Perpetually In Transit

Word verification woes and a word of warning

2012-02-24T19:30:00.000Z

Most of you reading this have probably noticed that Blogger has recently changed its word verification method. Until this change, if word verification was switched on, people wishing to leave a comment on a blog post had to copy a nonsense word into a box before publishing their comment. This is to prevent automatic spam and deter human spammers, which is definitely A Good Thing.

Now word verification presents us with two oddly distorted words to copy, so oddly distorted that many people, including me, have great difficulty deciphering them. Thankfully Blogger has removed the contrast bit behind one of the words, making them slightly easier to read, but I still often find myself having to click at least 2 or 3 times before I get a couple of words I can read well enough to type.

Interestingly, the new system has a very laudable aim besides that of preventing spam. The words presented to us come from books and newspapers which are being scanned to digitise them and thus make them available online. Many of these are old and have non-standard typefaces and the digitisation process has problems verifying whether individual words have been correctly scanned. By using these scanned images for word verification in blogs, the reCAPTCHA system makes use of millions of blogs to help verify these dubious spellings and move the project forward.

Unfortunately, for many people the sheer difficulty of deciphering the words is beginning to deter them from commenting on blogs, thus adversely affecting one of the most popular aspects of blogging. The Blogger Help forum is full of posts complaining about the new system and asking how to turn it off. This is where my word of warning comes in.

For those still using the old Blogger dashboard to write their posts, turning off word verification is easy. However the new dashboard does NOT offer the option of turning off word verification and to do so involves going back to the old one temporarily. Before very long, whether we like it or not, Google will be switching us all over permanently to the new dashboard, and unless they add the option to control word verification, it will no longer be possible to turn word verification on and off.

This means that if you want to be able to switch off word verification in order to make it easier for people to comment, you shouldn’t leave it too long to do so, or you may lose the option.

If, like me, you still use the old dashboard (and in my case I will only use the new one when finally forced to do so) all you have to do is to click on the Settings tab, choose Comments and scroll down to Show word verification for comments. Click on No, save your settings and word verification will disappear.

You will almost certainly start to get a bit of spam after this, but Blogger’s spam filter is very good and since I turned off word verification a few weeks ago, no spam has made it onto my blog.

If you have changed to the new dashboard, but haven’t made it your default, you can get back to the old dashboard by clicking on the cogwheel in the top right-hand corner and choosing Old Blogger interface. If you have made it your default you will have to untick Make Blogger draft my default before you can choose to go back to the old dashboard and follow the instructions for switching off.

Part of me feels bad about grumbling about the new word verification system, especially with its positive side-effect, but like a lot of bloggers I’m not getting any younger and neither is my eyesight, and life is just too short to waste it squinting at unreadable words. Sorry, reCaptcha. L

A giggle of bloggers - or doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

2012-02-20T07:54:00.021Z

As I mentioned in my last post, DH has been away visiting his mother this weekend, just as he was this time last year. As well as the spring-cleaning I wrote about, his absence last year was marked by a very different activity on my part – my very first blog post. Yes, dear reader, as of today I have been inflicting my thoughts, or what passes for them, on an unsuspecting world for a whole year and it has been such fun! J

Only two months later, I had to acknowledge that I was hopelessly hooked on this extraordinarily enjoyable and fulfilling activity called blogging, and nothing has happened since then to change my opinion. Oh, there have been times of deep frustration at Blogger’s inadequacies and my own lack of technical know-how, but these pale into insignificance when set next to the ways in which my life has been enriched. Blogging has brought me so much pleasure and satisfaction since that first tentative post last February and I don't grudge a minute of the time I spend on it.

First and foremost I love the glimpses of other lives, countries and cultures that I get from reading blogs written by people living all over the world, and I find the interaction with everyone who comments on my blog, or on whose blogs I comment, deeply enjoyable and satisfying. Blogging is a community activity, a reciprocal sharing of insights and experience, which is immensely rich and fulfilling.

I love the knowledge that by writing my blog I’m capturing memories of my own life which will still be there for others to read long after I’m gone. Some people write memoirs. I write my blog and I’m trying hard to make it a legacy worth leaving behind me one day.

I also love the fact that blogging is creative and forces me to think hard and use my intellect and language skills to say what I want to say as well as possible, as well as using my aesthetic sense to choose the best images to illustrate it. I even enjoy the technical challenge of learning to use the blogging software properly, the only computer thing I've mastered without help from anyone, even my very tech-savvy DH.

Blogging in this sense is a very active thing to do, compared to the passivity of watching TV or listening to the radio. In fact I can barely sit still in front of the TV nowadays unless I have some knitting to do - which is why I've already started yet another pair of socks for DH.

I know that I will blog less when the weather is good, as happened last summer in France, or when other activities are on offer, as happens in Scotland. But on a cold winter's day on top of a remote Welsh hillside, there are few more enjoyable things to do than blogging.

So my heartfelt thanks to you all for reading and commenting on my blog over the past year and for sharing your thoughts and lives so generously with me in your own blogs. Here’s to the next year of this very worthwhile journey.

Footnote: a giggle of bloggers – the collective noun for a group of quirky bloggers

Otherwise occupied

2012-02-16T12:54:00.000Z

For a couple of days I've had the beginnings of a post simmering away in the back of my mind, but it simply won’t come to the boil. Therefore, having just waved DH goodbye until Monday evening, I’m going to go away and get on with an annual activity I both dread and rather enjoy, until the next post is ready. You’ll find out what I’m up to if you go back and read my second post, written this time last year.

If only I could snap my fingers and have it all happen as easily as this!

On the west side

2012-02-11T20:05:00.003Z

On the wall at the top of our staircase in

Wales

hangs a framed poster, a gift from my next-to-youngest sister. When she spotted it in a shop, she immediately thought of me and my enduring love for the film it advertises – the immortal West Side Story.

I first saw the film itself 47 years ago this month, when I was 18 and had not long left school. I was working for a couple of months in a rather run-down café near the local bus station, earning the money for my fare to Hamburg, where I was about to spend 3 months improving my spoken German by working in what was then known as an old-people’s home. On one side of the bus station stood one of the town’s remaining 3 cinemas, the Palladium, and one day I noticed it was showing the musical about which I had heard so much, but which I had never managed to see.

The following Saturday I went to the afternoon show and nearly 3 hours later left the cinema not quite the same person. As I came out onto the pavement it seemed as though everything was the same, yet not the same, as though I was seeing it all through different eyes. It was my first experience of the transformative power of film and I’ve never forgotten how it felt.

Being such a wide and voracious reader I already knew that books could change the way one looks at the world, but film had always seemed too slight and ephemeral to have the same effect. That was probably due to the kind of films a teenager normally went to see in those days, but it meant that I simply wasn’t prepared for the effect this particular film had on me.

The combination of music and dance, of drama, pathos and (sometimes savage) humour totally enthralled me and it is still one of my very favourite films. Add to that the way it deals with some really big and difficult subjects such as immigration and discrimination, poverty and gang warfare and the fact that it was filmed on location among the crumbling slums of New York’s West Side, just before they were demolished, and you may begin to understand its hold on me.

I’ve seen it several times since that first viewing - in German with my penfriend in Hamburg, in French when I spent some weeks working as an au pair in Bourges and more than once again in English. Each time it has worked its magic and I probably know all the songs off by heart. In case you don’t, here are two which highlight the differences in background and experience between the two groups of young people who clash so tragically in this modern reinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet.

Bedtime reading

2012-02-07T21:05:00.003Z

Looking back through my posts recently, I was amazed to see that it’s over six months since I last wrote about books. For this particular ex-librarian and lifelong bookworm this is so long a gap that you might be forgiven for thinking that I had completely stopped reading books in favour of blogs. I will admit that my book-reading time is somewhat eaten into by blogs nowadays, but thankfully I possess neither a laptop nor an iPad, so that in bed, at least, books are my sole source of reading matter.

This morning, while drinking the tea which always starts my day, I finished the last tense pages of a really excellent crime novel by a author I first discovered last year. No Escape is the second novel by Natasha Cooper that I have read, but it won’t be the last. Well characterised and expertly plotted, it gripped me from the first page to the last. That book will go back to the library tomorrow, but I still have a substantial pile of others on my bedside table.

Being nothing if not eclectic in my reading tastes, the next book in the pile is a non-fiction book, published by the National Museum of Wales. Things Of Beauty: what two sisters did for Wales is a fascinatingly illustrated study of the Davies sisters, Margaret and Gwendoline, who used the enormous wealth inherited from their Victorian industrialist father, to build up a wonderful collection of Impressionist and other paintings, which they bequeathed to the National Museum of Wales.

My interest in them is not simply artistic, but comes from the fact that they were local people, born in the village of which I was once vicar, as was their remarkable father, who worked his way out of deep poverty to become one of Wales’ richest and most influential men. It would be difficult to live in Mid-Wales and not be intrigued by the Davies family and their achievements.

Below this in the pile is Louisa May, a biography by Martha Saxton of the 19th century American author, Louisa May Alcott. I was inspired to request this from the library by posts on Lifeonthecutoff's Blog about her life and work. As a girl I read and reread her most famous novel Little Women until my copy almost disintegrated, and having an enduring affection for children's literature, I still return to it and her other novels from time to time.

One of the things I only recently learned about Louisa May Alcott is that, like her heroine Jo in Little Women, in the 1860’s she published a series of sensational Gothic thrillers under a pseudonym in order to make the money for which the Alcott family always had dire need. These were rediscovered and republished in two collections in the 1970s and thanks to our library’s capacious store, one of these collections, entitled Plots & Counterplots, is also in my pile of bedtime reading.

Finally, as one of those books one can dip in and out of when too tired to read a continuous narrative, I have All Wound Up, the latest collection of very funny and perceptive essays on knitting and life, written by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the inimitable Yarn Harlot.

So, with reading tastes as varied as my taste in music, and all your blogs to read too, I don’t think I’m likely to be bored. And of course I know I can always rely on you for interesting suggestions as to what to read when I've finished my pile. J

Sixty years of service

2012-02-06T08:00:00.006Z

Sixty years ago today I was 5 years old (well, 5 ¾ actually) and confined to bed, as I gradually recovered from a bad attack of measles. I can still vividly remember that February day when my grandmother, who lived next-door, came into the bedroom to tell me that it had just been announced on the radio that the King had died in the night. An unusual thing to tell a five-year-old, perhaps, but she was genuinely upset and it is my first memory of any event beyond our small family circle.

Fast forward 16 months, to the cold and damp June day of the new Queen’s coronation. This is another indelible memory for me, as it marks my first experience of television. All over

Britain

people stretched their budgets to buy a set in order to be able to watch this rare event. Among them was a family who lived just up the hill from our cottage. They were the only people we knew who had television and they kindly invited all the children from our cluster of houses to gather round the tiny black and white screen to watch the pageantry unfold.

My third childhood memory of the Queen can’t be dated exactly, but I can’t have been more than 8. By then we had moved out of the town where I was born and lived in a small village on the western fringe of the Pennines. One morning my parents took my younger sisters and me into town on the early bus and we stood for what seemed like hours in the town centre, overlooking the market place and Town Hall, waiting to see the young Queen, who was visiting our part of Lancashire that day. I remember the cavalcade of cars coming down the road from the station amid a forest of waving arms, and then having a tiny figure in a pale coat, on a distant stage outside the Town Hall, pointed out to me as the Queen.

From those childhood memories onward, an awareness of the Queen as our hard-working head of state has been the background to my entire life. So today is, for me at least, not a day to debate the merits of monarchy versus presidency as a system for providing a head of state, nor is it a day to dwell on the inevitable failings of any one individual or family. Rather it is a day to acknowledge with gratitude a lifetime of dedicated service by one woman to her country and its people, and to say that today, as every day, I am glad and proud to be British.

Images via Wikipedia and Google

A little something for the weekend

2012-02-03T11:45:00.002Z

Life has pottered along gently this week, with Sunday’s snow still lying largely unmelted and our lane now very icy. Today the sun is shining brightly and making the ice crystals on the snow glisten like left-over Christmas glitter. The weekend is almost here, but with the possibility of more snow forecast for tomorrow, we won’t be going anywhere, preferring to hibernate quietly for the time being. DH is busy working on a project for one of his clients (no lazy retirement for him!) and I’m planning to finish the first sock in his new pair and cast on the second.

I usually knit while watching TV, but it mustn’t be anything too demanding, otherwise I will drop stitches (annoying with such fine fabric) or make even worse mistakes which may entail pulling back my work. L I’m not like DD, able to do the most complex and beautiful knitting while reading or watching TV. No knitting racehorse here, but instead a plodding donkey, who enjoys her work, but mustn't let herself get distracted.

So when a favourite film comes on TV and I settle down to do a few more inches of DH’s latest sock, I know that when certain scenes come along, the only safe thing to do is to put down my knitting and enjoy them to the full. One such favourite film I watched recently for the umpteenth time is the wonderful classic musical “Singin’ in the Rain”. I knitted happily along to most of it, but the knitting definitely stopped for what I think is one of the best comic performances I have ever seen. I hope you enjoy it too.

Image via Wylio

The great blizzard

2012-01-29T22:27:00.006Z

As I sit here at my desk on this cold and grey January afternoon, with the first light snow of winter gently falling outside the window, I find my mind being drawn back to another snowfall, thirty years ago this month. However, this was no thin covering like today, but the most severe blizzard I can remember in my sixty-five years of life.

December 1981 had been exceptionally cold and snowy, one of the worst Decembers I can recall. I remember it so clearly because at that time we were living in conditions not much better than a building site, as our decrepit old farmhouse was gradually renovated around us. The roof was in the process of being replaced, as were the windows, and I will never forget the fortitude of the double-glazing fitters, as they struggled to install our new aluminium-framed windows in the middle of a record-breaking cold spell.

Towards the end of the month, with snow still lying thickly on the ground, we went away to spend the Christmas holidays with DH’s recently-widowed mother, and arrived home in Wales at the beginning of January. DH and I went back to work and the children to school, and fortuitously, as it turned out, I made a point of stocking up the larder and the fridge as soon as I went into town.

That was on Tuesday, market day in the little town where I worked, and two days later, on the night of January 7th 1982, the snow began to fall. It fell all night, and by the time we woke up on Friday morning it was obvious we weren’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon. All day we stayed indoors, watching as the snow continued to fall without stopping, and it was still falling when we went to bed that night. It wasn’t until well into Saturday morning that it finally stopped and by that time we had around two feet of level snow everywhere and drifts that filled our lane from hedge-top to hedge-top.

A neighbouring village street

In those days we had no television, so our only source of news was the radio, and we listened avidly to every news bulletin we could find. We discovered at once that this had been no local blizzard, but a very widespread and severe weather event, which had virtually paralysed the southern half of Britain.

For days our village was cut off from the outside world, and even when the first snow-ploughs had cut through the worst of the drifts, only four-wheel drive vehicles could cope. We live on the 1000’ contour line, nearly two miles up a steep hill from the centre of the village , and it was at least a week after the snow stopped falling before the first snow-plough went along the single-track county road at the end of our lane.

Drifts above my head

We knew that we would almost certainly have to clear our lane ourselves before we could get our vehicles out. Once the plough had been through we asked a local contractor to try clearing it for us with his digger, but the lane was too narrow for him to be able to manoeuvre properly.

It was at this point that DS, then newly a teenager, and with a teenager’s urgent need for extra pocket money, volunteered to dig out the lane if we would give him what we would have paid the contractor. Naturally expecting that his enthusiasm would soon wane and our money would be safe, DH and I readily agreed and found him a snow shovel.

Don't scratch my car!

The weather was beautiful, if very cold, and the sun shone day after day from a cloudless blue sky. DS wrapped up warmly and set to work. And how he worked! He persevered valiantly all through the first day and by the time dusk fell had definitely made an impression on the 5 to 6 foot drifts which filled the lane. But it was obvious that it would take him far too long to finish the whole 150 yard stretch which needed to be cleared, even if he could find the energy. We would all have to help.

Next morning all four of us set to work, two at each end of the lane and dug towards each other for the best part of the next two days, until finally, like explorers meeting in the wilderness, we broke through the last few feet and finally had a gap wide enough for our small cars to pass.

The following day we made our first foray into the outside world since the snow had started to fall eleven days before and thankfully replenished our depleted stocks of food – and yes, DS did get the money we had promised him. J

It wasn't all work

Note about images These were not all taken at the time of the great blizzard, but in winters around that period. They give a good impression of the kind of drifts we often had to deal with back then.

The staff of life or the stuff of nightmare?

2012-01-25T16:49:00.003Z

Last August, not long before our return from France, the Transit household was plunged into mourning by the demise of one of my most faithful helpers, my bread-maker. After ten years of faultless service, my trusty little Breville Baker’s Oven had developed an unmendable leak in its pan, and we couldn’t replace it, as the model had been discontinued. I spent hours scouring the internet, just in case a stray one might still be on offer somewhere, but to no avail. Unless I wanted to start making all our bread by hand, I had no option but to buy a new machine.

Now the purists among you might wonder why I didn’t opt for the first possibility and make bread from scratch. I can forgive the question, because you couldn’t possibly know of the struggles I went through 30 years ago, as I attempted to make consistently edible bread by hand. I tried different recipes, different flours, even different methods, but more often than not my loaves still came out of the oven resembling slightly flexible house-bricks, but bricks we couldn’t afford to throw out.

So it was that our first bread-maker came to live with us and life changed for ever. It was a Hinari and its tiny recipe book was filled with recipes that worked every time. I wouldn’t like to try to calculate how many loaves it made for us before it finally expired, but we had it for some 14 years, so it must have been a lot. Sadly we couldn’t replace it with the same model, which is how we came to buy my beloved Baker’s Oven.

Now, after much research, and not being willing to break the bank for a machine that does everything but slice the bread for you, I have a shiny new bread-maker, but things just aren’t the same. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a nice machine and can make beautiful bread if it tries, but I honestly don’t think it tries hard enough. Sad to say, it’s a machine with attitude, a temperamental bread-maker, liable to throw a hissy fit if the ingredients aren’t measured completely accurately, and sometimes even when they are.

At the moment DH and I are valiantly chewing our way through something I thought I would never see again in my own kitchen – a slightly flexible house-brick! It tastes great, which is some consolation, but the amount of mastication required to be able to swallow a slice probably more than offsets the calories it contains. The previous loaf I made went to the other extreme and was so crumbly that it almost disintegrated when I tried to slice it.

However, the new machine has one saving grace: it makes superb dough. I made rolls last week, using dough it had kneaded for me, and they were wonderful, as they always are. This fact, combined with the recent crumbs versus house-brick contest, has led me to decide on a sneaky but very workable solution.

I will let the machine do the hard work of kneading. I couldn’t knead properly 30 years ago and certainly don’t think age will have increased my ability. I will than knock the dough back, shape it and bake it in my own tins, thus giving unsuspecting visitors the impression that my perfect bread is all down to my own hard work and superlative skill as a baker. Shhh – don’t tell anyone……

Images via Wylio

The world in miniature

2012-01-19T15:46:00.002Z

The more observant of my readers may have noticed me saying more than once that I find blogging more interesting and enjoyable than almost anything on TV. I’m glad now that I used that qualifying ‘almost’, because for an hour last Monday (and the previous one) only the direst emergency could have dragged me away from the TV screen.

It was by complete chance that particular Monday evening that I switched on the TV to find that BBC4 was about to start a 3-part series on one of my longest-standing passions: mediaeval illuminated manuscripts. The series is called Illuminations: the Private Lives of Mediaeval Kings and has been made to link in with a new exhibition of royal manuscripts currently being shown at the British Library in London.

Each was an hour of pure bliss, as I watched the art historian Dr Janina Ramirez explore the world in which these treasures were made and the reasons for their making. The programmes are so good that we have recorded them for future viewing and I know I will return to them more than once.

King Henry VI and Queen Margaret of Anjou

As I watched the first programme I tried to recall when my love of mediaeval and Renaissance architecture, art and, in particular, manuscript illumination began, but couldn't. It may have been sparked by the mediaeval German literature I studied as part of my degree course back in the mid-1960s. If so, it lay dormant for the next few years until I qualified as a librarian and began work in a public library, where my immediate superior was an immensely knowledgeable collector of old and often rare books.

During our coffee breaks he would sometimes show me book auction catalogues, many of them illustrated with pages from the works on sale. It was in this way that I first learned about Books of Hours and began to read about them and the people for whom they had been made.

My own bookshelves tell me that by 1979 my interest had grown to such an extent that my mother gave me a beautifully-illustrated book on the subject as my Christmas present. I spent many hours reading this book and poring over the exquisite detail of the wonderful illuminations, with their jewel-like colours, lavish use of gold-leaf and fascinating glimpses into a world so distant and different from our own.

One of the manuscripts examined in the book is the world-famous and immensely richly-decorated Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. I was so bewitched by the beauty and variety of these illuminations that at Christmas 1985 DH gave me a book about this one unique Book of Hours. The Très Riches Heures is deservedly famous for its wealth of exquisite sacred images, but above all for its extraordinary calendar of the months.

This portrays in loving detail the seasonal life of the countryside of the Berry region and the Duke’s court, from feasting at Christmas to haymaking in June and back again to winter, many of the images enhanced by the amazingly detailed depictions of castles and towns in the background.

February - life in winter

September - the grape harvest

The book DH gave me consists almost entirely of illustrations, with only the minimum of explanatory text. Next to it on my shelves is another volume, again a gift, this time a gesture of thanks and farewell from my former library colleague and friend, who retired in 1987. It is another splendidly illustrated book on the Très Riches Heures, but this time complete with a scholarly introduction and a much fuller commentary on the wealth of illustrations.

Taking these books off the shelves and looking at them makes me realise how much our interests and passions are bound up with who we are and the relationships that have formed us. Here are three gifts linked to a lasting interest in my life. Three gifts from different people, each of whom knew how much the gift would mean to me, each of whom has contributed, to a greater or lesser extent, to making me the person I am.

These three books may stay on my shelves undisturbed for long periods as new interests come to the fore, but once opened again they still transport me instantly into a different world, while at the same providing a tangible link to some of the most important people in my life. Sadly two of the givers are long dead, but the first glimpse of their handwriting on the fly-leaf of their gift makes them live again in the little world of my memory.

The world in miniature…

Most images via Wikipedia, with thanks

Stop Press!

2012-01-17T16:10:00.007Z

You don’t have to be a regular reader of my blog to realise that it doesn’t normally do current affairs or news, other than trying occasionally to grapple with the vagaries of Blogger. However today is an exception.

I spent much of this morning writing a new post, which involved more research than usual, including looking for suitable images, for which Wikipedia is often a very useful resource. Thus it was that I came across the news that tomorrow (January 18) the English Wikipedia site will be blacked out for 24 hours as part of a worldwide protest at what are seen as attacks on the freedom of the internet. There is a full explanation HERE, and not wanting my readers to be faced with inactive links, my post has been filed until the protest is over.

It is salutary to realise that, until faced with its absence for just one day, I, like most people, had come to take the availability of Wikipedia, whenever I need it, entirely for granted. With all its faults and limitations it is a extraordinary compilation of information and images and we bloggers would find life more difficult without it. Thank you, Wikipedia, and long may you flourish unimpeded.

Image, as so often, via Wikipedia

The pleasure of sharing

2012-01-14T11:08:00.004Z

One of the many lovely things about this blogging world of ours is being introduced to blogs we might not otherwise come across and finding ourselves very much at home. To aid this process of discovery bloggers have become good at handing out awards which involve the recipient in handing them on to other bloggers in their turn.

I have to thank the wonderful Ayak at Ayak's Turkish Delight for thinking of me when she was given the Liebster Blog award recently. Unlike some awards the Liebster Blog doesn’t involve any self-revelation (thank goodness), but simply asks the recipient to add its image to their sidebar and, if they wish, to do a post passing it on to five other blogs, specifically blogs with fewer than 200 followers. As we don’t all follow each other’s blogs, it’s probably best to let the new recipients know directly, as well as in the special post, and of course link back to the awarding blog as a gesture of thanks.

There are so many wonderful blogs out there, full of good writing, beautiful images and interesting thoughts that it’s difficult to choose just five. However, I’ve taken the plunge and would like to introduce you to five very different and enjoyable blogs I’m glad I found.

Blethers is a thoughtful and beautifully-written blog by a retired English teacher and active poet, living on the west coast of

Scotland

Lifeonthecutoffs Blog is a recent discovery of mine which I am enjoying enormously. It reflects life in a quiet, rural corner of the American Mid-West, on the very edge of Chicago. Its sharing of favourite books has already tempted me to more book-buying than is probably good for me.

Lurking is a delightful mixture of blog and day-book written by someone who lives on the very edge of London and who shares many of my interests, such as books and knitting and church life.

a very grand pressigny is one of two blogs I've chosen with a French flavour. It’s about life with a much-loved second home in the Loire Valley and is spiced with lots of wonderful photos and also some tempting links to recipes on the author’s other blog.

Writing Home is a blog about life in rural south-west France – a gentle, beautifully-illustrated portrait of a quiet life of house restoration, gardening and animals, with the occasional recipe thrown in for good measure.

I do hope you enjoy exploring my five chosen blogs as much as I've enjoyed choosing them.

Making history

2012-01-11T07:00:00.002Z

Today I and some seventy other women, throughout Wales and beyond, are marking a very special anniversary. Fifteen years ago today, on January 11th 1997, we became the first women to be ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Church in Wales. In the six cathedrals of Wales every seat was taken, as our families and congregations packed the pews to witness this solemn, historic, and profoundly joyful occasion.

My ordination took place in Bangor Cathedral, in the north-west corner of Wales, on a grey and wintry Saturday just after Epiphany. My entire family had made immense efforts to be there, with DH and our two children, my four sisters, DH’s two brothers, my mother-in-law, and as many assorted partners and children as could make it, coming from all over the UK to support me and rejoice with me. By my reckoning there were 24 of us around the restaurant table for the celebration lunch after the service! In addition, an entire coach-load of local friends and parishioners had travelled almost 100 miles along slow and winding Welsh roads to be there too.

The Famous Five

That service, and the new ministry which it opened for me and my female colleagues, was the culmination of a long and, at times, very painful process. The Church in Wales had been the pioneer of the ordained ministry of women in the Anglican Church in Great Britain, having ordained women as deacons as early as 1980. Sadly, that pioneer spirit seemed to have been lost over the years, and on April 6th 1994, only weeks after the first women had been ordained to the priesthood in the Church of England, the Bill to ordain women to the priesthood in Wales was defeated in the Church’s Governing Body by a narrow margin in the House of Clergy, having been passed overwhelmingly by the laity and unanimously by the Bishops.

What no-one could have foreseen was the upset this would cause throughout Wales, both inside the church and far beyond. It was headline news for days on Welsh TV and radio and in Welsh newspapers. Letters of protest poured in to the Bishops’ offices. Within a couple of weeks a meeting was held in my own parish in Mid-Wales, at which Anglicans from all over Wales decided to set up a campaigning organisation called Women Priests for Wales, of which I somehow found myself the Secretary! Things moved rapidly after that, and only a couple of weeks later I was being interviewed live by Jenni Murray on the BBC radio programme Woman’s Hour.

This was the beginning of two and a half years of very hard work, over and above my full-time work as a librarian and my parish responsibilities. Meetings were held and a petition organised, which garnered thousands of signatures and was presented to the Bishops. People (lay and clergy) joined, wore badges, wrote letters and produced publications, raised funds, held vigils and services and prayed hard, and simply refused to let the issue fade into obscurity.

Supporters of the campaign (including me) stood for election to the Church’s Governing Body and took part in its debates for the next few years. Finally, on September 19th 1996 (the date is engraved on my heart) the reintroduced Bill to allow the ordination of women to the priesthood passed its third and final reading in all three houses and the way was finally open.

By the time I and my eight fellow deacons (our ages ranging from 27 to 68) entered Bangor Cathedral on that historic morning, we had been waiting for that day for between 2 and 14 years. In my case I was 50 and had been a deacon for eight and a half years. Now, at last, the vocation we had all been aware of for so long was to be fulfilled and I cannot find the words to describe just how that felt. Perhaps the expressions on our faces in the photographs taken during and after the service say it all for us, without the need for words.

As if the ordination day itself were not gift enough, the next day found us all back in our home parishes, presiding for the first time at the church’s central service, the Eucharist or Holy Communion. My vicar had cancelled the other morning services, so that my first Eucharist could be a joint celebration for the congregations from both our churches. The church was full and the atmosphere almost electric with excitement and joy. I had been allowed to chose the hymns and songs, and the vicar, vested that day as a deacon to assist me, as I for so long had assisted him, preached for me.

It sounds like the most hackneyed of clichés, but I truly can remember just about every detail of that morning, even to the butterflies in my stomach as I sang the priest’s part of the service for the very first time. There were so many communicants that administering communion took much longer than usual, and the music group had time to sing all the songs I had so happily chosen.

After the service came the photographs and then the party in the adjacent church hall. A parishioner who is a gifted cake-maker had made and decorated the most beautiful ordination cake, and cake and wine circulated merrily for some time, amid animated conversation and much laughter.

Then, for me, came the crowning moment when my broadly-smiling vicar presented me with the beautiful silver home-communion set which was the parishes’ gift to me to mark the occasion. It has had much use over the years since then and I treasure it still, both as a reminder of an unforgettable weekend and as a tangible sign of the loving friendship which supported and encouraged me though all the years of my ministry in those parishes. It is the most immense privilege to be a priest, and I thank God for that privilege and the deep and abiding joy it has brought me.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Alistair (died November 2011) good friend and staunch supporter of the ordination of women, who sat next to me throughout that crucial debate and unprotestingly allowed me to crush his fingers, as we waited on tenterhooks for the result of the vote.

Epiphany celebrations

2012-01-05T19:03:00.017Z

Tonight is of course Twelfth Night, the beginning of the twelfth and final day of Christmas, and tomorrow the Christian church will be celebrating the great feast of the Epiphany. However, for the Transit household tomorrow is also a day of family celebration, as my next-to-youngest sister and Grandson #3 both have birthdays on this special day. Indeed I’ve recently learned that DD’s mother-in-law was also an Epiphany baby, so it’s a triple for us.

This is the reason why our family has always defied tradition and left the Christmas decorations up until after Epiphany. It just seems so mean to take them down the day before and leave the house drab and ordinary for their birthday. Well, that’s my excuse for enjoying a few more days of colourful Christmas cards, flying angels and our lovely little African crib set. J

DH is now enquiring plaintively when supper will be, so I will leave you for now with what to me is one of the most beautiful of Epiphany carols.

Image via Wikipedia:
Sixth-century mosaic of the Magi in Persian costume

Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy

Beating Blogger

2012-01-03T22:04:00.002Z

Back at the beginning of November, I and many other bloggers started to experience huge difficulty in following new blogs or ceasing to follow others. The problem featured largely in Blogger’s Help Forum for weeks, and a fix was repeatedly promised, but doesn't yet appear to have materialised. Judging by yesterday's plaintive post by SP at Secretly Skint, teeth are still being gnashed and hair pulled out all over the blogosphere.

Until shortly before Christmas this was my situation too, until I accidentally stumbled upon a solution to the problem of followed blogs failing to appear in Google Reader. My fix doesn’t cure the problem of your list of Blogs I’m Following being inaccurate, both on your dashboard or in your profile, but it does mean that ALL the blogs you follow, including newly added ones, will reliably appear whenever you go into Google Reader to view new posts.

This is what you do.

For each blog which you have started to follow since the beginning of November when the problem first arose, you need to repeat the following three steps:

1. Go to the blog concerned, and in Google Friend Connect, stop following the blog.

2. Then start to follow it again by clicking “Join this Site” in Google Friend Connect. (Don’t even think of using the Follow option at the top of the page. It just doesn’t work properly any more.)

3. Now – and this is the vital step, which I hadn’t noticed before, but which makes all the difference – when you get the pop-up which tells you:

Congratulations, AAAA

You are now following BBBB

click the little box below, labelled Done.

It’s such a small box that it’s very easy to overlook, and even when you see it, if you’re like me you may think it’s a statement, rather than something requiring action.

However, I now know from experience that if you click on this little box every time you begin to follow a new blog, you will always, and I do mean always, get its new posts appearing in Google Reader, even when, as often happens, they don’t show up in your list of Blogs I’m Following.

In your list of subscriptions on the left of the page in Google Reader you will find that your followed blogs will now be divided into two sections, with the blogs you followed before the problem arose appearing at the top, and a second list of more recently followed blogs underneath. A bit of a nuisance, but I can promise you that they won’t disappear from there and you won’t miss any more new posts from your favourite blogs.

Image by digitalart

Snatching a quiet moment

2011-12-29T22:10:00.004Z

Today has been a lull, a rest day, a brief interlude between a very happy and enjoyable Christmas with our daughter’s family and what will be a similarly happy and enjoyable New Year celebration with our son’s.

On the day before Christmas Eve DH and I travelled up to Yorkshire, taking his mother with us. Between then and yesterday, when we drove back down to my mother-in-law’s home, we went to church twice, ate very well but not too much, talked and laughed a great deal, played Grandson #1’s new card game to much hilarity (well, what else would you expect with a game entitled Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot?) and generally caught up with each other’s lives very satisfyingly.

Beware the Bunnies!

I even found time to knit one and a half socks out of the pair I've been promising DH for ages, often as I listened to DD and her two sons playing their various musical instruments.

Tomorrow, DS will arrive with his wife and Grandson #3 for what promises to be an equally entertaining and hilarious visit. The games will be different and there will be less music, but there will be plenty of talk and laughter and catching-up with all the details that don’t always get across in phone calls and emails. Our offspring lead such busy lives with all their work and family responsibilities and we’re always glad when we can spend more than the occasional day or two with them.

Naturally all this activity means that I’m very behind with my blog-reading, but I promise to catch up once we’re safely back home in Wales next week. In the meantime, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

Images via Wylio

Nativity - Assisi

2011-12-22T11:31:00.015Z

Tucked away obscurely in a dark corner of the left transept in the basilica of Santa Chiara in Assisi is one of the most touching mediaeval portrayals of the Nativity I have ever seen. When I first saw it nearly 15 years ago, it was almost hidden behind a pile of stacking chairs and I had to crane my neck to see it properly. Despite this I fell in love immediately with this exquisite fragment of fresco, which has almost miraculously survived at least 700 years of neglect and earthquake damage.

To my frustration, when DD and I made our Big Birthday trip to Assisi in May, we found that the apse and transept have now been cordoned off and visitors can no longer get close enough to the fresco to appreciate its beauty. So, as my Christmas present to you all, here is the wonderful image of the Madonna and Child with angels by an unknown but gifted student of the great fresco painter Giotto.

It comes with my thanks for your friendship and company on this deeply enjoyable blogging journey. I wish you all a peaceful and joyous Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year.

To accompany my touching mediaeval image, I would like to leave you with this lovely rendering of one of the most beautiful and touching of mediaeval carols.

The ghosts of Christmases past

2011-12-20T22:48:00.007Z

My next sister and I belong to the baby boom generation, born in the years immediately after WW2. I say my next sister because I am one of five sisters. My father was a widower with a young daughter, when he met and married my mother in the early years of the war. The year after the war ended I was born, the first of her four children.

The photograph was taken in the kitchen of our terraced house in a cotton town in industrial east Lancashire. It shows my parents and my elder sister, A, with R sitting on her father’s knee and me on my mother’s, with a book on my lap, of course, even at that early age. J. Looking at us, I think I must have been 3 or 4, which dates the photo to around 1950.

What a different world it was then. Our house was originally a basic two-up and two-down, though by the time my parents moved there it was one of the posher ones in the street by virtue of an extension at the back, which housed a scullery downstairs and that greatest of working-class luxuries, a bathroom, upstairs. The photo shows that the kitchen was still equipped with an old-fashioned range, but in the scullery my mother was also the proud possessor of a gas-stove, alongside the usual wash-copper and mangle.

We left this house to move out into the country before I was seven, so the Christmases I remember celebrating in this house were very early ones. I don’t recall a tree, so perhaps we didn’t have one back then, but I do remember the homemade Christmas decorations, made first by my mother and elder sister and then, under supervision, by R and myself, painstakingly criss-crossing long, narrow strips of different coloured crepe-paper and then carefully unfolding the resulting plaits for my parents to hang around the room.

Both my grandmother, who lived next-door, and my mother were good cooks, so we had our share of Christmas goodies as far as post-war rationing would allow.

Turkey

was unknown to us and in fact even chicken was a rare treat, enjoyed only at Christmas and Easter. But we had Christmas cake and mince pies and even a few chocolates, so it all seemed very special.

But what I remember above all else about Christmas in this house are the presents R and I received two years running. Because we were so close in age (less than 18 months between us) we were usually treated exactly alike. We would go to bed at the same time on Christmas Eve in the room we always shared, each armed with her Christmas stocking (a laddered old lisle one which had belonged to our mother or grandmother) with its handwritten label so that our presents couldn’t get mixed up.

Oh, the excitement of putting the limp, empty stocking across the foot of the bed on Christmas Eve and then waking early next morning to the weight of the miraculously-filled stocking pressing down on the bedclothes. We never had many presents, but there were always the traditional orange, apple and tangerine in the toe of the stocking, together with the essential net bag of foil-wrapped chocolate coins. There would be small presents from our only set of grandparents and from a couple of elderly great-aunts, but that was all, since by then our parents had no living brothers and sisters.

But, and it is a big but, on the floor at the foot of the bed, would be the present from our parents. Just one present, which of course made it very special. When I was (I think) five and R was four, we were given a walkie-talkie doll each. We have no pictures of them, but I don’t need any. I can still see them both so clearly. R’s had dark hair and brown eyes, whilst mine was a blue-eyed blonde. Wonder of wonders, both would close their eyes when we laid them down.

Our mother, who was a fine dress-maker and made all our clothes, had made clothes for both dolls, a nightie, a day dress and a party dress. After this length of time I can only remember the party dresses and they were wonderful. Each was made of taffeta, with a net overskirt. R’s doll had a yellow dress and mine a blue one, and, as a crowning glory, our mother had painstakingly sewn tiny sequins all over the bodice of each. Even now I wonder at the thought of her, with a house to keep and by then four children to look after, working on these miniature garments in the evenings when we had gone to bed, so that our dolls would be properly dressed.

The following year it was our father’s turn to be the creative one. When R and I woke up on Christmas morning, at the foot of each bed was a dolls-house, made from scratch in the evenings and at weekends. Rather than the front wall coming off to show the rooms within, the long sloping roof lifted up and hinged back to reveal a kitchen and living room, a tiny staircase rising from the ground floor to the first, a little bedroom and a miniscule bathroom. All the rooms were papered and painted (our father was a painter and decorator by trade) and neatly furnished. The crowning glory this time were the tiny lights in every room, made from torch bulbs powered by a battery, which we could switch on and off at will.

There were carefully chosen presents in subsequent years, and thanks largely to my parents’ example, Christmas has always been a very important time for me. But I don’t think any presents I have received since, however special, will ever replace in my memory and affections my beautifully-dressed and much-loved doll and my perfect little dolls’ house.

A comic interlude

2011-12-17T09:20:00.001Z

For the last few days I’ve been trying, and dismally failing, to produce enough coherent thought for a proper post. As soon as this dratted cough lets me get a halfway decent night’s sleep, I’ll be back with some real writing. In the meantime, here is an absolute gem by the wonderful Richard Stilgoe, first brought to my attention by David Cloake, the inimitable Vernacular Vicar. Thanks, David. J

Light in the darkness

2011-12-13T18:09:00.007Z

Yesterday DH and I went shopping, a not unusual activity at this time of year, but a task usually avoided by us both like the plague, except for necessities. It was cheering to see the shops and streets decorated for the festivities, though a little worrying to see how relatively quiet they were so close to Christmas. I think many shoppers are pulling their horns in this year and the shops must be feeling the pinch.

On our return I settled down with a nice pot of tea to look though that day’s posts in Google Reader and thoroughly enjoyed the glimpse of a traditional German Christmas market, as given by Friko on Friko's World, just as I recently appreciated the tempting images of aspects of Christmas Spanish-style, as supplied by Annie on Moving On.

I think this juxtaposition may be why today’s shocking attack at the Christmas market in Liege in Belgium has hit me with particular force and left me feeling very unChristmassy indeed. Seeing ordinary lives torn apart by violence in the middle of the very activity DH and I had been doing yesterday brings home yet again the horror of man's inhumanity to man. It sometimes seems that our world is moving ever further from the angels’ message of “Peace on Earth and goodwill towards men”, a sad thought to ponder only 12 days before Christmas.

To comfort myself and remind myself that Advent is all about hopeful expectation, even in the midst of sadness and suffering, I have just listened again to the exquisite Advent Song, written by Christine McIntosh and set to music by her husband John, and posted very recently on her blog blethers. The words are here, and the music, sung by their church choir, is below. I hope it may speak to you as it has to me.

Image: Paul Brentnall / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Small is beautiful

2011-12-09T21:52:00.004Z

Sitting at my desk on a cold, damp day, with pictures of the dreadful storm which struck Scotland yesterday still vivid in my mind, it’s already hard to remember that this year in Europe we enjoyed one of the warmest autumns on record. This meant that for the second year running I was fortunate enough to have glorious weather for most of my stay in Prague. Even the mere memory makes me feel warmer. So to distract myself from the winter weather outside my window, I would like to take you with me on a walk around my favourite part of Prague.

Mala Strana, or the Little Quarter, lies across the Vltava River from the centre of the city. Most visitors come to it across the historic Charles Bridge from the city centre. However I discovered that it can also be approached through the large and lovely Letenske Park and this second route rapidly became my favourite.

It takes you through the park, with its wonderful views over the centre of Prague and past the Belvedere, the beautiful Renaissance Summer Palace, into the Royal Garden and towards to Prague Castle. Walking in the shade of magnificent specimen trees, with views of the castle dominated by the towers of Saint Vitus’ cathedral, was something I never tired of.

Prague Castle, still the seat of government and one of the largest complexes of royal buildings in Europe deserves a post of its own, by someone more knowledgeable than I about its history. Having explored the castle last year, this autumn I preferred to walk through or round the castle and down one or other of the long flights of steps which lead from the castle heights to the Little Quarter below.

It’s also possible to walk down the steep and beautiful Nerudova Street, famed for the historic emblems on its house-fronts, which were used to identify individual buildings before the introduction of numbering in 1770.

Once at the bottom of the hill the Little Quarter just begs to be wandered around, almost at random. Its mixture of streets and squares of mostly C18th buildings, interspersed with glorious Gothic and Baroque churches and towers, is made to be explored on foot and alone, so that you can linger at will.

One of the many things I love about Prague, in Mala Strana and elsewhere, are the little side streets, alleys almost, which tempt you to leave your planned route and explore. On one such side street I found a reminder of the fact that for nearly 400 years Bohemia and its capital Prague were part of the Hapsburg Empire and the official language of government and education was German, not Czech.

Today Mala Strana, with its fine town houses and mansions, is a favoured location for embassies and other institutions. It is haunted by tourists, who are bowled over by its history and beauty, but also keeps its quiet places, where you can feel a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of the main streets. It is a quarter with personality and deep charm – living proof, if any were needed, that size bears little relation to importance and worth. Mala Strana - small is indeed beautiful.

Handel galore

2011-12-06T13:56:00.001Z

A friend just gave me this link and now, on a cold, wet, miserable, December day, I'm sitting here with a great big grin on my face. Enjoy.....and I promise not to make a habit of this. J

Strong words

2011-12-04T09:00:00.009Z

Today is the second Sunday of Advent and this morning at church our Bishop will be with us for a confirmation service. It will be a very happy occasion and during it we will listen to the prophet Isaiah's great message of encouragement from chapter 40, one of the set readings for today. It is one of my favourite Old Testament passages and is indelibly associated in my mind with Handel's immortal setting from his Messiah.

When I was growing up in the north of England in the 1950s and 1960s, the annual public performance of the Messiah was an essential part of the approach to Christmas for many people, either as performer or listener. Fifty years on I still make sure I find time to listen to it at some point during Advent. Another tradition which enriches my life. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

And so a tradition was born

2011-12-02T14:44:00.008Z

Yesterday I went out for lunch. Hardly earth-shattering news, you might say, and you’d be right. But it was a very satisfying lunch for me in more ways than the obvious one, because it was the 10th such lunch in a series that goes back to my early days as the vicar of three country parishes.

I arrived in the parishes in the spring of 2001, in the middle of the appalling foot-and-mouth epidemic which ravaged so much of rural Britain that year. On my arrival I found three welcoming and hard-working congregations, a number of deeply-worried farmers and a moribund branch of that stalwart Anglican organisation, the Mothers’ Union.

Like the Women’s Institute, the Mothers’ Union can often be the butt of jokes and the victim of some misunderstanding, but it’s an organisation for which I have a great deal of time and respect. Yes, its members are mostly on the wrong side of 50, but that’s true of a lot of organisations nowadays, both religious and secular. In today’s pressured world, how many younger people, desperately juggling work and family commitments and also trying to have a bit of time for themselves, have much time or energy to spare for joining things?

I joined the MU, as it’s usually known to its members, twenty years ago, when I was curate in a small market town. The branch I joined was large and lively and made a big contribution to parish life. Its monthly meetings had interesting speakers and were very enjoyable and I quickly learned to value the way in which the MU encourages its members to get involved in a wide range of socially useful projects, from making tiny baby clothes for premature babies to running parenting courses or helping to staff contact centres for separated parents or crèches for those visiting prison.

In my time as a member, among many other activities I’ve knitted baby clothes, raised money for literacy programmes for women in Africa and collected toiletries for the local women’s refuge, so that women and children arriving with nothing can at least look after their personal needs.

So it’s hardly surprising that one of my priorities on becoming a vicar was to revive the local MU and make it an area branch, covering a number of rural parishes too small to support their own branch any longer. The new branch went well and as Christmas 2002 approached, the members agreed that they would like to mark the end of its first year by having a Christmas lunch.

In the past this would have meant going out to a local pub or restaurant, but the costs quoted for the special Christmas menu were higher than most could comfortably afford, so we came up with a splendid alternative. The vicarage had a very large living-room, easily big enough to put up a couple of folding tables and accommodate all the members comfortably. We made out a menu and asked each person which favourite dish she (or he – we had a husband and wife who were both members) would like to bring for our shared meal.

The lunch duly took place and it was so enjoyable, and the food so good, that we thought it might be fun to invite others to share their favourite recipes with us, and to compile a recipe booklet to raise money for parish funds. The recipes poured in and a week’s hard work on my part (it should have been a week’s holiday, but needs must….) saw the booklet compiled and printed in time to go on sale for the summer. I don’t know about other people, but I’m still using mine.

Two years later I moved to a new post in England, but happily the MU branch I left behind went from strength to strength under its new branch leader and was still flourishing when I retired and moved back to Wales. Of course I immediately rejoined and was more than pleased to find that the tradition of the bring-and-share Christmas lunch had continued unbroken.

Yesterday’s lunch was in the village hall and I duly turned up with my contribution, including the bread rolls for which I've been famed from the beginning, thanks to my bread machine’s infallible ability to make perfect dough. J We sat at a beautifully decorated table, ate well, swapped news and had fun, and I came home feeling very contented, both from the excellent food lovingly prepared and in the knowledge that a small and very personal tradition was still enriching the lives of those concerned. Bon appétit!

A walk to remember

2011-11-29T11:50:00.007Z

Last Wednesday was DH’s 65th birthday and as always we celebrated the event with a special meal (home-made by choice). We had also planned to mark his entry into official pensionerhood by taking a trip out somewhere, but the weather forecast for the day itself was decidedly unfavourable.

As luck would have it, the day before his birthday dawned bright and sunny, so on the spur of the moment we decided to take our favourite local walk, to the ruined castle on the headland opposite the house. Caisteal Bharraich or Castle Varrich was the ancient seat of the chief of the Clan Mackay, and MacKay is still the most common local surname, as witness the village war memorial.

The footpath from the village to the castle runs past the end of our street and makes its way down to the river, passing fields on one side and the village’s small, neat, and totally inoffensive, reed-bed sewage farm on the other. The footbridge across the lovely little wooded river is an ideal place to play Pooh Sticks, even at my age!

Once across the river the footpath skirts a small area of peat bog before starting to climb the hill through another patch of woodland, a rarity in the vast, open expanses of windswept mountains and valleys which make up the landscape of North-West Sutherland. Most of the trees are gnarled and stunted silver birch, though there has been some new planting recently and DH (a tree-lover to his boot-soles) said there is lodgepole pine among the new saplings, which will certainly provide a contrast in the future.

The footpath up the hill is relatively new, having been constructed a few years ago to replace the old, precipitous, and often treacherous wooden steps which previously provided access to the castle. It winds its way up the steep, north-east facing hillside, which at this time of the year is mostly in shadow, thus making it a little too chilly to enjoy using the two or three sturdy wooden benches which have been placed to take advantage of the view and allow newly-fledged pensioners like DH and me to rest our legs and catch our breath.

One of these benches draws our attention every time we make this walk. It stands overlooking the junction of the river and the Kyle and has a wonderful view out to sea towards the Melness peninsula and the Rabbit Islands.

On either side of it a small heather has been planted and these were still in bloom, while the rest of the heather was already dry and shrivelled.

You have to go round to the front of the bench to see why it has warranted such care and attention. I never knew the person so lovingly commemorated here, but I like to think that this was a favourite spot of hers and that the bench was given in her memory to allow others to enjoy it as she used to do.

Once past the memorial bench the castle begins to loom above the walker. It stands at the tip of the headland, giving a 360 degree field of view and easily defensible, surely the reason it was built in this inaccessible spot. Gaunt and neglected, it juts upwards into the sky like a broken tooth, and one approaches its crumbling fabric with care. But it is worth the steep climb to reach it, and sit or stand under its walls, gazing at the breath-taking view over the mountains, the Kyle and the sea.

This time we were there when the tide was out and we could see flocks of seabirds and waterfowl feeding on the sandbars and mudflats. It is then that one realises just how shallow the Kyle has become, as it gradually silts up since the building of the causeway. At high tide it looks like the deepest of sea lochs, but this is an illusion. The navigable channel is narrow and winding and over the rest of the area the sand is taking over.

Late November weather, even on the sunniest of days, isn’t conducive to lingering for too long in such an exposed place, and we were soon making our way back down the path to the village, my ageing knees protesting with every step. Up is actually much easier than down nowadays, but as long as I can get up to Castle Varrich from time to time to take in the view and the air and the peace of the place, I’ll put up with a few twinges on my homeward path. J

It's that time of year again

2011-11-24T09:05:00.004Z

As often happens, real life has overtaken good blogging intentions and I don't have time today to write the post I had planned to. Instead DH and I will be racing the weather to get the van packed before the forecast wind and rain arrive later in the day, and tomorrow we will be taking the long road south again.

So in place of my normal pearls of wisdom, I will leave you to get into the mood for the forthcoming festivities with the help of the inimitable Tom Lehrer. With that out of the way, we can all settle down and concentrate on Advent instead. J

Like pearls on a thread

2011-11-18T20:17:00.010Z

A couple of weeks ago I walked to church on a bright, sunny, Sunday morning, along a road with perhaps one of the most beautiful views in Britain. As I did so, I found myself thinking back over the different churches which have played such an important part in my life since childhood.

In one of my earliest posts I wrote about the way in which living among hills has been a constant thread in my life. Alongside that thread runs another, made up of a variety of usually old, often beautiful, and sometimes spectacularly-set buildings, which have found their way into my heart.

Tockholes URC chapel

The thread begins for me with a small, plain, Congregational chapel in the little village in which I spent most of my childhood. The building itself is not particularly old, but its past is historic. It stands on the site of one of the first Nonconformist chapels, founded in 1662 when the Act of Uniformity of that year led to the expulsion from the Church of England of over 2000 clergy, who refused to comply with the compulsory use of the Book of Common Prayer in public worship. My memories of childhood are inextricably linked with this austere little building and my mother’s parents are both buried in its churchyard.

St Michael's Church, Trefeglwys

The next pearl was added to the thread in Mid-Wales, where at the age of 30, after having moved completely away from church-going in my late teens, I was confirmed into the Anglican Church. The story of how I came to this life-changing decision is told here. The parish church I began to attend was a mid C19th rebuilding of a C12th original, and a little research among the local history collection in the library in which I worked turned up the fact that until the Reformation it had belonged to Haughmond Abbey in Shropshire. It is right in the centre of the village and one day, to complete the circle, I shall be buried in its large and lovely churchyard, where in the past, as its Vicar, I myself conducted many burials.

Saint Idloes Church, Llanidloes

Twelve years later came another pearl, when I was ordained deacon and became a part-time, unpaid curate at the parish church in our local market town of Llanidloes, while still carrying on with my work as a librarian. If I had to choose which of the many churches I have known and loved is the most important to me, it would have to be Saint Idloes. It was the church where my vocation to ministry was nurtured and found expression. It was also the church where I had the joy of conducting the marriage of DD and her husband. It stands almost on the banks of the River Severn and is both beautiful and historic, and I love every stone of it.

Saint Llonio's Church, Llandinam

After thirteen happy years here I travelled downstream to another lovely village, when I went into full-time ministry and was appointed Vicar of three small country parishes, including the one where I had been confirmed. DH and I moved into the Vicarage, from where we could look across at the spur of land on which the parish church stands, high above the Severn in its cradle of hills. I have worshipped in many churches, but this is the only one where I have had to stop halfway up the steep path to catch my breath, only to have it taken away again when I turned round to look at the view. My third church was a tiny, simple building in a small hamlet, where the old rectory was probably bigger than the church itself, but where the equally tiny congregation was loyal and enthusiastic.

Saint Gwrhai's Church, Penstrowed.

St Michael and All Angels, Fringford

My subsequent move to a group of parishes in Oxford Diocese brought a complete change of scenery and a new historic link, not with a monastery or a Celtic saint or two, but with a writer whose work recently found great popularity, when it was dramatised for TV. For three years DH and I lived in Fringford, immortalised as Candleford Green by the locally-born author Flora Thompson, whose memories of her childhood in late 19th century rural Oxfordshire were captured so beautifully in her trilogy Lark Rise to Candleford.

Since my retirement four years ago, we have been back in Mid-Wales, where I can again worship in the local churches which have played such an important role in my life. When in Scotland I worship at the parish church in Tongue, where the view from the church gate encompasses both mountains and water, or sometimes at the little church overlooking the sea at Melness, the most northerly still-used church building in mainland Britain. In France I often attend the local RC church in the village on the hill above our cottage, a church which, like many in the area, had to be rebuilt after being totally destroyed in World War Two. History again, but of a very different kind.

St Andrew's Church, Tongue

Melness Church

The church at Juvigny-le-Tertre

So many churches, so many pearls on the thread of my life.

In praise of comfort food

2011-11-14T09:14:00.002Z

Picture the scene. It’s a dull/grey/damp/cold day (delete as appropriate) and you’re not at your brightest. Or it’s any kind of weather, but you’re tired or stressed or just plain fed-up. A meal-time is approaching and you just know you have to have something that will make you feel better and be blowed to whether it’s good for you. Calories are out, comfort is in. What do you choose?

Chocolate (dark, of course) would be one of my first choices, but sadly it isn’t generally considered a staple foodstuff, so the search goes on. Growing up as I did in a fairly large working-class family in industrial east Lancashire, high on my list of comforting dishes come the faithful old standbys of soups and stews. Warm, filling, meal-in-a-pot recipes, which can be made from very basic and inexpensive ingredients and can be relied upon to satisfy the appetites of growing girls.

I’m thinking here of Lancashire hotpot, or ham and pea soup, or a big pan of meat and vegetable broth with dumplings. Dishes like these were the background to my childhood, and though my culinary repertoire is very much wider and more adventurous nowadays, when the chips are down (with or without fish) I still instinctively turn to them for comfort, especially in the cold, dark days of winter. And that’s before I even think about puddings, which, given my current waistline, are probably best avoided.

Fruit crumble, with custard naturally - cream was only for birthdays and Christmas. Or bread-and-butter pudding with lots of raisins, or my mother’s unforgettable rice pudding, with the crispy bits round the edge we girls would squabble over. I could go on, but you get the picture.

So now you know how I try to insulate myself, at least at mealtimes, from life’s ups and downs, do let me into the secret of your particular comfort foods. Who knows? There might be a cookbook in it. J

Image via Wylio

They shall grow not old

2011-11-11T11:11:00.018Z

In the summer of 1964, when I was 18 and had just done my A-Levels, the BBC began to broadcast a very moving and detailed documentary series called The Great War, to mark the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. At the time my widowed grandfather (my mother’s father) lived next-door to us. Each week during that summer and autumn, I went round to his house to watch the new episode with him and talk to him about his memories of that same war.

Granddad had served in France throughout the war and came home with severely damaged hearing from prolonged exposure to the noise of the artillery, which it had been his job to supply with ammunition. Even worse, his whole family had been devastated by the death in action of his younger brother, the baby of the family, on 16 February 1916 at the age of 21.

My grandfather in uniform

Uncle Walter in uniform

Before the war Walter had been a labourer in a cement works in his native Hull. On enlistment he became a private in the 7th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment and, as his medal card shows, went to

France

on 13 July 1915. However, Walter did not serve as a combatant, but instead as a regimental stretcher-bearer, as can be seen from the SB armband he wears in this photograph.

I'm indebted to our own family historian, my next-to-youngest sister, for most of this detailed and poignant information and she points out that being a stretcher-bearer was no guarantee of safety: “ It was very risky moving stretchers through the trenches, but especially trying to rescue the injured from No Man's Land.”

According to official regimental records, in the early morning of 15 February 1916, Walter’s regiment was moved up from Divisional Reserve to the Ypres Salient, to a place called The Bluff, at one end of the infamous Hill 60 and just north of the Ypres Canal. Late in the evening of the same day, the regiment took part in a poorly-planned and ineffective attempt to retake trenches captured by the Germans the previous day.
The official account continues:
The East Yorkshiremen were then ordered to consolidate the ground they held. The 16th was comparatively quiet. At night the Battalion was relieved and, by 5 p.m. on 17th, all Companies were back in Reninghelst.

This was the first action in which the 7th Battalion was engaged, and it is interesting to note what the C.O. said of his men in his report to Brigade H.Q. :—"l wish to express my appreciation of the excellent conduct of all ranks of the Battalion during these operations. Pelted by the snow storm, continually hampered, halted and pushed on the road by transport, soaked to the skin, ordered back on arrival and again forward on getting back, were a severe test of their soldierly qualities and which, in my opinion, they came through with credit. Later they were operating in unknown trenches, over unknown ground and under heavy shell fire most of the time and again acquitted themselves well."

The Bluff - part of the Ypres Salient

In this aerial photograph of the battlefield, taken on 20 February 1916, the frozen canal, the craters and the German trenches can clearly be seen. The operations in the area of the Bluff, from the start of the enemy attack on 14 February to noon on 17 February, cost the British 1,294 casualties, of whom my great-uncle was just one.

Although Walter’s death was witnessed, he has no known grave, which implies either that his body was not able to be recovered from the battlefield or that his grave was subsequently lost. He is commemorated on Panel 31 of the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres.

Walter's name on the Menin Gate Memorial

The report of Walter’s death in the Hull Daily Mail for 26 February 1916 reads: “Pte. W. Sutcliffe, a young Hull soldier of the 7th East Yorks., whose home was at 4 Earle’s-row, Wilmington, has been killed while attending a wounded comrade. An intimation has been received to this effect. Private William Nicholls, a friend in the same regiment, writes to his relatives: “He was dressing a pal’s wound when he was hit, and died a few moments later. God bless “Jack” he has done his duty well. He was well liked by all the officers and men of the battalion.” Private Sutcliffe, who was 21, had recently been home on leave.

It’s all a very long time ago now, but the repercussions have come down through the years to this day. My memories of my grandfather, with his damaged hearing and his enduring sense of loss at the death of his brother, are still vivid. Two months after her young uncle’s death, my mother was born and a new little family looked towards the future. But there was a gap which was never filled. Rest in peace, Great-Uncle Walter. I wish I’d had the chance to know you.

My Great-Uncle Walter

My grandparents and my mother - Summer 1916

A quick word of advice

2011-11-10T11:29:00.012Z

This is meant as a temporary post and I'll probably remove it before long. Since the beginning of the month I (and, I think, many others) have had enormous difficulty following new blogs or pruning my list of blogs followed. There is obviously a great big new bug in Blogger's following software and it's had me gnashing my teeth in frustration, as blogs and new posts flicker randomly in and out of my list of blogs followed and Google Reader itself.

The only way round it as far as I can see is manually to add new blogs followed to my blogroll, thus totally bypassing Google Friend Connect and Google Reader until Blogger finds the problem and fixes it. I have a shrewd suspicion it is connected with the ongoing major revision of Blogger and its integration with Google+. However, that's Google's affair. Mine is to go on being able to follow the interesting new blogs I've recently discovered and to offer my newly discovered workround to those suffering similar frustration. At least this way I can reliably see when a blog is updated and avoid missing posts.

Music while you work

2011-11-07T19:01:00.003Z

Here on the north coast of Scotland the sun has been shining from a cloudless sky for the last couple of days and we’ve been thoroughly enjoying it. At this time of year in this area, as the days get shorter and shorter, you take advantage of the sunshine while it lasts. However you can’t see the sun from our somewhat gloomy, north-east facing kitchen, so while making lunch today, I decided to listen to some music to brighten things up.

Because of our peripatetic lifestyle, I’ve got into the habit of bringing with me to each location a random selection of CDs from our base in Wales. This time my choice ranges from Mozart concertos to the Beatles, from Fauré’s Requiem to the soundtrack from the musical Chicago, from the Tallis Scholars singing Allegri’s Miserere to Tom Lehrer singing his wickedly satirical songs to an appreciative audience back in the 1960s. I chose the last-mentioned to accompany my vegetable-chopping and put the salad together in record time. J

Thinking about my eclectic (to put it mildly) musical tastes, I wondered whether they are a sign of broad-mindedness or simply woolly-mindedness, because I lack the application to refine and train them. Am I the only one with a truly ragbag collection of music or are there other musical magpies out there, and if so, what catches your fancy?

Image via Wikipedia

The Versatile Blogger

2011-11-03T07:00:00.003Z

Last Friday, as we were in the final throes of packing to come north, I took a quick coffee break to catch up with that morning’s blog posts in Google Reader before my computer was switched off for the trip. As I sipped my coffee and nibbled a biscuit, I was delighted to read on the always excellent Ayak’s Turkish Delight that she had just been given the Versatile Blogger Award by another blogger based, like her, in Turkey.

As Ayak explained, there are conditions to receiving this award. The winner has to tell you five quirky things about him or herself and then pass the award on to five more bloggers. You’ll have to read Ayak’s five lovely quirky things for yourselves, but I can tell you that I was extremely, if pleasantly, surprised to find that I was one of her five nominees. As I commented to Ayak, I’m not sure how versatile I am, especially at that time of the morning, and I’m certainly not sure how quirky I can be considered, but in all fairness I have to try to live up to the honour. J So here goes…..

1. I hate Marmite! I know the world is divided into Marmite lovers and Marmite haters and the former seem to predominate, but I can’t stand the nasty, salty stuff.

2. I’m a sock knitter to the bottom of my soul. I like all kinds of knitting, but as I've mentioned before, socks are my perfect project for all sorts of reasons, being small, light, and cheap to make, but also nicely challenging to do well. One can never have too many socks.

3. I have never watched Strictly Come Dancing or the X-Factor or even The Apprentice or Dragon’s Den. I realise that in some circles that makes me not just quirky but barely a member of the human race, but I can’t help it. I don’t like reality TV or game shows, as I just can’t bear to watch people being publicly criticised, belittled or made a fool of, even if they’ve volunteered for the privilege.

4. I love Christmas. I know it’s fashionable to bemoan the secularisation and commercialism of the festival, but to me it has a meaning and a magic which is irresistible. I even enjoy singing carols (all the verses, mind you) and writing Christmas cards, as well as receiving them. A hopeless case…..

5. The nearest I ever came to meeting a real celebrity was back in the mid-60s, when I was a student. (I’ve led a very sheltered life since then. J) Coming out of a coffee bar in a little side-street near the centre of Oxford, I almost collided with Paul McCartney and Jane Asher, as they walked past the door. She was appearing at the Playhouse and I'd barely heard of her at that time, but was a huge Beatles fan. Imagine my horror if I’d actually knocked him over.....

Now for my nominees, all of whom I think write great and versatile blogs. They are:

Daydreamer

Life on a Small Island

Moving On

The Other Half

A Skinny Fairtrade Latte in the Food Court of Life

Oo-er!

2011-11-01T19:09:00.003Z

This afternoon I was merrily checking on a couple of the blogs I follow when I noticed that instead of the usual cheery thumbnail image of yours truly next to each of my past comments, there is now a scarily threatening black and white exclamation mark! No, it isn’t a leftover from Halloween, as I first thought. A quick glance at the Blogger help forum shows that other bloggers have recently been reporting problems with photos disappearing from their blogs and being similarly replaced.

In my case I think it may stem from an unwary deletion last week of a duplicate of my profile photo in the Picasa web album where all my blog pictures are stored. There is still a copy there and I’ve even reloaded it, but Blogger is obviously extremely picky and won’t accept any substitution retrospectively. Thankfully the real me has now reappeared alongside new comments, but where older ones are concerned, I'm afraid it seems you will all have to learn to live with the unappealing images with which Blogger has chosen to highlight my carelessness. J

The call of the north

2011-10-27T22:00:00.003+01:00

Tomorrow morning, hopefully in the sunshine forecast to follow all the rain we’ve had, DH and I will be busy loading up our trusty little campervan for our autumn trip to the north coast of Scotland. We’ll be up there for a month, long enough to celebrate DH’s sixty-fifth birthday in the place where we celebrated mine this spring, but returning south in plenty of time for Christmas. I typed that last bit with difficulty, furiously crossing my fingers as I did so, in the hope that winter won’t arrive quite as early as it did last year and again trap us there for longer than anticipated.

To give you a flavour of what it is that takes us so far at an unpromising time of the year, here are a few glimpses of the north coast at the tail end of the year.

Tongue village from Castle Varich

Michelin woman - but at least there are no midges

Nosy neighbours

Of course we hope we will see this:

not this:

I have a confession to make

2011-10-25T21:28:00.006+01:00

My name is Perpetua and I am a Sudoku addict. It all started so innocently one winter’s evening up in the north of Scotland. I had always resisted the temptation to try my hand at the puzzle which so enthralled some of my friends, but this evening I’d finished my book, we have no TV there, I just wasn’t in the mood to cast on that second sock and so I picked up a pencil and tried my hand at the ‘easy’ Sudoku in that day’s paper.

Let me say at the outset that I don’t have a puzzler’s temperament. I’m useless at crosswords, especially the cryptic kind, and have never had the patience to learn the puzzles which fill the odd corners of the average newspaper. I’ve always been a reader, or a knitter, and so I thought I could just dip my toe into the pool marked Sudoku and take it out again with no harm done.

Little did I know what would follow from that first careless attempt. To my satisfaction I did manage to finish that initial puzzle, but it was several days before I felt like trying another. But gradually the intervals between attempts grew shorter, until I realised that unless we changed our habits and began to buy a paper every day, I’d need to find another source of supply.

I know Sudoku can be played electronically – on the computer or on a little handheld screen, such as Grandson #1 enjoys using, but I’m a paper and pencil girl to my core. Then I discovered that you can buy books of Sudoku puzzles, some of which even include a dinky propelling pencil with a built-in eraser. That was the moment when the attraction became an addiction.

Now while waiting at the airport or the station or even at the dentist's, my bag contains not only my current paperback, but my Sudoku book and pencil. No longer do I groan when the plane, bus or train is delayed, because it gives me time to fit in just one more puzzle. In the mornings I’m as likely to do a puzzle with my morning cup of tea as open a book, since I’d have to put the book down sooner or later, whereas the puzzle will only take a few minutes.

I’m still an avid reader and a keen knitter, but I’m also hooked on the satisfaction I feel when I manage to solve a particularly fiendish puzzle, especially when I can do it with as few written notes as possible. I think of it as exercise for the brain, which, given my advancing years, is as important as exercise for the body, or at least that’s my excuse. Now where did I put that pencil?

Image via Wylio

What is it about Prague?

2011-10-19T21:32:00.127+01:00

Since my return I’ve been pondering just why Prague has so captured my heart and my imagination during my two relatively short visits. It doesn’t have for me the special religious and spiritual attraction of Assisi, though I have found worshipping at Saint Clement’s deeply satisfying. Neither does it have the profound personal significance of Oxford, where I studied and grew up and fell in love.

Yet Prague shares many of the characteristics which make both Oxford and Assisi so unforgettable. It is ancient and historic and quite extraordinarily beautiful. Its most significant buildings have somehow survived the ravages of time, natural disaster and human conflict and neglect and today, skilfully preserved or restored, they provide a memorable illustration of a thousand years of architectural innovation and genius.

St George's Basilica - C12th Romanesque

Tiny side-street church in the New Town

The Old-New Synagogue - C12th Gothic

Modernist house on the Baba Model Housing Estate 1932

Like Assisi and Oxford, Prague has an importance which stretches far beyond national boundaries, as is shown by the visitors from every part of the world who throng its historic streets. However, unlike them Prague is a capital city, the seat of government for a nation now making its way in the modern world after the isolation and stagnation of almost half a century of communist rule.

Government building, Prague Castle

Embassy in the Little Quarter

Though its beauty and sense of history are a big part of what fascinates me about Prague, another factor is that it is a city on a human scale. Despite being far larger than Assisi or even Oxford, its historic centre still lends itself to being explored comfortably and pleasurably on foot and alone. It divides very neatly into four main areas – the Old Town, the New Town, the Jewish Quarter and, across the Charles Bridge, the Little Quarter (Mala Strana) and Prague Castle. Each of these has its own distinct personality and a plethora of sites to visit and admire.

Old Town Square

Crowded gravestones in the old Jewish Cemetery

Architecture and trees in the New Town

The ubiquitous tram

In addition, if you want to venture beyond the main tourist haunts, Prague makes it easy by being the proud possessor of an extremely efficient and cheap integrated public transport system. Even a country bumpkin like me had no difficulty whatever in hopping on and off the very regular and frequent trams, buses and metro trains to get to wherever I wanted to go. With their aid and armed with comfortable shoes and a good city guide and map, the whole of Prague is your easily opened oyster.

But Prague is more than simply its historic buildings, however beautiful and numerous they are. It is also a wonderfully green city, full of tree-lined streets and squares, and with a wide variety of lovely parks and public gardens, large and small. This makes it surprisingly easy to move from bustling, crowded streets to find oneself almost or even totally alone in a green space or a tiny, winding lane.

Kampa Park, Little Quarter

The village in the city

C14th Michle Madonna - St Agnes Convent

And when you are tired of discovering the streets and buildings or strolling through the parks, you can explore the superb art-galleries and museums, or go to one of the many concerts which are such a feature of Prague life, or simply sit with a coffee or some great (and cheap) Czech beer and watch the world go by.

Anyone who reads my blog is likely to have spotted that I am a country girl at heart. I have visited a fair number of cities and lived in a couple for short periods when I was young, but I could never imagine myself actually living happily in a city until I visited Prague. If any city could change this country mouse into a town mouse, it would be Prague. I don’t think it will happen, but it’s interesting to realise that the little nugget of potential is there. J

Watch this space

2011-10-11T15:15:00.002+01:00

After an interestingly rollercoaster landing at Heathrow yesterday, thanks to the strong and gusty wind, I’m back on home ground with my mind absolutely buzzing with new impressions and happy memories. Just give me time to unpack, do the washing and download the new photos and I’ll try to make sense of it all and begin to share it with you. Until then a few more images of this wonderful city of Prague.

Our Lady of Tyn

Kampa Island - the Venice of Prague

Prague Castle in autumn mist

Have cassock, will travel

2011-09-16T22:54:00.007+01:00

When I was first ordained deacon twenty-three years ago, I would never have guessed how life was going to open up before me. I was still working full-time as a librarian back then and my work as an unpaid curate had to be fitted into the gaps. Fast forward almost nine years to my longed-for and long-worked-for ordination to the priesthood in January 1997 and my life was about to take another unexpected turn.

Within a fortnight of that unforgettable day, I had been asked to consider, and had accepted, the offer of voluntary redundancy and early retirement from my post as Area Librarian. Six months later I was officiating at DD’s wedding as a lady of leisure, but that happy state of affairs wasn’t destined to last very long. First I was asked to take on a diocesan responsibility (part-time and unpaid) and a couple of years later, after my first cancer diagnosis and treatment, I finally went into full-time parish ministry and became a vicar.

Six very happy years and two parish posts later, my second encounter with cancer led to my second attempt at retirement and this one finally succeeded. DH and I came back to our house in the hills of Mid-Wales and gradually settled into our unusual roving retirement. However, this doesn’t mean that I have hung up my cassock completely and when asked I still enjoy filling in when local clergy are on holiday. What I could never have anticipated was that being asked to provide cover when a priest needs a holiday might involve me too in packing a suitcase and flying off to foreign climes.

Saint Clement's Church

But that is exactly what has happened, thanks to my former rector and colleague in my final post being appointed as Anglican Chaplain to the English-speaking congregation based at Saint Clement's Church in Prague. His name is Ricky Yates and he writes a very interesting and informative blog about Prague itself and his life and experiences as chaplain there. He and his wife also like to go on holiday from time to time, and last autumn I was lucky enough to be asked to act as his locum chaplain for two wonderful weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting his amazingly international (and interdenominational) congregation and almost wore my shoes out exploring Prague on foot in my spare time.

Before I came home last year, we arranged that I would return this autumn for another stint as locum chaplain, which is why, next Thursday, I will be flying to Prague, this time for three Sundays. As you can imagine, I’m looking forward to it enormously. Since we got back from Normandy last week, I’ve been busy unpacking and getting the house sorted out. On top of this I’ve also been up to my eyes in preparation for the work I will be doing as chaplain, hence the continuing absence of new posts for those of you who faithfully pop in to see whether I’ve got round to updating my blog. J

Sadly, I won’t be able to blog properly from Prague, or at least not with photos, but I can promise you more than a glimpse of this most beautiful of cities once I’m safely back in Wales. Saint Francis and Assisi haven’t been forgotten either and will have their turn, now that the beguilingly long, light evenings of summer are only a memory and autumn is truly here.

Prague riverbank

Saint Vitus' Cathedral

Vltava River

Summer’s end

2011-08-30T22:27:00.004+01:00

Before supper this evening DH and I were sitting at our somewhat shabby garden table on the grass in front of the house, enjoying a drink and the slightly hazy sunshine. The grass (or rather the mixture of grass, clover and plantain, which normally passes for a lawn in our part of Normandy) was newly-mown after my exertions earlier in the afternoon, and we were enjoying its scent and the sound of the birds. A lovely summer’s evening after the damp and even thundery evenings we have had recently and one of the last we have to enjoy before our return to the

next week.

Yet it doesn’t really seem like summer any more. I know it’s still August, but somehow it feels as though autumn has come early this year, just as spring did. The grass around the cherry trees is already patterned with early-fallen leaves and the espaliered pear tree on the front wall of the house is laden with more and bigger pears than we have ever seen on it. Granted they are rock-hard and only edible after long simmering, but they are so large that they are starting to fall already, as are the apples, both eating and cider. Just like the grape harvest further south, the apple harvest is early this year and it is a bumper one. Suddenly autumn tasks are invading the last days of summer.

As I was making the soup for supper, I looked out of our north-west-facing kitchen window and realised that the sun was setting behind the apple tree to the left, rather than over the field ahead, a sure sign of the days drawing in. So summer is ending and what a varied summer it has been.

A summer of a lot more rain and a lot less sun than we would have wished, yet the result is a bigger crop of fruit than I can ever remember seeing. A summer of visitors, whose visits, luckily for them, coincided with the best of our weather. A summer of quiet, rainy days at home with just the two of us, interspersed with strenuous bursts of activity in the garden when the weather allowed.

A summer of catching up with friends whom we only see here, of weekly meetings of the local craft group, where I’ve done a lot of chatting and even a fair amount of knitting. A summer of watching our litter of feral kittens grow and become more adventurous and self-reliant and gradually a little less wary of us. A summer in Normandy, like and yet unlike the ones which have preceded it.

And now, like the swallows, we are preparing to depart, though in our case we’ll be heading north, not south. Tomorrow, before the rain returns later in the week, we’ll be picking apples to take home with us, apples which will see us through the winter. Then will come the packing and the goodbyes and the tugging up of the little roots which we always manage to put down during each of our summers here. This time next week we will be back in Wales, sorry to leave Normandy, yet glad to be home again for a while, before setting off on the next episode in our peripatetic retirement.

Gosh – August already!

2011-08-07T17:26:00.002+01:00

Help, where has July gone? Life has been so busy lately, what with gardening (between the downpours) visitors, our local fête communale last weekend (for which the sun shone!!) and now having Grandson#3 to stay for a week all by himself for the first time, that time for blogging, or even just reading my favourite blogs, is practically non-existent. So while he is happily chortling at Wallace and Gromit with DH, here is a quick sign of life from the Transit household and a promise to catch up with you all as soon as time permits.

For the cat-lovers out there I’m happy to be able to report that all four kittens are well and growing rapidly, though we very rarely see them all together and sometimes don’t see any of them for days. We were extremely surprised and relieved when the tortoiseshell kitten reappeared after so long. She has turned into a real beauty, with striking, black-rimmed eyes reminiscent of a silent film star at her most sultry (eat your heart out, Theda Bara…) but, like her siblings, is still ready to turn tail and hide if we come too near.

For art-lovers I have other news, and that is that we now have two lovely small watercolour paintings of our French house and the kittens’ woodshed, thanks to my next-to-youngest sister, who came with her husband on a visit over the fête weekend. On their last afternoon she sat out in the garden with her paints to capture her vision of them, which I’d like to share with you. So, until next time, here is our small corner of Normandy as seen through the eye of an artist. If you look carefully, you may even see the kittens. J

Echoes of conflict

2011-07-21T19:52:00.007+01:00

Looking out of our living-room window at the peaceful pastoral scene beyond the garden, it's almost impossible to imagine how very different things were in this corner of Normandy nearly 70 years ago. One of the enduring fascinations of spending part of every year here is discovering the history of the place and, in particular, learning how these peaceful fields and hills and villages were so viciously fought-over in the struggle for the freedom of Europe.

It’s ironic in some ways that I, who so love ancient buildings with their profound atmosphere of history, should end up buying a cottage in an area where many (if not most) of the buildings in the little towns and villages post-date World War 2, being built to replace those which were bombed and shelled into rubble during the fighting. Even our own little house had to be partially rebuilt, after being hit by a shell in a tank battle during the German counter-attack in August 1944.

I can tell you that it is deeply sobering to pick up and browse an academic study of the campaign and see how many references there are to the battle that raged for days through our small village, as the American forces struggled to contain the German Panzer offensive. It is even more sobering to visit the war memorial in the graveyard which surrounds the rebuilt church and see how many civilians from the village’s tiny population are listed alongside those who fell in battle.

The old church in the early 20th century

Drawing of the rebuilt church

On Wednesdays we often go to the big weekly market at the nearby town of Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët. With a population of about 5000 it’s one of the largest of the market towns in this sparsely-populated area, though by English standards it's little more than a large village. Yet because of its strategic position on a crossroads between important north-south and east-west roads, the centre of this small town was virtually destroyed in a single night, when on June 14^th 1944 the Americans bombed it as part of the Allied effort to disrupt road and rail links and prevent the enemy bringing more supplies and troops to the front. The same story can be told of other neighbouring small towns like Mortain and Sourdeval, both of which suffered immense damage in a very short space of time.

Aerial view of Saint-Hilaire after the bombing

Saint-Hilaire church today

Our shelves are gradually accumulating a collection of books and pamphlets portraying both the violence and complexity of the conflict and the huge damage it inflicted on people and buildings. To browse the old photos of places we know well and see how much has been lost, and how much painstakingly reconstructed, deepens our affection for an area which seems more like home all the time.

To talk to our French neighbours who experienced the war, or who heard their parents describe their experiences, brings home to us that history in our part of southern Normandy isn’t to be found so much in ancient buildings (though some do survive) as in the memories of those who lived through it all and in what they so laboriously rebuilt from the ruins of their homes and their past history.

The war may have ended before I was born, but in Normandy there is still a deep awareness and respect for what was endured, both by those who lived here and those who fought, and often died, to liberate them. The echoes of conflict are still very audible to those who listen for them.

Kittens in the woodshed

2011-07-16T19:21:00.012+01:00

Last Thursday was Bastille Day here in France, and after all the rain earlier in the week the sun was kind enough to put in an appearance for us. With it being a holiday I couldn’t disturb our neighbours' peace by mowing the grass, so decided just to do some tidying-up around the garden and enjoy the welcome sunshine.

We’d seen nothing of the kittens in the woodshed for days – hardly surprising, really, given how wet it’s been – so it was lovely to go round the corner of the house and see a small pair of ears sticking up out of a hollow in the woodpile.

As quietly as possible I dashed back into the house for the camera and spent the next few minutes gently edging as close as I could to the woodshed without alarming the owner of the ears. Finally I got close enough to see that there were in fact three pairs of ears, but sadly no sign of the fourth, which had belonged to a very pretty tortoiseshell and white kitten. It’s a hard world for feral kittens and we don’t think she’s made it this far.

They’ve grown a lot in the two weeks since we first spotted them, though they’re still being fed by their thin and frazzled-looking mother, who has now also started bringing them solid food to try. After they had been fed that evening, the kittens began to venture out and play in the grass near the woodshed. Unfortunately we were watching them through the window of the downstairs shower-room and it isn’t easy trying to take photos through the slats of a venetian blind, but I did my best.

If we were here permanently, I would be sorely tempted to try to tame these three little darlings, but as we’re not, I don’t feel I can interfere. All we can do is to leave them to be cared for and taught by their semi-wild mother and quietly admire them from a distance for their amazing beauty, grace and agility. Me, a cat-lover? Perish the thought. J

The Seven Links Project

2011-07-10T21:00:00.007+01:00

I was quietly browsing Google Reader with my coffee this morning, when I almost fell off my chair to find that Karen at Being Koy had nominated me for the Seven Links Project, which was started recently by Katie at Trip Base.

The aim (in Katie’s words) “is to unite bloggers (from all sectors) in a joint endeavour to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again”.

It gives the nominated bloggers a reason to look back over their output and, without too much agonising, to choose certain posts which they feel are worth highlighting. Once I recovered from the shock, I enjoyed reflecting over my as-yet limited list of posts and making my choice.

The rules are simple:

1. The Blogger is nominated to take part by another blogger
2. He/she publishes their 7 links on their own blog. One link for each category.
3. He/she nominates up to five more bloggers to take part.

The categories are very varied:

My most beautiful post The day I fell in love

This post took me back to a turning-point in my youth and I enormously enjoyed writing it. Though I always try to write as well as I can, I found the words flowed particularly easily and did what I wanted them to, in terms of evoking that long-ago experience and its life-changing significance for me.

My most popular post It really depends what you mean by popular. J

In terms of page-views, as measured by the not-always-reliable Blogger Stats, it is without doubt Where did the years go? which was written on our daughter’s fortieth birthday and was also a contender for Most Beautiful Post for very much the same reasons I give above.

In terms of comments it has to be A sentimental old fool which started as a bit of fun, but really seemed to strike a chord with my readers.

My most controversial post As my family could tell you, I don’t do controversy any more, at least not deliberately and in public, but Lessons for life (see below) deals with difficult subjects, as does A milestone birthday.

My most helpful post A tree for all seasons

(at least for people googling for photos of a tree (ash or not) year-round J As I don’t write an advice or information blog, this wasn’t easy, but the number of times a Google search has led people to this post leads me to hope that a few of them found it helpful, or at least mildly interesting.

A post whose success surprises me I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills

This is one of my earliest posts and the first to which I managed to add photos. It is simply a reflection on how my life has always been lived among hills and I hadn’t anticipated how much this would appeal to others or how many page-views it would get.

A post I feel didn’t get the attention it deserved Images

I didn't find this category very easy either, as I’m reluctant, not to say unable, to judge how much attention anything I write really deserves. However, in the spirit of the project, I mention this post. It was written at the time when coverage of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami was filling the news media daily, so my small reflection on the human cost of this catastrophe went almost unnoticed.

The post I am most proud of Lessons for life

This is another post reflecting on a significant time in my youth, in this case when, as a student of German, I worked for a few months as a ward orderly in a care home in Hamburg in the mid-1960s. I spent a long time on this post, trying to sum up what this experience had meant to me by remembering three women I had cared for and something of their stories, and feel I succeeded better than I could ever have hoped.

I realise I've snuck in an extra link, but trust I won't be excommunicated for one small sin....

5 bloggers

Among so many great bloggers it’s hard to pick just 5 to share something of their blog and their thoughts on blogging, but here is my list of nominees:

Wylye Girl @ The River Cottage Diaries who gave me my very first blog-roll spot when I was just starting out – thanks, Wylye Girl. J

The Broad @ ABroad with a View

Rosie @ A Year down the Line

DB @ Dancing Beastie

David @ The Vernacular Curate (from whose blog I garnered a lot of useful advice about blogging)

Image via Wylio

Rain, rain go away…

2011-07-09T16:35:00.004+01:00

….but if it doesn’t, there are always books. Since DH’s mother went home on Tuesday morning, we haven’t had a day without rain, often rather a lot of rain, so the garden is still far too sodden for me to work outside. Of course there is always knitting to do and Assisi to ponder, in the gaps between the usual chores and my daily French language practice of listening to the radio or reading the local paper, but wet weather is when books really come into their own for me.

We’re getting quite a good collection in our French house now, and by the time I’ve read them all I should have forgotten the earliest ones and be able to start all over again. Quite how permanent English-speaking residents of

France

satisfy their craving for reading matter without bankrupting themselves I’m not sure, but we manage very well for our three summer months here.

At the bottom of my just-read pile is Maxwell's Reunion by M J Trow, followed by Wild About The Boy by Dolores Gordon-Smith, an enjoyable mystery in the Agatha Christie/Margery Allingham mould. Set in 1920s

Britain

, its likeable hero is a mystery writer turned amateur detective and its portrayal of the period is shot through with a deep awareness of the dark shadow cast by the First World War.

About to join that pile is something quite different and I have to thank The Broad at ABroad with a View for the recommendation. It’s Pass The Polenta by Teresa Lust and consists of a series of truly wonderful essays on food and the memories it evokes. I’ve revelled in the author’s passion for her subject and found it engaging, touching, funny and mouth-watering in turn. Definitely one to reread in the future.

Alongside that I’ve just this morning started A Letter of Mary, the third of the wonderful Mary Russell mysteries by Laurie King. Starting from the premise made in the first of the series, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, of the unlikely, yet completely believable, encounter between an elderly Sherlock Holmes and a young woman graduate student, the books describe the growing relationship between them and the intricate cases they undertake. This is really excellent writing: densely plotted, intelligently and beautifully written, with strongly-drawn characters and a gripping atmosphere of mystery and undefined threat.

With books like that to lose myself in, I may not even notice when the sun comes out again. All I need now are your suggestions as to what to read once my pile is finished….

Image via Wylio

A city set on a hill

2011-07-07T18:51:00.040+01:00

A saint and his setting
Part 1: A child grows up

On a grey, wet and windy day in Normandy, with gardening out of the question, what could be more enjoyable than to bask (at least in memory) in the hot sunshine of Italy and think back over our pilgrimage to Assisi. Not that the sun always shines there, but as it happens I've been fortunate with the weather on all my visits, so that my indelible image of Assisi is of white or pink or golden limestone, glowing against the bluest of skies.

I’ve been fascinated by Francis, both his life and his writings, for some years now and it is this, as much as the beauty of Assisi or the warmth of the Italian sunshine, which keeps drawing me back to the place where he lived.

The sun must have shone just as often and as warmly in the Assisi of the late twelfth century. It was there, in 1181 or 82, that a baby boy was born to Pietro Bernadone, a wealthy cloth merchant of the town, and his French wife, Pica.

Image via Wikipedia

Pietro was away on a journey to France at the time of his son’s birth and his deeply religious wife had her child baptised Giovanni, in honour of Saint John the Baptist. This didn’t please Pietro, however, and on his return he renamed his son "Francesco" the little "Frenchman", perhaps because of his wife’s nationality, or his own love of

France

The house where Francesco or Francis was born no longer exists, though traces can still be seen in the fabric of the church which was later built over his childhood home. However the cathedral of San Rufino, in whose font he was baptised, still stands proudly in upper Assisi, looking, from the outside at least, much as it must have done when baby Francis was taken there over 800 years ago.

Chiesa Nuova - Image via Wikipedia

San Rufino

Centuries after Francis’ death and rapid canonisation, the pious belief grew up that, like the Jesus he had spent his adult life following so closely, Francis too had been born in a stable, in his case the stable of his family home. Today, one can visit a tiny, windowless, mediaeval chapel, close to the site of his parents’ house, which legend says was created from that same stable.

Francis, cushioned by his comfortable and financially secure home, grew up to be a popular and carefree, even wild young man, much given to throwing parties for his friends and having a good time. However, the Italy in which he was growing up was politically much less secure and stable, as rapid social change undermined the feudal order.

In 1198 or 99 the people of Assisi attacked and destroyed the Roccas, the feudal castles, which in their rebuilt form still dominate Assisi. The nobles who had lived there fled to Perugia, another hill town less than 15 miles away across the valley, and soon war broke out between Assisi and Perugia.

Francis, like many of his contemporaries, went off to fight for Assisi against her enemy. In 1202, at the age of about 20, he was captured and spent a year in prison in Perugia, but the experience seems not to have affected him too deeply, for, once released and back in Assisi, he continued his carefree and often expensive life. All this changed in 1204, when Francis became gravely ill and, as he slowly recovered, began for the first time to think seriously about his life.

Spoleto - Image via Wikipedia

The following year he left his home and his father’s business to fulfil his ambition to be a soldier and perhaps achieve knighthood. Travelling to join his lord, who was on his way to fight in the Fourth Crusade, Francis stopped at Spoleto, another ancient hill town above the Tiber valley. Here, it is said, he saw a vision and at once turned back towards home, convinced that whatever God wanted him to do with his life, it would be in Assisi.

To be continued…

Normal service will be resumed shortly

2011-07-02T22:07:00.001+01:00

For the first time since I started blogging back in February, I’ve discovered that sometimes life just takes over and blogging has to take a back seat for a while.

In the three weeks since I last posted, we’ve arrived in Normandy, evicted the spiders and reminded ourselves how the wood burner works. In fact it was so cold and wet when we got here that we checked the calendar to make sure it really was mid-June and not mid-March. Since then we’ve been settling in, meeting up with friends we haven’t seen since last year and enjoying having DH’s mother staying with us for her annual visit to

France

As soon as the rain stopped and things started to dry off, I also found myself expending considerable time and effort mowing the hayfield which was threatening to engulf the house. Actually, mowing the grass is one of the jobs I really enjoy here – fresh air, healthy exercise and the illusion that I’m creating a lawn out of a patch of bumpy and overgrown orchard. Meanwhile, my doughty, 87-year-old mother-in-law has been busy digging out a narrow flower border along the front wall of the house, which we have today planted out with lavender and calendula and London Pride.

Talking of orchards, I’ve also been enjoying another of my favourite occupations this week. At the local gardening club on Tuesday I was given an unexpected, but very welcome, invitation to help myself to a friend’s remaining raspberries and blackcurrants, as she’d already picked all they could possibly use. This meant of course that I had to spend the next day turning them into jam, with the aid of my trusty, travelling jam pan. Stop laughing over there – you should know that there are some things one simply can’t leave behind for three months – especially in summer.

So nothing exciting, but all very pleasant, and absorbing enough to leave me with very little thinking time. Assisi isn’t forgotten, but will just have to wait a little longer. Oh – and there are cherries to pick and kittens in the woodshed to watch….

A small cottage in Normandy

2011-06-11T22:30:00.008+01:00

Events have rather overtaken me since DD and her husband took the grandsons home last Sunday, and the thinking time I was hoping to have, to reflect properly on our pilgrimage to Assisi, has disappeared without trace. I haven’t forgotten my promise, but it will have to wait a few more days, I’m afraid. This is partly because DH and I are gearing up for our annual visit to France, to southern Manche in Normandy to be precise, close to the border with Brittany.

One fateful Sunday afternoon, at the end of the last millennium, I happened to read an article in that day’s newspaper which turned out to have seriously far-reaching consequences for DH and me. It was about the growing number of British people who were snapping up houses in rural France at bargain prices, such bargain prices that it looked like this might even be a possibility for us too. I started to daydream about holidays in France in our own little cottage, though I must admit that DH’s eyebrows were very sceptically raised at that point.

As I have described elsewhere, he tried very hard to dissuade me and even bought a tiny campervan as a substitute. That worked for a few months, but, as it turned out, the second long trip we had in it was the following year, during a cold, wet and windy week in February. DH had surrendered and we were on a house-hunting expedition to southern Normandy. Not only was the ferry crossing cheaper at that time of year, but we reasoned that if we liked a place under those conditions, we would love it in summer.

During that week we looked at an interesting collection of houses, some habitable, but extremely small (our budget being equally miniscule) and some not much more than four walls and a roof. Then we struck gold.

In a small market town we went into the local estate agent’s office, to say that we had changed our minds about the house he was due to show us and did he have any others within our budget. He had two, one impossible and one which we knew, as soon as we saw it, could be the one for us.

The house when we bought it (estate agent's photo)

It was small, but not too small. It was totally unmodernised, but had recently had a new roof, the old one having been blown off in the great storm which ravaged much of western France in December 1999. Best of all, it sat squarely in its good-sized patch of ground and was affordable. We knew we would have an awful lot to do to make it properly habitable, but that didn’t matter.

After a long evening’s discussion in the campervan, we went back first thing next morning to see the estate agent and by the end of that day we had signed the compromis de vente, the promise to buy which is the first part of the French system of house purchase.

That was eight years ago and the house still isn’t finished. But it is now habitable, and since my retirement 4 years ago we have spent every summer there, among the gentle, rolling, green hills of this beautiful and deeply rural corner of France. This time next week we will be there once again, clearing away the cobwebs and chasing out the spiders, and deciding which room we’re going to tackle this summer. But it won’t be all work and I’ll have plenty of time to blog or knit or just sit and talk. Watch this space…

Summer 2010 7 years on - a work still in progress

Beauty right under my nose

2011-06-05T20:30:00.020+01:00

Today the grandsons went home after a really enjoyable visit (for us, and hopefully for them) and I’m now recovering with a nice pot of tea and a gentle browse through the photos we’ve taken this week. After the rain-sodden Bank Holiday weekend the weather improved rapidly and we were able to go out to show them the Mid-Wales countryside, so different from their home area in the flat plain of the southern Vale of York.

On Thursday afternoon, while I was otherwise engaged, DH took them to visit the wind-farm on the hills across the valley from us. Mid-Wales is home to an increasing number of wind-farms, and the rate of growth is proving to be more than a little controversial. For what it’s worth, DH and I don’t have a problem with this, but I realise it isn’t a view shared by everyone.

This particular wind-farm is one of the longest-established in the area, and when it was opened in 1993, it was the largest in Europe. By today’s standards, however, its output is modest and it is due to be rebuilt, but the present turbines still managed to awe our two talkative grandsons into silence.

On Saturday, after we had been joined by DD and her husband, we went to visit one of my favourite local beauty-spots, in the heart of the Hafren Forest. The forest takes its name from Afon Hafren (River Severn) which rises less than a mile outside its western boundary, high on the slopes of Pumlumon, the highest mountain in Mid-Wales.

After our picnic lunch we went for a wonderful walk alongside the infant Severn, which at this point on its journey to the sea tumbles over a series of small, rocky waterfalls, known as the Cascades.

Years ago the Forestry Commission installed a board-walk along the boggy river-bank, to enable even those with limited mobility to enjoy this extraordinarily beautiful spot, as well as waymarking a series of walks through the forest to satisfy all levels of energy and fitness.

DH and I contented ourselves with a modest stroll, and while DD and her family went off for something a little more strenuous, we walked back to the boardwalk to sit by the river and contemplate the beauty to be found so very close to home.

Once I've tidied up after the visit and gathered my thoughts, I will share more of my trip to Assisi with you, but until then there is something eternally restful and constant about the ever-changing flow of a river.

The Big Birthday trip

2011-05-30T10:31:00.011+01:00

As I sit here on this rainy Bank Holiday Monday, my mind goes back to the very different weather I was enjoying this time last week. DD and I were in Italy, on our long-planned Big Birthday trip to celebrate her 40th birthday and my 65th, and we were revelling in cloudless blue skies and 30 degree temperatures. However, contrary to what you might expect from a mother-daughter holiday, we were neither sunning ourselves on the beach nor hitting the Italian shops for the latest fashions.

Instead we were exploring, with ever-increasing fascination, the narrow, winding streets, ancient churches and other wonderful buildings of one of the most beautiful and best-preserved small mediaeval towns in Italy – Assisi. We were on a 4-day pilgrimage to the town forever associated with Saint Francis, and it was an unforgettable experience.

As yet it is an experience I haven’t had chance to reflect on, as within two days of my return home, Grandsons #1 and 2 arrived to spend half-term with us. They do so at this time every year, and, as always, spare time flies out of the window until they go home again. So until then I will leave you with a few tantalising glimpses of another of my very special places.

The ever-climbing street

In the Piazza Communale

Basilica of San Francesco

Cathedral of San Rufino and (left) the birthplace of Saint Clare

Underneath the arches