The Gang

Well, after checking with everyone, here are a few shots of us at the Ludlow Esoteric Conference, taking tea before the first lecture:

This is Arnametia



The Green Witch (yes, the lady in purple!)



Examining earlier finds from the Saturday market in Ludlow



Kim, desperately trying to avoid the camera



And last, but not least, techno-Witch



Foolishly, I was having so much fun that I put my camera back in the bag and completely forgot about taking any more pictures, how silly was that?



That was about the last time the camera saw daylight *sigh* but I shall remember the day for a long time yet!

A Ludlow Day

Well, Kim and I set off for Ludlow on Friday afternoon, having booked a hotel room for the night, so that we were fresh for the Esoteric book Conference and festival. It was rainy, grey and the traffic was unspeakable but, we got there and had a quick look around the town before collapsing into our beds.

Saturday dawned much brighter and we drove into Ludlow town centre to discover the horrors of parking in the town; eventually we managed it and took ourselves off to a rather nice little eatery for breakfast and a trough of tea. As it was Saturday, the town centre market was in full swing and we wandered towards the Assemebly Rooms through stalls of hats, cards, food and all sorts, eventually arriving at the book fair a few minutes late. We needn't have worried, we were on 'Pagan time' so the projected 11 a.m. start for the first lecture was very late.

Kim had decided to take himself off to have a look around the town and castle, as he's not Pagan and didn't fancy the lectures. We did manage to meet up with TGW, Arnametia and Sheshat (from Seshat's Voice) and we settled down to a cup of weak tea before kick-off. I was incredibly touched when Seshat produced a lovely birthday card (it's tomorrow, Sunday) with the delicate blue flowers that I just adore on the front. TGW had made the most beautiful beads for me, with a silver Goddess symbol from Ibitha (I think) and a sweet card. Honestly, I felt like I had won the lottery - to be with such lovely people and get cards and pressies was such a treat!

Anyway, time marched on and it was time to pile into the lecture hall. We looked for LavenderBlue, but yet again, she eluded us, so I'm beginning to wonder if she's deliberately avoiding me! Organisationally, Ludlow was ... interesting... and the first talk was swapped with the last as the first speaker hadn't managed to get to the gig on time. The talk was all about John Dee and by half way through I had sorted out my handbag, applied enough lip salve to be slippery and, well, I just was bored. In the end, I got up and tried to sidle out of the lecture hall as quietly and inconspicuously as possible. It was as dull as dishwater.

In the interests of fairness, the chap giving the lecture have lots of information in his head, but he clearly wasn't a public speaker and had all the charisma of a damp sponge. You will forgive my unkindness, but I never had to sit through the tedious, dry lectures of an undergraduate's life and if I'm paying to see someone, I expect to be entertained and entranced. Neither happened. Worse still, he couldn't multi-task, so had some poor woman sitting centre stage, with her back to the audience, clicking through a PowerPoint presentation that was regularly interrupted by (oh-God-I-hate-)Windows messages about a lost network overlaying pictures of his holiday in central Europe to illustrate the read-from-notes talk. They hadn't rehearsed, as the speaker was having to prompt the laptop-poker each time he was ready to show a new slide. Eventually, the lure of weak tea and gazing out of the window with my tongue hanging out got the better of me. I left.

We didn't head back as the small group had decided to set out in search of a hearty lunch and good conversation. What lovely people we spent the day with. Arnametia is sweet and though initially cautious about my psycho rantings about getting a cross-bow and shooting the noisy buggers who wake me up, she blossomed and was delightful company. Seshat, ah, now that's a lady I like - she had depth and so much warmth - I'm only sad I didn't meet her sooner. Shimma, as social and jocular as ever, kept everyone laughing until we stumbled out of the eatery, full and content.

My dear Seshat and Shimma took a turn around the square to walk off lunch and the rest of us ambled through the market looking for treats and bargains. Meeting up again in the square, Kim and I decided it was time to head back to Somerset and our moth-eaten old cat. Satnav took us on some wild and weird route along the Wye valley, which was both twisting and pretty. By 7 p.m., we were home, with the sun beating through the car windows.

What a wonderful weekend! Good company, nice food and sunshine. I don't know if any of the other lectures were any good, but it didn't really matter - I met two more lovely people and that was certainly worth the drive!

Great Book

On a whim, helped along by amazon's amazing marketing, I popped Looking For The Lost Gods of England by Kathleen Herbert, ISBN 1898281041, into my shopping basket. Today, I had a chance to read it.

I had to wait around at the little house for a wood-burning stove to be delivered, so was up and out bright and early. I remembered to take tea bags, but forgot the milk, remembered washing up liquid and toilet roll but forgot the biscuits. Luckily, I remembered my specs.

Before settling with the book I hacked at the insanely huge brambles and triffids in the garden and managed to clear right back to the far end of the greenhouse, though I have lots of scratches for my troubles. By mid morning I looked like a distressed beetroot and retreated into the house and parked on the one scruffy chair with my new book.

The book is only 57 pages including maps but it's a treasure trove. Tracing the Engle and their move to the island we now call England she looks at the Gods and Goddesses that the Engle worshipped and some of the traditions and healing that were recorded variously by Tacitus, Bede and others. There is a lot of information crammed into the pages, but the flowing style makes the book easily digestible and compelling.

I can think of few things that you could spend £4.95 on and enjoy more - an excellent read.

Timing Is Everything

And my timing isn't working at the moment! No matter how early, late or in-between I head into the kitchen after getting up, Tom, our resident geriatric cat will have just emptied himself a few moments before and left the room smelling like a midden. Even with the back door open a whisker before 7 a.m. he did his party trick, so there was I, scrabbling about with disinfectant and air freshener so my cleaning lady didn't turn on her heel and head for home!

But, timing is everything and my parcel from the Hedgewitches' Kitchen arrived just after I had cleared up and washed my hands; now that's what I call timing! Ripping open the jiffy bag with great anticipation, the gorgeous aromas obliterated the whiff of cat poo in a second and transported me from kitchen drudge to bubble Goddess in a trice. Oh boy, am I looking forward to the moment I have the house to myself and can luxuriate in a goat's milk bath and wonderful, fragrant soaps.

Until then, I shall have to exercise the tiny vestiges of patience that are mine, make a large trough of tea and look forward to the Ludlow Esoteric Book Fair this coming Saturday 28th June. The timing is rather good as it's the day before my birthday, so Kim and I are travelling up and then heading back for a Sunday that should involve a trip to the coast to eat at our favourite Thai restaurant, overlooking the beach at Lyme Regis. At least, I hope so...

Norwegian Swimming Cats

Ocassionaly, I look after a gang of Norwegian Forrest Cats and some British Short Hair cats in the village for a delightful lady who breeds them and loves them to bits. She only has a couple of breeding males and females, and the rest are 'retired' and very well loved pets. This weekend, I was charged with looking after the gang, which is always a pleasure. There are three cats in an orchard enclosure (bigger than my entire garden), a breeding male and two neutered females to keep him company, two more breeding females in a very swish 'house' near the swimming pool, Bertie, the falsetto breeding male, who lives and squeaks in the Studio, a very sweet but slighly nervy British Short hair female and her one remaining wonderfully bold kitten in the bedroom and last but not least, the four NFC pensioner cats, who have the run of the place.

The pensioners are my favourites. There are two males, Alv nd Affie, who are huge, furry and as soft as putty and they will happily swirl around my legs in hopes of getting fed ahead of the queue and try all sorts of cunning trick and antics. Affie is built like a lion, and though he's now an old chap, caught a squirrel a few weeks back from up a tree in the church yard; he has the inner calmness of a creature who knows he's top of the pecking order. Affie's shadow and friend Alv will do anything for a cuddle - if you start to stroke him, he'll wheedle and paw for more, even at the expense of his stomach. The third 'pensioner', though she'd be mortified if she thought anyone called her that, is Victoria. Very much like Mrs Beckham, the lovely Victoria is a Diva of the first order and will bat the two old chaps if they get between her and a stroking hand. Victoria has attitude and spent the time I was there teasing the new breeding female by dancing about on the roof of her 'house' and it looked like it was just for the pure pleasure of it! Victoria has won many awards for Best In Show and knows just how pretty she is; she's a poser.

Last, but certainly not least, is the old lady of the group, Mousie. Mousie is 18 years old and a bit senile; she is also going blind and has lost her sense of self preservation. Yesterday, we discovered that she's slim enough to walk through the bars of the front gate; this was with some horror, as we have often had to stop the car, pick her up and put her back in the garden as she roams, blinking and confused, around the road in the path of traffic. I was warned that Mousie was a danger to herself and that I should keep the gate between the main garden and the swimming pool closed and yesterday, after much effort, left the gate firmly shut so dear old Mousie couldn't hurl herself into the swimming pool by accident.

When I got there today, there was no sign of Mousie. I called and called and headed out towards the orchard cats to feed them, passing through the closed gate to get there. Horror of horrors, Mousie was padding about on top of the pool cover, meowing pathetically and unable to get off. As she neared the edges, the pool liner would start to collapse and she would retreat towards the centre. Thank goodness for the cover, or the poor old girl would have been a goner. I threw down the food and managed to coax her close enough to the edge to grab her without having to climb into the pool. Clutching Mousie to me, I dashed into the house and called Kim to help. He appeared in minutes with large fluffy towel and a dry T-shirt for me.

I don't know how long Mousie had been walking on water, but she was soaked right through her thick fur coat and was very cold. I gave her some food to warm her system up and then gathered her up in the towel and hugged her dry. After about 30 minutes of shifting the towel around, she started to feel less water-logged and though still clamped as close to my body for warmth as it was possible to get, without being inside my clothes, she started purring and perking up. It was only then that my heart started to subside from my mouth back into my chest.

How had Mousie got to the swimming pool? My dear breeder had left another door open that let Mousie amble from the garden, past the summer house, through the vegetable garden and into the swimming pool area. I was just relieved it hadn't been anything I had done, though I'm sure it was no consolation to Mousie! After lots of cuddles, I carted the old girl into the house, parked her in a cat basket beside the Aga and left her to groom her freshly washed leg fur!

Lawks! What a day. I had so many plans - I was going to go off and buy things for the house, do work and all sorts, but by the time we went home, I felt like I had been through the mill and collapsed in a crumpled heap while Kim ministered tea and hot, buttered toast. I have to say that Kim was a complete hero - he dashed around with towels, he finished feeding the rest of the gang while I looked after Mousie and then carted wet T-shirts and soggy towels home, all the while declaring how great it was that he got to see the cats again. He's as enchanted with the gang as I am. I feel like a wrung out dish-cloth - I do hope the rest of the week is a bit less exciting!

Mousie, just after she had had a severe haircut of the hind quarters because her fur had got a bit tangly:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Normally these days, her tongue is poking out and she looks as daft as a brush!

One of the orchard cats lookng less than inpressed at chicken for lunch... again!

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

And here's Victoria, Diva kitty:

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And here's Affie, my favourite, the great, gentle lion:

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Affie's partner in crime, Alv the snudger:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Is it any wonder I'm so smitten...?

Rabbits, Badgers and Elderflowers

What a strange day. I had lots of chores and work to sort out and set to with some gusto, having promised myself tht I'd collect some elderflowers and make cordial once I had got everything done. It seemed like a good reward and I was on the last leg of my journey when I saw something horrible.

Driving along the busy A30 (not very fast as it was in a 40 mph area) a rabbit leapt out of the hedgerow directly in front of the car ahead of me. The driver didn't have time to do anything and the car clipped the poor bunny and sent him somersaulting along the road. I managed to take evasive action, more in the hope that it wasn't fatal than through any logical thought. I looked in the rear view mirror and the creature was laid on it's side with a leg twitching madly as if trying to run away. I couldn't even stop to dispatch the rabbit, as there was no verge and more traffic following on. It was very upsetting.

I don't know if it happens to anyone else, but when I see something upsetting like that, it feels as if I have been punched in the solar plexus. It took the rest of the drive before I could swallow properly. Chores done, I decided to head home over an interestingly narrow track with few passing places that crests a verdant hill, in hopes of finding some elder that wasn't loaded with petrol and diesel emissions from the busy roads. It started raining. I jumped out at several places and was thwarted by locked field gates that were far too rickety to even think of climbing (imaging balancing a large zepellin on a razor blade and you'll be somewhere near the idea). Eventually I found a footpath and set off down it, figuring that I'd eventually find some elder. Did I? Heck as like! Well, that's not entirely true, I did find one old elder and the lowest blossom was over 15' above the ground. I think the Lady was having a bit of a laugh at my expense.

I may have failed miserably at procuring elder for my cordial - I should have guessed as I'd gone and got the lemons; had I not bought them, I'd have found elder aplenty - but I did find two badger sets! They're obviously active sets, as there was a perfect paw mark in the damp mud outside one and I was thrilled. I won't mention exactly where they are, as there are cattle fairly close by, and we all know what happens to badgers!

So, it was all a bit of a strange day, the tumbling rabbit, no elderflowers within reach, despite all attempts and then my wonderful find. It's now pouring with rain, the roads in the village are sounding more like streams as cars drive by, but the birds are sining and it's solstice.

To everyone who reads this, have a light-filled, joyous Litha!

What A Good Way To Cleanse!

The last few days of working with my regular customers and a new one, who is polite, eager and perfectly delightful have been an incredible balm after the week I had in London last week. I was in a room with a couple of particularly toxic people and, very stupidly, hadn't thought to do any protection for myself. It was only when I got home and talked to a long-time friend about my week that it became apparent that I had rather left myself open to some pretty vile people.

My friend, Nathalie, makes candles for ritual, and sometimes decoration, out of the finest bees wax and is opening an online store very soon. She mentioned a small company (they both supply Treadwells in London) that might be helpful in ridding me of the grungy, toxic sludge that I feel I was carrying and within minutes had me hooting with laughter. Two delightful ladies have set up The Hedgewitches' Kitchen and one of their products is Two Finger Soap (you'll have to scroll down a bit). It seems Nathalie has had times like my week last week and has test driven Two Finger Soap and found it most efficacious. It's designed to:

"This is one for those days when you want to wash off stupid people as you wash off the dirt. Cleanse your aura as you cleanse your skin!"

Sounds good to me.

So, after trawling through the site and being hugely tempted by a number of products, I have flexed the plastic and treated myself to the aforementioned soap and some Demeter's Goats Milk bath stuff. I shall report back to you once I have sloughed off the toxins of last week and had a bit of a soak in liquid goat. I think I'm going to enjoy this!

How very odd that this is my second post about soap - it's not that I'm obsessed or anything, though I do wash my face in it and don't bother with all the creams, lotions and potions that are supposed to keep me youthful and amazing - I find soap is perfectly adequate to clean myself and I hate feeling like a greasy ... thing... that if you grabbed me I'd go slipping and sliding out of your hands! That shows my age, doesn't it? I'm sounding more like my mother by the day and sadly, looking more like her too. Ah well, maybe Kim has done as he's told (some hope) and booked me a face lift as well as the psycho gun-turreted land rover for my birthday...

I like soap. A lovely, frothy soap can make or break a luxuriating soak on the bath. My Soap Shed bar of sandalwood and pachouli is still going strong, mostly because I managed to persuade Kim it smelled far too 'girly' for him to use. Is it being a Cancerian that makes me love soaking in a large tub of delicately scented water? Whatever it is, cruddy old tesco soap just doesn't cut it and it certainly won't wash off toxic people.

I'll Pass On The Saccharine

Reading the interesting article on left and right hand paths from Seshat's Voice, I was reminded that none of us are purely one thing or the other. The article got me thinking in that quiet way that happens when you're physically occupied doing repetitive, mundane stuff and it leaves the back of one's brain to turn over more interesting things.

Added to Seshat's article, I was reading an interesting article by Bill Thompson about how our thinking is affected by interaction with the internet. I like Mr Thompson; he's a thoughtful man with a healthy cynicism and can take complex information and make it easily understood. The point he made about search engines can easily be mapped on to blogs and other internet communications:

"The current generation of 'search engines' seem to encourage a model of exploration that is disposed towards assimilative learning, finding sources, references and documents which can be slotted into existing frameworks, rather than providing material for deeper contemplation of the sort that could provoke accommodation and the extension, revision or even abandonment of views, opinions or even whole belief systems."

So, I asked myself just how much I was reading 'comfortable' sites, blogs and information that fitted my model and how much I looked at challenging material and accommodated rather than assimilated. It's very difficult to be objective, as one person's definition of 'challenging' might be 'interesting' to another person; what to set as the criteria...? I also asked myself whether it was just about assimilation or whether I was keeping a critical channel open in my head when reading 'comfortable' materials.

This resonated with The Green Witch article Define Blue, which looks at how so many people accept sloppy work and take things as 'given' without research and care for the presentation of accurate information. All this was milling around in my little cranium earlier today and I came to the following conclusions:

I certainly can't claim to be on a totally right hand path, I just don't think I am idealistic enough.

Any philosophy I embrace has to have a healthy link with the reality I live in; connection to my deity is all fine and well, but I have a physical life to sustain and I'm no aesthete.

The religion that I espouse has to take account of the nature of the humanity that it is designed to teach and support. We are fallible, weak creatures with needs and primal urges - now, I don't disagree with striving to become as close to perfection as it's possible to be, to achieve oneness with the divine and become the best one can be, but there does have to be a thread of realism woven into the ethos.

I recently found The Reclaiming Site and had a read through the principles they espouse. Now, there isn't one thing in that web page that I could find to actively disagree with, but somehow, well, it all left a saccharine taste in my mouth. I do wonder if any system can be all-embracing, without external authority and so even-handed? Surely, as imperfect beings, we strive towards these ideals, but the statement reads as if this has been attained; that, I suspect, is far from the case.

Could I become a 'reclaimer'? Certainly not. Apart from sighing inwardly at the discovery of yet another "tradition" within Paganism, I really do not believe we are all equal. Would I compare myself as an equal to Mahatma Ghandi, to Mother Theresa, to the Dalai Lama? You bet your bum I wouldn't. See, this just doesn't work for me and that's because I have enough left hand path happening that I can't loose myself in the cosy, amorphous mass of such a grouping. I have not set out to savage the Reclaiming Group, far from it; their principles are good but they do provide a stark contrast against the reality that I see all around me.

Perhaps this sort of thing is the prerogative of the comfortable, middle classes; people who have enough time to think and the security to be able to espouse equality and oneness - I can't say I have ever met an active Pagan who wasn't fairly well educated and at least reasonably well fed. Perhaps that's my fault for not finding the other types, or perhaps too much cynicism.

Bill Thompson does have an interesting point about how we interact with the net and Seshat is certainly right in her assessment that we have a foot on both paths. For my part, I'll aspire to be the best I can be, not only for my own personal advancement, but for the betterment of anyone I interact with, sadly though, I'll pass on the saccharine.

My Little Miracle Worker

She can't be taller than 5' and that's giving her the benefit of the doubt, my little miracle worker. She is ex-navy and a dynamic bundle of energy and determination - not a lady you'd cross and one you'd certainly say "Yes ma'am!" to, if she barked an order. Who is this miniature magician? My McTimoney chiropractor, Sue.

Last week I roamed a classroom with a pelvis that was tilted and rotated out of alignment, vertebrae that probably looked like a messy child had been playing with them and sciatic pain that I wouldn't wish on a worst enemy. Today, I drove to see Sue, right over the other side of the country, and she's worth the trip. I can now walk rather than rolling like a drunken sailor to accommodate the back pain. Sitting down doesn't hurt (except when the cat sinks his clawdicure-overdue talons in my leg) and I can walk up and down the stairs without nearly wrenching the bannister off in order to haul myself up and down.

If there were awards for being an all-round super-heroine, this lady deserves it. I'm off to sink gratefully and pain-free into my bed for the first time in weeks. I know I pay her, but what she does is amazing - may the Goddess and God bless her and I wish good things upon this wonderful person!

Happy To Be Home

It's only when you go away that you realise how much you like the place you call home, at least, that's my view. I have just spent the week in London, within sniffing distance of Euston Station and I can say with absolute certainty that Somerset smells better, even when the air is pervaded by the aroma of cow poo.

My hotel room was on the ground floor, facing on to a busy road that feeds buses in and out of Euston terminus. The option was to have the light on in the late evening or early morning with blind open = everyone seeing everything, or, blind closed = feeling like I was in a sarcophagus but at least a private one. Mind you, I was so tired, with a minimum of 12 hours in a classroom every day, that people seeing into the room wasn't an issue - I could barely see out of my own eyelids after standing in front of double projectors, which are a bit harsh on the eyes. There was a Fire Station on the corner of the next block and if their sirens weren't going off, there was a regular blast from ambulances and police cars and vans, rushing to and from incidents; it was noisy.

The worst bit, though, was the smell of London. It's not one specific bad smell, but just bad air, full of fumes, pollution and dirt. Driving out on Friday night, I could feel the acrid effects on the lining of my nose and in my throat; how glad I am that I don't live there.

As we drove along the A40 heading out of the city, it made me realise just how lucky I am to live in such a quiet backwater. There were flats that resembled the battery cages Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall loathes so much, masquerading as "luxury apartments" because they had a minuscule balcony that allowed the inhabitants to sit and sip their G&Ts whilst gazing over the balmy view of the A40 traffic jams. Many of the blocks of flats looked more like penal institutions than homes and seeing them gave me a good kick up the bum. I may grumble about the occasional grockle who litters or the noisy oiks who honk their horns or rev engines outside the house, but what I have is so different to what I saw in London that it's hard to describe. As loathsome as it was to spend time there, I needed the reminder of how lucky I am and how I must never forget to be grateful each day for the things I have. More importantly, to be grateful for the things around me that I don't have; my environment is truly beautiful and peaceful.

As we travelled homewards, the houses decreased, the verdant fields increased and then we reached the border. There is a cutting on the A303 as you cross from Wiltshire into Somerset, with a large "Welcome to Somerset" sign beside the road. There are sloping verges and at this time of year they are dotted with large white daisies, bright, fresh and cheery. Oh, it was good to come home and the air didn't smell, yippee!

Yup, there's no denying it, I have become a country yokel and you know what's better? I don't feel in the slightest apologetic about it!

Don't Chicken Out!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall strikes again. He's taking on Tesco and they're playing dirty (no surprises there!) by trying to make him pay for the papers to be sent to shareholders to vote on a resolution about chicken welfare.

Tesco want Hugh to pay a smidgeon over £86,000 to circulate these papers, though they do not normally charge others for the same privilege. Good old Tesco. It's not like Hugh is asking for much; just that the minimum standard is Freedom Foods. It's just not possible to raise chickens humanely when the retail price is £5 for two birds.

Anyway, Mr F-W has put up £30,000 of his own money and is auctioning off some stuff that's rather appealing to help raise the rest of the money. Even if you can't afford to bid thousands for Hugh to cook you a meal, there is a link for you to donate to the cause.

Come on guys, whether you like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or not, he's doing a really good thing, so every £5 helps. Please join me in supporting this fund-raiser, after all, wouldn't it be a laugh to see Tesco having to listen to the customer?

Dropping Off The Radar

Amid all the revision I have to do before Monday, the manic preparation of 'extra' slides and handouts to ensure that the course I'm teaching goes well, I have been trying to keep pace with the blogs of a number of people from whom I take an RSS feed. It has been an interesting fortnight and particularly, the tone and intensity of these blogs has intensified over the last week.

Now, I shall probably be about as welcome as a fart in a space-suit for saying this, but (diplomacy not being my middle name) I do wonder at how people are carrying on. The majority of blogs that I watch purport to be Craft or Wiccan in nature and yet, they really don't sound as if they are; mostly, they sound like devout Christians with a different label stuck on the tins. How can I explain what I mean clearly? First, let me qualify what I am about to say with a statement that I'm not a hugely sophisticated creature, that I don't have qualifications oozing from every pore and that I am, quite simply, as Pagan in the true sense of the word. I am a country dweller, I live a pretty simple life and high theology is rather wasted on me.

What do I believe? That I have a deity, who is female and male, one yet separate, and that they are omnipresent and pervade everything I do and everything that I am. I haven't read lengthy tomes to get to this belief and although I have a few books on my shelves, I have read little compared to some of the Uber-Wiccans and 'turbo-Witches' that seem to be on my horizon increasingly of late. It's not that I revel in being a simpleton, but sometimes I do wonder at the convoluted meanderings of people I read, of the angst-ridden self doubt and fraught questioning of everything, however simple and obvious.

Most of the histrionics seem to smack of Christianity with a fresh label. Call me cynical and stupid, but surely ours is a nature based religion that has living in harmony with nature at it's core? So, just where does the self-flagellation the constant introversion and questioning fit?

• Should I worship male as well as female?


• Should I eat animals?


• Should I feel bad about carnal inclinations?


• Are we indulging in a cult of personality?


• Am I truly connected to my Gods?


• What is the nature of God?


• How can I, a mere speck, understand God?

And on and on. You know, It's enough to send me running to the hills of atheism for a bit of peace an quiet! Please understand, this is no attack on one person, it is merely the observation of a trend that has been prevalent of late; it is a trend that I am finding deeply uncomfortable and terribly familiar.

Perhaps I'm not the right person to run a site like Whitewicca - I just can't be doing with all this navel-contemplation and being entranced by the bright lights shining from the bottoms of the Witchy glitterati, it's all so... boring. Perhaps I'm having a crisis of faith (that would be ironic in the circumstances!) but I just don't get it - the Buddhists and the Hindus don't seem to go in for all this self-doubt and introversion - actually few other faith systems do. The most refreshing things I have read of late have been written by a Muslim and given the choice, I find it more cheering to read the doleful financial pages!

In light of this, I'm seriously thinking of giving my blog and all my RSS feeds a very wide berth for a while. I think it might be good for me to step away from the intellectual debate and just BE. It's what I've always been good at and I'm rather missing it.

Feline Dementia

Do cats suffer from the feline equivalent of Alzheimer's? I believe they do.

My cat, Tom, will celebrate his 17th birthday in June, assuming he lives that long (I'm superstitious about assuming he'll last the night), and I feel certain that he is loosing his marbles.

In his prime, Tom was a magnificent specimen of feline grace and hunting prowess. He chased and beat up a border collie who had the temerity to walk into Tom's garden, he caught a rat and brought it indoors as a gift (I'd have preferred shoes or diamonds, but cat's just don't get it) and he would disappear off over the fields for a week at a time, feeding himself off hot mouse take-aways and reappear back home all glossy and sleek, none the worse for a lack of commercial cat food.

These days, Tom is like an old person whose body has gone into survival mode, you know the old people who are stick thin and look as if they could be blown away by a light breeze? That's how Tom is now. He staggers off his cat sofa in the kitchen and flops on the back path if the sun is shining, but if it's grey, he will manage the stairs and come up to my office and lay out on the carpet, slapping his tail every so often to make sure I haven't forgotten him.

Like many old people, Tom has become a creature of habits and routines and his favourite, after eating, is to wander into the sitting room of an evening and sit beside me on the sofa, with his back pressed against my leg to warm himself. It's an arrangement that suits us both, for affection and warmth.

Over the past weeks we have noticed that Tom seems to be getting disoriented and confused. He will come into the sitting room at his normal time (you can set the clock by him), but instead of walking over to the sofa, he will wander over to the bookcase in the corner and then look perplexed. Unless called, he will just sit in the corner looking confused - it's as if he has forgotten where to find his warm spot.

Funnier, or sadder still, is Tom's perception of owning three gardens. He normally goes out through the main kitchen door to get on to his sunbathing spot on the path. Lately, however, we opened up the old scullery door and now there's a way into the garden through the scullery. I know it has confused the poor old cat because he wandered out through the scullery door and then sat outside the main kitchen door meowing pathetically to be let in, while the scullery door was still open. Imagine the confusion when we opened the conservatory door, which gave him another exit, albeit within a few feet of the main kitchen door! He wandered out of the conservatory, sniffed some flowers, then back in and he walked all around the dining room, through the hall and kitchen to get to the kitchen door to go out again. When you consider the minuscule size of the garden, and the proximity of the doors, the only conclusion I can draw is that my cat is senile.

I don't know what I shall do when Tom finally gets too weary to carry on. He has been my friend and companion for nearly 17 years now, after I took him home from a cat rescue sanctuary when he was a ten week old wild kitten. So much of my daily routine revolves around catering for my old codger's needs that I dread the emptiness that will follow his parting. Still, I have been worrying about that since he turned 12 and he's still staggering about, even though it's much less purposeful these days.

Bi This, Bi That!

Well, goodness me, I have learned something fascinating today; I am biphasic. It seems that people fall into two categories, monophasic and biphasic and I'm on of the latter. Don't worry, it's not contagious!

Being either monophasic or biphasic describes how your natural sleep patterns are and it is beautifully explained in Devin Ream's article here. It seems a sleep cycle is 90 minutes and biphasic people just do a whole lot better if they take 90 minutes during the day as well as four cycles during the night.

This explains a lot. There have been times I have beaten myself up terribly for feeling like I could do with an afternoon nap, yet on the occasions when I take a nap, I feel much fresher, I'm not nearly as grumpy as I'm prone to be otherwise and life generally looks, smells and tastes sweeter. Maybe that's why I've been feeling so miserable and unhappy for the past five weeks with Kim at home - I can't sleep when he's around (unless I'm really exhausted or ill) and since he's gone, I've been sneaking the odd 90 siesta (wouldn't you know that the Spanish had nailed it?!) and my whole outlook has improved.

Now, it may be nothing at all to do with my sleep cycles and that I'm just enjoying the peace and quiet and not having battles about whether the lid of the toilet seat is up or down... I suspect that sleep patterns do have something to do with it though, as I wouldn't have turned the corner on feeling so low that I was seriously considering carting myself off to the quack just cos I have the house to myself. And, guess who pointed this article out to me? Yup, Kim.

So, perhaps I'm not bipolar, but I am biphasic, buy shoes, buy jewellery and buy handbags. That's not so bad after all...

The Robin Family

I have to tell you about the baby robins that have fledged in the last few days! We have a thriving robin colony around here and there are a pair of robins who seem to spend a great deal of time on our feeders. I figure they are a pair as they're not trying to gouge each other's eyes out, or any of the other pugilistic things robins do to defend their territory.

Mr and Mrs Robin appear to have successfully hatched and fledged two babies and they have now become rather sweet little visitors to our feeding tray. We know that there are two babies because they both look different. One still has some of the fluffy, baby feathers on his back, between the ends of his wings and it looks as if he's loosing his stuffing. When we saw this little robin, we were just delighted as they are such great little birds. Better still was to find that he had a sibling. We know it's not the same baby bird as the second one looks like a small, feathered airliner which has had a huge explosion in it's tail end. This baby robin has fluff all around his tail and looks like he's been put through a tumble dryer on high heat! Yesterday, they both landed on the table at the same time and there was a proud parent in the holly tree, keeping an eye on things.

Robins have always had significance for me - every time something major starts to happen in my life, I seem to see a lot of robins - I may be imagining it, but it feels as if they are keeping they beady little eyes on me to make sure all goes well. Seeing one robin makes me smile, seeing a family of them is just such a treat!

Quiet Descends

Kim has set off for Coventry and left me and the house for the first time in five weeks. I don't mean we haven't been out, but a trip to the shop 100 yards up the road or a quick trip to pick up something or other from up the road is about the sum of our excursions over more than a month. Apart from my trip to Birmingham, I don't think we've had many minutes apart. The first couple of weeks were mitigated by morning trips along the lovely lane, seeing deer and pheasants, rabbits and partridges, but that all stopped and I began to feel more and more... claustrophobic and imprisoned. Sounds dramatic, but it was more of an insidious, creeping feeling that started to drag me down.

Suddenly, the house feels very quiet and still. I have managed to complete lots of niggling paperwork from my desk and clear the deck for the week + of preparation I have to do before I go to London on a teaching assignment, though it did require me to work until 9 p.m. last night. The cat is dozing in the kitchen and the list of TO DOs is not quite as hysterical. I still have to do two more CVs, one for another Whitewiccan and one for my son who is off on Saturday to stay in America for a fortnight in hopes of finding a company who will sponsor him to get an EB3 (I think - some sort of work related visa). Kim spent ages telling me about the different sorts, but my head was so full of noise that I didn't absorb much at all. The only thing that stuck was useless - that an EB1 is for someone who is pre-eminent in their field - and I only remember that because I made a joke about being a pre-eminently grouchy Witch with a few other less-than-attractive attributes that would put me in that category.

That's been the trouble over the past weeks - I have had a head full of noise. It's the only way I can explain things and it's not very articulate. I don't seem to have been able to concentrate on anything, absorbing information has felt more challenging than climbing Everest and I started to loose the clear edges of 'me'. All the 'home' things that should have been finished by now are still unfinished, like the sticking up of dado rail in the dining room so I can get the decorators in, the hardboarding of the floor at the little house so I can get it measured for carpets, as well as piles of things that I still have to do for work. The slowness of the work on both houses is certainly making me feel glum. The dining room was destroyed by the incompetent plumber on 13th June 2007 and the room has been out of use since then - first through battles with the insurance company because plumber hadn't paid his excess, then because we decided to remove a vile, tiled fireplace and put in something more suited to the period of the house, then because... well, I just don't know really, but there's always a reason why things can't be finished or moved along. The little house has been much the same - a great deal of that was my own fault; I thought I would be able to do a certain amount of the work myself and discovered that my back wasn't cooperating. Then, if I wanted to move something along with the little house, there would be a flurry of activity on the big house, never amounting to any substantial action, but enough to prevent progress, or vice versa. As each month passes, it feels as though the state of both places deteriorates and that's depressing. I had wanted to get the little house sorted out and finished before we even started on the big house, but somehow it never happened. We started on getting a new bathroom, then, with the ruination of the dining room (the only room we had decorated and were happy with), that got added to the mix - then the kitchen sort of half happened and there are base units floating all over the place.

Part of my problem lies in the way I work - I like to do one thing at a time, get it finished and then start on the next. Sadly, we have not one house-full of unfinished work, but two and there are no opportunities to say "Ah, that's great, I have finished the XXXroom!" It feels like Vietnam - doing one thing causes us to have to do five other things, that cause us to have to do ten other things and... well, you get the idea! Thinking about this house reduces me to tears - it was a beautiful house when we bought it - high ceilings and decent sized rooms - but now, it seems to be a big shambles and we'd never be able to sell it in the condition it is now. Anyway, I'm trying not to think about it for now as I have to concentrate on studying.

There is nothing but a deafening silence here now and it feels wonderfully liberating and like a salve to my addled brain. I shall make myself a pot of tea, park it on my pretty new tray and bring it to the wreckage that is my sitting room and start revising my course... after I've dealt with the cat, who is now bellowing for attention...!