red. And don't you love the name?!

Daffs are everywhere.

I fell instantly in love with this cottage. The chap who lives there sold me ten bags of fire logs at 50p per bag less than I was paying. Delivered the next day.

The last stretch of the hill before gaining the top of the ridge. But not yet. Onwards, to the Pheasant!

The seething core of metropolitan Burwardsley. The shop was closed (Sunday), but it had a lot of useful and interesting notices and a nice bench to sit on for a rest.

This little cottage, just before the Pheasant, was once a Methodist chapel. So many of these are now converted into flats or cottages, one wonders if there are any Methodists left. The one in Tattenhall has been changed into very uncomfortable looking flats and it makes me sad when I remember that it was once host to the great John Wesley himself who preached in the village in the late 1700s.

1843

The Pheasant at last. My mum's favourite pub in all Ynglonde.

The walker's reward. I ate my tongue sandwich, cheese and sausage rolls, but it was too cold and windy to stay on the patio. I moved inside where the pub was full.

The next stile is the entrance to the Sandstone ridge and the beginning of stage two.

Walk to Maiden Castle

2008-04-12T18:14:00.003+03:00

Part I

I simply can't resist a stile. They are symbolic, somehow. When I climb over a stile, the modern world just goes away and stops bothering me for a while. Closest I've come to the door to Narnia. This stile is the closest one to the edge of the village on the east side, towards Beeston. At night, it is an eerie place to approach since the road is only lit about as far as this stile. After that, the light stops at what looks like a cave of blackness as the road winds away into the countryside. Actually, it is quite dangerous to walk on the lanes at night. They are only about 15 feet wide, less in some places, and there is no pavement (that's a "sidewalk" to Northamericaners). The verge is often only about two feet wide and sometimes less. And the corners are blind. There is only room for one car at a time and no place to jump when they come. You just listen very carefully, (easy because of the total silence) and press up against the hedge when a car comes.

Off in the distance, you can see the hills where I'm heading. That's the Sandstone Ridge. Historically, shelter for Celts, Cavaliers, gypsies and hermits, all seeking refuge from detection. If the door to Narnia is anywhere...

On the other side of the stile

the sheep fields (looking back toward the village,) stretch ahead. Despite the word "sheepishness", the sheep are actually quite protective of the lambs so it's a good idea to give them plenty of room. They certainly look at you very sternly and usher you on your way quite brusquely.

My kit-bag

with Beeston crag, ever looming, in the distance. The weather is pretty changeable this time of year. It was a very warm day, in general, but up on the ridge, I was very glad to have my wooly cardie.

The sacred earth. How long has this particular patch of ground been tilled, every spring (or every other, being left fallow in between)? I like that the farmers are so careful not to plough up the footpaths...there's probably a fine.

Sometimes you have to do a little creative interpretation of the right of way laws

it really makes one appreciate the great Wellington Boot

Every inch of this country is cultivated, cared-for and jealously watched-over. The English have turned their island into another Eden.

This little wood is at the end of the fourth field along from the lane. It surrounds a pair of still ponds, full of newts, frogs, ducks and coots. I go in there when I'm looking for kindling sticks and at Christmas for pine cones and holly, and I always wonder how long it has been there.

There's a funny thing about cows. I don't know why, but if they see someone walking across their field, they become very agitated. Even when they see people walking along the lane next the field, they will come crowding around, often clamouring over each other to get close. I don't know how to interpret this. Are they defending their territory? Or do they think it's feeding time? I don't know anything about cows and have no idea why, but they do go all wiggy when they see someone crossing a foot path. It's why it's a good idea to take along a pair of binos. When you come to a stile, it's good idea to check to see if there are cows at the other end who aren't held in with a line of fencing. And if there are, to find another route.

At the end of five fields from Tattenhall, towards Bolesworth Castle, we come over an other stile to Dark Lane.

go down that lane for quite a while, and you will come to the road up to Burwardsley, and a place called Cheshire fishing where people go to practice with their rods. It doesn't seem like real fishing to me. More like kids playing at fishing in a pond that has been deliberately stocked for the purpose. But that's probably just the Canadian in me. There isn't any wilderness here, and hasn't been for a very long time.

The other direction, you can see, is the road to Bolesworth. This is the back gate to the estate. When I came here, this cottage was empty and I had a poke around the back. It's lovely, and the garden is well-kept. That's Bolesworth. They have a very good reputation here as excellent landlords.

more to come...

Big Stomp today

2008-03-30T14:20:00.003+03:00

Going to walk to Maiden Castle, near Bickerton today. Taking camera. The Iron Age hillfort is the blue dots at the very bottom of the map below Fuller's Moor.

Gotta get going.

Lady Ridley's Nettle Soup

2008-03-22T22:12:00.001+03:00

Ingredients:

1 lb potatoes
½ lb young nettles
2 oz butter
1½ pts chicken or vegetable stock
sea salt & black pepper
4 tablespoons sour cream

Method:

Cook the peeled, chopped potatoes for 10 mins in salted water. Drain.

Wash & chop coarsely the nettles (Only pick the new, young tops,using gloves!)

Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the nettles and stew gently for a few minutes. Add the potatoes and heated stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until tender.

When all is soft, cool slightly & purée in a blender, adding seasoning and the sour cream.

I hope you enjoy the nettle soup. The hardest work is picking the nettles. Half a pound is a lot of small leaves, but it is fun to do, in season, once a year.

The Viscountess Ridley

More Nettles

2008-03-22T20:26:00.001+03:00

There's a website for everythynge

National Be Nice to Nettles Week

Not the Apocalypse

2008-03-22T17:54:00.002+03:00

just spring.

Weird weather today. Windy and chilly; one minute brilliant sunny, the next second slate grey sky; the next hail; then a snow flurry...

Spring.

It's quite chilly; colder than it was in February's weird warm patch, and the wind is very blustery, pushing even the big high cumulous clouds fast across the sky.

Normally (or I should say, "so far") our weather comes from west to east, with the wind off the Irish sea pushing the clouds down from the Welsh hills five miles away. But I've noted that it seems to be reversing itself as the spring gets going.

I went out for a long long stomp yesterday up as far as the sandstone ridge of which the most prominent part is Beeston Crag. Cheshire, despite its idyllic rural atmosphere, is a little...well...flat, for me, raised as I was in the mountains.

The little cottages and crofts up there in the hilly bits are lovely, nestling between the streams and rocks and the lanes even windier than usual.
But the wind that one hardly notices down here on the flat bits really screams up there and one is grateful for the lee of the hills. Was very grateful for the Norfolk tweed shooting jacket Uncle Mike gave me. It's a bit like wearing a space suit, completely water and wind proof and very snug. What one wants when spending four hours out there Looking At Things.

Made friends with a very nice horse. He stood quite still nibbling the buttons on my jacket while I petted his head. Next time, I'm going to take my camera and a couple of carrots.

I saw so many little woodland creatures yesterday that I realized if I'd had an airgun, the freezer could have been filled with rabbits, pheasants (yes I know it's illegal) and wood pigeons. Every time I saw the cute little hippity-hoppities, I thought the same thing...if only I had a gun.

Found what can only be a badger sett too. The holes were much larger than the bunny holes under the hedges and it was obviously a fairly extensive system in a little hill in a woody bit. I thought of buying a webcam and setting it in a tree to see what we could see.

I was going to venture out again today to see if I could gain the Sandstone Trail and make some headway on it, but for some reason the Spirit of Frobisher is not with me today. I think I'm going to jar the syrup, put the fire on and see if I can make a bit of Scotch broth, without burning the house down.

101

2008-03-22T02:53:00.001+03:00

Stinging nettle has a wide range of uses and is a very versatile medicinal herb.

Since biblical times, it has been used to help with arthritis. The practice called urtication (from its botanical name) involved stinging stiff swollen joints affected by arthritis. Urtication often provided considerable relief with reports of arthritic swelling subsiding within minutes after stinging!

In more recent years, nettle has been increasingly used for treating bronchitis, asthma and hay fever. Research shows that it may effectively treat allergic nasal symptoms and has been used for centuries around the world to treat nasal and respiratory troubles: coughs, runny nose, chest congestion, asthma, whooping cough (pertussis) and even tuberculosis and laryngitis Scientific studies have proven that nettle is an anti-histamine. The leaf extract may also be used to help treat and heal hives.

Nettle is also a traditional liver tonic often recommended for ridding the body of all kinds of toxins. When the liver is sluggish, it processes oestrogen slowly, contributing to the high levels that may cause or aggravate premenstrual syndrome. This herb can also reduce bloating and breast tenderness.

Nettle is recommended for the prevention and treatment of kidney stones and as it's a diuretic it can help with bladder infections. Nettle is a silicon-rich herb which has strong folkloric support as a treatment for gout and rheumatism. Experimental animal studies found nettle increases uric acid secretion and lowers blood levels of uric acid making it useful for the treatment of gout. It has long been used to treat inflammatory conditions that affect the joints and therefore may help in treating bursitis and tendinitis as well.

Nettle contains considerable amounts of the mineral boron, which can double levels of the hormone oestrogen circulating in the body. In several studies, oestrogen helped improve short-term memory and helped elevate the moods of some people with Alzheimer's disease. In addition to the magnesium in nettle greens, studies show that nettle also has anti-bacterial activity. It can be added to toothpastes and mouthwashes to reduce plaque and gingivitis.

Nettle may also be used to treat prostate enlargement. Extracts have successfully treated benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH). Researchers gave a few teaspoons of extrxct daily to 67 men over 60 with BPH and found the herb significantly reduced their need to get up at night and urinate. The herb apparently has some inhibitory effect on the conversion of testosterone.

Finally, tincture of nettle leaf can also prevent balding in those with thinning hair.

100ml 1:4 Alcohol Volume 25%. Take 10 - 15 drops 2 x daily.

Nettled

2008-03-21T23:27:00.002+03:00

Well, as we have read elsewhere, the jelly was a bust, but not to be deterred, I've tried nettles.

Went collecting today with the Norfolk jacked Uncle Mike gave me (that thing could probably stand up on its own and very likely deflect bullets. At least, it certainly was entirely proof against the very cold wind today).

Just for starters, I collected a shopping bag's worth and carted them home. Washed in cold water with rubber gloves on and sauteed in a hot pan with olive oil and a crushed garlic clove. And they were GREAT. Very much in the spinach line, but with a nice subtle mushroomy flavour and a much nicer texture, given by the little hairs that normally deliver the sting.

mmmmmm...good.

(I have to admit though, that before getting outside them, I did give them a little poke with my ungloved fingertip. I'm not crazy, after all.)

Cottage Life

2008-03-17T01:43:00.003+03:00

So, I found out that the way you get a name for your house is just to decide on one, buy a sign and stick it on your front door. Or more usually, stick it on the front wall of your house next to the door.

Most of the houses around here have names, which is a Big Thing in rural England. What I like is that the Royal Mail will take the name of your house as the official address, so that when you give your address, you can call it "Hawthorne Cottage, Huxley Lane, Cheshire, England, CH9 9QE" and letters will come to you as that.

So, I've decided to get right into it and name the cottage. I'm leaning towards "Rosehip Cottage" since rosehips have become something of a defining lifestyle choice for me. But I think it might just be a leeetle too twee.

Suggestions are welcome, therefore, since those who know me will remember that I am the world's very WORST name-thinker-upper. I have had the same teddy bear for 22 years and in all that time, other people have named him all sorts of things, (including, oddly, "Manta-Bear"...don't ask) but between the two of us, he has remained "Mr. Bear". All my dollies were "Dolly". I got really creative one time and had a dolly named "Polly".

I went today for a very long stomp up past Bolesworth Castle and along some footpaths that had been flooded out in the "winter". I saw that the time for collecting nettles is upon us, with the sprouts everywhere and looking very healthy and green. I'm looking at recipes online for nettle wine, nettle beer, tincture of nettle (good for all sorts of things that ail you) and nettle shampoo that is guaranteed to keep your hair from falling out or thinning and is very good for it.

Nettles are also very good to eat and extremely healthy. But of course, the best reason to eat nettles is revenge. The same reason I used to enjoy eating shark a lot in Nova Scotia, ("Oh yeah? Think you're so tough? Well, who's got the thumbs now Mr. Toothy, eh? EH?!")

Some more excellent news is that, while the relations have moved from the house next door ("Medway House") to a place that was once the Tattenhall train station ("Station House" Get it?) and I feel a little lonely without the kids screeching and giggling next door, the new house has an enormous garden, including a formal herb garden. Uncle Mike and I inspected it as we were all helping the tribe move yesterday, and we decided to appropriate the garden for ourselves. With five very rambunctious kids to chase after and two full time jobs, there won't be a lot of time for yard work, so I get my wish of having a bit of Cheshire to dig in without having to wait 30 years on the list for a Council allotment, and the cousins get a gardener they don't have to pay.

There is tons of work to keep the diggers happy; it has been sorely neglected for many years. Mike and I happily pottered about inspecting hedges and shrubberies, lawns and garden sheds. The house is semi-furnished and comes with a full complement of gardening tools. There was a pond in the front lawn that has been filled in with rubbish of various kinds. We decided that it will make an excellent raised bed for veg, and the front gets sun all day (as much as there is in Cheshire), so there can be cold frames as well. Possibly one day even a hothouse for tomahhtoes.

Oooo! Digging! Rapture!

Went for a short stomp on Friday morning and took the camera, as well as the collecting bag for bits of oak tree.

my sitting room in the morning light.

St. Alban's churchyard daffs

I like it when the willows get that yellowy-green haze...sprouting.

Daffs grow in great carpets and clusters everywhere, wild, lining all the lanes, in the fields and woods...(note the young nettles)

I'm not sure what this little yellow flower is, but it grows very abundantly by the sides of all the streams. For some reason I think it is a mallow, but I'll have to look it up.

crab apples flowering in the hedgerows. Next year's jam crop.

a pal of mine with Beeston crag in the background.

This lane, between two fields, is my favourite. It is lined and arched over with oaks, chestnuts, roses and crab apples. It has been lovely in every season I've been here, and is the best place for rosehips. Its hawthorned hedges have started sprouting.

as you can see.

towards the village end of the lane, on one side is a rather posh house with very beautifully kept grounds.

apple blossoms.

the flowering plum across from the Village Indian and green grocer's at the end of Church Bank.

an host of golden daffies

the flowers came from Auntie Gill and Uncle Mike for my birthday.

Anyone looking at this would think I live in a decorating magazine.

I had a bucket of boiled crab apples and rosehips in the freezer all winter, waiting on the day when I was down to the very last scrapings of the last jar. Today's the day. The rig was something Uncle Mike came up with in the fall for the first batch of rosehip syrup. It works a treat.

St. Mary's Church, Nantwich

2008-03-13T02:09:00.004+03:00

In the fall, I was taken to visit the beautiful and ancient market town of Nantwich, not far from here.

Nantwich is one of Cheshire's Roman towns, and was founded as a market centre around the town's original industry, the salt mine.

Wiki:

The origins of the settlement date to Roman times when salt from Nantwich was used by the Roman garrisons at Chester (Deva Victrix) and Stoke-on-Trent as both a preservative and a condiment. Salt has been used in the production of Cheshire cheese and in the tanning industry, both products of the dairy industry based in the Cheshire Plain around the town. Wich and wych are names used to denote brine springs or wells.

We took a stroll around St. Mary's Church, a famous landmark.

The church is almost completely untouched. Unlike most medieval churches in the area that have only bits that are original, St. Mary's has had no significant re-building since it was first put up as, naturally, a Benedictine monastic church, in the 14th century.

a transept chapel

can't remember what you call the little sink with the drain that goes directly into the earth in which one purifies the vessels. But whatever it is called, this one is the original.

I was particularly taken with this stone lady, possibly one of the church's early patronesses.

Very disappointed that this one turned out fuzzy.

A better version comes from the church's website:

Like nearly all the churches in this poor stolen country, it makes me very sad.

Long before the building was called a church there had been a chapel on the site under the control of Acton church. At that distant time there may have been a simple building erected in Anglo-Saxon times before the Norman conquerors arrived.in 1066.

About 1130 Acton church and Nantwich chapel were granted to Combermere Abbey run by a small group of Cistercians from France. For a hundred years monks came from the abbey to officiate in Acton and in Nantwich.

Around 1380 the present building was started. Masons came from Yorkshire and the red sandstone came from the Runcorn area. Money came from the abbey estates; through the religious gilds; and from wealthy people during the Hundred Years Wars in France.

Built in the Decorated style with later additions in the Perpendicular style the church is huge for such a small place as Nantwich was in the 14th century. Little wonder that it has been christened the `cathedral of south Cheshire.`

The oldest parts are the choir, chancel and nave(13th and 14th centuries) and less old, the 14th century transepts.

Features to look for are: the triple-canopied choir stalls; the misericords(carvings on the undersides of the choir seats - often quite amusing); the ribbed vaulted chancel ceiling; the faint remains of inscriptions (the Ten Commandments), high up on the east wall of the nave; and the effigies in the south transept. One is of Sir David Cradoc in alabaster.

After King Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s the church changed from being Roman Catholic to Protestant or Church of England.

The Hilariad

2008-02-20T20:45:00.001+03:00

Name change.

Obvious reasons.

HJW

Better here than

2008-01-30T20:24:00.001+03:00

anywhere else, really.

Took these today, across the road from my cottage.

If the door to Narnia is going to be anywhere, it's going to be in a place where the daffs bloom in January.

More pics to come. Forsythia and more.

And,

new shelves. Uncle Mike made them and put them up today, and just in time; there's a booksale at the Village Institute next weekend.

Believe it or not, this is almost all my books now. But at least it now feels as if I really live here. Not just camping.

Canal Day

2008-01-27T20:02:00.000+03:00

Shortly after my arrival here, my uncle and aunt took me on a trip to see the canals and canal boats at the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, and Llangollen, a gorgeous little village in Wales. (Neither of those names are pronounced the way you think. It's Welsh, so don't even try. The fact that Uncle Mike can do it proves its not a genetic Welsh thing, but it takes a lot of practice.) The aqueduct brings the Llangollen Canal over an enormous gorge,

at the bottom of which you can see some of the most charming and lovely Welsh rural scenery anywhere (as long as you're not afraid of heights.)

I'm terribly impressed with grand engineering projects, particularly those completed before the steam age. The canals in England were largely dug by hand by Irish labourers, and formed one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the early industrial revolution. They've been replaced of course, first by rail and now by roads, but consider that before they were built, the only way to ship goods around the country was by horse cart over almost completely unpaved roads. Roads, moreover, that by our standards, were little more than muddy farm tracks.

Thomas Telford is a hero of the industrial age (something as we know, I'm rather ambivalent about) and no matter what we think of the long-term results of the entire movement, there is no doubt that the creation of these canals, canal bridges and aqueducts, was a work of engineering genius unequaled in his time.

The boats are not barges, as is commonly thought. I saw a real barge a few weeks ago and it is enormous. They are too big to get through most of the locks and certainly can't get over most of the bridges. They only take barges on the bigger canals.

These are the more common kind and are called narrow boats, and are now used exclusively as pleasure craft. There is a whole little narrow boat subculture in Britain where people, mostly retired, tool about the countryside from Liverpool to London and as far as Norfolk on the other side.

My uncle has a particular thing about them. Doesn't talk about it much, but misses his boat very much.

Lots of ducks. Canals are really great places to watch waterfowl.

Here reason for the name "narrow" boat becomes clear.

The locks are fascinating. Most of the locks in use today are the same that were built at the time the canals were constructed. As you can see here, they are operated by a hand windlass that all the boaters keep on board.

It can be quite a lot of work to get through a long system of locks.

The lower half of the lock filling.

Just above this spot, there is a very long string of sixteen locks. After you've worked your way down this, which on a busy day can take all day while you wait your turn, you moor the boat next to the pub and have something to eat and a pint before tackling the next set of locks.

This is the Shroppie Fly, a kind of Narrow Boat enthusiasts' hangout.

You use the windlass (which looks like a bent crowbar) to raise and lower road bridges too. When we came to this one, the boaters (probably on a hireboat) had left the bridge up and a car was left sitting there until the next boat came along to take care of it.

Stay tuned for Llangollen.

Nothing to see here; move along.

2008-01-22T18:23:00.000+03:00

Well, I'm getting bored with this. L'eg, despite its very appealing acronym is really not necessary any more. I set it up as an adolescent act of rebellion when I was asked to stop blogging at The Devout Life. Since then I'm no longer under that restriction and have resumed full-speed public blogging at the same address as TDL. I don't have a site meter or any way to check blog stats so I don't know if anyone still even comes here.

I had thought I would keep Orwell's Picnic as strictly political and news oriented, but of course, all the grammar, recipes, poetry, jokes and other stuff have crept in there anyway (although nothing yet on the growing threat from our radially symmetrical evolutionary rivals). I do want to keep the strictly personal stuff carefully out of O'sP so I've told one very persistent fan that I will continue putting stuff up here, but this will be mostly for those few personal friends who want to keep up with my private adventures. I'll put up what I think are rather dull pics of family and architecture, canal walks, and various items of local interest. But actual blogging will carry on at

The-Blog-Formerly-Known-As-TDL.

Now the holy bits

2008-01-09T17:39:00.000+03:00

Colwich Abbey

The nun's choir and the sanctuary (spot anything missing?). The choir was built originally to be the ball room/banqueting room for the hunting lodge. I took the picture from what was then the minstrels' gallery and is now a place where you can sit and hear and follow the services if you are sick in the infirmary.

The long cloister.

St. Benedict

Among the many treats in the house is the clock room. You go into a bathroom and a little door, about three and half feet high, opens into a little anteroom containing the clockworks. When you are standing over it watching the works, the chime will make you jump out of your skin!

Having a bath in the bathroom right next to the clock is quite an experience. The picture is a bit dark, but if you look closely, you can see the pendulum as it swings.

The Christmas holiday between Christmas day and Epiphany, was described to me as "the silly season" in which the sisters have lots of tea parties and little dos, fancy dress and plays. I was assured over and over that the rest of the year is much more nunny.

from the left, Mother Prioress and Mother Abbess.

The house from the south end of the garden. The mysterious little doors you see in the foreground are the entrance to the "grots" the underground vaults that once were to serve as stables and wine cellars and food storage for the aristocrat who built the big house.

Taking the dog for a walk after Morning Office

the back door.

The grounds with a bit of house

The community was founded in Paris in the 1650's to pray for the conversion of England. The nuns were arrested during the Terror and fled back to England where they pioneered Eucharistic Adoration for this country.

Our Lady of Walsingham still reigns. The shrine to her in the garden had a candle lit all night. This is also the favoured spot in the summer for the sisters to take recreation.

More grounds.

And more grounds.

And more grounds. The view from the community room window.

The community room (which they call the "work room") decked out for a Christmas buffet.

Reverend Mother Abbess Gertrude Baker, saying good bye in the refectory on my last day.At 4'7" and after nearly 60 years of religious life, one of the tiniest and most delightful people I have ever met.

Not a child's Christmas in Wales

2008-01-09T17:22:00.000+03:00

but pretty good.

Pics.

Toasting toes at home

Auntie Gill teaching Millie to knit in the pub, Christmas afternoon

The hordes descend. It really was a feast. Turkey, ham, and r. beef, onion sauce, horseradish sauce, wine gravy, sprouts, parsnips, roasties and mash, Christmas pud and bread n. butter pud.

Ben has got into the habit of eating breakfast on Uncle Mike's lap in the mornings before anyone else gets up. Ben eats all the mushrooms and Mike gets to read the paper in relative peace.

Feeling somewhat guilty at having had all three kinds of meat and doubles of B n' B pud. Ready for the Queen's speech and a long snooze.

Away for a bit

2007-12-26T03:33:00.001+03:00

Having a holy holiday until Jan 7.

Blessings upon y'all.

HJMW

an interesting new blog

2007-12-22T15:50:00.000+03:00

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

2007-12-22T15:22:00.000+03:00

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

2007-12-17T19:01:00.000+03:00

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.

2007-12-13T20:26:00.000+03:00

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,

2007-12-13T20:17:00.000+03:00

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

2007-12-13T15:51:00.000+03:00

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

2007-12-13T00:13:00.000+03:00

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

2007-12-12T23:51:00.000+03:00

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

2007-12-12T19:04:00.000+03:00

Much better.

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

Stay tuned.

hmp.

2007-12-12T18:27:00.000+03:00

is this any better?

hmm...

2007-12-12T18:25:00.000+03:00

a bit teeny...

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

how's that?

2007-12-12T18:19:00.000+03:00

Testing new picture methods.

so, does it work?

2007-12-12T02:50:00.000+03:00

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

2007-12-12T02:38:00.000+03:00

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

2007-12-06T15:35:00.000+03:00

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

2007-11-30T21:29:00.000+03:00

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

A lovely day

2007-11-29T18:12:00.000+03:00

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

2007-11-27T23:09:00.000+03:00

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

2007-11-27T19:41:00.000+03:00

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!!

2007-11-23T12:50:00.000+03:00

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

2007-11-23T00:41:00.000+03:00

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...

2007-11-21T11:50:00.000+03:00

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.

2007-11-08T21:32:00.000+03:00

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

2007-10-15T13:19:00.000+03:00

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...

2007-10-03T01:14:00.000+03:00

...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

2007-09-27T12:56:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-27T03:14:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-27T01:40:00.000+03:00

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,

2007-09-20T03:49:00.000+03:00

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

Last things

2007-09-18T16:25:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-18T16:21:00.001+03:00

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

2007-09-18T15:44:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-18T04:23:00.000+03:00

the following code:

Garnier: 415.

OK?

thanks.

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

2007-09-17T15:50:00.001+03:00

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!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-09-14T22:55:00.000+03:00

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!

2007-09-13T23:25:00.001+03:00

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

2007-09-13T19:43:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-13T07:09:00.001+03:00

...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

2007-09-12T22:53:00.000+03:00

"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

2007-09-12T20:00:00.000+03:00

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"

2007-09-10T22:21:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-10T06:26:00.001+03:00

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

2007-09-10T01:55:00.000+03:00

cause you know,

you can't have too many.

My Future in Britain

2007-09-09T20:13:00.001+03:00

The agony of life on planet Earth

2007-09-09T19:12:00.002+03:00

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

so cute...

Ye Bittes of Olde Ynglonde...

2007-09-09T18:54:00.000+03:00

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!

2007-09-09T17:40:00.001+03:00

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

2007-09-09T16:43:00.001+03:00

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

2007-09-09T16:40:00.000+03:00

Kinkajou ~ Not what you're thinking

How to move to another country

2007-09-07T17:02:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-07T16:38:00.000+03:00

take hats to work Mon.

note to self

2007-09-07T06:53:00.001+03:00

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

On the other hand...

2007-09-06T23:38:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-06T23:30:00.000+03:00

Everyone there looks like Morticia Adams

Am in the process of securing a living establishment

2007-09-06T23:19:00.001+03:00

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...

2007-09-04T03:04:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-04T01:13:00.000+03:00

Seth Lakeman

The Plot Thus Far

2007-09-03T23:42:00.000+03:00

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!

2007-09-03T23:14:00.001+03:00

For Karen ~ the hats of Howard's End

2007-09-03T22:28:00.000+03:00

Always loved this one

Last Chance to Mock

2007-09-03T18:59:00.001+03:00

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"

2007-09-03T18:56:00.000+03:00

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.

Four 'Cellists and a Drummer

2007-08-31T01:54:00.000+03:00

Ok, I think there's a rule that says you can't be a classically trained 'cellist and a headbanging rocker at the same time.

There has to be.

I think it's because you have to sit down to play. You can't be a proper long-haired headbanger and remain seated. It just looks weird.

Go to another country and eat gross food

2007-08-30T23:27:00.000+03:00

you think British people eat awful food? Black pudding and haggis are over the top?

Try Korean!

Yah.

How 'bout a nice spinach salad?

Feminists are Evil

2007-08-30T03:21:00.000+03:00

Germaine Greer is a foul old hag and an evil sow. Everyone who believed her and followed her advice also turned into an evil old sow.

Because of her the world is full of evil old sows.

Mr. Bear concurs

Cuddly toys are ugly monstrosities - and it's time we stopped our kids from fetishising them

Germaine Greer
Monday August 27, 2007
The Guardian

We have persuaded ourselves that children have always tended to fixate on inanimate friends. The received wisdom is that they use toys as objects of transference, developing social awareness by interacting with them, even though dolls and soft toys have only been ubiquitous since they began to be mass-produced in the mid-19th century. Before that, human effigies were used as objects of veneration or fetishes or in witchcraft, but never as children's surrogate siblings. Shakespeare uses the word "doll" only as a name, the diminutive of Dorothy. The word "toy" meant for him "a thing of no regard", not an animal effigy that slept with you. Children haven't always screamed themselves into conniptions if Teddy or Bunny or Cuddles got left behind. Nowadays, cutesy effigies of animals are apt to turn up almost anywhere; they gaze soulfully from car dashboards, loll in heaps on undergraduate beds, peep out of rucksacks and grace restaurant tables. Teddies and bunnies are taken into exams and sat on the desks, as if to be without them for three hours would induce hysteria and fainting spells. Soft toys are left along with the flowers at the scenes of fatalities. Wherever they are, they are truly hideous, beyond kitsch. By making our children fall in love with such ugliness, we are preparing them for a life without taste.

Refit's complete

2007-08-29T19:04:00.000+03:00

ready to launch in 22 days.

Here's another one ~ Tuesday, March 14, 2006

2007-08-29T16:01:00.000+03:00

"Why I Like Civilization More than Barbarism"

Why Kathy likes being Catholic.

I prefer the artificial. The synthetic. The perfectly choreographed. Now THAT's Catholic. Big honkin' non-biodegradable paintings and utterly unrecyclable marble altars and pointlessly extravagant monstrances...

When we Catholics make the mistake of getting "natural", what's the result? Natural Family Planning. Which involves mucus. Just typing the word "mucus" gives me an ice cream headache/anxiety attack...

This made me happy. I have another reason for hating hippies: I was raised by them on the West Coast. I have noticed that people who were raised by hippies either became very very angry conservatives or very very angry feminists. But, Lordy! No one ended up happy.

I also like nature to be very controlled. I remember life in nature, in places like Hornby and Denman Islands where lots of hippies live to this day

Hippie co-op store, Hornby Island

and my peripatetic father briefly lived in a tarpaper cabin with a wood burning cast iron stove. It wasn't all bad. I liked the beach and the woods.

North Beach, Hornby Island

I liked collecting rocks and had quite a good collection of interesting nature things that I had found whenever I went out into it. I have admitted to being outdoorsy. Used to camp a great deal, wandering around the Gulf Islands every summer (the ferry rides between the islands were free in those days.)

But later I wised up. I learned, as did the Barbarians when they got a good look at Roman civilization, that nature is all fine as long as you can go indoors at night and turn on a light and read the field guide to all the interesing nature things you have found on your walk.

I kept camping, but I learned to do it in a manner befitting a lawful heir of Western Civillization. I camped in as much ostentatious luxury as possible. And I mean absolutely crazy luxury.

I'm talking oriental carpets, tapestries, giant iron braziers with whole pigs roasting on them, elaborately engineered outdoor baths heated by wood-stoked ovens. Every time I see a movie that has a medieval or Roman camp in it where everyone is lounging about in luxurious pavillions and drinking a lot of mead from a fancy metal cup, I sigh and think, "I've been to that party, and it was great." (Yes, I can't wait for Beowulf!)

There's nothing quite so wonderful as the experience of waking up early on a summer morning and listening to the birds start twittering in the glorious, clean and quiet and cool outdoors while encased in a silk brocade duvet on a double-size hand made wooden bed in a pavillion decorated with silk banners, an armour stand, and wrought iron candelabra, smelling of wood smoke and thinking maybe a little leftover venison would be nice for breakfast.

Medieval re-enactors are geeks of the highest order, it must be admitted, but how much geekier can you get than a Trad? And at least in their own context, those guys really know how to live.

After discovering the truth that man is meant to subdue and dominate nature, I learned to hate it along with the hippies who worshipped it. The one thing that Rachel Carson was right about was that man is at war with the insects. Her solution, however was to capitulate and thus, we have the absurd yuppies of Kitsilano and the Annex buying absurdly over priced organic fruit that doesn't even taste good. We have the vegans who are going to go blind, and prematurely osteoporotic and probably senile because they don't get enough protein and vitamins. All because we have adopted the liberal line that the strong must apease and capitulate to the weak. I understand we are at war with nature; and I intend that my species will WIN.

Actually, that's not true, I like nature just fine, when it is carefully controlled in a flower pot, cultivated garden, or zoo as God intended (literally! it says so in the Bible!). Otherwise, it tends to crawl on you with its horrible little legs and sting you with its horrible little stingers. Nature is really just trying to eat you all the time. I like that we have mostly learned to subdue it and subject it to our will.

I think I have stayed in Toronto, partly because I know that though it is a nice cozy fantasy, the idea of living in a hermitage somewhere in the woods of, say Vermont, would remind me too much of the grubby, little cabins on Pender Island (before it became a resort) with no indoor plumbing and wolf spiders lurking in every corner. Ugh!

I'm going over old blog posts from TDL

2007-08-29T15:53:00.001+03:00

this one was just great (and not my own, so I'm not boasting.)

Remember those occasional issues of Marvel Comics "What if" series? (Come on, you can admit you read Marvel comics. You can even admit that you still do once in a while...)

Well, here's one from an enterprising alternate historian,

I can see that we at Manning House were not the only ones to sit around for hours coming up with world domination theories.

What if Henry VIII had never been born? Or, alternatively as Dom Bettinelli suggested, that he hadn't been such a git?

1. The monastic lands in England were not seized in 1538 - 1541

2. Hence the Great Revolt (aka “the reformation”) does not happen, because the European rulers do not learn from Henry’s disastrous policy that it is possible to go round plundering the Church for loot

1550 Also due to options a or b above, the staunchly Catholic English population fail to become Anglicans. No-one is worried by this.

1553 Queen Elizabeth I fails to govern England properly due to non-existence...

World Decidedly Better Off.

Spared the Ruff.

Shakespeare continues business as usual (minus ruff).

Generation upon generation can recite all his sonnets – and understand them.

Luther sticks post-it note to church door. No one notices...

...

(1694 – 1788) Voltaire has happy childhood, fails to become git.

Things continue swimmingly.

...

1912 Hilaire Belloc and G K Chesterton, having little else to do, spend many happy nights playing cards and reciting poetry.

Belloc blesses World with more verse and Chesterton spends more time with wife, Frances.

All is Well.

...

Sigmund Freud, with the help of his Confessor, overcomes his “issssues.”

World Spared More Misery.

...

Germaine Greer , Jessie Bernard, Maureen Dowd, by positive miracle of God, live peaceably with women of all kinds. World is Staggeringly Better Off.

Pope John Paul II, having not much else to do, spends most of his spare time with Cdl Joseph Ratzinger, playing cards and reciting poetry.

...

2005 English PM, Tony Blair announces severe restrictions on the sale of alcohol.
World (99% Catholic) Horrified.

English monarch, King Francis II, orders his execution. Grants pardon at 11th hour.

...

2006 Catholic bloggers have little to report – fight among selves.

Never Mind, I've decided.

2007-08-27T22:27:00.001+03:00

What to do?

2007-08-27T19:12:00.000+03:00

OK youse, listen up.

I need some input.

I've got about 30 readers in this little list, most of whom are either personal friends (people I have actually met) or people who were longtime readers of TDL or other bloggers. I have no idea how many on the list are regular visitors, but the mix is pretty good, with people who know something about writing, others who know something about politics and others who know something about me.

I've been refitting TDL in preparation for my return to public trouble-making in a month (ooo! Less than a month to go, I keep forgetting!) and am wondering what sort of direction to go in.

I see that Steve has more or less retired from Catholic Tradoblogging, and good on 'im, I say. He makes the excellent point that since the Motu Proprio is out, Benedict has more or less stolen his thunder, or taken the wind out of his sails. War's over, we won,

now what do we do for fun?

Well, Steve wants to try the genteel life of a gentleman farmer and good on 'im again. But see, I'm Irish and life without a fight is just unthinkable.

Since dropping out of the blogging life, I've snuck back in through Orwell's Picnic and am having a fine old time there, just trawling though my dozen or so daily Google News alerts and posting things up with a link and a quippy headline. No rants and it is exclusively about British politics. No religion, no radial symmetry, ducks or Doctor Who. I've been really enjoying it, but feel the urge to rant in public getting stronger.

Now, I've pretty much had the biscuit of Catho-blogging and can't stand the sight of Catho-political blogs any more. All that stuff is being adequately covered anyway by peope like Fr. Tim. Why reinvent the wheel?

Actually, just by Fr. Tim, who does it better than I, or anyone else I've come across.

As it stands now, people were visiting TDL pretty regularly, and, according to the stats I've looked at, still do now and then. So the address is still in people's blogrolls and favourites lists.

What do you think? Should I decant it all back into TDL? Collapse all the British politics, recipes, Shatner, personal stuff, religious mumbling, philosophical blatherings and all that, into one thing and then discontinue this and Orwell's Picnic? Or keep the two separate, one political and one for all the rest of it?

Or (and here's where I'm inclined) de-post the TDL archives, keep the site address, change the masthead to point away from religious topics and turn TDL into Orwell's Picnic, only with a bit more commentary?

Whaddya like?

I guess that's why they call it the "nanny state"

2007-08-26T20:04:00.002+03:00

Women's vote started the free world on the road to big government and social micromanaging.

(...says Some Guy, who's got some kind of degree in something and has written a book...)

In your book, you discuss a correlation between granting women the right to vote and the growth of government -- could you explain?

John Lott: There's been a puzzle that's been around academics for decades about why government started to grow when it did. From the beginning of the country to the 1920s, the federal government had been about 2 to 3 percent of GNP. You'd have a war sometimes and it would go up. After the war was over, government would go back down to where had been previously. But it began to grow through the 20s and the 30s and 40s.

You see a phenomenon that's true around the world, during about 50 years of time in which government began to grow. I've noticed from looking around at these countries that the government growth seemed to coincide with when women were given the right to vote in these places.

I looked at where women were given right to vote in the United States from the first state in 1868 to the last state in 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. One of the interesting things here is that some states voluntarily gave women the right to vote, and some were forced to because of the 19th Amendment. ...Is it the fact that you gave women the right to vote that caused the government to grow, or is it that the state was more liberal and wanted to give women the right to vote at the same time they wanted government to get bigger?

The fact that you see this growth in the states that voluntarily gave women the right to vote before the ones that were forced to indicates that it was giving women the right to vote and not just some other factor changing at the same time.

The effect is dramatic. If you look at 10 years prior to when a state gives women the right to vote, you find expenditures and revenues were flat. Once women were given the right to vote, the next year you see an increase in government expenditures. It keeps going up dramatically. In 10 years, government expenditures and revenue doubled in real terms. That growth follows closely with the percent of voters who were women.

After that you basically get to the 1960s, and what happens then is you have a big increase in divorce, and divorce tends to make women a lot more liberal than they were previously. They are more likely to depend on the government for some safety net or protection. We see this in how women's political views change over a lifetime.

Young single women are more liberal than young single men. When they get married, about half that gap disappears. When they have kids, about half of the remaining gap disappears, so about 75 percent of the original gap. If they get divorced, they become much more liberal than they were to begin with. Men pretty much stay in the same place all their life.

When a woman is on her own, she's more likely to support a more progressive income tax. But if she gets married and has kids, she's more likely to oppose those sorts of taxes. There would be similar changes to other types of social programs. Women tend to be more risk averse and more likely to turn to the government for these government programs.

The discussion about divorce is itself driven a lot by government. One of the big changes we had in the 1960s and 1970s was the movement from at-fault to no-fault divorce. When you had at-fault divorce, women were much more protected. If a man wanted to get a divorce, he had to get the wife to agree to a divorce. He had to pay her off, and give her more assets to get her to agree. So her investment in maybe staying home a lot and taking care of the family were much more likely to be protected than they are now.

Now when you have no-fault, if a man wants to get a divorce, the woman almost has to pay him in order to stay in the relationship. Many women are more reticent to stay at home and take care of kids. In this case, they have a big incentive to (work) in case there is a divorce later on-they can have a job and an income they can depend on. Not only do these (divorce) laws, explain why women become more liberal, but they also explain why women are having fewer kids.

I'm starting to like the Telegraph

2007-08-26T06:50:00.000+03:00

At first glance,

Home Office information appears to support Clarke's fanciful promises. It says: "The risk of becoming a victim of crime has fallen to the lowest level recorded since the British Crime Survey began in 1981... violent crime has fallen by 43 per cent since its peak in 1995."
advertisement

Do you believe this guff? No, neither do I. And do you know why we don't believe it? Right, because it's not true. Those who seek to hoodwink us with these damned lies and dodgy statistics are insulting our intelligence. They are taking us for mugs.

In a week when little Rhys Jones was gunned down and Learco Chindamo, the killer of headmaster Philip Lawrence, discovered that his human rights count for more than the victim's family's, you'll forgive me, I hope, for listing some discomforting facts.

The British Crime Survey (BCS), a poll of 40,000 people, is what Labour's propagandists trot out when under fire. The trouble is, the survey reads a bit like the report and accounts of an ethically challenged company: much inconvenient evidence is omitted.

Oh please...oh PLEASE...

2007-08-26T02:27:00.000+03:00

I promise to be very very good, and not be cranky or ill-tempered for a whole week, and not be mean to a single poor person on the phone at the office, nor to scrinch up my nose when talking to the crazy ladies...

Paxman also warned that Newsnight, the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, might not survive if proposed cuts are carried out.

The bigger question is whether the BBC itself has a future.

"I don't want to be apocalyptic, on the basis of what may turn out to be short-term problems.

"But I think it foolish to be too confident on that score. I guess there'll certainly be one more licence fee settlement. But can we really be certain there'll be a fourth? Or a fifth?

"It is all too easy to imagine a future in which our grandchildren will talk of having had an ancestor who worked for the BBC in the same way as people nowadays mention having had a grandparent or great-grandparent who worked for the Sudanese Political Service, or was a District Officer in Bechuanaland."

Not a parody

2007-08-26T02:13:00.000+03:00

nor a cockamamie scheme cooked up for the election by either of the two Big Parties.

I'm not making it up...

"I will not set fire to things..."
I will not make excessive noise late at night.
I will not use abusive language to passersby...
Signed "X" (Thumpy the Yob, certifies before a witness that this is his mark.)

The Home Secretary thinks the reason the "Acceptable Behavior Contracts" aren't working to stem the tide of "feral youth" crime in Britain is that not enough of them have been handed out.

Really.

Not making it up, one bit.

2007-08-26T01:21:00.000+03:00

DF Assures me that both "Headmaster" and "Headmistress" have been sent down. We shall have to add the term "head teacher," with a resigned sigh, to the list of NeverUse.

Now my next question is, are there any periodic publications that deliberately decline to use the Newspeak terms?

Are there any defiant editors?

If anyone knows, please let me in on it at earliest convenience, as I shall be seeking freelancing opportunities and fear that the ruddy tone of my upper vertebrae area will tend preclude employment in the established press.

The Daily Mail sounds promising, but I'd like to do features for magazines.

Maybe This England.

Anything else?

This Oozy Person is a Catholic

2007-08-25T00:57:00.001+03:00

It's making me want to become an Anglican.

Keith Vaz -

Melanie Phillips:

The importance of [the Salman Rushdie] episode and the no less significant reaction to it by the British establishment can hardly be overestimated. Such scenes were unprecendented in Britain...Yet not one person who called for Rushdie to be killed was prosecuted for incitement to murder...

Not even the Labour member for Leicester East.

"In Leicester, the Labour MP Kieth Vaz led a three-thousand-strong demonstration intent on burning an effigy of Rushdie, and carried a banner showing Rushdie's head, complete with horns and fangs, superimposed on a dog."

He told the 3000 Muslims assembled, "Today we celebrate one of the great days in the history of Islam and Great Britain" and attacked the Labour Party as a "godless party".

In February 1990, Vaz wrote in The Guardian newspaper urging Salman Rushdie not to publish the book in paperback because "there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech".

Newspeak Watch

2007-08-24T21:04:00.000+03:00

So can the Ynglysshe types here tell me if the use of the Newspeak term "head teacher" in the British press means the same thing as the English word "headmaster"?

I'm confused by this, but the dogged determination with which the term is used and the complete absence of the Ynglysshe word "headmaster" makes me think that "head teacher" is one of those little words I have to add to my list of NeverUse. Like "spokesperson".

I got the banning of "spokesperson" made official policy at LifSite.

It's the details, man.

The Early Life Issues - A Briefing Book For Legislators

2007-08-24T19:35:00.001+03:00

Anyone needing a surefire method of overcoming insomnia...

Here it is.

I'll tell y'all a secret:

Pro-life stuff gives me a coma.

I'm sure I would have said that, given enough time and lager...

2007-08-24T03:06:00.000+03:00

The Englandism Charter

I'm particularly fond of stipulation

6 The Channel Tunnel will be flooded with warm water and infested with those South American barbed fish that swim up one's urethra.

and do be sure to visit the "Burning National Symbols of Foreign Countries such as Scotland, Pitcairn Island, Wales and Cornwall" page for good fun...

Ooooo I really wish I'd said that!

2007-08-24T03:03:00.000+03:00

Yes, Angus McSporran, Dai the Embittered, Mick O'Michael, Francois Fromage Fraise and f*cking Mel Gibson we are superior. And yes, Mr Tarquin Diversity-Consultant and Ms Cressida 'I'm so very sorry about the land clearances and stealing all your North Sea oil so here's £500 million to build yourself a shiny new parliament' the English did actually invent everything everywhere and have been bank-rolling everyone else ever since.

I wish I'd said that...

2007-08-24T03:01:00.000+03:00

Flying in the face of the 'given' wisdom of the bespectacled middle-aged middle-class organic lentil baking diversity promulgating estuary accented sanctimonious fact-shy knob-polishers who constitute the vast majority of the purposeless taxpayer subsidised public service 'support' structure that has led to us having more administrators than actually useful human beings and dictates to our collective consciousness that 'Every morning we must wake up and apologise for being English'.

Englandism

It Figures

2007-08-24T01:16:00.000+03:00

Immigration stats are in:

74,000 people arrived in the UK from the eastern European countries that joined the European Union in 2004.

16,000 people from those countries left.

200,000 people from the same countries registered for work in the UK during that time.

haaaang on...

lessee...

74,000 -
16,000
__________

58,000

58,000 is not 200,000.

Does anyone in Britain have any idea how many people are coming into the country?

On a completely different topic...

2007-08-23T17:50:00.000+03:00

Got an email this morning from "Parish Chaplaincy - Durham"

Dear Hilary

Just to let you know we have had a response re accommodation. I am photocopying your e-mail and sending your details to the lady in question but I am aware that she is on holiday until next Wednesday - I am sure she will be in touch with you.

Kindest regards,

(St. Cuthbert's parish secretary.)