There were two reasons why I set out to read the book. The first was a sense of obligation. The book was signalled for our October meeting. The second reason was much older. Heart of Darkness was a classic. It had survived for more than a century of earthtime. Such survivors are there to be studied and admired. Joseph Conrad’s reputation relies on his Polish origin and his outstanding command of the English language. That is what made him a classic. For me, his words printed on the page rose up. An impenetrable thicket redolent of cigar smoke and leather-covered easy chairs for the comfort of gentlemen in their clubs along Pall Mall.
I went in search of a first edition. The library had a handsome run of Blackwood’s Magazine. Here was a doorway to revelation.
1826 came forward in two leather-bound volumes. Two discoveries : William Blackwood published his monthly magazine in Edinburgh; it was a veritable miscellany designed to provide permanent reading material from the wider world for the benefit of Scottish gentlemen of leisure. It was avowedly political. A Whig counterblast to Tory intransigence. Huskisson and Grattan took me back to history lessons in the VIth Form. ‘First Love’ began : “I shall never forget the first time I ever drank rum-punch after having been smoking cigars.”
The two fat bindings of 1899 were tributes to increasing prosperity. William Blackwood & Sons were now of Edinburgh and 37 Paternoster Row, London. Here was John Buchan in January. Here the Heart of Darkness divided, like Gaul, in partes tres : February March April. And, on page 818, the grandiloquent exuberance of Lord Jim : “I was hindered by the oriental voice within the court-room expostulating with impassioned volubility.” Elsewhere : the Carlist cause in Spain; The Preservation of African Elephants; Californian gold discoveries; Game-fishing in the Thames; Mr Lecky on Mr Gladstone; Sir George Trevelyan as a historian; a biography of George Borrow; The Sins of Education; Christian Science ‘Quackery’; and much else besides. There was a military feel about it. Lt Gen Sir Henry Brackenbury, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., wrote at length from Salamanca; there were Lessons of Russian Aggression still to be learned; the necessity of the Boer War to be questioned; inappropriate equipment of British troops in Afghanistan to be lamented. Plus ça change .. ..
I have at last an explanation for Conrad’s thicket. The writing of fiction requires its own subset, its own particular register of the English language. It is like unto the conjuring of a magical spell designed to create that state of έκστασις [ékstasis] where the reader ‘steps aside’ from the everyday consciousness of physical reality into the metaphysical reality of the author’s original creation. I find myself unable to tune in to Conrad’s idiosyncratic wavelength. The yellow mellowness of London’s gas lighting and the swirling opacities of pea-souper fogs are but faded memories of Harcourt Street before I moved away. Coal-fired steamships and the blood red maps of Empire are no longer current currency. I wander all too easily among the unending landscapes of lo real maravilloso. Time’s wingèd chariot is standing at platform nine.
© francis cameron
oxford, 27 september 2008
Saturday 27 September 2008
BOOKS ON THE BROAD
books on the broad
On the first Monday night of the month, I go to Books on the Broad. It’s a ‘reading group’ hosted by Blackwell’s in their bookshop on Broad Street in Oxford. Numbers present have varied between 12 and 20. Last night the age range began, I guess, in the mid-twenties and went upwards from there. Again I guess: probably the majority present are aged 50 or more. Men are in a minority. Just 3 or 4 of us.
The general idea is that during one month we read our ‘set book’ – it’s always a novel – and then we meet on the first Monday of the next month to talk about it. Put like that it looks a strange thing to do. I joined partly to meet a new group of people but more particularly to be led to books I otherwise might not have read. Somehow I suspect it just provides an evening’s entertainment in congenial company for some of those who attend. We meet at 6:30 with an 8 o’clock exit. I find I’m home in time to watch whatever BBC1 has on offer at 9 pm.
I ‘discovered’ the group in June, read the chosen book, and wrote a brief review which I took with me for the first Monday in July. The book was Annie Proulx : The Shipping News which I remembered from the short list for one of the literary Prizes and for a film version I’d seen on the telly a long time back. I didn’t particularly enjoy the book. It seemed to me like the work of someone who’d been to a Creative Writing course to learn how to do it and then diligently applied the lessons she’d learned when she wrote her novel. I was not surprised to find I was in a minority of one so far as Books on the Broad was concerned.
On August 4th, we talked about Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, a science fiction novel originally in Polish and the book of two films. Another text which didn’t particularly beguile me. Without a self-imposed obligation to read the whole thing, I would never have reached the end. I found it a monotone monologue without a beginning or an ending. It was first published in 1961 (in Poland). I found a sense of an undefined but continual threat lurking in the background and speculated that this was the very real possibility of imminent nuclear war which many people felt in the early 1960s.
And so to last night when we were assumed to be familiar with Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing, her first novel (published in 1950). It’s set in southern Africa (where she lived from age 5 until 1949) and is about a youngish single women who was influenced by gossip to get married. It was a disaster which ended only when she was killed. I found the book very well written and have since read two more of hers. The Sweetest Dream (2001) and The Golden Notebook (1962). I found Golden Notebook especially good and quite unlike any novel I’d ever read before. Maybe it can go on our ‘reading list’ sometime in the second half of next year.
On the first Monday night of the month, I go to Books on the Broad. It’s a ‘reading group’ hosted by Blackwell’s in their bookshop on Broad Street in Oxford. Numbers present have varied between 12 and 20. Last night the age range began, I guess, in the mid-twenties and went upwards from there. Again I guess: probably the majority present are aged 50 or more. Men are in a minority. Just 3 or 4 of us.
The general idea is that during one month we read our ‘set book’ – it’s always a novel – and then we meet on the first Monday of the next month to talk about it. Put like that it looks a strange thing to do. I joined partly to meet a new group of people but more particularly to be led to books I otherwise might not have read. Somehow I suspect it just provides an evening’s entertainment in congenial company for some of those who attend. We meet at 6:30 with an 8 o’clock exit. I find I’m home in time to watch whatever BBC1 has on offer at 9 pm.
I ‘discovered’ the group in June, read the chosen book, and wrote a brief review which I took with me for the first Monday in July. The book was Annie Proulx : The Shipping News which I remembered from the short list for one of the literary Prizes and for a film version I’d seen on the telly a long time back. I didn’t particularly enjoy the book. It seemed to me like the work of someone who’d been to a Creative Writing course to learn how to do it and then diligently applied the lessons she’d learned when she wrote her novel. I was not surprised to find I was in a minority of one so far as Books on the Broad was concerned.
On August 4th, we talked about Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, a science fiction novel originally in Polish and the book of two films. Another text which didn’t particularly beguile me. Without a self-imposed obligation to read the whole thing, I would never have reached the end. I found it a monotone monologue without a beginning or an ending. It was first published in 1961 (in Poland). I found a sense of an undefined but continual threat lurking in the background and speculated that this was the very real possibility of imminent nuclear war which many people felt in the early 1960s.
And so to last night when we were assumed to be familiar with Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing, her first novel (published in 1950). It’s set in southern Africa (where she lived from age 5 until 1949) and is about a youngish single women who was influenced by gossip to get married. It was a disaster which ended only when she was killed. I found the book very well written and have since read two more of hers. The Sweetest Dream (2001) and The Golden Notebook (1962). I found Golden Notebook especially good and quite unlike any novel I’d ever read before. Maybe it can go on our ‘reading list’ sometime in the second half of next year.
Wednesday 27 February 2008
daily daily
ic swince þearle
my day begins with texts in old english
today I am absorbed in the colloquia of aelfric
he that was abbot of eynsham round about the year 1000
he set out to familiarise his trainees with the latin language
to that end he wrote a series of imaginary conversations
with local craftsmen and traders
others have transformed his latin into old english
this is the only text I know which throws light
on the ways and means of ordinary people
in reply to the question
hwaet dest þu
the inevitable reply is along the lines of
ic swince þearle
swincan is full of meanings
ic swince þearle comes across as I really do work very hard
but ic swince can also mean I struggle
and I think of myself
and my struggles with some old english writings
this week’s task has been to focus on the description of beowulf’s funeral
ic swince
I really do
I really do struggle
I diligently parse every single word
but to convey connected thought into modern speech I cannot
still less am I able to respond with lines
half lines
of rhythmical verse
even imitative alliteration eludes me
I struggle
ic swince þearle
I really do
giese leof
my day begins with texts in old english
today I am absorbed in the colloquia of aelfric
he that was abbot of eynsham round about the year 1000
he set out to familiarise his trainees with the latin language
to that end he wrote a series of imaginary conversations
with local craftsmen and traders
others have transformed his latin into old english
this is the only text I know which throws light
on the ways and means of ordinary people
in reply to the question
hwaet dest þu
the inevitable reply is along the lines of
ic swince þearle
swincan is full of meanings
ic swince þearle comes across as I really do work very hard
but ic swince can also mean I struggle
and I think of myself
and my struggles with some old english writings
this week’s task has been to focus on the description of beowulf’s funeral
ic swince
I really do
I really do struggle
I diligently parse every single word
but to convey connected thought into modern speech I cannot
still less am I able to respond with lines
half lines
of rhythmical verse
even imitative alliteration eludes me
I struggle
ic swince þearle
I really do
giese leof
Tuesday 12 February 2008
to þam wife cwæð god
þu bist under weres onwealde
and he gewielt þe
I am at my morning exercise. I’ve made a cup of coffee and am sitting up in bed with an extract of Aelfric’s Old English translation of part of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden which I am rendering (!) into current dialogue.
Mitchell & Robinson have kindly provided alongside for comparison King James’s Authorised Version and a Latin text which I take to be Jerome’s dubious vulgar rendition. The Old English makes its point with greater fervour.
god said to the woman
you are under your man’s command
and he uses you
None of the mollycoddling flimflam from KJ’s boys ‘he shall rule over thee’.
Still less of Jerome’s ‘sub viri potestate eris et ipse dominabitur tui’, though I must admit dominabitur associated with sub viri potestate does evoke a certain kind of folksy imagery, sitting up in bed as I am illuminated by rosy-fingered Dawn’s early light.
Aelfric was a monk, Abbot of Eynsham, no less, and he really didnt want to make the Book of Genesis open to men of the common herd lest they imagine they were free to copulate, as did the patriarchs, with their sisters and daughters for the better increase of the better part of the population; nor indulge themselves with assorted concubines as well as a plethora of wives and a side order of nubile serving wenches. Nonetheless he does make a point.
Was there something about knowing which side his bread was buttered?
þu bist under weres onwealde
and he gewielt þe
I am at my morning exercise. I’ve made a cup of coffee and am sitting up in bed with an extract of Aelfric’s Old English translation of part of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden which I am rendering (!) into current dialogue.
Mitchell & Robinson have kindly provided alongside for comparison King James’s Authorised Version and a Latin text which I take to be Jerome’s dubious vulgar rendition. The Old English makes its point with greater fervour.
god said to the woman
you are under your man’s command
and he uses you
None of the mollycoddling flimflam from KJ’s boys ‘he shall rule over thee’.
Still less of Jerome’s ‘sub viri potestate eris et ipse dominabitur tui’, though I must admit dominabitur associated with sub viri potestate does evoke a certain kind of folksy imagery, sitting up in bed as I am illuminated by rosy-fingered Dawn’s early light.
Aelfric was a monk, Abbot of Eynsham, no less, and he really didnt want to make the Book of Genesis open to men of the common herd lest they imagine they were free to copulate, as did the patriarchs, with their sisters and daughters for the better increase of the better part of the population; nor indulge themselves with assorted concubines as well as a plethora of wives and a side order of nubile serving wenches. Nonetheless he does make a point.
Was there something about knowing which side his bread was buttered?
Tuesday 1 January 2008
round and round they go
round and round it goes
Is it the influence of my autoimmersion in AngloSaxon studies? Last night it happened. This afternoon it happened again. I’m taken back to october 1949. Unexpectedly. Very tangibly. It almost hurts.
last night
BBC4 TV has a couple of excellent programmes about Vienna, that old capital of the AustroHungarian Empire. We tour the grand style architecture when the Ringstrasse was built. I glimpse the little statue of Johann Strauss and relive the moment in the late summer of 1977 when my mother and I heard the orchestra strike up The Blue Danube. And we danced. There and then in the Ring we danced The Blue Danube Waltz while a Viennese orchestra played on the other side of the greenery. (Been there! Done that! They didnt sell T-shirts in those days!) BBC4 took us on a tour of the Wien of Freud and then to the Klimt of the Secession Pavilion. (I’d seen and luxuriated in the decadence of The Kiss when it was on display at the New York Guggenheim in january 1965.) Last night (New Year’s Eve) I turned on for Schiele’s Death and the Maiden.
and stayed on for The Third Man
Oxford, october 1949. My first evening in Univ. I still hadnt had my study grant confirmed. The National Service bureaucrats seemed reluctant to let me have my due. But I went up just the same and had a handsome room on the first floor, overlooking The High. I had a small quantity of small change in my pocket. I spent a substantial part of it in a visit to a cinema in the Cowley Road. Yes, you’ve guessed it. The film was The Third Man. In black and white. Dark shadowy atmospheric black and white. Ending as it began. In a cemetery. ( .. .. and my grant was delivered in the nest morning’s post.)
this afternoon
I’ve been a fan of Michael Wood since the early 1980s when he went on TV In Search of the Dark Ages. In my mind’s eye there’s still a picture of him, young as he then was, striding along a narrow footway between two hedgerows – an ancient and still existing AngloSaxon boundary – and as he strode he declaimed the AngloSaxon words of the original land charter. Very impressive.
In 1999 his In Search of England was published. I bought it to compare with H V Morton’s 1927 work of the same title (my copy was bought in Wells on 7 september 1957). Just a few minutes ago I was reading Michael’s considerations of Asser’s Life of Alfred the Great. A name leapt out of the page and caught my eye. Humfrey Wanley. Once more I am transported back to October 1949 when I sat in Duke Humphrey’s Library with the incomplete set of partbooks which contain the earliest surviving handwritings of church choir music in English. The Wanley Manuscript.
is there a message for me?
The original users of Old English lived in a continuous present. Their language provided for this and for recalling events of the past. Unlike the Latinists of the ekklesia they had no future tense. I sense though that at least some of them were aware that their continuous present was a continuous weaving of the Web of Wyrd. Each individual continuously created their own future – in conjunction with the Webs of all those with whom they were inexorably linked. What am I weaving now?
swa cwæð snottor on mode
francis atte oxenford
incipit 2008
Is it the influence of my autoimmersion in AngloSaxon studies? Last night it happened. This afternoon it happened again. I’m taken back to october 1949. Unexpectedly. Very tangibly. It almost hurts.
last night
BBC4 TV has a couple of excellent programmes about Vienna, that old capital of the AustroHungarian Empire. We tour the grand style architecture when the Ringstrasse was built. I glimpse the little statue of Johann Strauss and relive the moment in the late summer of 1977 when my mother and I heard the orchestra strike up The Blue Danube. And we danced. There and then in the Ring we danced The Blue Danube Waltz while a Viennese orchestra played on the other side of the greenery. (Been there! Done that! They didnt sell T-shirts in those days!) BBC4 took us on a tour of the Wien of Freud and then to the Klimt of the Secession Pavilion. (I’d seen and luxuriated in the decadence of The Kiss when it was on display at the New York Guggenheim in january 1965.) Last night (New Year’s Eve) I turned on for Schiele’s Death and the Maiden.
and stayed on for The Third Man
Oxford, october 1949. My first evening in Univ. I still hadnt had my study grant confirmed. The National Service bureaucrats seemed reluctant to let me have my due. But I went up just the same and had a handsome room on the first floor, overlooking The High. I had a small quantity of small change in my pocket. I spent a substantial part of it in a visit to a cinema in the Cowley Road. Yes, you’ve guessed it. The film was The Third Man. In black and white. Dark shadowy atmospheric black and white. Ending as it began. In a cemetery. ( .. .. and my grant was delivered in the nest morning’s post.)
this afternoon
I’ve been a fan of Michael Wood since the early 1980s when he went on TV In Search of the Dark Ages. In my mind’s eye there’s still a picture of him, young as he then was, striding along a narrow footway between two hedgerows – an ancient and still existing AngloSaxon boundary – and as he strode he declaimed the AngloSaxon words of the original land charter. Very impressive.
In 1999 his In Search of England was published. I bought it to compare with H V Morton’s 1927 work of the same title (my copy was bought in Wells on 7 september 1957). Just a few minutes ago I was reading Michael’s considerations of Asser’s Life of Alfred the Great. A name leapt out of the page and caught my eye. Humfrey Wanley. Once more I am transported back to October 1949 when I sat in Duke Humphrey’s Library with the incomplete set of partbooks which contain the earliest surviving handwritings of church choir music in English. The Wanley Manuscript.
is there a message for me?
The original users of Old English lived in a continuous present. Their language provided for this and for recalling events of the past. Unlike the Latinists of the ekklesia they had no future tense. I sense though that at least some of them were aware that their continuous present was a continuous weaving of the Web of Wyrd. Each individual continuously created their own future – in conjunction with the Webs of all those with whom they were inexorably linked. What am I weaving now?
swa cwæð snottor on mode
francis atte oxenford
incipit 2008
sæternes dæg 29/1207
I’ve had one of those once-a-year letters tucked into a Christmas card from distant cousins half a world away. Theirs is neatly printed out headed by a colorful (sic) interior scene of fir tree presents and pink lounge. My reply, when it is composed, shall travel via email as did last year’s response but I hardly know what to say.
I look back at my own past twelve months and see little to report. Barren wilderness unsullied by incident. The highlight of each week a locking of intellectual stimulus with Katy (who surprised me last time by actually agreeing with me). Apart from that. What?
I’d gone into the medical practice to get a prescription renewed. Nothing serious. Just routine to keep the platelets happy. In an unscripted moment I enquired how busy everyone was. A few fingerings of the computer later I was booked in to see a locum. The locum had time to spare. We talked. Was there anything physically wrong with me? If not, then I knew what to do. More talk. Questions and answers. Blood samples taken and sent for analysis. Go back for the results. Nothing to report but do have another cholesterol test in twelve months’ time. OK. So it’s psychosomatic and I know what to do about that.
Shan reappeared in my landscape. I’d known Shan in the mid-80s by reputation. She was a force to be reckoned with. One of those who act, who build, who do something whether or not others approve. House of the Goddess. In London. She was still a force to be reckoned with more than ten years later when I met her at one of Michael de Ward’s In the Presence ChristoPagan seminar weekends on a commercial campsite at Calne in Wiltshire. I remember she spoke about reciting the Charge of the Goddess and then finding out she was in the presence of Doreen Valiente. After that I’d heard nothing more of Shan until her name popped up on the screen in front of me sometime in this year 2007. Now she was in Newport, Mon., transforming a disused working man’s club into premises which included a temple. I went along and helped with the redecorating. Now I have a proprietorial interest in two of the kitchen’s walls and some other bits and pieces here and there. More visits to look forward to. Stimulus. Momentum. Time shall come again when once more I take the A40 westward and over the border to that place of magic.
I used to assist with the computer teaching programmes at the university’s Department of Continuing Education. My name remains on their mailing list. In the early summer an advance copy of their autumn schedule arrived on my desk. I tend to read anything in print that comes under my eye. Dutifully I worked through from the front cover and towards the back. My eye spied a course of Old English language literature and culture. I knew this was for me. And so it was. And so it is. For two reasons. One : in my time of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Sydney, I could happily decode the Latin texts handwritten in Carolingian minuscule. But the AngloSaxon material defeated me. I was quite ignorant of the language. More urgent matters took its place. Now was a time to remedy a deficiency. Fill a gap. Two : when I first came in contact with Marian Green she encouraged us to explore our local landscapes for traces of the old gods among the places belonging with their names on the map. I did visit Great Tew but perhaps I wasnt on the right wavelength that day. Or the signal was deep buried in more mundane static. Village prettiness. Too too too arty. Consciously.
The DCE Old English course is absolutely first class. Our tutor is Russian. She’s on the staff of Duke Humphrey’s Library where the Bodleian keeps its manuscripts and incunabula. She really knows her stuff. And life is transformed for me. I made it clear at the start that I have a primary interest in the paganism the original English brought with them from their homelands adjacent to the North Sea. Not so easy since the finite amount of surviving documentary evidence depends upon the handwork of longdead Christian scriptoria. Which tends to leave an unbalanced view of reality. Nevertheless. Joy of joys. [Corn in Egypt!] I find I can hardly go two steps in my local landscape without tripping over ground which was once nurtured by my AngloSaxon brethren. The very house I live in is on ground that used to belong to one of them. Until Guillaume le Bâtard dispossessed the last of them in favour of the Earl of Abingdon, whose family name was Norris. Also spelt Norreys.
So there we have it. Something to look forward to. Something to exercise the mind for as long as .. .. ..
I weave my own input into the Web of Wyrd. I create my own future. As we all do.
Oh yes. And there was a significant birthday just days ago with three daughters and five grandchildren. Twelve of us altogether. I’ve managed to survive 80 years on this planet. More than I ever expected. And I’m aware of preparing for next time. And the time after. Still more yet to do. The Web of Wyrd weaves unceasing and it weaves exceeding fine. Toodle pip. As they say.
Swa cwæð snottor on mode
francis atte oxenford
29 december 2007
I’ve had one of those once-a-year letters tucked into a Christmas card from distant cousins half a world away. Theirs is neatly printed out headed by a colorful (sic) interior scene of fir tree presents and pink lounge. My reply, when it is composed, shall travel via email as did last year’s response but I hardly know what to say.
I look back at my own past twelve months and see little to report. Barren wilderness unsullied by incident. The highlight of each week a locking of intellectual stimulus with Katy (who surprised me last time by actually agreeing with me). Apart from that. What?
I’d gone into the medical practice to get a prescription renewed. Nothing serious. Just routine to keep the platelets happy. In an unscripted moment I enquired how busy everyone was. A few fingerings of the computer later I was booked in to see a locum. The locum had time to spare. We talked. Was there anything physically wrong with me? If not, then I knew what to do. More talk. Questions and answers. Blood samples taken and sent for analysis. Go back for the results. Nothing to report but do have another cholesterol test in twelve months’ time. OK. So it’s psychosomatic and I know what to do about that.
Shan reappeared in my landscape. I’d known Shan in the mid-80s by reputation. She was a force to be reckoned with. One of those who act, who build, who do something whether or not others approve. House of the Goddess. In London. She was still a force to be reckoned with more than ten years later when I met her at one of Michael de Ward’s In the Presence ChristoPagan seminar weekends on a commercial campsite at Calne in Wiltshire. I remember she spoke about reciting the Charge of the Goddess and then finding out she was in the presence of Doreen Valiente. After that I’d heard nothing more of Shan until her name popped up on the screen in front of me sometime in this year 2007. Now she was in Newport, Mon., transforming a disused working man’s club into premises which included a temple. I went along and helped with the redecorating. Now I have a proprietorial interest in two of the kitchen’s walls and some other bits and pieces here and there. More visits to look forward to. Stimulus. Momentum. Time shall come again when once more I take the A40 westward and over the border to that place of magic.
I used to assist with the computer teaching programmes at the university’s Department of Continuing Education. My name remains on their mailing list. In the early summer an advance copy of their autumn schedule arrived on my desk. I tend to read anything in print that comes under my eye. Dutifully I worked through from the front cover and towards the back. My eye spied a course of Old English language literature and culture. I knew this was for me. And so it was. And so it is. For two reasons. One : in my time of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Sydney, I could happily decode the Latin texts handwritten in Carolingian minuscule. But the AngloSaxon material defeated me. I was quite ignorant of the language. More urgent matters took its place. Now was a time to remedy a deficiency. Fill a gap. Two : when I first came in contact with Marian Green she encouraged us to explore our local landscapes for traces of the old gods among the places belonging with their names on the map. I did visit Great Tew but perhaps I wasnt on the right wavelength that day. Or the signal was deep buried in more mundane static. Village prettiness. Too too too arty. Consciously.
The DCE Old English course is absolutely first class. Our tutor is Russian. She’s on the staff of Duke Humphrey’s Library where the Bodleian keeps its manuscripts and incunabula. She really knows her stuff. And life is transformed for me. I made it clear at the start that I have a primary interest in the paganism the original English brought with them from their homelands adjacent to the North Sea. Not so easy since the finite amount of surviving documentary evidence depends upon the handwork of longdead Christian scriptoria. Which tends to leave an unbalanced view of reality. Nevertheless. Joy of joys. [Corn in Egypt!] I find I can hardly go two steps in my local landscape without tripping over ground which was once nurtured by my AngloSaxon brethren. The very house I live in is on ground that used to belong to one of them. Until Guillaume le Bâtard dispossessed the last of them in favour of the Earl of Abingdon, whose family name was Norris. Also spelt Norreys.
So there we have it. Something to look forward to. Something to exercise the mind for as long as .. .. ..
I weave my own input into the Web of Wyrd. I create my own future. As we all do.
Oh yes. And there was a significant birthday just days ago with three daughters and five grandchildren. Twelve of us altogether. I’ve managed to survive 80 years on this planet. More than I ever expected. And I’m aware of preparing for next time. And the time after. Still more yet to do. The Web of Wyrd weaves unceasing and it weaves exceeding fine. Toodle pip. As they say.
Swa cwæð snottor on mode
francis atte oxenford
29 december 2007
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