Happy Birthday, Ted!

Dru has written a poem for Ted, who is five today:

To Ted on his birthday

I hope your birthday brings you

A cowpat nice and wet:

Some extra smelly fox poo;

No visit to the vet;

Much illicit snaffling

Of someone else's dinner;

Not too much that's baffling

For a hairy piebald sinner.

Dru Marland

Ted really likes it apart from the sinner bit.   And the waiting around to sample the cake.

Hurry up!

It's my birthday, not his!

If I stare long enough, it will gravitate into my mouth ... 

Carping the Diem in Lullington

So, in the spirit of seizing the fish, when I found myself on the Wiltshire/Somerset border this afternoon, with an hour to spare between dropping Son the Elder off in Dilton Marsh and being due at potter Jan Lane's house to help her with some technolologickal stuff, I decided to return to Lullington - top of my list of places, some of which I absolutely finally need to get to round to visiting this year - in the hope of getting into the church.  

The Church of All Saints, Lullington, dates from the 12th century and is famed for its Norman carvings.  You might call these grotesques 'gargoyles', but in Somerset a distinction is made between carvings that serve a purpose and those that are purely decorative, hence they are 'hunky punks'.  

Externally, however, this is the gem - the spectacular North Door.  

Here it is in context ... 

... topped by a niche containing a sculpture of Christ in Majesty.  

All this I had seen before. With luck today I would have time to find the keyholder and get inside.  

Gentle reader, I didn't even have to do that.  There was a car parked just outside the church, the door was open and a prospective bride and groom were being shown around by one of the parishioners. I slipped inside, rejoicing, to find this wonderfully wonky arch of Norman stonework which, at some point, metamorphosed into Gothickery.  

And see how beautifully lit it is ... from light into the darkness of Choir into the light of the Chancel. 

Here's a closer look at the crossing capitals, featuring two wyvern-type creatures with human heads and a green man ...

 ... and something I've seen described as an ox with two bodies and one head, though they appear to me to have rather leonine feet and tails, and a pair of birds, perhaps, preening each other.

More very well-preserved carvings ...

... including a head reputed to be that of King Edward I ... 

... and glorious stained glass light.

I loved this rather more modern Arts and Crafts memorial.

I adored the painted organ pipes.

Oh but the best thing of all, inside and out, is the deservedly famous font - early Norman (c11th century), with interlinked arches under a frieze of flowers, and inscribed with the motto 'Hoc Fontis Sacro Peveunt Delicta Lavacro' - 'in this holy font sins perish and are washed away'.  (Still not sure how a baby can be said to have sinned, but there you go.)  

Above the inscription is another frieze of 'green cats', which, it is believed, were supposed to be lions but which were carved by stonemasons who'd never seen the real thing - a bit like the Elephant and Castle in Chester Cathedral.   

And finally some snowdrops to cheer me on my way. Forget winter ... spring is coming.  

'Grwyne Fawr' - Another Poem from Inking Bitterns

This is me reading the first part of my three-part poem, 'Speaking Raven'. It was inspired by a visit to Patrishow in the Black Mountains last January, when my fellow-travellers and I saw two ravens flying high overhead.  Their conversation carried all the way down to us on the still, cold air.    



'Grwyne Fawr' was recently published in Dru Marland's illustrated anthology, 'Inking Bitterns' - a book of poems and pictures for wild places, published in association with Poetry Can, and available from Gert Macky books and good independent bookshops, price £5.  It will also appear with its constituent parts in my forthcoming collection, 'Map Reading for Beginners', which is due to be published by Indigo Dreams later this year.  

Illustration of Patrishow by Dru Marland

Beauty and the Beast

Rain. We've had a lot over Bristol lately, falling  in frequent, heavy showers.  

One advantage are the beautiful, painterly skies.  If they were as rare as eclipses, even God would stop to watch.  




The following photos were taken on Purdown on Friday:

And these were taken on the Downs today:

The disadvantage of so much rain is mud, and Ted mistaking himself for a hippopotamus.

'Whaaaaaat?'  

To Hetty Pegler's Tump and Selsley

Dru was off to release a few Inking Bitterns into the wilds of Gloucestershire and did I want to come too? I said I could spare a morning (with Ted in tow) and she agreed that was all it would take, so off we went.

First stop Thornbury, where Dru snapped up a copy of 'Biggles Gets His Men' in a charity shop, then Berkeley (where there are no bookshops but a soon-to-close newsagents and a pharmacy in the former pub), followed by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge.
    
We also hoped to pop into the church with its graceful spire but it was locked.  The churchyard was interesting, though,  if swampy. In contrast to the elegance of the architecture, there were some very thuggish cherubs.  I suspect they are bouncers at the Pearly Gates.

Then it was off to Hetty Pegler's Tump, the Neolithic Long Barrow at Uley, just outside Dursley.  The mound is named after Hester, wife of the the 17th century owner of the field, who died in 1694.  

We took the scenic route to the tump, which led past a quarry in the wood.  

It was pretty rainy and the ground was sodden and slippy, but the colour and geometry of rock and trees made up for that.  

Back up on the road we found ourselves in cloud, but the skies were clearing from the west and by the time we reached the tump, the day was brightening.

Is it my imagination or is there an oval, Paul Klee-esque face staring out of the stone lintel?

The entrance being much smaller than the one at Stoney Littleton - or me possibly being rather fatter - I didn't attempt to squeeze through it, but this is what it looks like inside.  

View across to the River Severn

En route to Nailsworth to drop off some books in the Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, we saw a sign for Selsley, a small village outside Stroud with a remarkable Arts and Crafts Church, and as Dru had yet to visit it, we made a brief detour.  

Look, isn't it stunning, seen through the Lych Gate with attendant jackdaws?








The last of the great Cotswold wool churches. 

Selsey's chief treasure is its windows, which date from 1862 and are the only complete set designed by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.  

This is one of my favourites - another Ascension, like the mediaeval window at Fairford and the stone carving in Wells Cathedral.  

And this is the beautiful West window.

There were lots of lovely Arts and Crafts touches - the delicately carved screen around the Lady Chapel, the capitals on the (rather ugly marble) columns, the altarcloth and pulpit hanging, but I'm sticking with the windows for now. 

In the churchyard, some of the more modern headstones were reminiscent of those at Mells and Partrishow.  This one is engraved with a few lines from 'Parting' by Jorge Luis Borges.

Back at the car, Ted was twiddling his paws so we let him drive us home via Nailsworth and Wotton-under-Edge (whose bookshop, unfortunately, was closed), returning somewhat later than planned ... but what a cracking day out.