Roman; Saxon; Norman; Schoolboy

Whatever your persuasion, whether you look at it as Beltain, May Day, or the first day of summer, yesterday, for once, the weather played its part. Actually the weather always plays its part-it’s just that it’s not always the weather you want!

Anyway the sun was out, and after doing my errands for She Who Must Be Obeyed I took time out in our local Jubilee Park which was certainly dressed for the occasion.

Adorned in her best Cherry blossom, who cannot be lifted on a day such as this? Even I-Autumn and Winter lover that I am.

Though it may not be the exact geographical centre of my town I certainly look upon this area as both its historic and spiritual centre. St.Leonard’s church, part of which dates back to Norman times, is the church that my wife and I were married in.  It is believed there was a wooden Saxon church here before this, and possibly built, as was the custom, on the site of a pagan temple. A stone’s throw away is the suspected place of a Roman signal point, and just behind it some long gone prehistoric barrows.

And speaking of history-here’s a building that has figured prominently in mine. This is Middleton Library. You guys know I’m a bookworm, right?  Go beyond those upstairs windows, in what is now the reference library, and you just might see the ghost of an eleven-year-old Jackdaw diligently doing his homework with his school mates in the former children’s section.

I wonder if I’d recognise him? Would he know me?

I’ve been a member of that library for something like thirty five years. And now my own book is in there. How cool is that?

Near to the bandstand I found the Middleton coat of arms, shyly stating its claim in the grass. And those dandelions-so important for the early bees when many flowers have yet to bloom. At least that’s what I tell my wife when she wants the garden doing.

When Two Worlds Meet, Two Bloggers Greet

In 2013 I was searching the Internet after googling ‘Canky Middleton’. Canky was the name of a legendary figure connected to my hometown of Middleton, allegedly a bodysnatcher of the 19th Century. I was trying to discover if there were any kernels of truth in the story, or if it was rather just a notorious urban legend.

My search led me to a post written by Pam, the author of a blog called Mushy Cloud, who lives in a town not too far from my own. We had a conversation on there about the infamous Canky. Afterwards, I began to explore WordPress, and so was sown the seeds of writing my own blog. This was how City Jackdaw came into being. I followed her blog, she reciprocated by following mine.

Fast forward four years to last Thursday afternoon.

I was attending the funeral of a dear family friend. The length of time that the woman who had passed had been connected to my family can best be illustrated by the fact that, not only did she knit clothes for my children when they were born, she also knitted clothes for me when I was born. Her family and mine had been tied together for decades. 

Anyway, at the service, the vicar who was taking the funeral service called upon a ‘Pam’ to lead the people gathered in prayer. I watched her walking to the front of the church, thinking: I’m sure that’s the Pam who hosts Mushy Cloud.

I knew from some of her posts that she was exploring her vocation within the Church Of England, and this was the town in which she lived. When the service was over and the mourners were filing out, I approached her as she sat at the back of the church. No doubt she thought that I was one of the many people saying goodbye as they walked past to the church doors.

“Are you the Pam of Mushy Cloud?”

She looked up at me. “I am. Who are you?”

“I’m Andy, of City Jackdaw.”

She started in surprise, then immediately thrust out her hand to shake mine, both of us declaring how good it was to meet after all of our WordPress-fielded conversations.

She said “It’s like two worlds are coming together.” 

She wrote in her most recent post that it was a lovely moment in the coming together of her online life and her ‘real’ life. I think we could also look at it as the world of Mushy Cloud and the world of City Jackdaw that came together, two separate planets connected in friendship and confederacy through the nebulous and all encompassing universe of WordPress.

Trust you, my wife said on reading this, to turn it into something all sci-fi! 

But all of our individual blogs are like individual worlds, existing in the blogosphere, each with its own inhabitants and laws, welcoming travellers from near and afar.

Thursday was a nice reminder that we do all exist in the real world, and sometimes indeed our paths do cross.

Keep an eye out for me as you go about your business. I’m the one in the green coat, probably with kids in tow.
Here is Pam’s post, where she mentions our unexpected meeting, go and set down on Mushy World:

https://sterlingsop.wordpress.com/2017/07/20/catching-up-4/

*As I’ve commented on Pam’s post, a further twist that underlines the connections theme is that it turns out that my wife and Pam have met in the past in a professional capacity. City Jackdaw was the ghost that moved unsensed between them.

June, Early Evening

I saw this photograph on a local Facebook page. The photographer Carlo Fontanarosa gave me permission to share it.

It is taken from the old cemetery in my home town of Middleton, and the church is that of St.Leonard’s. Standing on the highest part of the town, it dominates the view both spiritually and geographically.

Part of the building dates back to Norman times, and it is built on the site of a wooden Saxon church. There is even speculation that there was a pagan religious site before this.

All those layers, but its greatest historic significance is that it is where I got married!

I love this shot, it has everything: history; place; wilderness; memories. And to cap it all, it is taken at dusk, my favourite part of the day.

Welsh Odyssey #3

Descending once again the conical hill of Mwnt, I was pleasantly surprised to see a small church below me. Bone-White, sun-bleached, it contrasted sharply with the green field it was situated in. I made a bee line for it.

Unable to resist old churches, and also old cemeteries, the Holy Cross Church ticked all the boxes: the building dated back to the 13th-14th Century, and traditionally a church had stood on this site since the age of the Celtic Saints in the 5th-7th Century. And it was an open, cool oasis in the heat of the day.

I had the church to myself, the only sound was the buzzing of a bluebottle trying to find its way back out into the light. Dust motes span in cobwebbed windows.

The dedication of the church to the Holy Cross is a sign of its antiquity, and just inside was a font from the 14th Century, verdigris-tinged, in need of a scrub. How many babies had been baptised here? From those first, blessed ripples, where did the tide of life take them? Did any of them lie in the cemetery outside these walls?

Also of interest to history buffs like myself was a the remains of a 15th Century timber Rood-screen. The carved heads of what are probably the twelve apostles can still be made out, though the one that I studied looked more like a boxer with a flattened nose and cauliflower ear.

St.Rocky, perhaps?

I sat for a little while, soaking up the atmosphere, thinking of time and wishing for whispers, when the wooden door behind me suddenly opened and my friend entered.

“I just knew that this is where you would be!”

My wife and kids were in the car, and it was time to head back to our caravan. And so I did, but pushed things by having a quick walk around the small, enclosed churchyard first. Luckily, (for my overheating family in the car), there were many graves but few headstones, and of course the old ones were written in Welsh. It seems the graves of the newly dead had conceded their epitaphs to the English tongue.

History; Natural history; this place was a wonder.