Sue Vincent's Daily Echo

The Small Dog’s 10 Best Tips for Training your Two-Legs

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Sue Vincent

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The correct training of your two-legs… ‘specially visiting two-legses…is critical to their well-being. I thought I’d share my ten favourite tips for the establishment of proper pack behaviour…

ani window 1. Use advanced surveillance techniques. Never let them arrive unexpectedly. This gives you a ~~unfair~~ unique advantage. You, of course, will know long before your two-legs that a visitor is arriving. They have to wait for a knock on the door. Which means, you can be ready… and waiting…

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2. Decontamination. You don’t know where they’ve been… they may even have been near cats! But a thorough washing both cleans them up and lets you investigate. They, poor things, have a problem with soap and smelly stuff… they smear it all over. They taste a lot better when it is all gone. They think you are being cute and giving kisses… but that’s okay. We know better… And anyway, if they are going to stuff us in baths with their smelly stuff, what do they expect?

Continue reading at The Small Dog’s Blog

Posted in Dogs, Humour, Nick Verron, Photography | Tagged care of humans, dog ownership, pets, small dog | 4 Comments

Unfamiliar #midnighthaiku

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Sue Vincent

Posted in Photography, Poetry | Tagged fear, haiku, imagnation, shadows | 7 Comments

Going West: A Field of Peace

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Sue Vincent

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We gathered by Whitesands beach, just outside St David’s in Pembrokeshire… a small group of people from all walks of life, putting aside the cares and pressures of the daily grind to explore the sacred landscape of Wales. A time out of time. A weekend is too short to see enough of anywhere… and an area such as this, so rich in natural beauty, history and legend deserves all the time you can give. We had only the weekend, but our guide and Companion had carefully planned the days to share as much as she could of a place that is very dear to her heart.

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For myself, the time in such a landscape was much needed. It had been a busy several weeks. Ever since the April workshop in Derbyshire it seemed as if I had been on my feet or cursing them, especially after the incident with the spider bites. With an unexpectedly rapid house move thrown in for good measure, I was wound up tight and the healing of stone, sun and sea was a balm that I craved.

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Few places could have been better than where we began the weekend. A curve of pale sand nestles between limestone cliffs and is bounded by the bluest sea and a profusion of wildflowers. Carn Llidi rises against the azure sky; its name may mean either the ‘Cairn of Wrath’ or the ‘Cairn of the Gates’. The former may refer to the storms that can batter this headland, but I prefer the idea of the Gates. Walking in its shadow we began a journey through the ancient past.

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The first living field of wildflowers that we crossed hides a secret. This place was once the site of a chapel dedicated to St Patrick, as it is told that it was from here at Porth Mawr that the saint took ship for Ireland some fifteen hundred years ago, after being granted a vision. The chapel was already in ruins four hundred years ago and only a small mound now marks where it once stood.

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Posted in albion, Ancient sites, archaeology, Books, Don and Wen, History, Photography, travel | Tagged archaeology, Halifax bomber, Liberator, skeletons, St David's, St Non, St Patrick, Wales, Whitesands Pembrokeshire, WWII | Leave a comment

Dear Wen: ‘lunatic fringe’…

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Sue Vincent

Dear Wen,

Ah, I have it… It was dusk.

I even have some photographs, taken during our brief sojourn, of the moon.

Perhaps then, it is a sort of ‘Moon Madness’ from the lunatic fringe of the moor, as it were… Don’t answer that, it may be rhetorical anyway…

The Gods as Everyman is precisely my point, as recognised by the ticketing policy of the early Theatres.

The Middleton Crosses? They really didn’t want us to get in there did they. Worth it when we finally did though, and nice to have someone else along with us, without whom, even that third time we wouldn’t have got in.

Continue reading at France & Vincent

Posted in albion, Books, Don and Wen | Tagged interpretation, landscape, magic, mystery, Mythology, Photography, psychology, story, writing | Leave a comment

Masks of Sod

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Sue Vincent

…For those of you who have not yet realised, the preceding monographs have followed,

relatively closely, the lines laid out by the Danish Philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard,

in his master-work, ‘Fear and Trembling’.

Quite apart from his unquestionble literary genius and an eternally playful spirit,

Kierkegaard is interesting for a number of reasons.

His name, for one, which means ‘church-yard’, compare, scottish ‘kirk’ for ‘church’,

and the fact that all his published written works were placed in the public domain

under a series of aliases which comprised a different nom de plume, or pen-name, for each work.

We shall return to literary masks in due course…

Continue reading at France and Vincent

Posted in Art, Books, philosophy, Stuart France | Tagged consciousness, Fairy Tale, Folk Tale, magic, mystery, psychology, story, writing | Leave a comment

Walking the line…

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Sue Vincent

“… so fear was originally there to help us survive.”
“Yep… and with not many sabre-tooth tigers roaming the suburbs, we found other things to fear. And fear is intimately linked to how we judge people.”
“How so?”

It was one of those early morning conversations over coffee and from the nature of fear we had progressed to how we unconsciously judge the people that we meet. It is all very well to say that we should not judge…but we do. At least to a certain degree. Sitting in moral judgement upon someone’s actions is a slightly different matter, but we do seem to be programmed to make judgements about the people who arrive in our lives. It comes from the same primitive survival instinct as fear and is part of the same process. If a hunter comes face to face with another spear-wielding man, that snap judgement would be the deciding factor; does he run from a foe, throw his own spear, or welcome a fellow hunter to the chase?

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Our need for such judgements may not be so acute these days, but the instinct remains. We just use it in a more abstract way. A new person arrives on the scene… a new colleague, perhaps… and an immediate reaction determines what we see as our best approach. How we judge them then determines, rightly or wrongly, what we expect of them too.

But how do we make that judgement? Against what measure are we holding them? We only have our own normality, our own world view, with which to work… and that, of necessity, becomes our median line. Some people will quickly climb high in our estimation, others will let us down. People will either surpass our expectations or fall below them…and hopefully we can rejoice at the one and learn from the other.

Continue reading at The Silent Eye

Posted in The Silent Eye | Tagged ego, expectations, fear, instinct, judgement, psychology, superiority, survival | 1 Comment

Glow #midnighthaiku

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Sue Vincent

Posted in Photography, Poetry | Tagged continuity, dawn, gold, haiku, rose, sunset | 16 Comments

Going West: Into the Past

Posted on September 12, 2020 by Sue Vincent

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As you walk through the antlered gate of the hillfort at Castell Henllys you are stepping back into the past. This is no mere historical curiosity, nor ‘just’ an educational museum… it is a real and ancient settlement, painstakingly recreated and brought once more to vivid life.

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There are posts marking some of the placements where the supporting frames of the roundhouses were found during excavations. There are places where you can go and see the stone footings of similar buildings. Indeed, we would see some that very afternoon. But here, there are not just posts. There are roundhouses.

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Over a period of twenty six years, archaeologists explored the site. The roundhouses are built on the original foundations of the Iron Age settlement, standing exactly where they would have stood over two thousand years ago. The site provides a time machine for us to see how our ancestors lived. For the archaeologists, it is something more… a unique opportunity to study the practical issues of living in such a settlement; to see how things would have had to be constructed… and learn how they worked.

Continue reading at France & Vincent

Posted in Ancient sites, Art, History, mystery, Photography, Sacred sites, Stuart France and Sue Vincent, travel, Wales | Tagged Castell Henllys, Iron age hillfort, pembrokeshire, reconstruction | Leave a comment

Names Matter: nimmy nimmy not…

Posted on September 12, 2020 by Sue Vincent

…Well, she felt that horrud. Howsomediver, she hard the king a coming along the passage. In he came, an’ when he sees the five skeins, he says, ‘Well, me dare I don’t see what ye will ha’ your skeins ready tomorrer night as well, an’ as I reckon I shorn’t ha’ to kill you, I’ll ha’ supper in here tonight.’
So supper and another stool was brought for him and down the tew they sat.
Well, he hadn’t eat but a mouthful or so, when he stops and begins to laugh.
‘What is it?’ says she.
‘Why,’ says he, ‘I was out a huntin’ today, an’ I got away to a place in the wood I’d never seen afore. An’ there was an old chalk pit. An’ heerd a sort of hummin’, kind o’. So I got off my hobby, an’ I went right quiet to the pit, an’ I looked down. Well, whar should there be but the funniest little black thing yew iver set eyes on. An’ what was that dewin on, but had a little spinning wheel, an’ that were a spinning a wonnerful fast, an a twirlin’ that’s tail. An’ as that span sang:
‘Nimmy nimmy not… I’m tha’ Tom Tit Tot…’
Well, when the mawther heerd this, she fared as if she could ha’ jumped outer her skin for joy, but she di’nt say a word.

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Posted in Books, Don and Wen | Tagged esoteric, Fairy Tale, Folk Tale, mystery, psychology, Stuart France and Sue Vincent, symbolism, The Silent Eye | Leave a comment

The Story Teller’s Art…

Posted on September 12, 2020 by Sue Vincent

In ‘Sunken Cities’ the author, A.J. North, contends that in Math the son of Mathonwy, one of the Four Branches of the Mabinogion, we have an instance of what can only be regarded as racial memory.

In this story, Gwydion, the Arch-Mage, and his protégé and foster-child, who at the outset of the story has neither name, combat arms, nor the hope of securing a livelihood and hence a fitting mate, journey three times to the ‘strong-hold’ of Arianrhod in order to acquire from her, by fair means or foul, the child’s three-fold birth-right.

On the first journey, in order to secure the child a name, they walk together to Arianrhod’s seat of power, which is situated in Anglesey. On their second sojourn together, in order to secure combat arms, they have to wade to the fortress and on their third sally forth, in search for the lad a wife, they sail there in a boat.

It is North’s contention then that, as it was only over the slow course of millennia that Anglesey actually became an island, what we have here, preserved for all time in this story, is a folk record of the earth’s gradual evolution into that state.

Continue reading at France and Vincent