Reblogged from Jen Goldie:
“Take a life with a small dog in tow, add a dash of red hair dye, a selection of crumbling bis- cuits and a passion for recitable verse… The result is a recipe for laughter. Sue Vincent shares her world in verse.”
I’m really a cat lady. Wait! I meant I’ve had cats NO! I mean Cat’s have owned me. I mean Felines! Oh! you know what I mean.
If you’ve ever been owned by a dog, of the canine variety, you’ll love
Continue reading at Jen Goldie
Images and Text from the Silent Eye Workshop: Whispers in the West…
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Angles of Approach…
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Concord of Stones…
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Step forward Spirit…
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Claws of what?…
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Continue reading at The Silent Eye
He scared them. He knew things. He was Fey…
He had talked to the soldier. They had come from far away, marching across the hill with their sharp swords and short kilts, shiny metal at their breast and sun dark skin. One was kind, let him share their fire and told him about their home, far beyond Rome. The other soldiers did not seem to see him.
He had learned from the wise woman who muttered to herself about the herbs and the berries she gathered from summer trees when the snow lay on the ground. He had seen the blue-painted faces of the Small Ones as they camped on the hilltop.
The others said there was no-one there. But he knew… he could see them.
The Ostler was afraid… They were all afraid except the Smith.
So they called him mad… Fey… Fool… and threw scraps to him in the Hall. They let him sleep with the horses in the warm, sweet hay.
He was no fool. Just alone in a world the others could not see…
Excerpt from Heart of Albion
“Yeahs, you’re beautiful aren’t you?” says Wen to the llama.
Now llamas don’t understand English, obviously, but as surely as I am sitting here typing this, he does begin to preen when Wen complements him on his beauty. So I am thinking, well he has maybe picked up on the tone in the vibration of Wen’s voice and is responding to that. His keepers probably do that type of thing all the time… when they are about to feed him.
“I bet you know the way to the top of Our Sacred Hill don’t you, beautiful?”
Lammas nods. Without a word of a lie, Lammas the llama nods an affirmative to a direct question. Okay, so Wen was also nodding, and so he could just have been copying her. Llama, see, llama do and all that.
“Which way is it then, gorgeous?”
Lammas turns his head… and looks… and nods to the left.
“…Which way?”
Lammas repeats the look… and the nod… to the left…
Excerpt from Heart of Albion.
Stuart France & Sue Vincent
Unwittingly drawn into the mysterious and magical landscape of The Initiate, Don and Wen pondered the visual language of symbols, stumbling across revelations and realisations that would alter their perception of the age-old stories they thought they knew… tales that entwine across the tapestry of time.
A hilltop steeped in tragedy, a child whose eyes see too much… a Word-Weaver’s birth into darkness… strange forms shimmering on the edge of vision. They learned to walk the Living Land, listening to the whispers of Earth memory and the ghosts of the most ancient past. And from those tales, another line of communication opens as they explore the folklore, legends and traditional tales handed down, from heart to heart, over the millennia.
As the two friends travel between the sacred sites of Albion, they discover stories that tell how the leys were made, the true origins of the hillforts and the reason why Father Fish had breakfast in Slug Town.
Striding across this landscape of myth are the giants. From Cerne Abbas to the top of the Beanstalk, from Camelot to the Castle of Maidens, how and why is their presence stamped on the Living Lore of the land by their seven-league boots?
Join Don and Wen as the adventure continues, unravelling its mysteries and the magical relationship between Albion and its people.
Heart of Albion is the second book of the Triad of Albion, also available via Amazon
New evidence from the past two years’ work on Orkney has revealed breathtaking perspectives on the nature and importance of the finds at the Ness of Brodgar…
(1000 words, a ten-minute read)
(Above: technical reconstruction of Structure 10 and its dramatic ‘pyramid’ roof on the Ness of Brodgar by Kenny Arne Lang Antonsen and Jimmy John Antonsen)
Staring, breathless, at the TV, desperately trying to keep notes, I was clutching my pencil so hard, it began to splinter…
There was a silence among the archaeologists and assorted technical specialists grouped near Structure 10 on the Ness of Brodgar World Heritage Site; the kind of silence that follows feverish activity and intense speculation – most of it expectantly negative…
We are a cautious species. If we long for something that might change the world, and hope it might happen, we prepare ourselves to be wrong.
Continue reading at The Silent Eye
Such a wonderful gift from a beautiful community…
Then catch the moments as they fly,
And use them as ye ought, man:
Believe me, happiness is shy,
And comes not aye when sought, man.
—A Bottle and a Friend, Robert Burns
Some weeks ago, I turned to Arran, the small Scottish island I call home, for help. Two friends and I had hoped to get together on Arran last April. Because of the pandemic, we postponed it to this year. But between continuing covid restrictions that left me marooned in Italy, and life-threatening health issues that came up for each of my friends, we realized that wasn’t likely either. (You can read about their personal, sad, funny, and amazingly life-affirming cancer journeys on Mary Smith’s Cancer Diaries and Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo.)
The solution, for anyone who has ever lived on Arran, was obvious. I posted a message on the island’s…
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There is a ‘wishing squirrel’ tied around my wrist. Its cord matches my dressing gown. The red squirrel. ‘Tufty’ to most of my generation in this country… has been under threat from the invasion of its grey cousins for years and where once they were a common sight, they are now a rarity across most of the land. I have caught glimpses on my travels, but no photographs… no snapshot to hold and remember.
Memories, though, I do have… of watching them as a child with my grandfather, deep in the Fall Woods, dodging the small missiles they threw at me every morning as I walked through the trees on my way to school, excitement as a red flash ran across a road near Glen Lyon… And, while photographs and keepsakes may perish or be lost, memories persist, even when our minds may no longer be able to access them.
I would like to think that the earth holds memory in trust for us too, ready to share them with some new heart that is open and listening. Maybe they return as the touch of inspiration, a feeling of love or knowledge all unreasonable for the time and place, that comes in and whispers to our inner ear, leaving us with unexpected gifts. I do not believe that any experience is ever wasted… unless we choose to ignore what it offers.
Two days ago, I ‘met’ with two dear friends. It was not the way we had planned, but it is the way it now has to be. The memories we made will, perhaps, not be with me for long… the uncertainty of exactly when the Reaper has scheduled me for collection is not easy but he can take his time as far as I am concerned… but the strange thing is how wide the ripples of memory will and have spread.
Total strangers responding to a quiet call for help made up parcels that transported three women across a continent in isolation to a meeting on a beautiful island, filled with its art, its tastes, scents and colours. All that was missing was the ability to hug each other. We shared beauty, laughter and the inevitable tears … and we made memories.
Perhaps memories are personal, maybe they do not have to persist in order to change the world… even our own… but while they do, they are precious. As I approach the end of my own life all too rapidly, I am conscious of how rich the vein of memory is… and how many of its threads are common to us all. Mary Smith, with whom I have walked the past few months of this journey through cancer, will be teaching an online writing class on this subject soon… Mining Memories. For writers, there can be no better source inspiration. For those of us with time to look back and read what we have written in the books of our lives, there is no better way of checking that we filled every page with something worth living.
So many of the small moments that we have taken for granted assume their true proportions when we look back… Things like smiling across a room at a stranger, cooking with a child, breathing in the first summer sun or the last of the winter snow… Most of the time such moments pass insignificantly by, almost unnoticed… but they should be savoured. They are not the mundane bits and pieces that always drop to the bottom of the bag, but the raw gems from which strings of jewelled memories can be made… and perhaps, if the earth holds our memories in trust, it is their sparkle that we see when the frost or the first dews of spring catch the light.
An Interview with Sue Vincent plus a review of Mister Fox: The Legend:
Sue Vincent, along with partner Stuart France, writes beautiful, haunting, thought-provoking books with universal themes. And then there’s Mister Fox. I fell in love with this seriously weird, viscerally beautiful, hilarious, and just plain fun series of graphic tales. Sue’s health is seriously failing, but her spirit still overflows with a larger-than-life delight in family, history, and love, as you can see in this interview from some years back.
I have seen them write in fire on the darkness…and heard the drums beaten with flaming brands.
Where do they come from?
They come out of the night…
Where do they go to?
Back to the night they return…
They dance in the dark to pipe and drum and fiddle
They dance in the dark with fire and brandished flame…
No-one knows who they are…
But why do they dance?
What is the story behind this magical spectacle?
There are rumours, legends…
Don and Wen set out to investigate.
In a darkened corner of the Waggon and Horses, Langsett, a hooded and enigmatic figure whispers secrets…
Continue reading at Barb Taub
“Can we go out for the day together?” asked my younger son. Days are precious because of their uncertainty around here at the moment, but the chance to spend time with my son and granddaughters made the answer one that I did not need to think about. With everywhere closed and covid restrictions in place, it would have to be in the open air and the first place that sprang to mind was Wayland’s Smithy.
We were lucky with the weather… a glorious, if chilly, spring day dawned. A picnic packed to eat in the car and a wheelchair borrowed ‘just in case’. With the girls sharing the back seat with Stuart, we headed off to one of the most iconic ancient sites in the land… and the place where the adventures Stuart and I have shared over the years had begun so long ago. It was to be a special day for so many reasons.
I already knew that I would not be able to climb Dragon Hill and planned to wait, looking out over the Manger, while the others climbed to the top. I had told the girls the legend about how St George had slain the dragon atop this hill, and how the bare patch of chalk that remains on its summit is where the dragon’s blood was spilt and the grass no longer grows. Caught between shivers of delight and disbelief, Hollie, at six years old, appeared to approve of the story.
I watched the great kites and the buzzards circling far beneath me, and arms outspread, the two little girls ‘flew’ around the hilltop. I could remember clearly our dear friend and companion in the Silent Eye, running down the top of the hill, arms outspread, taking off like a dragon… and she has not ‘come down’ since 🙂
Disaster struck when I fell down for the second time… my leg simply ‘disappearing’ as far as my nerves were concerned. This time I took Stuart out with me and the wheelchair was reluctantly brought out from the car. We drove to the main car park and Stuart and I waited on the grass while Alex and his girls went to see the chalk-cut figure, thousands of years old, that is said to represent a White Horse, or Epona, the horse-mother goddess. Or, given that it has a ‘beak’ or flames coming from its mouth, perhaps a dragon…
Image Wikipedia
Once again, tucked up with a tartan blanket and a granddaughter under each arm, I shared the legends, telling them about the great prehistoric enclosure of Uffington Castle and where to find the Fairy Thorn beside which a skylark had risen one fateful and misty morning that had changed our lives. I was hoping that they would feel the same magic in the land as we had done, and being open to it, would let it in.
A long time later, my son and his girls came back and we headed off to Wayland’s Smithy, just a mile down the five thousand-year-old track known as the Ridgeway. The wheelchair was a necessity now and not one I was happy about… but needs must. I told them the legends… Stuart added to them by including silver-shod unicorns… capturing a little magic for the girls. We told Alex about the feather that fell from the sky when we had been here that first time… a small, white feather, exactly like the one the girls had found and given to me earlier that morning.
The girls made friends with the welcoming darkness of the tomb, sitting within its embrace. Perhaps my own imminent passing may be softened a little for them as they remember the feeling of a peaceful place where loved ones were laid with such care and respect… a place where laughter is as welcome as reverence and where the sun ripples on the spring flowers playing in the breeze.
Wayland’s is a place to which we have taken many people we love, seeking to share the love of the ancient land and its lore that began to blossom for us there. As another generation learned to see with ‘fairy eyes’… to see the many faces hidden in the spirit stones and feel the living presence of earth, stone and sky, I was so glad we had been able to share the day. All you need to do is go out and connect with your roots, no matter where you are in the world… the earth has no boundaries, but continues as a whole, even beneath the sea and beyond time.
And were I in any doubt at all about whether the girls were old enough to understand, two small stones had been picked up along the path and hidden in pockets until they were home… small stones that are standing stones in miniature, covered, from whichever angle you look, in faces…
Reblogged from Ken at rivrvlogr:
the journey
a gift of love, life, and Mother Nature
to write of hope
of survival, like a flame
to have mattered is a joy
to become a better vessel
letting go of illusions
learning how to say goodbye
tomorrow is an uncertainty,
rebirth an existence beyond this one
more than belief… the Design
Continue reading at rivrvlogr
A wonderful review from Paulette Mahurin, author of The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap, The Seven Year Dress and Where Irises Never Grow… all of them deeply moving works, and the profits from the books have been helping to save dogs from kill shelters for years.
Review: Notes from a Small Dog~ Four Legs on Two
In these days of so much devastation and sorrow surrounding so many impacted by Covid, political turmoil, and economic woes, it is a gift to encounter something uplifting to read. Notes from a Small Dog was exactly what I needed. This delightful small book packs a big punch. Well-written, straight to the heart, from the beginning of Ani’s introduction to the computer to her adorable antics throughout I didn’t stop smiling. As I’m writing this review I’m aware of how light my body feels…
Continue reading at The Small Dog’s Blog
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 