High Lands

 I didn't post my photos of half-term in Scotland with Catherine and then Jacqueline, my oldest and my newest friends. I was still warming up for a while and then the world broke. But here are some remembered moments of high places and wide places in case you need to look at something different this weekend. And chickens! (And thank you - Prince Charming is much better and back at work. We are very grateful x)

A game in two

We are in the Mourne mountains for a few days over half-term. Weather-wise today has definitely been a game in two halves! I have only once in my life been as wet in the hills as we all got today. And that first time was a New Year's Day, not the middle of pretend Spring!

Matt and I turned back and let the tallest and the youngest plough on for a spot of caving. And then as soon as we parted ways, the sun came out to stay!

I thought I'd be here until Wednesday which would give me time to wash and dry all my walking gear before heading to Scotland to stay with two friends, but then a weather warning of strong winds was published and all my outgoing plans fell into disarray.

So in fact I leave tomorrow to fly to an airport still quite far from where I want to be, to catch a train to a town closer to where I want to be, to catch another train to a smaller town much closer to where I want to be, and there, hopefully, will be a friendly face to gather me up!

This will be my first time in an airplane since these times of plague, and Northern Ireland is lifting all its restrictions tomorrow. For a convert to reclusivity, this is a stretch. Thus far x

 

The Ravens

 Since March we have been tuning in to Radio 2 at lunchtimes. There is a clear need for teenage sons to be listening to upbeat music between virtual lessons, rather than my usual (and much loved, except for the dramas) Radio 4. Jeremy Vine has totally helped us get through three Lockdowns now. One of us switches the radio on, while someone else reaches for the kettle, but we all ask, "What's the nation's rant for today?" And we settle down at the kitchen table to listen with glee to all the folk phoning in about crowds in national parks, drones over pharmacy queues, and to date our still collective favourite: the woman complaining about being fined for drinking her tin of Prosecco on a bench while resting in the middle of her daily walk which was so essential to her because of her health issues. If that was you, we're sorry for your troubles.

At the end of last week, we arrived in the middle of a discussion between Mr Vine and raven breeders in England. Apparently, and I don't mean to worry you more than you already are in the middle of These Strange Times, there are only two remaining ravens at the Tower of London. We found this genuinely shocking. What was also shocking was that the iconic Mr Vine claimed never to have known the legend of the ravens. Even we Northern Irish dwellers know that should the ravens ever leave the Tower, well, dear readers, as you know too, the nation will fall.

This is why they apparently have always clipped the wings of the ravens in the Tower's hitherto healthy raven community. (What is the collective noun for ravens? Ang must know!) And I think the Beefeaters have some responsibility for their welfare, since obviously they don't have too many inmates there these days. Although Mr Vine did tell us that he had once been shown a tiny little cell in the Tower with a very lovely Armitage lavatory in the middle of the room. Churchill had the cell earmarked for Hitler, should they have been able to apprehend him. The Geneva Convention states that prisoners of war must have lavatory access, so here, in this tiny little room with bars on the window, was a lavatory fit for a genocidal dictator. The room was not used.

So right now, it seems, they are trying to boost the raven population at the Tower. We wish them every success. Obviously the last thing we need right now is for the ravens to desert us. The image of rats fleeing the sinking ship comes to mind. With Brexit, and plague, and all the worries in our heads, I think we wouldn't be surprised if both ravens flew (or passed) and the nation fell.

I've just finished reading Cymbeline, which uses Wales as a site of mystical enchantment. A place associated with faeries and spirits and also the Arthur legends. So, here's what I'm thinking. If the ravens are going to leave us, maybe the time will be now for Arthur to rise from his hill and come forth to deliver the nation in its time of greatest peril. I've always loved that legend, that Arthur is just waiting for the time when we need him most. I think that legend, going back to the Right Honourable Sir Churchill, was also discussed in the dark days of the second world war.

And surely there are indeed spiritual parallels here? A saviour rising from a hill? A nation saved? These are definitely days for putting our faith in a King.

ps I have just looked up the collective noun for ravens. "Flock" is now most commonly used, but more specifically they can be a rave, a conspiracy, or even a treachery - all of which seem very fitting words for our different approaches to this pandemic. 

pps We visited the Tower one idyllic sunny day in July 2012, just before the opening of the London Olympics. It was wonderful.

pps Guy Ritchie's Arthur: Legend of the Sword is well worth a watch.

edit: Ang's article tells us that there are more than two ravens remaining. All is not, yet, lost!

Swallows and Russians

It is pitch dark here now by nine at night and there is a crisp, clean beauty to the air, even in the heat of a sunny day like today! September is coming! Thus, two hasty posts before Sunday on "What I did in my Summer Holidays". In preparation for Modern Language GCSEs this coming year, poor Mattman has had to be thinking the same in German and in French.

MK mentioned Swallows and Amazons a little while ago, and I promised pictures of the day we spent on Coniston in July. Gratifyingly at least one son seems to have enjoyed it! Coniston Water is where Arthur Ransome lived with his second, Russian, wife when they returned to England and the Lake District from Revolution. When you take the cruise boat they point out the house where they lived, very close to the shore. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of it- though, given the quality of the next two pictures, that's perhaps not surprising at all.

Beyond the boat the island, for it is an island, is Peel Island, and it is widely accepted as the inspiration for Wild Cat Island in Swallows and Amazons. Ransome and Evgenia were visited at Coniston by Ransome's old flame Dora and her husband Ernest Altounyan. Ransome taught the Altounyan children to sail, and the seeds of the famous literary adventure were sown. The secret harbour of the island may well have been this, and there was a little craft navigating its careful way in as we passed. You'll need to navigate my poor photographic skills just as carefully! Maybe you can just see the rocky outcrop marking the entrance to the inlet...

There's a wonderful article on Ransome's life here, but I'm disappointed firstly that I can't remember the tales of Evgenia's eccentricity that we were told on the sailing, and secondly that nowhere on the Wondrous Wide Web can I find much beyond her jewel-smuggling to fund the Comintern! Ransome was certainly much, much more than a nautical story-teller. Read the article: it's a very exciting tale full of Oscar Wilde, Trotsky, foreign correspondence, and love lost and won! (Much easier to read than S and A. I gave up when I tried to read it with younger boys.)

We had gone to Coniston, not for Swallows and Amazons, but for John Ruskin. His house is here too, higher up from the shore and kept now as a monument to his life and work. I realised when I got there that I had assumed Ruskin to be mainly an art critic whose greatest achievement was his championing of the Pre-Raphaelites; how wrong I was. That will be for another time, but here's his bedroom turret, which I loved.



The Last Book of the Year

 I was determined to get to twenty-four books by the end of this month- surely it is possible, even in this uncomfortably hot sandwich time of life, to read two books a month?! So, in the interests of both speed and relevance, I reached a few nights ago for this Platonic ideal of a Christmas book.


We are having a wonderful Christmas break, with just the right balance between exciting things and time quiet at home, or indeed long mornings in bed! We have been up a misty, snowy mountain, into town with sales shoppers, to the cinema to see Voldemort and Professor Snape try their hand at the Star Wars genre for a little change, and have cooked and cooked and fed and fed.


Already feeling alarmed that this time, even this time, will pass, I dearly want to hold on to Scrooge's resolution (in the absence of any others) that, "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."

We had a wonderful sermon this morning, from three passages at the start of Luke- passages where different characters from the Nativity narrative are told not to be afraid. If I had two resolutions for whatever shall unfold next year, this would be the second!

Apparently, as farcebook said last week so it must be true, an old Irish tradition is to light a candle in the window on Christmas Eve to promise hospitality to the traveller. Always late, I'm lighting my unlit Advent candles tonight. They are a pale imitation of that bright moon shining beyond the pane, but they reflect our desire to shine what light we can here where we are. You are always welcome! May you know God's blessing and light in your heart, and all the year, with much love from the Meadowplace,

Mags and men x 

What I did in my summer holidays

We are doing all the back-to-school things. Uniforms are ironed and hanging in the airing cupboard. Have I ever shown you a picture of my airing cupboard/hot press? It is genuinely exciting, to me. Lunches are packed and in the fridge. School bags are packed and in the hall. It is raining.

So here are a few sunny summer memories from home and away, just to remind me of blue skies! We got to the blissful middle of nowhere in France with friends, the always delightful Surrey with family, and had a wistful farewell trip with our big, blue, old, cathedral of a tent in Fermanagh.

Thank you to all you kind folk who still read and comment here, even though I've been a very absent friend for years maybe now. Working more than I did a decade ago, and having parents to look after now as well as boys, and just trying to live a life, I suppose, dictate less self-indulgence at the keyboard! I have Psalm 37 open here, and saw this in verses 25 and 26:

I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are always generous and lend freely; their children will be blessed.

I'm struck by a double layer of meaning for me this weekend. Last night Prince Charming and I were delighted to get to one of Rend's Hometown Gigs. At more recent gigs of theirs that we've been to, they have promoted the work of World Vision, and we're hoping to talk to somebody soon about sponsorship. It seems to cost £26 a month, which is less than my gym membership. It would certainly be money put to better use. I must tell you someday why I joined a gym, the most boring place on earth.

Happy September!