Last year I met a stonemason, Tom, who had spent 7 years working on Hereford cathedral, so with just 40 minutes to spare I was hurrying to catch a first glimpse of those medieval and modern stone angels and gargoyles. But I encountered flesh and blood on the way. As soon as I saw her I thought I knew her. She was young and diminutive, headscarf and long skirt, warmly dressed against the cold, selling the Big Issue in the High Street. I gave her the money and she kept the change. “Where are you from?” “Romania.” “How long have you been here?” “Five years.” “Are you a gypsy?” “I am.” Why in this world is a young woman, perhaps a teenager, from Eastern Europe washed up homeless in Hereford? I know the reasons, and its complex, but it still makes me weep for the alienated, the scattered, for all the Mary Magdalenes.
There is an astonishing passage in the Law of Moses in Deuteronomy that requires God's people to cancel debts every 7 years. But it goes on to say “however, there should be no poor among you” because God would provide for and bless his people. There are of course a few conditions attached, such as prescriptions for a just society, but I cannot see why the same should not apply to us. We are “blessed”, if you will forgive a religious expression. In the West we have abundance, and we also have the poor. But it should not be so since there is actually enough to share. We do have the poor, and the passage goes on to say “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore be open-handed towards .... the poor and needy in your land.” So there we have it. I care about justice but I am still tight fisted; I would fight for the downtrodden but I am too busy working in an economy that tramples on them.
I found the cathedral, the gargoyles and angels, the kings and queens. Did old Tom and his forebear craftsmen recognise that spiritual world when they delighted in upsetting the Dean with disguised Green Men, devils and dragons, the demons of sexuality and the blushing charm of angelic beings? I think so. Justice appeals to a higher law and to forces at war in our hearts. I shall return another day to ponder these things. Hurrying back I found my friend with the same pile of The Big Issue. Are you I wonder, that honey coloured stone queen in the frosty morning sun returned to us? “What is your name?” “Rebecca; ....will you bring me a photo?” “I shall!”
15 February 2010 – Adam was a gardener
If life had been more leisurely recently I would be reporting regularly on the many unanticipated delights of arriving suddenly and alien-like in a new community. Kington continues to surprise as we make it our home. It is a very small unshowy market town on the Welsh border, and it is full of many-braided life like the river Arrow that runs around it. Just last year, responding to some grass roots enthusiasm for becoming more self-sufficient, an allotment scheme was started. A few people took the initiative and made it happen. But the critical resource was popular enthusiasm. In just a few months a piece of fertile loam in a pastured loop of the Arrow was found, the field ploughed, plots laid out, and the allotmenteers moved on! Colonisation immediately reflected our love of diversity. A host of little sheds sprang up, many with home-crafted beauty and recycling ingenuity. And this cow meadow soon became a lively and creative community of diggers and builders. Although it is still gloriously freezing and winter beautiful, Spring is bursting through. The dipper sings his rasping sweet song from a rock in the river; the golden morning sun burns off the frost; people are digging and manuring and tidying. Soon it will be time to sow seeds and brew up some coffee in the sun and contemplate the good work. Where does this enthusiasm come from? Human development is so tied up to animals and plants, to crops and livestock. Clearly we have evolved a heart-beating affinity for the natural environment that we all once knew to be, until very recently, our very life line. But we might also say that Adam was a gardener, and it is in the blood. Sorry, I mean genes.
10 January 2010 – Talking Curling
One would hesitate to write about sex but a piece in The Guardian's G2 on 8 Jan compels me to complain about the deceptions that society has self-interestedly woven around the precious intention of sexual intercourse. A women writes in to complain that during her 10 month relationship with her boyfriend what had begun as explosive mutually satisfying sex had reached a point where she was now “only able to climax using a vibrator whilst on top.” And she now feels guilty about how long it takes for her to have an orgasm. Pamela Connolly, in reply, points out that her man clearly has problems multi-tasking, and goes on to suggest that they should focus less on technique and more on each other. Well that is a start, but it still seems to accept that sexual intercourse is essentially a form of sport between consenting couples, a bit like football; strong on technique, team-playing, charisma etc.
Essentially, we are not talking about copulation as if we were pairing animals. Notwithstanding the evolution of Homo sapiens and his imperious sex drive, we are also, as someone has put it, Homo divinus. We are angels and human animals in one. God was the author of life, the creator of this extraordinary sexuality in men and women. “Male and female he created them”, and in his own image he made them. As the Genesis story puts it so economically, when a man leaves his father and mother to be united to his wife, “they will become one flesh”. This is about sex becoming the medium through which a man and a woman meet each others' deepest needs to be known. Through a living and breathing, sometimes gasping, intimacy, we become more than the sum of our parts. That was what our Creator intended, which is why sex is too important to be just an issue of technique. The best sex starts after breakfast. We are not talking football, but more curling.
3 January 2010 – Setting our hearts on pilgrimage
I don't expect to find many if any who share my enthusiasm for nocturnal rambling, but if you are mildly susceptible to the lunar cycle I strongly recommend a walk on the wild side under a full moon. Camping for the night in our wood we left the fire going and crunched off in the ice and frost to find Chris and Anna for supper a couple of miles downstream. We stumbled in the darkness through 3 coverts and over a stream feeling our way a little hesitantly not wishing to run into the game keeper of the well furnished shoot. Pheasants are the most hysterical and irritating of birds making a huge amount of entirely unnecessary noise. We also disturbed a huge flock of jackdaws much dismayed at a pair of blundering beasts crashing around beneath their roost. All was well and we supped warmly and happily. The return journey was what makes night walking an adventure and delight, when "midnight's all a-glimmer" as Yeats put it. The full moon had risen huge and bright making black shadows in the sparkling frost. We crunched the ice and felt almost dazzled by the silent empty universe of light. Nothing stirred. No one moved. The few cottages we passed as we left the hamlet were firmly shut up, dogs snoring by the telly, central heating purring.
Our intoxication in the bright madness of frosty light didn't last for long. No sooner had we entered those keepered woods than a storm of pheasants, emboldened by the moonlight, exploded in a cloud with terrible alarm. We hastened on a little quickly wondering whether it is best to offer an immediate and unconvincing explanation to an enraged keeper disturbed from his fireside or to bolt into the undergrowth and hide. No worries; it never happened. Those ridiculous pheasants deserve to be shot for making such an unnecessary fuss. But what a walk, and what a moonlit world. Arriving “home” to the embers of a fire beneath the towering spruce in a frozen Narnia, we bedded down beneath a horse blanket and a huge thick quilt. Walking by owl-light, especially by a full winter moon, is strange and wonderful.
But camping in a wood, even for just a night or two, offers interesting lessons. If you had little clue how to take care of yourself the experience would be uncomfortable at best, or even dangerous. However farmers who care for livestock, just like woodmen who still live and work in the woods, know that living on the land is hard graft. But much more than that it requires community and discipline. These are obligations that we have tried to throw out in the name of independence, but they are part of our fabric, personally and socially. They have to be a part of a healthier future.
Back home in the Marches we walked from church, thoughts of pilgrimage into a new year on our minds, and crunched our way straight up onto the snow-frozen Hergest Ridge. If only I had my langlauf skis! Perfect squeaky snow. The gorse was lost beneath a sculpted frozen cloak. The hills of Radnorshire rolled in frozen white waves to the sun-lit West. The green hedged lowlands of Herefordshire to the East were somehow released from the White Witch's spell. We crunched our way down through the gorse; a pair of ravens tumbled in the blue sky. Places, work, people, homes, going on together; a year of new adventures, perhaps challenges. As the Psalmist declared “Blessed are those who have set their hearts on pilgrimage”.
Last year I met a stonemason, Tom, who had spent 7 years working on Hereford cathedral, so with just 40 minutes to spare I was hurrying to catch a first glimpse of those medieval and modern stone angels and gargoyles. But I encountered flesh and blood on the way. As soon as I saw her I thought I knew her. She was young and diminutive, headscarf and long skirt, warmly dressed against the cold, selling the Big Issue in the High Street. I gave her the money and she kept the change. “Where are you from?” “Romania.” “How long have you been here?” “Five years.” “Are you a gypsy?” “I am.” Why in this world is a young woman, perhaps a teenager, from Eastern Europe washed up homeless in Hereford? I know the reasons, and its complex, but it still makes me weep for the alienated, the scattered, for all the Mary Magdalenes. 
There is an astonishing passage in the Law of Moses in Deuteronomy that requires God's people to cancel debts every 7 years. But it goes on to say “however, there should be no poor among you” because God would provide for and bless his people. There are of course a few conditions attached, such as prescriptions for a just society, but I cannot see why the same should not apply to us. We are “blessed”, if you will forgive a religious expression. In the West we have abundance, and we also have the poor. But it should not be so since there is actually enough to share. We do have the poor, and the passage goes on to say “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore be open-handed towards .... the poor and needy in your land.” So there we have it. I care about justice but I am still tight fisted; I would fight for the downtrodden but I am too busy working in an economy that tramples on them. 
I found the cathedral, the gargoyles and angels, the kings and queens. Did old Tom and his forebear craftsmen recognise that spiritual world when they delighted in upsetting the Dean with disguised Green Men, devils and dragons, the demons of sexuality and the blushing charm of angelic beings? I think so. Justice appeals to a higher law and to forces at war in our hearts. I shall return another day to ponder these things. Hurrying back I found my friend with the same pile of The Big Issue. Are you I wonder, that honey coloured stone queen in the frosty morning sun returned to us? “What is your name?” “Rebecca; ....will you bring me a photo?” “I shall!”
If life had been more leisurely recently I would be reporting regularly on the many unanticipated delights of arriving suddenly and alien-like in a new community. Kington continues to surprise as we make it our home. It is a very small unshowy market town on the Welsh border, and it is full of many-braided life like the river Arrow that runs around it. Just last year, responding to some grass roots enthusiasm for becoming more self-sufficient, an allotment scheme was started. A few people took the initiative and made it 
happen. But the critical resource was popular enthusiasm. In just a few months a piece of fertile loam in a pastured loop of the Arrow was found, the field ploughed, plots laid out, and the allotmenteers moved on! Colonisation immediately reflected our love of 
diversity. A host of little sheds sprang up, many with home-crafted beauty and recycling ingenuity. And this cow meadow soon became a lively and creative community of diggers and builders. Although it is still gloriously freezing and winter beautiful, Spring is bursting through. The dipper sings his rasping sweet song from a rock in the river; the golden morning sun burns off the frost; people are digging and manuring and tidying. Soon it will be time to sow seeds and brew up some coffee in the sun and contemplate the good work. Where does this enthusiasm come from? Human development is so tied up to animals and plants, to crops and livestock. Clearly we have evolved a heart-beating affinity for the natural environment that we all once knew to be, until very recently, our very life line. But we might also say that Adam was a gardener, and it is in the blood. Sorry, I mean genes.
One would hesitate to write about sex but a piece in The Guardian's G2 on 8 Jan compels me to complain about the deceptions that society has self-interestedly woven around the precious intention of sexual intercourse. A women writes in to complain that during her 10 month relationship with her boyfriend what had begun as explosive mutually satisfying sex had reached a point where she was now “only able to climax using a vibrator whilst on top.” And she now feels guilty about how long it takes for her to have an orgasm. Pamela Connolly, in reply, points out that her man clearly has problems multi-tasking, and goes on to suggest that they should focus less on technique and more on each other. Well that is a start, but it still seems to accept that sexual intercourse is essentially a form of sport between consenting couples, a bit like football; strong on technique, team-playing, charisma etc. 
I don't expect to find many if any who share my enthusiasm for nocturnal rambling, but if you are mildly susceptible to the lunar cycle I strongly recommend a walk on the wild side under a full moon. Camping for the night in our wood we left the fire going and crunched off in the ice and frost to find Chris and Anna for supper a couple of miles downstream. We stumbled in the darkness through 3 coverts and over a stream feeling our way a little hesitantly not wishing to run into the game keeper of the well furnished shoot. Pheasants are the most hysterical and irritating of birds making a huge amount of entirely unnecessary noise. We also disturbed a huge flock of jackdaws much dismayed at a pair of blundering beasts crashing around beneath their roost. All was well and we supped warmly and happily. The return journey was what makes night walking an adventure and delight, when "midnight's all a-glimmer" as Yeats put it. The full moon had risen huge and bright making black shadows in the sparkling frost. We crunched the ice and felt almost dazzled by the silent empty universe of light. Nothing stirred. No one moved. The few cottages we passed as we left the hamlet were firmly shut up, dogs snoring by the telly, central heating purring.
Our intoxication in the bright madness of frosty light didn't last for long. No sooner had we entered those keepered woods than a storm of pheasants, emboldened by the moonlight, exploded in a cloud with terrible alarm. We hastened on a little quickly wondering whether it is best to offer an immediate and unconvincing explanation to an enraged keeper disturbed from his fireside or to bolt into the undergrowth and hide. No worries; it never happened. Those ridiculous pheasants deserve to be shot for making such an unnecessary fuss. But what a walk, and what a moonlit world. Arriving “home” to the embers of a fire beneath the towering spruce in a frozen Narnia, we bedded down beneath a horse blanket and a huge thick quilt. Walking by owl-light, especially by a full winter moon, is strange and wonderful.
Back home in the Marches we walked from church, thoughts of pilgrimage into a new year on our minds, and crunched our way straight up onto the snow-frozen Hergest Ridge. If only I had my langlauf skis! Perfect squeaky snow. The gorse was lost beneath a sculpted frozen cloak. The hills of Radnorshire rolled in frozen white waves to the sun-lit West. The green hedged lowlands of Herefordshire to the East were somehow released from the White Witch's spell. We crunched our way down through the gorse; a pair of ravens tumbled in the blue sky. Places, work, people, homes, going on together; a year of new adventures, perhaps challenges. As the Psalmist declared “Blessed are those who have set their hearts on pilgrimage”.