Sue Vincent's Daily Echo

Discovering Albion – day 9: Soapbox…

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Sue Vincent

It was getting late by the time we left the island. Ten miles back to the last hotel we had passed or forge ahead and see what happened? We forged ahead and fell lucky, finding a little place north of Alnwick where we could spend the night. Next morning we were up and away early, breaking our fast on the provisions with which we had stocked the car… and deciding, in true Hobbit fashion, that second breakfast could be had in Durham.

Jumping Bean

We found a superb little place in the city centre… the Jumping Bean Café. I warn you, stay clear… unless, of course, you want to end up addicted to crumpets covered in toasted cheese. In which case, I highly recommend it. We looked at the artwork on the walls and watched a pied wagtail on the decking as we waited, curious to taste this unheard-of combination. Cheesey crumpets were, we decided after the first bite, definitely the way forward…

Friendly chaffinch…

The police had reopened the bridge across the river by the time we had done; the body floating in the water had been recovered and turned out to be no more than a log washed downstream. We wandered through the ancient alleyways… ginnels we would call them in Yorkshire… and up towards the castle and Cathedral. A huge memorial cross in the Celtic style dominates the green, but is dwarfed beside the majesty of the cathedral itself.

narrow ways

Now, you’ll have to excuse me but there are a couple of things that get my goat and I fail to understand either of them. No flash photography within the Cathedral… no photographs in the chapels set aside for prayer… those I can understand. The first may cause damage to delicate materials… and I never use a flash in historic places for that reason. The second is unfair and distracting to those who are simply there to pray.

Medieval arms.. though I still say it looks like the Loch Ness monster on that helmet…

But no photography at all… sometimes ‘for copyright reasons’… on a building whose copyright probably ran out the best part of a millennium ago… this I fail to understand. Obviously they want you to buy their illustrated guides. But then there is copyright on the images…

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Posted in adventure, Photography, travel | Tagged admission charges, churches, copyright, heritage, history, rant | Leave a comment

Across a Scattered Land ~ Steve Tanham

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Sue Vincent

Across a scattered land I sought you

For almost all a lifetime’s days

Until within a book I brought you

To be a light beneath my gaze.

Continue reading at Sun in Gemini

Posted in reblog | Tagged Finding Self, Rumi, the beloved | Leave a comment

God-Man…

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Sue Vincent

…“But the Angles were a British tribe, right? And the Saxons were German?”

We are back in Wen’s study after the half triumph of the first of our Glastonbury talks, which aside from a few timing problems, went as well as could have been expected in view of the weather and the somewhat intricate complications of the run up.

“No, that’s not right either; both the Saxons and the Angles were Germanic tribes.”

“Our country is now named after a Germanic tribe! I think we need to know more about the Anglo-Saxons and the original Britons who could, perhaps, be more or less synonymous with what we now like to call the Celts.”

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Posted in Ancient sites, Books, Don and Wen | Tagged alternative history, celtic, Christianity, esoteric, mercia, Mythology, saxons, Stuart France and Sue Vincent, symbolism, The Silent Eye | Leave a comment

Black and White…

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Sue Vincent

…Mother said, “The spiral patterns on the gate don’t mean anything, dear, they’re just decoration.”
If life is a search for meaning then it would be as well to point out from the start that there is none to be had, that way more people would be able to relax and appreciate their surroundings.
The gate of number eight Teesgrove Road did not mean anything but at least it now existed for me in some sort of meaningful way. Those spiral-line pieces of metal made me think that they were a pretty beautiful and elaborate way of saying absolutely nothing…
In fact those spiral-line pieces of metal made me wonder just where the gate of number eight Teesgrove Road stood in relation to the other gates in the street and the very short answer to that question was that the gate of number eight Teesgrove Road was unique.
The Urban and Suburban Town Planners sit around tables drawing up each new uniform vision of the future and the people they have designed the latest uniform homes for move in and immediately start turning meticulously planned dreams into their own personalised versions of heaven or hell.

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Posted in Books | Tagged esoteric, Great Work, mystery, psychology, sacred geometry, story, Stuart France, symbolism, The Silent Eye | Leave a comment

Forget-me-not

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Sue Vincent

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As I pulled the book from the shelf and opened it, a flower fell from between its pages. Its colour gone, its petals so fragile they cracked and crumbled as I caught the little thing. Still there was enough left for me to recognise what it was… a little sprig of forget-me-nots. My face remembered before conscious memory kicked in, the smile and the tear meeting halfway across my cheek. It was a long time ago, but for a second, imagination painted two hands where there was now one and the soft blue of the flower glowed ghostly blue. At its centre, the golden eye of a distant sun looked back at me. A very long time ago.

How much my life has changed in twenty years! How much the world itself has changed. Children who have grown into parents, people who have moved through my life, taken centre stage then exited quietly, to other lives or beyond life. Technology has moved at a pace that makes my daily life barely recognisable, opening a world of knowledge and communication whilst closing the doors on many more human moments of contact. Twenty years to see the sharpness of youth fade to softer tones. The hand that gave me that flower would barely recognise so much of my life today.

Yet, so much has not changed. People are still people, with the same hearts and hurts, the same dreams, the same problems. The places are all filled, as generation after generation play an eternal game of musical chairs, each taking the place of those who went before. The sky is still blue, the earth still as green and a babe in arms still has that soft, milky smell as every babe ever born. Forget-me-nots still bloom, and seem to tell a story similar to our own.

Continue reading at The Silent Eye

Posted in consciousness | Tagged experience, flower, growth, learning, memory, seeds | 1 Comment

Transformation #midnighthaiku

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Sue Vincent

Winter’s purity

Ceding place to summer skies

Looked for with longing

Where is the sorrow

Exchanging earth for heaven

When two become one

Posted in Photography, Poetry | Tagged change, haiku, seasons | 15 Comments

Well it’s a plan ~ Tallis Steelyard

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Sue Vincent

Rebligged from JimWebster, aka Tallis Steelyard:

I was going to start this by saying that there are two types of librarians. Mind you, last time I said that we ended up with a brawl. Somebody immediately leapt up and shouted that there were are least four types, male, female, shy, and intimidating. Another listener told him he was an idiot. He had known librarians who were tall and thin, whilst others were short and stout. A third person hissed at them and told them to be quiet and when they ignored her, she banged their heads together and told them to shut up. I hadn’t the nerve to ask whether she was a librarian.

But ignoring the cavilling of the buffoons at the Misanthropes Hall, or at least who drink in the upstairs bar, I will repeat my assertion. There are two types of librarians. There are those who cherish books, treasure them and would find it unthinkable to part with even the most battered of folios. The other type secretly hates books, will dispose of them at the slightest excuse and seems to think that a library is supposed to be an open space with minimalist décor and a handful of popular books which are borrowed so regularly you don’t need much shelf space for them.

Continue reading at Tallis Steelyard

Posted in Humour, reblog | Tagged Aea in her aspect of Judicious Enthusiasm", Books, librarians | 6 Comments

Discovering Albion – day 8: Sunset

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Sue Vincent

We walked up to the Heugh, a high point of the island, to watch the sun set in the west. Once there was a fort here and some of the ruined walls remain, providing a little shelter from the prevailing wind. There are the remains too of the Lantern Chapel that may have been a beacon and lookout point.

The view from here today is spectacular, looking inland onto the ruins of the twelfth-century Priory, eastwards to the castle and along the coast of the mainland to where the silhouette of Bamburgh castle punctuates the horizon and the day markers of Guile Point reach for the sky.

The light was amazing, turning the pink sandstone to red then gold, painting the landscape with long shadows and glittering on the water, casting an aurulent pathway to the sun. Below we could see the little spit of land, no more than a sea rock cut off from the island by the tide, where St Cuthbert’s chapel once stood.

A simple cross stands on the tiny islet. It was to here the saint retreated in search of solitude, and later further still to the island of Farne. Legends say that like St Francis his rapport with the birds and beasts was great. He would talk to the birds that flocked around him and the seals would come and sit at his feet, warming them against the frozen north wind that blew across the sea.

Certainly, the birds were still with us as we climbed past the simple memorial cross, designed by Lutyens in memory of those who lost their lives to war. The shocking number of crosses at its foot may be more a reflection of those who remain than the number of dead, but the tiny population of the island means that few families escaped unscathed from the conflict.

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Posted in adventure, Ancient sites, Photography, scotland road trip, travel | Tagged birds, Holy Island, Lindisfarne, St Cuthbert, sunset | Leave a comment

Sweet Terror…

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Sue Vincent

…I first noticed the spirals on the gate of number eight Teesgrove Road when I was turning the soil and tidying the litter from the strip of earth which separated its grounds from those of number ten Teesgrove Road.
I started at the bottom of the garden under the gate post because a lot of litter and dead leaves had collected under the bush which stood in front of the gatepost.
Up and until that point in time the gate of number eight Teesgrove Road had been simply that, a gate, but as I worked, this gate started to impose something of it’s own making, something peculiar and of its very own sweet terror… which, after several long hard stares, it eventually transpired, consisted in a pattern of iron worked spirals.
Inanimate objects do not talk, they do not have a voice but when the Amerindian advises you to listen to trees he is not necessarily imploring you to use your ears.
Once I had taken the time to actually look at the pattern of spirals on the gate they were pretty easy to work out and I began running my finger tips along the inside edge, into the centre and back out again…

Continue reading at France & Vincent