If I make my aim now - if I ask myself what it is I want to complete before the next 365 days are over - then I'll be that much more likely to finish the job.
Friday 31 December 2010
Monday 20 December 2010
minus 8
As if to rebuff my intrusion into the sacred stillness without, the changing face of the Google Gadget now shows a mere minus eight (Celsius) .. ..
minus 12
The little Google Gadget in the corner of my screen tells me the temperature outside is "minus twelve degrees celsius". I find it hard to believe. I am content to note the positive shewn on the Kodak Photographic thermometre pinned to the wall. The mercury there is steady at the thick line and larger figures (from the turnover time) confirming the equivalence of the 'old' 68F with the 'new' 20C. In my undergraduate days in this city there was a popular song in the Hit Parade - four different commercial recordings all out and selling well! - "Baby, it's cold outside". I have no pressing need to emerge and see for myself.
I shall remain in my eyrie.
Content ..
I shall remain in my eyrie.
Content ..
Saturday 18 December 2010
Thursday 16 December 2010
Tuesday 14 December 2010
Monday 13 December 2010
Sunday 12 December 2010
Saturday 11 December 2010
Friday 10 December 2010
from Ghent to Aix
Robert Browning
How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix
I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
‘Good speed!’ cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
‘Speed!’ echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast. It's the rhythm that's stuck in my mind since my months in the Mercers' School during the dying days of the nineteen thirties. I may not have remembered the name of the poet. I may have reversed the route of the riders - but the rhythm is still there. Especially the second line I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; Not much of the poetry we went through at school remains in my mind. Something about the Lady of Shallot. Young Lochinvar coming out of the west. If I should die, think only this of me. It was as if The War was only just before my time. There were uncles who had dug trenches on the Western Front. Another who served at Gallipoli. When the resumption of War loomed in 1938, the spirit of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori was still very tangibly surrounding us. An aunt in the City of the Angels sent us the comic section of the Los Angeles Examiner every week. I was struck by the front page banner. "What fools these mortals be" - Puck. francis cameron, oxford, 10 december 2010
abdication 1936 december 10
10 december 1936. I remember it well. There had even been talk of the country becoming a republic. In my youthful ignorance (I was only nine years old!) I was heard to say “In that case, one day I could be President.” What a hope. Little did I know what kind of a game politics is
When it came to it, we were at the annual Christmas Fair and Sale of Work for the Pitt Street Settlement in Peckham. The man responsible for the Settlement was my proGodfather, Captain C Lisle Watson. I believe he was also one of the Clerks at the House of Commons. He’d lost a leg in the War (1914 to 1918) but this didn’t seem to deter him in any way. (In 1939 he was promoted to Major and resumed active service as an Army Welfare Officer for South London.)
On that evening, 10 December 1936, someone brought in a wireless set and stood it on the front edge of the stage. A hush descended on the crowd in the hall. We heard the man who was no longer King tell us how he had given up the throne in order to be with the woman he loved.
What a different world it was then. Edward VIII wanted to marry Wallis Simpson. ‘They’, the Establishment, wouldn’t let him. Horror of horrors! Mrs Simpson was an American, she was divorced, and her last husband was still living. The Establishment could never allow a woman like that to be Queen.
From time to time in one or other of the ‘recent past’ programmes so popular these days, we hear again the recorded voice of Edward conveying his sorrow to those who had once been his people. It always brings a lump to my throat.
francis cameron, oxford, 10 december 2010
Monday 6 December 2010
Sunday 5 December 2010
Saturday 4 December 2010
tomorrow and tomorrow and .. ..
Today I stand on the eve of my 83rd birthday. I never expected to live so long. When I was a little boy I wondered if I could possibly live to see the new century in the year 2000. I was well aware of the biblical imperative ‘the days of man are but threescore years and ten’. We had been educated to take that literally. Come the end of 1999 I would be seventy-two. Was it possible I could last so long?
Yes it was and I did. And maybe I’ll go on for a bit longer. Provided there’s something interesting to keep me occupied.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been reorganising the photographs on my computer’s hard drive. There are more than 7000 frames there – and probably at least an equal number waiting to be transferred to electronic form. The digital images of the past ten years are encouraging. I had thought but little had been accomplished but when I came to examine the visual record I was touched by the great number of those who have befriended me. I drove my car far and wide; have spoken at a more than satisfactory number of meetings; written a fair number of articles and reviews; enjoyed to the full the phenomena of Pagan camps. Life has been good.
In term time I am often to be found on the premises of the Oxford Union Society where, inter alia, I serve as a senior member of the library committee. In the Members’ bar I have been known to read the Tarot cards now and again. I feel free to quote from Leviticus ‘Thou shalt not cut thy hair nor trim thy beard’ though I really need no such injunction and my flourishing of the text dates from years after I ceased attending my hairdresser in the Turl. Nor do my feet wear ought but sandals – save when thoughts of ice underfoot prompt me to venture out more protectively shod.
I am going to try to write a book about my life. I am all too aware of what I came back to do this time and why I was born where I was and into that particular family.
From my infant years onward I was involved with music until I retired from the profession in 1995. And for most of my life I was a church organist and choirmaster. I’m tempted to wax lyrical about a double helix of music and religion. But I won’t.
I must write about my experiencing the certainties of Spiritualism. How I put that firmly aside when I enrolled into the comfort of the Latin-speaking catholic church. How my completely unexpected exit Road to Damascus was a narrow winding track through the volcanic jungle of an island in the South Pacific. And how the visitor from the house next door, one evening in the suburb of Rozelle (the year was 1974) pointed me to a shining pathway back to the world between the worlds where we are at one with our goddesses and our gods.
vita scribenda est
francis cameron, oxford, 4 december 2010
Tuesday 30 November 2010
Monday 29 November 2010
wikiHow
I’ve just discovered wikiHow. Looks like fun.
I’m putting off finishing the article about the value of procrastination.
francis cameron, oxford, 29 november 2010
strictly
I think I’ve sussed the present format of Strictly Come Dancing. I used to know it as a dance competition. Celebrities teamed up with professional dancers in a competition to recognise the best.
Last year it began to change. There was the retired television news reporter who stomped his way to fame by dragging his barely clad professional across the floor. He had the grace to leave the show before too many much better dancers had been eliminated.
Now ‘tis changed. It’s no longer a dance competition. It’s a rather vulgar game show where an elderly yattering politician is encouraged to make an exhibition of herself in an expressed desire to win the coveted glitterball by a sad mockery of anything approaching a sense of time and rhythm.
I feel so sorry for the others who spend hours each week aiming to perfect dazzling routines.
What we have now is deception. But it brings more publicity than the BBC could ever have hoped for. Or was it planned that way?
francis cameron, oxford, 29 november 2010
Sunday 28 November 2010
Friday 26 November 2010
Thursday 25 November 2010
Tuesday 23 November 2010
Monday 22 November 2010
Sunday 21 November 2010
Saturday 20 November 2010
Thursday 18 November 2010
Wednesday 17 November 2010
Tuesday 16 November 2010
Sunday 14 November 2010
Rupert Brooke
A BBC QI fact of the day notes that when the poet Rupert Brooke ["If I should die, think only this of me .. "] was at Cambridge he was 'a leading member of the Neo-Pagans (a group of friends dedicated to camping, rambling and nudism).' It's worth posting this. I certainly had never come across it before. Does anyone else have any information about this group of friends?
september 1966
two weeks in september
I was checking over some of the old photographs in my collection. I stopped at an image of a woman asking directions from a policeman near the Seine in Paris. The file number showed September 1966. At first I doubted this could be true. Then it all came back.
It was the summer vacation for the Royal Academy of Music. My part time work as Deputy Director of Music for the Parks Department of the Greater London Council would be over at the end of the week. I could play the organ at the Church of the Assumption on Sunday, take one Sunday off, and be back for the following Sunday. I had the inside of two weeks for a holiday. I’d like to travel. We could take the car to France.
In those days the Automobile Association still had offices in central London. I went there first to enquire about car ferries. It soon became apparent I could do the job just as well by myself. So, early on Monday morning I drove down to Dover, bought cross channel tickets at the entrance to the ferry, and was in Calais in plenty of time to drive to Amiens and find a nice little hotel for the night. In England, if a car was parked in the street overnight, sidelights had to be left on until dawn. How do you find words to ask if that is a legal requirement in France? My schoolboy French found no provision for this vocabulary among the works of Lamartine and Victor Hugo. I compromised on ‘phares’ – though I had an uneasy feeling I might be asking about lighthouses – received a reply that satisfied me and left the car unlit. It was OK.
I had better fortune a few days later when my windscreen wiper broke in the rain. In the AA notebook I found the right French word and explained hesitantly to the mechanic that it was fractured! He glanced at my dear little old Austin, fixed a replacement (in the French style), accepted my francs, and we went on our way.
Our usual plan was to travel until about four in the afternoon and then find somewhere pleasant to stay the night. If we liked the place we’d stay for two nights. In that way we spent time in Beauvais Rouen Evreux Chartres and Paris. Hence the photo of the woman asking for directions. I have a vivid memory of driving twice round Etoile. According to my map we needed to turn right at the 13th street. Impossible! The 13th street was completely partitioned off for road works or some such. We did find a nice little pension nearby, had an excellent dinner in an unobtrusive café and slept on a mattress harder than any I’d experienced before – or since.
On the last night of our holiday we stayed in a seaside pension run by an Englishman. Escargots were on the dinner menu. It would be a new experience. Apparently I was not the only Englishman to enjoy snails for the first time in that restaurant.
francis cameron, oxford, 14 november 2010
Saturday 13 November 2010
Friday 12 November 2010
days of the week
Today is Friday which still bears the name of the Saxon goddess who came to Britannia with the ancestors of the English. Our other weekdays still relate to the Old Gods of those ancestors : Saturn Sun Moon Tiw Woden Thor. Perhaps the observance of Saturn Sun Moon overlapped from Roman times as the names of their divinities ‘ruling’ three of the more significant days of the week. And perhaps, in due time, it was local British women who merged their observances with those of their Saxon menfolk.
We read in the First Book of Moses how the world was created in six days so that the Creator rested on the seventh. And that’s how we come to have a seven-day week with the Sabbath as our day of rest. We probably think of it as a Jewish idea. It is – but it’s one of those brought back from Babylon when the Captivity was ended – and from there it made its way, via the empire of Alexander the Great, to the Roman Empire of Constantine who decreed, in the year 321, that the law courts and the markets should be closed and silent on each Day of the Sun.
We can still see reproductions of the old diagrams with the Earth as the centre of a series of concentric circles, each circle being the path of one of the heavenly bodies influencing the earth and its people, each heavenly body being the manifestation of an ancient divinity. In the Latin language their names are still with us ; dies solis, the day of the sun ; dies lunae, the day of the moon ; dies martis, the day of Mars ; dies mercuri, the day of Mercury ; dies iovis, the day of Jupiter ; dies veneris, the day of Venus ; dies saturni, the day of Saturn, the father of Jupiter.
I find it interesting that the Latin names tend to imply distant gods with homes in heaven whereas the Saxons – and, later, the Vikings – kept constant company with their gods. That’s why, today, Wiccans can still say with confidence : we step into the world between the worlds and we are at one with the goddess and our gods.
francis cameron, 12 november 2010
Thursday 11 November 2010
Wednesday 10 November 2010
Monday 8 November 2010
bright and breezy
It's a gorgeous clear bright wet windy morning in Oxford. Laus dea ac deo. Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange
Saturday 6 November 2010
Friday 5 November 2010
Wednesday 3 November 2010
Tuesday 2 November 2010
Sunday 31 October 2010
Witchfather
Philip Heselton’s splendid new book Witchfather is on the way . It’s a quite magnificent piece of work. The Witchfather of the title is, of course, Gerald Gardner and the amount of information about the man, his deeds, his family, his friends, those he worked with, and places he went to – all these are there. It’s much much more than any of us who have been in touch with Philip from time to time could have expected. Yet it doesn’t feel overburdened with facts. Philip is such a master story teller, it’s almost like being there with him in a visualisation of events past and present. I consider myself privileged to have enjoyed a preview of the text. I just could not put it down. I had to stay with it until I reached the final page. It’s very easy to distinguish between Philip’s own work and quotations from other people. Those who want to follow up any particular points will be able to start with the sources which Philip places in full view. When, because there is no tangible evidence so far as we know, he has to speculate to fill in the gaps, he says so very plainly and gives his reasons. I take my hat off to him. If I had a cloak I’d spread it in front of him as he walks. If you are a Wiccan, a Pagan, a social historian, a reader of brilliant biographies, or even if you have only the slightest teeny-weeny bit of interest in Gerald Gardner, then this is the book for you. Go buy! francis cameron, oxford, samhain 2010
Saturday 30 October 2010
Tuesday 26 October 2010
temple of high magic
I am so glad I chose to be born to parents who were both practising Christian Spiritualists. This meant, among other things, that from the age of ten I was thoroughly at home with manifestations of the afterlife and the continuing journey of the soul through many incarnations. I was still at school when our first home circle experimenting with spirit photography metamorphosed into a regular weeknightly gathering where my mother in deep trance channelled higher wisdom, such as I had never heard before, from one of her guides whom we knew simply as Father. Sixty years later while staying overnight after speaking in a distant city, I discovered a book about Plotinus and recognised there the neoplatonic vista opened up to me in more than one of those trance addresses.
I have read fluently and voraciously since the age of four. At first I was part of the common impression that if it’s in print, it must be authentic (though I ought to have known better : a photograph of [old fashioned] beehives in an Elementary School text was at variance with my actual experience of working with bees and their hives in a relative’s garden). Only in middle age did I come to appreciate that books which purport to set out The One True Way can be dangerously misleading. On the other hand public and university libraries – as well as the irresistible attractions of bookshops – are a veritable treasure trove, an open sesame to realities and insights on many different levels. Always I found it important to go beyond the printed words on the page and to compare them with my experiences in the worlds of physical reality.
That first commentary on Plotinus, coupled with the remembrance of my mother’s guide, led me under the right conditions to explore some of the resources perceptible to a more intensified consciousness. I would have said I began with Wicca, but it was always Wicca illuminated by my experience of Spiritualism. And that Wicca, when it first discovered me, was of the variety still known then as The Old Religion – with its ramifications set out so nicely in my 1974 purchase of What Witches Do to which I soon added Dion Fortune’s Mystical Qabalah. Half a lifetime later and I discover the esoteric possibilities of a priest and a priestess – just the two of them – working together tuned in to the same wavelength. So it was that in my most recent series of workings, which concluded a while ago, we used elements of Alex’s ceremonial, a drawing down of energies through the frequencies aided by the immediate focus of chakras and enhanced by a vibrant Sephiroth. The re-enactment of the myth of the Chalice and the Blade prepared us for stepping through the portal into the Halls of Learning and beyond.
Now in my solitary state the Inner Bookshop provides me with a copy of The Temple of High Magic in its 2010 English translation of the 2007 Dutch original. I find so much here which, with its differing perspectives, throws new light on my past practices and understandings. Quite deliberately it offers guidance to individual explorers who lack the presence of a neighbouring Magister. A small number of similar individuals able to combine within a common mind are also invited to make use of this strand of esoteric enlightenment passed on, as it is, in a direct line from Dion Fortune via Ernest Butler and Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki. Further back in time it passes through the myths and legends surrounding the year 1453 to the ancient scripts of the Hermetica. We are back in Alexandria with the school of Plotinus and the insights of neoplatonism. A good solid foundation on which to build.
Ina Cüsters-van Bergen
The Temple of High Magic : Hermetic Initiations in the Western Mystery Tradition
ISBN 9781594773082
UK 14-75. USA 19-95.
francis cameron, oxford, 26 october 2010
Monday 25 October 2010
time and temperature
It's -2 Celsius in Oxford at 10:23 on the morning of Monday 25 October 2010.
// There - I got the date right today! //
// October used to be the 8th month //
// Which means March was the first month of the year //
// Samhain approaches on the Eve of All Saints //
// BBC people on camera are all now wearing poppies //
{dun ur xmas shopping yt}
// There - I got the date right today! //
// October used to be the 8th month //
// Which means March was the first month of the year //
// Samhain approaches on the Eve of All Saints //
// BBC people on camera are all now wearing poppies //
{dun ur xmas shopping yt}
Friday 22 October 2010
magic cafe
The Magic Cafe appears to have had a makeover of management. It is almost pristine. Calm and very peaceful. Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange
Thursday 21 October 2010
the past comes alive
I had just opened up FaceBook and begun to meander through the new postings when I was brought to a halt by a set of photographs. It was a Wodening at Cara Brae (Did I get the name right?) some years ago. Now I feel the presences all around me. That very dynamic evocative shamaness who conducted the ceremony so brilliantly. The TV team who did their job so well there was no intrusion from their world into ours. The guardians of the Four Quarters. The priest who spoke the words. The couple who joined hands. Everlastingly.
brrr ....
According to the gadget on my screen, the temperature outside is minus two degrees Celsius. That's Oxford at 09:14 today, Thor's Day 21st november (which used to be the ninth month).
Sunday 17 October 2010
after the andrew marr show
Steve Richards turned to the back page of one of the more popular sunday newspapers and there we were – in a parallel universe. We’d been voyaging through the upcoming Day Of The Big Cuts and the other looming problems building a thicket around us and then, all of a sudden, there we were :::: in a parallel universe. A footballer, referred to only by an abbreviation of his name and the club he plays for, a flamboyant footballer is quoted as petulantly proposing not to play unless he’s paid something in excess of 100K EVERY WEEK! Boy oh Boy, what a wonderful world he lives in. Never mind the parallel universes which may or may not concern the philosophers of astrophysics. Here’s a parallel universe right next door to the panoramic newsday studio. OK! Not quite that. Just the back page of one of the Sundays. Worlds apart from the universe tearing large headlines through the front face of the same objective recorder of tunnelling spacetime.
Makes me think that when “me’n’me mates” steps inner the World Between the Worlds - you know what I mean if you’ve been there - we still have our feet firmly on the ground. In the Real World. In a parallel universe. That’s reality for you.
francis cameron, oxford, 17 october 2010
Saturday 16 October 2010
Looking for Bede's Eostre
Easter 2011 is a fascinating example of how the rule works out in practice. [1] look for the vernal equinox :: 23:21 on sunday 20 march [2] find the next full moon after that :: 02:44 on monday 18 april [3] and the sunday after that is easter day :: sunday 24 april. I suspect this is as late in the year as Easter can be .. ..
francis cameron, oxford, 16 october 2010
Friday 15 October 2010
Chopin on BBC4
A beautiful heart-rending programme on Chopin from BBC 4 this evening (and still available on BBC iPlayer). francis cameron, 15 october 2010
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Woden's Day
It's good to see some familiar faces among all the new ones coming into the Union building for the first time. Of course some of the familiar faces are 'old familiar faces' in the friendliest sense of the word. At least one of the them is even older than me! I think I can detect which of the little huddles of members are politically minded and whose names will no doubt be among those standing for election to this or that Committee or Office later in the term. My mind keeps going back to the 'great ones' of the debates I attended in my undergraduate years - but it's quite clear the world is a very different place from what it was 60 years ago. When I look around now I am happy for the future.
Luka and the Fire of Life
I heard Salman Rushdie talk about his latest book. A book about a boy called Luka who lives in the Real World but can step sideways into a Magical World where all sorts of Wonderful Things happen. It is beautifully written. With Love and Tenderness. francis cameron, oxford, 13 october 2010
Tuesday 5 October 2010
rosslyn
I've just been watching a fine film about Rosslyn Chapel now showing on BBC iPLayer. I'm so glad I diverted my journey to see this remarkable building when I was on my way further north.
francis cameron, oxford, 5 october 2010
francis cameron, oxford, 5 october 2010
tuesday 5 october 2010
I find myself musing on my spiritual journey from Paddington (Congregational) Chapel via Spiritualism and the Church of England to Westminster (Roman Catholic) Cathedral and thence to the vivid experience of the Wicca where we step into the World Between the Worlds and are at one with our gods.
francis cameron, oxford, 5 october 2010
education / schoooling
In his English Social History (1944) G M Trevelyan writes (pp 363f) of modern education ‘creating an unwanted intellectual proletariat’.
My own experience both as a teacher and as a pupil led me, some thirty years ago, to the conclusion that education (schooling) was primarily designed to produce only just as much literacy and numeracy as was useful to employers. You needed a workforce which could read and write but not a workforce of men and women who might be able to think for themselves.
Circumstances in 2010 are not the same as in those Establishment-dominated years between the wars but when I read that one in five children now leave school without reaching the required standard in English and Maths, I do pause to wonder for our future.
francis cameron, oxford, 5 october 2010
when I am dead
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget. Christina Rossetti
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget. Christina Rossetti
Monday 4 October 2010
monday 1 october 2010
It’s Monday of Week 0 which means the Members’ bar is open again after the long long summer’s closure. Not that all that many were present. Far less than I had expected. But at lunchtime we had a good table full of conversation. Not so much as catching up on all that had gone on during the holidays. More on life going on in general in spite of living in interesting times. Mark was eager to know what different their new status makes to the Druids. Me, I’m so pleased at the result for Emma Restall-Orr (Bobcat, to her friends). I look forward to other individual religions being taken out of the Pagan grab bag where they’ve been relegated by authorities too eager to remain steadfast to a long outdated convention. Back home to the Strictly Come Dancing season now upon us. And a glimpse of what’s going on in Delhi. As for the Party Conference. That’ll have to wait until Andrew Neil comes on after Newsnight to give us his impressions of the day. francis cameron, oxford, 4 october 2010
Sunday 3 October 2010
Berlin, october 1990
Forward planning sometimes plays strange tricks.
In 1988 I was at the annual gathering of our European Seminar in Ethnomusicology. We confirmed the venue for 1989 and accepted a provisional bid from Berlin to host our proceedings in 1990. So it happened that twenty years ago today we were present in Berlin on the day of reunification. We did a tour of the city. The image of the Brandenburg Gate imprints itself on my memory. And – it was the prelude to a great Seminar. francis cameron, oxford, 3 october 2010
In 1988 I was at the annual gathering of our European Seminar in Ethnomusicology. We confirmed the venue for 1989 and accepted a provisional bid from Berlin to host our proceedings in 1990. So it happened that twenty years ago today we were present in Berlin on the day of reunification. We did a tour of the city. The image of the Brandenburg Gate imprints itself on my memory. And – it was the prelude to a great Seminar. francis cameron, oxford, 3 october 2010
Saturday 2 October 2010
'i' for imaginary
I’d been talking with my friend the Imam who, like the Holy Father the week before, expressed concern with the blight of secularism.
The Imam mentioned Richard Dawkins (and his million followers) as the Prince of Secularism. /* caveat : my mind may perhaps have embellished this interchange! */ I responded by classifying Dawkins as a materialist – in the sense that he, as a biologist, is accustomed to handling plants and animals, material objects, which can be scrutinised in scientific laboratories. Our conversation then deviated to the Imam’s exposition of the traits of secularity. I, for once, remained silent. Wondering.
Later I happened to take up with Roger Penrose and with Douglas R Hofstadter, among others, opening the door to the world of ‘the square root of minus one’ : an imaginary number incapable of observation even under the most intense of microscopes.
Yet the square root of minus one actually exists. I came to be aware of its existence when I first moved for the teaching of the C++ computer programming language. I did not then know what was symbolised by the mystical letter ‘i’. I only saw how its properties once entered into the initial planning made the viable outcome possible.
Our lives are not utterly delimited by the materials of laboratory experiment. Consciousness of the imaginary goes with us. Hand in hand.
Pick me a handful of BlackBerries. Yes!
Pluck me a handful of imaginary numbers? Ah!
francis cameron, oxford, 2 october 2010
treading the parallels
I am reading, yet once again, G M Trevelyan’s delightful English Social History : a survey of six centuries Chaucer to Queen Victoria. He wrote it before the war (1939) but restrictions of paper and printing delayed its publication in Great Britain until 1944.
As I read I am aware of a certain prospect of Englishness presented to us in my schooldays and I sense it returning now and then to the more leisurely of our television screens. It’s that looking back to a past which may or may not be distant, which may or may not ever have existed in glaring reality. A past viewed, as they say, through rosy-tinted spectacles.
I see it in Michael Wood’s homing-in on a country town community, digging up its past, blowing the dust off somnolent rolls ledgers and charters which then magically ‘bring the past to life’. I see it in the elder Dimbleby’s unhurried dwelling on sceneries and artefacts which belong with bygone ages. I see it even in Michael Portillo’s quasi-misty-eyed railway journeys, Bradshaw always open in his hand.
My thoughts turn to the books and other reminiscences which make those re-creations possible. Trevelyan brings back to life Defoe’s London, still existing among the ghosts haunting the footpaths and alleyways of the City. Other books, when well conceived and well written can do the same. They are the material of visualisation, treading the spaces and enclosures of parallel universes where the in-tuned spirit may also meander at will.
Words set out on the page are the spellbooks of their authors.
Come with me and bathe and bask in parallel universes just as real as those once green hills and valleys now over-covered with manufacturies of stone timber brickwork and plastic. The boundaries are there to be stepped over. The veil between is no more than the flimsiest creation of our own imaginings.
francis cameron, oxford, 2 october 2010
Saturday 25 September 2010
taking wicca further
In my experience there’s much more to Wicca than the rituals and other information now in the public domain. There are hints of this in Gerald’s published works but nothing I’ve come across from those who were at Brickett Wood with him or who have followed after. I’m not sure whether this is because Gerald never actually got that far with his New Forest colleagues, though I have a sneaking suspicion this may be the case – and that would imply the same for Dafo. Even though he was with them for the better part of seven years there may have been more advanced stages which they deliberately kept from him because he was so eager to tell the whole world about the survival of the Old Religion of Witchcraft and they were not. I cannot be sure of this. I certainly cannot adduce any proof. I just feel it in my bones and in some of the work I have been doing in the past. That work is on hold for the present for the lack of a suitable working partner living near enough for regular meetings. In the meantime I find myself gradually refining my ideas of the essential nature and potential of the Wicca. At the moment I feel very much on the threshold.
francis, oxford, 25 september 2010
Wednesday 15 September 2010
LJ & FB
I logged in to Live Journal via my Facebook account. That was one great disaster. Now, instead of messages from my friends on LJ, all I get is a stream of adverts I'd rather do without. And there seems no way of reversing this pernicious process.
Monday 13 September 2010
on page 127
I am reminded of Catullus to his Lesbia. 'vivamus atque amemus' - "Let's live! and let's make love!" What an admirable precept.
Thursday 2 September 2010
on Day for Gerald
My presentation of Dafo's Tale is now ready for delivery to the Day for Gerald get together on September 12th at the Conway Hall. I finished it this afternoon and am well pleased.
francis, oxford, 2 september 2010
francis, oxford, 2 september 2010
Tuesday 31 August 2010
that library thing - day 8
Just a little more tidying today to reach a total of 451 titles catalogued. There remain 4 or 5 feet of books sitting in a divided pile just under the window but these are destined to wait while I take a break (until, probably, the 13th) before actually starting to move lots of books from one room to another on the floor below. Then a much bigger task begins!
francis, oxford, 31 august 2010
francis, oxford, 31 august 2010
Monday 30 August 2010
that library thing - day 7
.. and at the end of cataloging on day 7 I have reached the grand total of 436 entries - and I am still in my study with books in 5 or 6 more rooms still to be done! Francis
Sunday 29 August 2010
that library thing - day 6
Now I am going much slower. Books need to be picked up from the floor and re-arranged with the largest at the bottom before I begin to catalogue them. So my total is now only 384 and I am beginning to see which volumes need to be disposed of when I move to a different set of shelves in a fortnight's time.
francis cameron, oxford, 29 august 2010
francis cameron, oxford, 29 august 2010
Saturday 28 August 2010
that library thing - day 5
Not so much done today. My excuse? The qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix. So I log off with a total of 361 titles - and, in places, a strange phenomenon. An area of carpet less faded than its surroundings. Two unstable piles of books seem sedately settled on shelves. I hope they enjoy their new surroundings! = Francis
Friday 27 August 2010
LibraryThing - day 4
As I sign out this evening I am credited with 306 titles - and there are still more to be entered - and they are all in my study!
francis cameron, oxford, 27 august 2010
francis cameron, oxford, 27 august 2010
Thursday 26 August 2010
LibraryThing - day 3
I like LibraryThing so much - and I've enjoyed using it - I just signed up for life membership.
Hey ho! The wind and the rain!
francis cameron, oxford, 2608 2010
Hey ho! The wind and the rain!
francis cameron, oxford, 2608 2010
Wednesday 25 August 2010
That Library Thing
LibraryThing – day 2
Last night I stayed up late until I had catalogued the whole of one shelf of my specialist collection of books mainly about the Wicca and related subjects. Today I have gone on. I’ve now entered 140 titles including some copies received when I was otherwise too occupied to deal with them. They been safely coddled up in their postal wrappers until this afternoon. Now I know what they are and where I can find them and write reviews of them.
I can also see the usual computer thing has happened. I started off using LibraryThing as an easy way of building a database of my rambling collection of books. Already I am able to cross-reference to similar titles available ‘out there’, plus information about the author of each title and the other titles from each workstation. There’s also the possibility of seeing how many other LibraryThing subscribers also have copies of a each discrete volume. But that’s something I’ve not yet delved into though I’ve just noticed that Hugh Bowden (Mystery Cults in the Ancient World [2010]) and I have three titles in common. 7,495 of us have copies of The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009). No one else owns up to a copy of Rhythmic Proportions in Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Chant (1958). Why am I not surprised?
© francis cameron, oxford, 25 august 2010
Saturday 14 August 2010
Monday 9 August 2010
Tuesday 13 July 2010
Monday 12 July 2010
friends reunited
Some of you already know I belong to the Oxford Union Society. I signed up for life membership when I was an undergraduate and now find it a very welcoming space in the city centre. Lots of good people there in term time and the comfortable Old Library open through most of the rest of the year. Early in 2008 there was a notice on Facebook asking for someone to fill a Senior vacancy on the Library Committee. I volunteered. At the very first committee meeting of that term I enquired about the clock in the Old Library. It sits on the rail of the gallery and is contemporary with the rest of the building. For many months it had stood at five to one. I wondered why. It took five or six weeks to find out that it needed repairing. The weeks went by. The weeks turned into months. Then one day last October a man came and took away all the clocks in the building that needed attention. At the end of the last committee meeting last term I commented that eight full terms had gone by since the matter of the clock in the Old Library had first appeared on the agenda. Today I visited the library. Lo and behold! There is the clock merrily going on its way. It feels to me like the return of an old friend. Wes thu hal! Francis Cameron, Oxford, 12 july 2010
Sunday 11 July 2010
Saturday 10 July 2010
Friday 9 July 2010
pas la meme chose
I'd restudied one of her books. Decided she'd done a good job. Couldn't really understand why so many (males) had criticised her work. Thought I'd better restudy the next one in the series. Got as far as page 17 and began to grind my teeth. She really ought to have known better. But then she was in good company. 50 years later a whole clutch of scholars who ought to have known better were still making the same mistakes. All based on wistful speculation without owning up. I started to tidy up some old files in preparation for doing something else. Windows 7 brought me to a halt. Twelve months ago I'd been through the same process. Carefully studied this second book in the series. I was much milder then. I'd drawn attention to the inaccuracies but I hadn't ground my teeth. Quite apart from that, I'd been through the whole of the book before writing my report. I've recognised some subtle changes in myself. I look back over the past year and strike a chord. I've spent most of term times chatting to friends in the Oxford Union Society rooms. Without noticing it at the time, I'd been absorbing a different sort of atmosphere. Conversations nearly always merged into academic debate. And, dammit, this is Oxford, and there's still more than a hint of the patrician in the air despite the vulgating of the idiolect. General Petraeus came and talked only a few days before he was given a new job. When his name's mentioned on the news, I feel I know the man. He demonstrated to the full that to be a successful (American) general, you need to be a diplomat as well. Double dammit! I used to say the best thing about Oxford was it was so easy to get out of it - especially when you lived near the main road to the South and the ring road was less than a car mile away. Now I'm getting quite fond of the place. Plus ca change. Pas la meme chose. Wittgenstein, thou shouldst be living at this hour! oxford, 9 july 2010
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