Temple Cloud

For several years now, I have wondered about getting a Nativity scene.  There are all sorts of versions around, from a range of sizes and styles available in cathedral gift shops to a tiny Mexican folk art version that I once saw in a gift shop.  Books on handicrafts offer patterns to make your very own woollen ‘Knitivity’. When I’ve raised the subject with PDB11 , his answer has always been: ‘What I’d really like to have is a dragon Nativity.’   It’s not that he thinks that Jesus was a dragon, even in a fantasy universe , but just that, as a Christian who likes fantasy fiction involving dragons, he would like to combine the two ideas. A web search for ‘dragon Nativity’ brought up three main results.   Firstly, there are a number   of essays  arguing that you should include a dragon in Nativity scenes, in reference to the allegorical poem in Revelation 15 picturing Satan as a dragon attempting to eat Jesus. I did once have a go at making a Christmas ...

The past couple of days have been days for retracing steps and trying to get things right this time. On Wednesday, I decided to retrace Tuesday’s walk to see whether I could find the lost camera.   First, though, I had a look at the Oakleaf Café’s rota and saw that no-one was signed up to clear tables and wash cups on Wednesday morning.   I decided to get some miles in by taking a shortish early-morning walk around Benter, T’other Side the Hill and Badger’s Cross (did I mention how much I love Somerset place names ?) and end up at the café around 10.30. When I arrived, the kitchen was fairly full, as another volunteer had come in, but just hadn’t put her name down on the rota.   She needed to leave by 12.15, so I could have waited nearly two hours to cover the period from12.30 to 1, but I couldn’t be bothered.   I had a camera to search for, dropped somewhere either in the lanes, copses or fields south of Shepton Mallet, or somewhere along the A37 or Fosse Way, o...

A few years ago, I read a Diary column in a newspaper in which the journalist described having what she called ‘old-fashioned evenings’ with her small daughter, where they didn’t use electricity.   She described how difficult she found it to enter into the spirit of imaginative play with a five-year-old, without television to keep her entertained. I remember feeling sceptical that keeping up with a five-year-old’s imagination would be the hardest part of doing without electricity.  Surely, particularly in winter (when that column was published), lighting and keeping warm would be the challenges?  Not to mention cooking, and preventing chilled or frozen food from spoiling. Friends of mine took the even more radical-sounding step of introducing what they call ‘technology-free days’ to curb their children’s fixation on television and computer games.  I remember having an argument with one of the children, who had said, ‘Fine, I’ll just go out on my roller blades, th...

A few days ago, I went over to see old friends of mine whom I will call Lily and Manly, a couple I have known for over twenty years, before they actually were a couple rather than just two friends I hung out with, and well before their three children were born.  Lily and the youngest child, aged 11, had been working on tie-dyeing T-shirts, so I joined in with that, and chatted with the parents (the two boys weren’t inclined to chat much), and had supper.  I had been hoping to see the oldest teenager (whom I will call Grace), who was out with friends during the day, and arrived home in the early evening.   She needed to go upstairs to get on with her maths homework, but had a bit of time to chat to me first, mainly about how much she hates college.   Grace is halfway through A-levels at the same sixth-form college that I attended and loved, and where my mother taught for a number of years.   I enjoyed studying there, taking four A-levels, a spare GCSE, and (m...

PDB11  and I have recently been reading The Captain’s Apprentice  by Caroline Davison.  This is a fascinating story of two people who led very different lives: Robert Eastick, a Norfolk teenager who in 1856 died at sea under suspicious circumstances after prolonged abuse by the ship’s captain; and Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer and folk-song collector, who in 1905 heard a ballad, ‘ The Captain’s Apprentice ’ , sung by a Norfolk fisherman, James ‘Duggie’ Carter, a childhood neighbour of Eastick, telling the story of a cabin-boy tortured to death by his captain. But it is more than a biography.   It is also a story of how songs and stories mutate over time and are adapted for different purposes.   Vaughan Williams assumed that because the version of ‘The Captain’s Apprentice’ that he heard contained local references, it must have been about a local event.   In fact, as Davison explains, versions of the ballad had been sung on both sides of the Atlantic si...