lblanchard | Reading

We were at the Farm on Monday and a Spitfire flew over and did a roll for us- practising no doubt for the Eastbourne Air Show this coming weeked. I pointed up at it and shouted "Spitfire!"- which is what I normally do when one turns up.

You got to love a Spitfire, right?

Well, perhaps not if you're a Quaker..

In this respect I'm a bad Quaker.....

There are those at the Meeting House who want to stage some sort of protest at the Air Show. I'm going along with it because it's been discerned as the will of the Meeting but I have reservations. I don't think that getting in people's faces and annoying them is the way to promote Peace. I could be wrong.

My contribution has been to pin this poster up outside the Meeting House.

There are those who find it insufficiently serious. Sure it is. Serious people start wars. Humourous people tend not to.

poliphilo

It was hot yesterday and will be hotter today. Tomorrow we're promised some blessed rain.

"Have you ever worked in a hayfield?" asks Damian apropos of nothing. And I say, "Yes, once in Kentucky- where it gets a lot hotter than it does here. I lasted for a morning; had I carried on it would have killed me- and I mean that literally."

Mike is working a concrete mixer in the front yard. "How do you know when you've got the mixture right?" asks Ailz. "By the colour" he says.

poliphilo

We went round the farm on a big trailer pulled by a tractor with Peter the farmer driving. At intervals Peter would get down from the cab and tell us what we were seeing.

The farm covers something like 1,050 acres. Back in the Middle ages the land belonged to the Augustinians at Michelham Priory. Peter is the third generation of his family to farm here- and is in the process of handing over to the fourth. His grandfather moved the family south from Nottingham just after the war.

It's a dairy farm, but they also grow maize. The river Cuckmere runs through it- and they're taking steps to stop run off from their fields getting into it- and to eliminate the North American mink who are doing their damnedest to kill off all the native riverine wildlife.
Theyre building a new milking parlour with a a huge central turntable which will speed up milk production no end. They're trying to be scientific, they're trying to be ethical.....

I looked through the skeleton of the new milking parlour and many miles away were Windour Hill and The Long Man. I ran my telephoto up as far as it would go.....

poliphilo

We show up yesterday morning and the litter tray has been used and some kibble eaten so we search the house again- and this time we find her. She's nestled between two bags in a bedding box under the bed in the spare room.

Phew.

We have to go take a final look at her this morning and then- unless we hear to the contrary- her owners will be back.

Another heat wave is underway. This afternoon we've said we'll be going on the "hay ride" which a local Quaker farmer lays on once a year as a treat for Sussex Quakers and residents of the Quaker-run care home where Ailz is a trustee. He owns dairy cows and pastures them on a chunk of of lovely Sussex landscape in the parish of Arlington- and the tea he lays on after the tour of the farm is supposed to be fabulous.

The world of East Sussex Quakerism is intense and circumscribed and if you hang about long enough you get to know everybody. Happily everybody is nice. Oh, we all have our foibles and some of us have dictatorial habits but dive beneath the surface insecurities and fear and distrust drop away. There's a woman we originally dubbed "Scary Mary" because her public face is so formidable but I've got to know her properly now and she's become one of my favourite people.....

poliphilo

We're looking after a friend's cat. Or that's the idea.

The cat doesn't leave the house- at least not on our watch- and there's no cat flap.

We turn up for our first session yesterday evening. Should be straightforward. Feed cat. Socialise with cat for as long as its prepared to tolerate us. We've done this before. Easy.

Only, no cat.

We search the house top to bottom. I even go down into the locked cellar, where I have to move around bent double. Lots of carboard boxes, Lots of wine. No cat.

Our friend's son has been staying in the house. Did he let the cat out and not let it back in? Did he take it with him? We don't want to bother our friend- who is somewhere far away and not in a position to do anything but fret.

So we'll be going back this morning. Will the cat have emerged from its hidey-hole? Will it be waiting on the doorstep?

Cats, I ask you!

Something I read online: The difference between having a dog and having a cat. A dog is like a child, a cat is like a housemate......

poliphilo

Elizabeth rings from her care home shortly before seven o'clock in the morning to ask if anything is happening today that she should be aware of.

The answer is "No"- bcause today is Saturday and the things she might want to be aware of- and which we've told her about- are happening tomorrow.

Once upon a time I'd have shaken my head and said "Sad..."

These days, no, I just see it as evidence of a Mind in the process of uncoupling from Time- something all of us have to look forward to. Some will do it suddenly. Some will do it gently, by degrees. It's all good.

poliphilo

"Who is the Goddess of chaos? I know the name. It's on the tip of my tongue"

"That would be Eris."

"Hmm, wikipedia calls her 'Goddess of strife and discord'. That's close enough.

This is her time.

Here she is on a piece of Attic pottery. In mythology she is held responsible for kicking off the train of events that led to the Trojan War.....

Love those boots!

By chance (only these things are never Chance) her name was given to a dwarf planet that was discovered on the edge of the solar system at the beginning of the present century. Planet Eris is smaller than Pluto but has greater mass....

....and has a moon that has been named Dysnomia, meaning lawlessness.

The Discordian religion, which was founded in the 1960s, has Eris as its presiding Deity. Erisians believe every man and woman on the planet is a Pope and are enjoined to disbelieve everything they read including, I presume, the Erisian scriptures.....

poliphilo

"Did Michelangelo ever work in ivory?" she asked.

I thought the answer had to be "No, Michelangelo was far too butch" but I asked the Internet just to be sure.

And it told me there are a couple of ivory crucifixes in Spain- in Guadalupe and Montserrat- that have been attributed to him.

Well, I never!

They're not greatly impressive as works of art, but they're skilful- so I'm modifying my answer from "No" to "Probably not."

poliphilo

The narrator of the book I'm currently reading- Iris Murdoch"s Under the Net- has been telling us about the time he ghosted his best friend. Synchronicity, eh? He ghosted him because he'd first betrayed him- and can no longer bear to face him. I can bear to face the person I've ghosted, but I think Murdoch has hit upon something in linking ghosting and betrayal. In ghosting we betray the trust the other person had placed in us. We may argue that the trust was always misplaced and we didn't invite it, but this doesn't entirely stifle the feelings of guilt.

I dreamed I went to have my hair cut and the Latin American hairdresser wanted to shave scenes from her country's 19th century revolution into the stubble. I said, "Go for it."

I'm happy Jeremy Corbyn is starting a new political party. People are joining in droves- and disgust with mainstream politics is such that it may even get somewhere. I don't fancy tying myself to someone's else's mast so I won't join but if the party puts up a candidate locally I'll vote for them.

poliphilo

Ghosting- the new name for a practice as old as Linear "B".

I've ghosted and been ghosted.

On occasion I've ghosted inadvertently, meaning I've put off replying and put off replying until it would be silly to pick up the thread.

I'm ghosting the person who annoyed me- but only after telling them that I wasn't going to exchange any more texts. And leaving the loophole that if they wanted to speak to me face to face they knew where to find me. This person dodged out of an earlier face-to-facer and that was pretty much the final straw.

I was always a reluctant correspondent. Writing any kind of letter, email, text is a perfomance. You have to assume a mask adapted to the nature of your correspondent. The persona you present to a bank manager is very different to the one you present to a sweetheart- and for everone in between the two extremes you have to calculate just how intimate/comic/severe you can afford to be and choose your words accordingly. It's bloody hard work. Some of the same applies to face to face meetings but there you're relating to the person in the moment and words are not the only medium; there's body language, there's emotional temperature and what- for want of a better word- I'm going to call vibes. Face to face you can adjust, turn on a sixpence, improvise....

poliphilo

Scotland and the North of England got hit hard but Storm Floris merely dragged the skirts of its coat over us down here on the South Coast.

Floris- is it a girl's name or a boy's name? Neither and both. The internet tells me it's gender neutral and Dutch, derived from the Latin word Florens meaning "flourishing". I'm all for gender-neutral. And what a beautiful name it is!

poliphilo

Picture Diary 100

1. Under the mountain

2. Tap Dancer

3. Vive la France

4. Ascended master

5. Hermit

6. O.B.E.

poliphilo

The honest thing would be to say, "You've royally pissed me off and I really don't like you- so l please leave me alone" but I find I can't.

The best I can manage is discourageement. Might outright rejection be kinder?

poliphilo

I am sufficiently European to resonate with Catholic things
And sufficiently English to resonate with Anglican things
And sufficiently far out to resonate with Pagan things
And sufficiently marginal to resonate with Quaker things
And suffciently impatient with all the above to resonate with Zen things....

Next week one of our members is going to be giving a talk on her pilgrimage along the Milky Way to Santiago da Compostella and Mark- who has an eye and an appeciation for anything cross-cultural said how interesting it was that Quakers were prepared to countenance something so very, very Catholic and I thought, "Well, now you mention it I suppose it is, but I'd sort of taken it for granted...."

poliphilo

Keep calm and carry on.....

Seems like a good mantra for these chaotic, catastrophic, thrilling times.

Or, alternatively, the Zen version, which I rather prefer for its graphic, poetic quality.....

Chop wood, carry water

Chop wood, carry water,

Chop wood, carry water.......

poliphilo

Spent the early evening at Edna and Miriam's beach hut down by the Holy Well.

A thunderstorm has passed through just before we arrived and we watched it floating away to sea, drank wine, ate bread and cheese.....

poliphilo

I dreamed "we" had gone across to France to eat at a restaurant with a wonderful reputation. We were seated downstairs in a crowded room and- while they were perfectly friendly and brought us various amuse-guelles- the staff were tardy in taking our order. I began to wonder whether the experience was worth the large price we'd be paying for it. Then, suddenly, we were no longer in the cellar but sitting in the open air at the edge of a cliff with a fantastic view out over blue distances, while behind us stood the soaring gothic towers of a mediaeval city.....

poliphilo

Every so often- ever since I was 12- I have felt the need to have a little Rider Haggard in my life. I am currently reading Finished, the third part of a trilogy, featuring Alan Quatermain (dear old, wise old, violent old Alan) and dealing with the fall of the Zulu kingdom. I read book 1 in my teens, book 2 in late middle age and here I am rounding off the experience. There's lots of fighting, lots of tamped down sexuality and lots of lovely, lovely supernaturalism. There's not much that Indiana Jones knows that he didn't learn from Alan. The Quatermain book that is mostly read these days is King Solomon's Mines, but I think the trilogy- Marie, Child of Storm and Finished- is better, richer, fuller- with more engaging characters....

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lblanchard

August 2023

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The News from South Philly

and other points of interest

Reading

Spitfire!

Briefly

On The Farm

Small World

Cat!

Uncoupling

Eris

Too Butch?

Scenes From A Revolution

Ghosting

Floris

Picture Diary 100

Too Nice?

Cross-Cultural

A Choice Of Mantras

Departing Storm

Change Of Scene

Dear Old Alan

Profile

August 2023

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