A Quest for Words!

ell, I'm back, still musing on Life, the Universe and everything, with a brief post to mark the fact that today’s Saint is Quiricus, who was only three years old when he was beaten to death by the Romans while his mother Julitta was forced to watch. Then she too was killed for being a Christian. Alas, I can tell you nothing more, since facts about this sad little tale are few and far between. I only chose him because there are not many saints whose names start with the letter Q. Come to that, how many people do you know whose names begin with Q? 

Anyway, let us remember him by looking at the Q page from Mike Wilks’ The Ultimate Alphabet, and see how many Q words we can find. You will, of course,  note that everything is quadrupled. And I've tried to keep the theme going with a decorative initial letter composed of quadrilateral shapes (thanks to http://www.dailydropcap.com/).

New Beginnings

Bust of the Roman God Janus, from the Vatican Museum. 

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

‘Tis the First of January, the month named after the Roman God Janus, who had two heads (back to back) and was therefore able to look backwards and forwards at the same time, to the past and the future. He was the Guardian of Gates and Doors, Custodian of the Universe, and the God of Beginnings. Presumably that’s why our New Year has become a time for reflecting on the year that’s gone, and considering what lies ahead over the next 12 months – and it offers the chance for us to make amends for past mistakes, and create ourselves anew as better, happier people.

And that, of course, is what all those New Year’s Resolutions are about. My main aim this year is to try and get fitter by eating more sensibly (which means no snacking between meals) and walking for at least 20 minutes every day. I even have a pedometer which, alas, is not as accurate as it should be, to keep track of how far I walk, and how long it takes.

So, accompanied by the Man of the House, I marked New Year’s Day with the first walk of the year, a 40-minute stroll down the road, through a park, and back up another road in a huge circle. Downhill, on the first leg of our walk, we had the wind in our faces, which was bracing to say the least, but the wind was behind us on the final uphill section, and fairly blew us back home. According to the pedometer we covered two-and-a-half kilometres, but I’ve been counting the number of steps I take, and checking the figure recorded on the pedometer, and the two do not match up at all, so we checked the route online and reckon it was roughly two-and-a-half miles.

Day One of my Keep Fit Campaign is almost over, and I feel very pleased with myself – but there’s 364 days to go until the end of the year! 

Count-down to Christmas!

oday (or what's left of it) is the feast of Saint Eligius, who is also known as St Eloy or St Loye, and is the patron saint of goldsmiths, which seems highly suitable during the run-up to Christmas, especially when you consider that gold was one of the gifts present to Jesus by the Three Kings.

Apparently Eligius, who died in the 7th century, was a skilled goldsmith who became counsellor to the French king, but established churches and monasteries, helped the poor, carried out missionary work, and eventually became a bishop.

December, from Jean, duc du Berry's
Book of Hours.

Celebrating with real gold is a little tricky, but there are masses of golden coloured Christmas baubles and tinsel around at the moment, so it should be easy to mark his day with a bit of glitter and sparkle, and burning a golden candle would add a festive touch. And I guess it won't matter if you celebrate a little late!

Anway, It's the First of December, the year is almost at an end, and the final count-down to Christmas is under way, so I'm launching a seasonal celebration. Last year I celebrated with 'Adfest' over on my other blog (The Book Trunk), a kind of month-long Advent Festival where I looked at my favourite literary representations of Christmas. This year I'm marking the occasion here, on my original blog, by trying to find out a little bit about some of our seasonal customs.

December, as I'm sure most of you know, is so called because it was the tenth month of the old Roman calendar (decem is Latin for ten), and it kept its name after Julius Caesar reformed the calendar, and two new new months were introduced. The Anglo Saxons called it Winter Monath, or Yule Monath.

Many religions have major festivals during the month, which is the darkest time of the year, with the shortest days and the longest nights, and it is one of the most important times in the Christian calendar, celebrating the birth of Jesus. All kinds of traditions have sprung up and by now you should have baked your cake and prepared a Christmas pudding ready for boiling or steaming – after all, Stir-Up Sunday was back in November.

But many of you will have opened the first window of your advent calendar today, and I notice that lots of people have already decorated their homes and put a Christmas tree up, which does seem awfully early to me – when I was a child decorations and trees usually went up on Christmas Eve, and stayed up for the 12 Days of Christmas, before being taken down and carefully packed away for another year.

Pumpkin Lanterns!

onight is Hallowe'en when, as the old ballad says, the fairy forces ride... It's the Eve of All Hallows (or All Saints) Day, when ghosts, spirits and witches can walk abroad, along with all kinds of ghoulies and beasties (three-legged or otherwise) and things that go bump in the night... But, according to legend, you can keep the dark at bay by ensuring a fire burns through the night... 

All Saints Day was one of the great festivals of the Medieval Christian church, but Hallowe'en and its traditions seems much more pagan. It's the Eve of Samhain, the last night of the Celtic Year, before the start of winter, when crops had already been gathered in, cleansing fires were lit, and animals slaughtered and their meat preserved for the months ahead. At this time people looked to the past and future, and considered ageing and death, and the circle of life.

Shine a light! Jack-o'-Lantern candles.

The Romans also had a festival at the end of October to celebrate Pomonoa, goddess of fruit trees, especially apples. Nuts and apples were roasted on bonfires, to symbolise the food stored up for winter and, presumably, because they tasted good! It's an interesting link with the past I think, because apple bobbing is a traditional Hallowe'en game, and sticky toffee apples are always popular at this time of year.

These days fancy dress, parties, and trick or treating seem to be the order of the day, but but there are all kinds of customs associated with Hallowe'en, many of them connected with foretelling the name of one's future wife or husband. Church bells were rung to keep away evil spirits, and in days gone by lanterns lit for a similar reasons were carved from turnips, rather than the pumpkins used today.

I knitted a Hallowe'en tea cosy!

According to one tradition, if a maiden threw unbroken apple peel over her shoulder it would fall to the ground and form the initials of the man she would marry. And there were similar superstitions involving mirrors, candles, nuts and even cabbages!

I would suggest you mark the occasion by lighting a candle an reflecting on the summer that has gone, and the winter that lies ahead, and thinking about the good things in life, and the people you have known. You could enjoy a warm and spicy celebratory meal of course – pumpkin soup perhaps, and baked apples (with sultanas and golden syrup), cook up some pumpkin soup, or carrots .. something orange and spice would be suitable... and a glass of wine. And you could listen to Fairport' Convention singing Tam Lin here (and the rest of the Leige and Leaf album). And if your nerves are up to it you could curl up with a spine-chilling ghost story, but I'm afraid I can't recommend anything, because spooky tales aren't my thing!

More Jack-o'-Lanterns -sadly, I can't eat chocolate, but I
bought these last year because they looked so sweet, and
the family ate them.

Don't Burn the Cakes!

et us celebrate Alfred the Great, who died today in 899 AD. Alfred was the father of Ethelfleda, Lady of the Mercians, who is one of my heroines (I blogged about her here), so I thought he desreved a mention. Alfred is, of course, famous for burning the cakes: he was (allegedly) hiding from the Danes in a humble cottage belonging to an old woman who asked him to keep on eye on her baking while she popped out for a bit, and the king (allegedly) forgot. He obviously lacked the culinary skills of the delectable Paul Hollywood, who I am sure would have had something to say about the disaster!

King Alfred, pictured in a 13th century
manuscript.

I must admit I always have a tendency to muddle Alfred up with King Arthur and Hereward the Wake, producing a composite figure of a heroic, mythical leader charging about the marshy countryside righting wrongs and repelling all invaders, with a little help from God and a magical wizard...

Anyway, Alfred became king of Wessex in 872 and won a series of key battles against the Danes before negotiating a treaty with them in 886, which established that land to the north and east of England (roughly the area between the Thames and the Tees) was subject to Danish law. Alfred hung on to Wessex, and also gained West Mercia and Kent. Think of the outcome as being like the football results – Invading Pagan Danish l, True Blue Christian Brits 3!

The pact put Alfred into a much stronger position (top of the league, but under threat of demotion, as it were) and gave him a chance to protect his new, enlarged kingdom by improving the army, erecting fortifications throughout the southern part of the country, and creating a navy to protect the coast. In addition to being a great military leader, he was an able civil administrator: he reformed coinaged, introduced a fairer justice system, and new laws, and promoted learning, especially for churchmen. It is believed that he learned Latin when hewas in his thirties, and helped translate books into Anglo-Saxon.

He supported the church and is said to have been a friend of Pope Marinus, who is thought to have given him gifts, including a piece of the True Cross. There always seems to be a lot of supposition involved in this period of history – early records are not always to be relied on, as they don't always separate fact from fiction.

By the time he died, at the age of 50, Alfred (who is the only English king to be known as'the Great'), he had pulled much of the south of England into a single realm, with unified laws and money, and he was known as the King of the Anglo Saxons on coins and documents. He was buried in Winchester, which was his capital city.

I think it's worth remembering his achievements, and there's only one possible way of celebrating – with cake! I doubt that Anglo Saxon cakes (I'm sure they had them) cooked on hot stones over an open fire were not as tasty as those available today, but there's plenty of choice, so just select your favourite. And to accompany it raise a glass of wine to the king who could rule a kingdom – but didn't know how to bake cakes!

The Alfred Jewel, which is kept in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It's use
 is unknown, but it is inscribed with the words 'aelfred mec heht gewyrcan' -
Anglo Saxon for 'Alfred had me made'.

Buy New Shoes for St Crispin!

Today is the Feast of St Crispin, when a handful of stout-hearted English archers beat the mighty French army at Agincourt way back in 1415. Remember Henry V, and Shakespeare, and that stirring speech? But St Crispin is also the patron saint of shoemakers (or one of them – there's St Hugh as well). According to legend he and his brother Crispinian were Romans, who were martyred in Gaul, where they preached the Gospel by day and made shoes by night – which is why he has special significance for shoemakers.

In Medieval times shoe and boot makers were given the day off, for feasting and celebration, but since you are likely to be give a holiday, I suggest you mark the occasion by buying new shoes! And you could read 'The Elves and the Shoemaker', by the Brothers Grimm, which is one of my favourite fairy tales, or 'The shoes of Salvation', by Edward Monkton, which is a very small and very funny cartoony book about a woman who buys uncomfortable, expensive shoes, but she doesn't care because they make her feel so good!

Shall I wear cheerful pink sneakers to celebrate St Crispin?

You could get in the party mood by listening to Elvis singing Blue Suede Shoes and, if you can get hold of it, you could watch the old black and white classic 'Hobson's Choice', starring the late, great Charles Laughton in one of his funniest roles, and a young John Mills as bootmaker Will Mossop, whose life is turned around when the boss's eldest daughter takes a fancy to him. You could watch Red Shoes, with Moira Shearer (another wonderful old movie) but personally I think it's much too sad to be celebratory.

I can't think of any food featuring shoes. I did once read that during the seige of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War of the 19^th century starving residents boiled leather shoes and ate them, but I don't think that's to be recommended. What about choux buns? It's spelled differently, and it's nothing to do with footwear, but it sounds the same, and choux buns (with cream) are one of life's great pleasures.

So there you are, lots to choose from to celebrate St Crispin. And if you're not a shoe enthusiast, why not turn to Shakespeare - read Henry V, or better still watch the Kenneth Brannagh film.

From 'The shoes of Salvation', by Edward Monkton

Sunday Scatterings

Good Morning All! I have decided to try and reactivate this blog, on an occasional basis (but more occasional than once every three months, I hope!) so it can run alongside The Book Trunk, and I can write about things that are not book related. It will be good to try and get it up and running again, because this was my original blog, started when I was a very novice computer user – I never, ever got to grips with the in-house system at work, and remained petrified of computers until, following redundancy, I embarked on an IT course at our local college.

Then, during the snowy winter of 2010, I broke a toe, hurt my back, and had a cold I couldn't shift, so I sat at home feeling very sorry for myself. My younger daughter, trying to cheer me up, said: “Do something positive. You're learning about computers - write a blog.” So I did, and you see my very first post here. Gradually the books took over, and I set up The Book Trunk, and although I tried to keep this one going, it kind of lost direction.

So for starters, while I try to organise myself, here is a piece posted on The Sunday Salon, hosted by Carrie K, which only mentions books once, and shows that I don't spend all my time with my head in a book. So this is what I'm doing today:

Embroidering: I bought a kit of a map of Yorkshire for £3.49 in a charity shop - a real bargain, because it had never been taken out of the pack, and usually sells for almost £36. I've oversewn the edges of the linen, to stop it fraying, and done lines of running stitches (horizontal and vertical) to mark the centre. Now I have to put it on a frame to keep the material taut, and then I can start stitching. Looking at this, I realise that large parts of Yorkshire were settled by the Vikings, so there is a Nordic connection going on in my life today.

Reading: 'A Winter Book', by Finnish author Tove Janssen (who wrote the Moomintroll stories). This a collection of short tales, drawn from her own life, which I am enjoying very much, and would recommend to anyone. See what I mean about the Scandanavian links?

Listening: 'Finlandia', by Sibelius, is one of my favourites, and seemed a suitable choice. Music from the far north – blame my Norwegian ancestry.

Enjoying: The sun is shining after days of rain, high winds, and low temperatures, so I may venture into the garden at some point to do battle with the snails and weeds, which are flourishing after all that rain. And I have some plants my mother gave me last week, which are still sitting in containers, and really need to be planted out. Did the Vikings have gardens I wonder?

Shopping: We are like Old Mother Hubbard and the cupboards are bare. The vegetable basket is empty, because yesterday I used all the left-over vegetables to make soup; the fridge is empty, because I cleaned it, and threw out all the oddments lurking inside, and the freezer is almost empty - it contains ice-cream and chips, but precious little else. Plus, of course, we need cat food. We always need cat food. It doesn't matter how much I buy, it disappears really quickly. I like to think The Cat is helping himself, but in reality it is our fault, because every time anyone goes in the kitchen he mithers for food, so we all feed him, several times a day and he is, as you can see, a Fat Cat.