Divine Award

I’m honoured and delighted that Weave a Garland has been nominated for a Divine Award by the ‘divine’ Sandra Gulland.

Many thanks to you, Sandra.

In turn, I’d like to nominate the following wonderful, informative, beautiful and uplifting blogs…

Tea at Trianon

Writing the Renaissance

Women of History

Disorganised Author

The Embroiderer’s Story

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And now to answer the Divine Award Questions…

1.  Where is your phone?

Lost. Again!

2.  Your hair?

Dark Brown

3.  Your Mother?

Sadly gone

4.  Your Father?

Still here

5.  Your favourite food?

Fresh bread and real butter

6.  Your dream last night?

Nope. Dead to the world

7.  Your favourite drink?

Chardonnay

8.  Your dream/goal?

To be published

9.  What room are you in?

Kitchen

10.  Your hobby?

Knitting, reading, jigsaw puzzles….

11.  Your fear?

Getting to the end and having regrets about things not done

12.  Where do you want to be in six years?

With my family

13.  Where were you last night?

Arriving home after a ten hour drive from Paris

14.  Something that you’re not?

All with it

15.  Muffins?

Not really

16.  Wishlist item?

Let’s begin with a chateau in France…

17.  Where did you grow up?

All over the place. Forces child.

18.  Last thing you did?

Lit the woodburner. It’s cold in here.

19.  What are you wearing?

Slippers and lots of layers. See above!

20.  Your TV?

Take it or leave it.

21.  Your pets?

German Shepherd, four cats, several fish in a pond

22.  Friends?

Great ones

23.  Your life?

Love it

24.  Your mood?

I’m a girl – it changes

25.  Missing someone?

All the family are home right now – so no.

26.  Vehicle?

4×4

27.  Something you’re not wearing?

Make-up

28.  Your favourite store?

Any book shop

29.  Your Favourite colour?

Depends on mood. Love red though

30.  When was the last time you laughed?

This morning

31.  The last time you cried?

A few days ago

32.  Your best friend?

My husband

33.  One place that I go to over and over?

Local secondhand bookshops

34.  Facebook?

Yes. Um!

35.  Favorite place to eat?

Our kitchen

Silêncio

“So you see, imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.”

“I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.”

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.”

Brenda Ueland – 1891-1985

Strange Old Gardening Tips

Below are some old, tried, tested and just plain weird gardening tips.

* Manure your peach trees with leather. In times past, gardeners would travel miles to inspect rubbish heaps for discarded boots and shoes.

* To create your own scented flowers – soak the seeds of non-scented flowers in your favourite scented water overnight, dry them in the sun and then plant.

* Sweet peas planted on St Patrick’s Day (March 17th) will have bigger blooms and greater fragrance.

* Plant strawberries in topsoil taken from around pine or spruce trees and mulch with pine needles for the sweetest taste.

* Place crocus near lavender to keep the birds away from them.

* Place a block of cooking lard beneath the roots of your roses to condition the soil. And always plant roses with parsley to improve their fragrance.

* Dress lilies with woodash for beautiful blooms.

* If you are using a scarecrow, dress him in scarlet. Birds hate scarlet.

* To discourage mice, bath your cat and then sprinkle the water over the soil or plants.

* Plant masses of dill in the flowerbed to discourage rabbits. They adore eating dill and will leave the flowers alone.

* Get rid of fleas with bog myrtle, hollyhock, chamomile and ferns.

A Thread of Red and Gold

She came to us in Autumn

A world of Red and Gold

A land already dying

A life forever Old

She grew up in the Winter

Horizons Light and Cold

Waiting, always Watching

Bought but never Sold

She left us in the Springtime

Shook off our stranglehold

In search of any other

Who listened when she Told

She lost it all in Summer

When everything unrolled

And landed in the River…

…A Thread of Red and Gold

The Public Nuisance of Hoops & Underpants

It is said that 16th century women began to wear knickers because of Catherine de Medici’s love of riding to the chase side-saddle on windy days. The Medici was small of stature and rather well-built but she had beautiful legs and a fine degree of modesty.

 

Catherine de Medici

 

These underpants were called calçons and they caused a bruhaha amongst some moralists of the day…

“Women should leave their buttocks uncovered under their skirts. They should not appropriate a masculine garment but leave their behinds nude as is suitable for their sex.”

Others were of a different opinion. Henri Estienne believed...”These calçons are useful for women – they help to keep them tidy, prevent the onslaught of dust and cold and stop them showing too much of their body whenever they happen to fall off a horse. It also affords them a certain measure of protection against dissolute young men who, when they stealthily slide their hand under a lady’s skirt, will no longer come into direct contact with her flesh.”

Also condemned by some were the vertugades or hoops that women wore under their skirts from about 1530. Satirized, and finally declared a public nuisance, the hoop remained in use for several decades.

 

Catherine de Medici’s daughter, Marguerite of Valois apparently had a novel use for her hoops. She wore one of great width in which she had pockets made large enough to hold a little box. Inside each little box lay the embalmed heart of a deceased lover. And each night, Margot would hang her hoop in a cupboard behind her bed which she kept firmly locked.

King James I of England

James VI of Scotland 1567. James I 1603.

Born 1566. Died 1625.

A Contemporary Description

by

SIR ANTHONY WELDON.

 

 

This Kings Character is much easier to take then his Picture, for he

could never be brought to sit for the taking of that, which is the

reason of so few good peeces of him; but his Character was obvious to

every eye.

He was of a middle stature, more corpulent through his cloathes then

in his body, yet fat enough, his cloathes ever being made large and

easie, the Doublets quilted for steletto proofe, his Breeches in great

pleites and full stuffed: Hee was naturally of a timorous disposition,

which was the reason of his quilted Doublets: His eyes large, ever

rowling after any stranger came in his presence, insomuch, as many

for shame have left the roome, as being out of countenance: His Beard

was very thin: His Tongue too large for his mouth, which ever made

him speak full in the mouth, and made him drink very uncomely, as if

eating his drink, which came out into the cup of each side of his

mouth: His skin was as soft as Taffeta Sarsnet, which felt so, because

hee never washt his hands, onely rubb’d his fingers ends slightly with

the wet end of a Naptkin: His Legs were very weake, having had (as was

thought) some foul play in his youth, or rather before he was born,

that he was not able to stand at seven years of age, that weaknesse

made him ever leaning on other mens shoulders, his walke was ever

circular …

He was very temperate in his exercises, and in his dyet,

and not intemperate in his drinking; however in his old age, and

_Buckinghams_ joviall Suppers, when he had any turne to doe with

him, made him sometimes overtaken, which he would the very next day

remember, and repent with teares; it is true, he dranke very often,

which was rather out of a custom then any delight, and his drinks were

of that kind for strength, as Frontiniack, Canary, High Country wine,

Tent Wine, and Scottish Ale, that had he not had a very strong brain,

might have daily been overtaken, although he seldom drank at any

one time above four spoonfulls, many times not above one or two…

Theme in Storytelling

Mark Barrett has lately been publishing a series of posts about THEME on his site Ditchwalk

He cites Thomas McCormack’s book THE FICTION EDITOR which includes a chapter called Axing Theme.

To quote Mr McCormack – ‘Let’s start calmly: Each appearance of the word ‘theme’ in a literature appreciation textbook should be marked with that yellow crime-scene tape. Samples of the way ‘theme’ is taught should be sent to Atlanta so the Centers for Disease Control can get on it…I seriously pursue this crusade here, albeit in condensed, almost outline, form, because I believe that what’s being done in classrooms stunts, and even kills, the ability and appetite of many of the best students. This deprives our globe of much talent that would otherwise find itself in writing, teaching, reading . . . and editing.’

When Mark Barrett asked Mr McCormack for permission to quote from his book he received this reply – ‘I have no objection to your posting the piece wherever you will — the primary motivation behind my writing that book was not to get rich but to promulgate some helpful things I’d learned in many years of association with storytelling.’

Flannery O’Connor’s take on THEME – “People talk about the theme of a story as if the theme were like a string that a sack of chicken feed is tied with. They think that if you can pick out the theme, the way you pick the right thread in the chicken-feed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens. But this is not the way meaning works in fiction. . . . The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”

You can access Mr McCormack’s full article about Theme and its dire effects here.

 

Clattering…

Or how to catch ringdoves –  Old World pigeon (Streptopelia risoria) having black markings forming a half circle on the neck –  for your supper the Renaissance way.

 

Having said my piece and feeling quite gay,

I invite my friends to put sadness away

“Come! Come! friends, I say; this evening,

If you’re ready, I’ll take you clattering”

In the kitchen, hither and thither

Everyone runs to find first whatever

Will make a noise. One takes a kettle,

Another a mortar of noisy metal,

Another a drum, another a boiler,

Another a fry pan, another runs to the barber

To borrow a baisin; in short, each brings

To make a great noise, all sorts of things.

Once in the forest we begin to take

The sounding instruments, forthwith to make

Such a noise in the fields, the woods, in the sky,

Which goes forth, that whoever hears it will say

In the woods around, some horrible hell,

Has broken loose and come to dwell.

With such a clamour we take the road

Where the ringdoves in the nearby wood

Of hornbeam, oak and willows roost,

The chill night through.

Under the trees we redouble our clatter

Soon the fire’s alight, its bright rays scatter

To aid the incontinent eye as it reached

The great flock perching in the branches.

The ringdoves watch, necks craned, and turning

Immobile at the noise and bright flames burning,

Which in an instant suddenly flare.

Now the harquebus men begin to prepare,

They attentively look at the tree to take stock

Of the densest mass of the startled flock.

Then suddenly sounds a volley of shots

Mixed with the clatter of pans and pots,

Which fill the woods with a horrible blare

While the small-shot ravage in the leafy air

Whatever they meet, and rain on our head

A hail of ringdoves; the rest, full of dread,

Stay still in the tree, or merely change place,

Fluttering about in the bright, clear rays,

Perching more in the light, on the first twig that offers.

Thus, better seen than before the shooters,

Rest quite at ease, till they start to fall striken

Tumbling topsy-turvy…

 

The abuse of Louis XIII

Louis XIII is an intriguing and very complex character. Accused of coldness, melancholy and homosexuality, he has divided opinion over the years. Many see him as a cipher and pawn of his incredibly clever First Minister, Cardinal Richelieu. But Louis, for all his perceived faults, had undeniable qualities.

The negative slant on his personality is subjective but with a very real basis in fact. And yet – when his childhood is investigated – it is possible to see why he was such a complicated human being.

Jean Héroard was born in Montpellier in the year 1551. His descent was from a long line of influential doctors with international connections and he spent his early career in the pay of the Gonzagas and then Charles IX of France. Charles’ brother and heir, Henri III,  retained this doctor and Henri IV renewed the contract when his wife Marie de Medici became pregnant with the future Louis XIII.

As soon as the umbilical cord was severed, this doctor took control and responsibility for the heir of the throne of France’s care. What set Héroard apart – in history – was the very detailed, day by day account he kept of his new charge’s life.

When just two days old, the dauphin Louis had trouble suckling so Héroard brought in a surgeon who cut the membranes beneath the infant’s tongue in three places – a common enough practice but Louis – for the rest of his life – was afflicted by a stutter and he often had to poke his tongue out of his mouth and hold it between his lips.

From that day on Héroard seems to have sought and found complete control over all of the child’s inputs and outputs. The first suppository was administered when Louis was just 10 days old.

By whatever standards, both activities were an invasion  and one that continued for many years, robbing Louis of control over his own body.

Héroard records the dauphin farting near the nose of an attendant who said, ‘Sir, you must fire your musket again.’

‘But it’s not loaded,’ said Louis.

‘Sir, but what should it be loaded with?’

‘With merde,’ the dauphin replied.

A close reading of Louis’ childhood brings unmistakable proof of profound abuse. He was whipped regularly on the orders of both his mother (Marie de Medici) and his father (Henri IV)

Héroard should not hold the full blame. His nurse, his governess, his siblings(legitimate and illegitimate) play their parts. As does his father,the sexual exhibitionist.

When Louis is only four or five years old and after a visit to his father, Héroard questions the dauphin and records…

‘…he (Louis) said some new words and phrases that are shameful and unworthy of his upbringing, saying that Papa’s was a lot longer than his, that his was a long as that – showing half the length of his arm.’

The violence and the abuse were not abnormal. The adults thus produced were afflicted. These adults populate our history books.

Thought provoking?

Louis as a child by Frans Pourbus the Younger

17th Century Smoking Ban

The things you learn when researching a novel never cease to amaze!!

~

Pope Urbain VIII

In 1624, Maffeo Barbarini (1568-1644) aka Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) issued a papal bull that ordered a worldwide ban on the smoking and sniffing of tobacco on pain of excommunication.

For health reasons?

No.

Because he believed it led to sneezing and that sneezing too closely resembled sexual ecstasy.

~

Though I think Mikhail I Fyodorovich Romanov aka Tsar Michael of Russia (1596-1645) had a much more frightening way to enforce the ban on smoking that he invoked in 1634…

Tsar Michael

…A first offence meant a whipping, a slit nose and an exile to Siberia.

And those caught a second time faced execution.