I have often thought that one way to slow down the terrifying acceleration of time as I get older is to spend the days with small children. This is exhausting, but maybe that it the price you have to pay to get full value from every waking hour.
Certainly when my own children were small, the days seemed to last as long as they had when I was a child myself. The impression that time has speeded up - especially the months, seasons and years - has got more appalling the more I am away from small people.
The last 24 hours has been spent with the grandsons, and it's already lasted about a week. We have been doing - everything. I have sat on the floor a lot, and been climbed on. I have read, and re-read, and read out loud again books made of thick cardboard pages with pop-up sections. I have counted up to a hundred.
I have taught first one, and then the second boy how to play Connect Four... the the competitive part has not been mastered, but getting the counters into the tiny little frame has been completely understood - this little toy amused their father when he was a child... They have already lost two of the precious counters so I will have to move the sofa later to find them.
I have counted up to a hundred again. I have laughed. I have wiped so much green pasty stuff off the boys' faces you would not believe that so much gunk could have started as one innocent bowl of pea soup.
I have rescued a fine old chisel from being hammered into the floor. I have helped eat porridge with my fingers.
I have helped each boy have a go on a new (second-hand) pedal car, on the lumpy lawn in the rain. round and round, eventually abandoned to wait for drier weather or a harder surface.
I have played Spiderman Zipwire about 75 times across the sitting room, while discussing how wet my (his) feet could get if we splashed into a pond under the wire, and how scared Spiderwoman would be if he (yes, he is a superhero) if he had to do the same thing.
I have been in the rain to the supermarket, hearing the tune for Batman boysplained to me over and over and over again, and then performed - dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner-Batmannnnn! dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner-Batmaaaaaaaaan! (Many times). I have carefully selected which apple turnover to bring home, and then had to phone my DIL to find out if it can be eaten immediately... (No!)..... But then selected a box of blueberries to eat on the way home, and pushed home in the absolutely tipping rain with the two boys alternately picking blueberries out of the punnet with extreme delicacy, while the rain poured down their impervious face...... We came home without the Batman Chorus but full of blueberries and completely happy, wet from top to bottom. Next we made art on the phone with a digital paintbox, and emailed them to the parents.... And then we played trains, and watched some television, and texted to Aunty Lucie, and then ... well, it's mid-afternoon and we still have the rest of the afternoon..... So, this is my formula. I have been living in their timezone. It goes MUCH more slowly than old time. I recommend it.
Tuesday 4 June 2019
Sunday 2 June 2019
Sending children down the mines....
Half way up the Great Orme there's a pit in the ground, about the size of a couple of tennis courts. In 1987 there was a plan to make this into a carpark, and then preparatory works uncovered evidence of old mine workings - which they investigated.
The assumption was that the mine was a left-over from the 19th or maybe18th centuries - modern industrial times. But soon they started to discover old tools left behind, and these were made of stone, and animal bone. This was a previously unsuspected copper mine dating back 4000 years, in the middle Bronze Age. Its full extent is still to be uncovered, though they have penetrated down 9 layers, some 180 metres in depth. Only the first two layers are available for public visits, well lit and explained, but still - narrow, damp, dark and full of mysteries.
They think that copper would originally have been visible on the surface - malachite rock or other stones stained green or blue, so at first they'd have been able to scavenge on the ground, but gradually started to work their way down. Their pursuit - using their hands and rocks as tools - led them to gouge out a maze of tunnels and caverns, tiny, claustrophobic, and only accessible to children.
As one of the display signs says, this was all about the creation of wealth and power... new ideas in the world. The older ways - which had seen the spreading of mankind all over the world - were all about understanding how to wander with cattle and goats, and possessing skills, knowledge. People were nomadic. The goddess governed matters of life and death, according to her own seasons, dancing with the sun and the moon, the weather, the sea... nothing which could be owned.
But the mining of metals meant a complete change in everything... Now everything was up for grabs. Men seized control and authority.
Contemporary with the Great Orme copper mines is the amazing gold cape found at Mold, now in the British Museum who accept it was probably associated with the works at Orme. How about that for a statement of wealth and power? (The gold probably came from Ireland).
So, this power came from the copper mines. You have to ask, which children went into the tiny shallow narrow holes in the rock in the pitch dark to bash away and scrape out more of the green-tinged rocks? Were they slaves? Who sent them? How long did these little scraps live? How were they paid? In food? In being allowed to live, at all? Children died in the copper mine, as young as 5, or 6. And women too, and men. Their grandfathers and grandmothers had been herders, wanderers.... but these people were destined to grub into solid rock. It's dark and cold down there. What stories did they tell? What did they believe?
Stones were hauled up from the beaches a mile or so away to be used as hammers and spades. And animal bones were fashioned and abandoned and left behind and became stained green from the metallic water flowing round them....
The scale of the excavations is amazing... not just the extent and depth of the tunnels, but the occasional ball-room-sized space, one of which is thought to be the largest man-made ancient hole in the ground in the whole world. Wealth and power. Not tribe and knowledge.
Whatever changes we are witnessing now, as the internet and artificial intelligence and dark data penetrate every aspect of our lives, I think it that is nothing compared to what rippled out from the Great Orme. Here they must have had many many people, over many generations - more than 1200 years - going down into that pit to pulverise the rock and drag the metal out into the open. They mastered smelting too, jettisoning iron as they didn't know what it was, and their fires were not hot enough to melt it... The copper was fantastically valuable - influencing technology, trade, power, mapping, politics. It was made into tools - axes, and spears, and these were now to be used as weapons against people, to establish ownership and territory... Kings created themselves. Is this the age of King Midas?
The very excellent booklet sold at the Copper Mine mentions the Dover boat in the context of trade with the continent... some of the photos from that booklet are used here.
If you get a chance, do go and see this extraordinary place. Until it was found, everyone thought that copper and bronze making was a matter for the Mediterranean, the Middle East... but this pit on the Great Orme has meant the re-writing of the entire history of that period for the British Isles. Much more is waiting to be uncovered.
The assumption was that the mine was a left-over from the 19th or maybe18th centuries - modern industrial times. But soon they started to discover old tools left behind, and these were made of stone, and animal bone. This was a previously unsuspected copper mine dating back 4000 years, in the middle Bronze Age. Its full extent is still to be uncovered, though they have penetrated down 9 layers, some 180 metres in depth. Only the first two layers are available for public visits, well lit and explained, but still - narrow, damp, dark and full of mysteries.
They think that copper would originally have been visible on the surface - malachite rock or other stones stained green or blue, so at first they'd have been able to scavenge on the ground, but gradually started to work their way down. Their pursuit - using their hands and rocks as tools - led them to gouge out a maze of tunnels and caverns, tiny, claustrophobic, and only accessible to children.
As one of the display signs says, this was all about the creation of wealth and power... new ideas in the world. The older ways - which had seen the spreading of mankind all over the world - were all about understanding how to wander with cattle and goats, and possessing skills, knowledge. People were nomadic. The goddess governed matters of life and death, according to her own seasons, dancing with the sun and the moon, the weather, the sea... nothing which could be owned.
But the mining of metals meant a complete change in everything... Now everything was up for grabs. Men seized control and authority.
Contemporary with the Great Orme copper mines is the amazing gold cape found at Mold, now in the British Museum who accept it was probably associated with the works at Orme. How about that for a statement of wealth and power? (The gold probably came from Ireland).
So, this power came from the copper mines. You have to ask, which children went into the tiny shallow narrow holes in the rock in the pitch dark to bash away and scrape out more of the green-tinged rocks? Were they slaves? Who sent them? How long did these little scraps live? How were they paid? In food? In being allowed to live, at all? Children died in the copper mine, as young as 5, or 6. And women too, and men. Their grandfathers and grandmothers had been herders, wanderers.... but these people were destined to grub into solid rock. It's dark and cold down there. What stories did they tell? What did they believe?
Stones were hauled up from the beaches a mile or so away to be used as hammers and spades. And animal bones were fashioned and abandoned and left behind and became stained green from the metallic water flowing round them....
The scale of the excavations is amazing... not just the extent and depth of the tunnels, but the occasional ball-room-sized space, one of which is thought to be the largest man-made ancient hole in the ground in the whole world. Wealth and power. Not tribe and knowledge.
The very excellent booklet sold at the Copper Mine mentions the Dover boat in the context of trade with the continent... some of the photos from that booklet are used here.
If you get a chance, do go and see this extraordinary place. Until it was found, everyone thought that copper and bronze making was a matter for the Mediterranean, the Middle East... but this pit on the Great Orme has meant the re-writing of the entire history of that period for the British Isles. Much more is waiting to be uncovered.
A drive across the country
Some observations:
The government's cut-backs are presumably responsible for a cut-back in cutting back the trees, hedges, shrubs etc which like to grow up beside roads. As a result, right across the country, road signs which are placed for our information and safety are - at present - very often hidden inside a crazy kind of Burnham Wood. This is both irritating and dangerous. Not everyone has satnav, and these indicator boards are essential. But they don't move and they are silent. Hard-pressed councils have put their maintenance and visibility right down at the end of the list of priorities.
Petrol stations are quietly transforming themselves into grocery shops. People are eating on the move. All the food and goods are wrapped in plastic. Not all garages have the facilities we used to rely on, air-pressure fillers for example. And none of them sell large road-maps any more.
They do sometimes sell small local car maps, smaller page size than A4. But these are not much more use than satnavs which give you such limited information. Our old car maps are so beaten up and out of date, and I failed to notice they were hard to renew nowadays. But only a large map covering a wide area and filled with proper details can show you your alternative routes, or interesting places to go and explore, or what the local place-names tell you. I feel bereft. (Also, as it comes to mind, I can tell you that shops no longer sell packets of ordinary house-hold candles. You can only buy tea-lights now, unless you revert to the internet.) Maybe this blog will become a litany of loss, recording the multitude of tiny changes which are sweeping the old ways away, and creating new ones which are not always welcome. So.....
Travelling across Britain by car these days is quite difficult. You can join the motorways where the traffic is frequently crowded or jammed or stationary, with bumpy noisy road surfaces due to age and method of construction, or the motorways are restricted by speed limits for long distances, and they are nearly always, and mostly, in any case, boring. I find I have a yearning to go by the old roads, because there I learn about the landscape, the history and community of the country. But it's no use being in a hurry. I think I shall add 'travel in England in the Middle Ages' to my list of subjects to explore.
Yesterday leaving Faversham at 9am we arrived in Llandudno at about 4.30pm. One of the greatest moments was a sudden brilliant glimpse down into the huge glowing estuary of the River Dee, with the tide out, and the swirling pinks and greens and golds of the water and mud stretching out into the soft light. Nowhere to stop and take a breathe. I wish our road system had 'aires' as they do in France, where you can stop and recover your spiritual equilibrium by just looking.
And I had another vision, as we saw various real or Victorian castles dotted about in the hills, that I need to think about the landscape as women and men see it... a male landscape, and a female. What items would we place in the masculine map? Castles, courtrooms and canals, bridges, railways, etc. Mines and quarries. Battle fields. And which would go in the feminine landscape? Not so easy to list! But wells and springs, cottages and gardens, herbal beds, the addresses of midwives....
The process of booking into a self-catering flat has become entirely automated these days. They send messages with entry codes and details of where to find a key, all that. Fine, as long as the messages arrive.
Montague House, (sp. var. Montegue) conceals itself at the end of a row of splendid early-mid Victorian holiday hotels and b&bs by hiding its name behind a built-on ice-cream booth. There are few if any house numbers to be seen anywhere… everyone is revelling in the Belmont, Merrion, Lauriston and Lawton, Milverton, Wildings, Tyndale, Annan, Whitemoor, Grand, Brigstock and St Davids……We were lucky that the ice-cream booth was open as the helpful boys working there found us someone who knew someone who could telephone someone who knew the owner of our apartments. A few calls were made. The owner (‘host’) sounded plaintive that his messaged instructions had not reached us….. But we did eventually get in.
The photos which ‘sell’ these little apartment contracts do not, of course, contain information about noise or smell. This apartment which is otherwise almost quite sweet, is directly above the loudly-powered ventilation units clearing frying smells from two restaurant kitchens, so it is not the lack of sea view which depresses, or the proximity of the rear walls of the adjacent buildings, but the smell and roar of these fans. Alas.
But - it’s home for the next two nights. We went out to explore.
The broad streets of Lllandudno are very pretty. There was a building regulation or formula 150 years ago that ensured the houses were no higher than the width of the streets, which gives a very open and pleasing tone to the town. The huge wide bay sweeps round between the Great Orme and the Little Orme, and in the modestly warm air, children were scampering and families strolling along the distant water’s edge. Very pretty. The Ormes are two huge blobs of rock - baby mountains - which lurch out from the land towards the sea, and are thought to have been named by the Norsemen who thought of them as dragons, or worms…… (geddit?)
The broad streets of Lllandudno are very pretty. There was a building regulation or formula 150 years ago that ensured the houses were no higher than the width of the streets, which gives a very open and pleasing tone to the town. The huge wide bay sweeps round between the Great Orme and the Little Orme, and in the modestly warm air, children were scampering and families strolling along the distant water’s edge. Very pretty. The Ormes are two huge blobs of rock - baby mountains - which lurch out from the land towards the sea, and are thought to have been named by the Norsemen who thought of them as dragons, or worms…… (geddit?)
We perambulated, found that restaurant prices are quite high especially in the evenings (main meal ranging from £15-33), and eventually chose a Bengali place - mostly on the basis of price. Vegetable dhansak or biriani £9. There was a brief moment (as we climbed the stairs to the dining room) that we fancied we would be gracing them with our custom… (the arrogance of holiday-makers bestowing choice and money on a business!)… but when we go there it was crowded out, utterly heaving. We were lucky to get a table, and had a pleasant meal surrounded by happy families and chuckling groups of businessmen. And so home to bed. The noise and smell of the ventilators had died down. Hoorah! Sweet dreams.
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