The Peace of Wild Things

A path diverging from the familiar....

Everything Old Is New Again

At President Joe Biden’s inauguration, the young poet, Amanda Gorman, speaking to “Americans, and The World,” expressed poetically how humans strive and thrive with passion and compassion (to borrow a phrase from another of my favourite poets, Maya Angelou):

   Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

   That even as we grieved, we grew,

   That even as we hurt, we hoped,

   That even as we tired, we tried.

I have to hope that the post-Covid world (when the disease is endemic rather than ripping across the globe without fear nor favour) will be a better world, where we can see things freshly and anew. Despite trudging many local byways over the years that I have lived in Saltaire, occasionally a new route presents itself and, on a familiar trail around the Bolton Abbey estate recently, we followed a signpost to Coney Warren and trod a path that was new to us.

Intrepid Exploration

Posforth Gill and Posforth Force

Negotating steep slopes, stiles, heathery fields, and walls by woods, it was reasonably easy to reach the Valley of Desolation where two falls, slightly tucked away but worth the find, thunder over drops. The higher falls, reached by a cul-de-sac path, is at Posforth Gill and the lower falls, the longer drops, are named Posforth Force. A perfect place for a picnic.

Reflecting back, projecting forward

Nature by day, TV by night! It’s notable that our TV-watching during this second or third Covid-lockdown (depending on whether you count local lockdowns) has mixed stressful police or medical dramas (Line of Duty, Unforgotten, ER) with gentler fare (Schitt’s Creek, Greyson’s Art Club, The Great Pottery Throw Down). It’s almost as if we need the distress to stay alert to issues and problems outside the pandemic and the beneficial stress (the eustress) to help us sleep. Whatever gets you through the night. I’ve found the poem The Peace of Wild Things a useful go-to poem during the last year. It was written by Wendell Berry (born 1934), a poet-philospher, essayist and novelist who is also a farmer and environmental activist.

Whatever Gets You Through The Night

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

It is interesting that this poem was included in a collection, Tools of the trade: Poems for new doctors, given to all graduating doctors in Scotland between 2014 and 2018. By doing so, the medical organisations were acknowledging that poetry (or lyrics in general or more broadly the Arts) can play a vital role in contributing to the well being of all (both patients and health practitioners.) I have always believed this to be self-evident which is why the Tory party’s suggestion that ballerinas (and by implication all arts workers) should retrain to work in IT (Fatima’s next job could be in cyber – she just doesn’t know it yet) was so unenlightened and counter to the true “wealth of the nation” - the peace of wild things and the people who grew, hoped and tried.

Miss Jean Louise, stand up....

Golden Anniversary

During Lockdown Three Point Zero, you take your celebrations where you can. So, if The Harry Potter Film Club has to meet on Zoom, then so be it. The group started as a prelude to watching The Cursed Child at the the theatre (in the olden days of theatre-going) because one person had limited knowledge of the Wizarding World. But then it continued, fuelled by a love of wine and cake and sociable bonhomie. And we decided to mark the 50th film with dressing up as characters from films we’d already watched, thus, above:

• No-Face from Spirited Away
• Sadness from Inside Out
• Idgie Threadgoode from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café 
• Mr Perks from The Railway Children and
• Lina Lamont from Singin’ in the Rain

Hey, Boo, fifty films and counting

There have been

• 10 Fantasies
• 7 Comedies
• 5 Animations
• 5 Documentaries
• 4 Dramas
• 3 Historical Films
• 3 Crime Thrillers
• 3 Musicals
• 2 Biopics
• 2 Family Films
• 2 Literary Adaptations
• 2 SciFi Movies
• 1 Disaster Movie and
• 1 Satire.

Over half were made since the Millennium and the earliest so far was 1940's Pinocchio. The 50th anniversary film choice was Robert Mulligan’s 1962 movie of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird with landmark performances by Gregory Peck (as Atticus Finch), Estelle Evans (as Calpurnia), Mary Badham, Phillip Alford and John Megna (as Scout, Jem and Dill), Brock Peters (as Tom Robinson), and Robert Duvall (as Arthur (Boo) Radley.) With mood-perfect rhythms and music by Elmer Bernstein and a miraculously faithful adaptation by Horton Foote, the movie captures the spirit of the novel without simplifying any of the moral and legal complexities. The film remains light touch in the way a modern version, I think, would be far more heavy-handed.

Three Resolutions

The weasel in the garden

And 2021 has begun. I resolve to Keep Walking and Keep Creatively Visualising images like the one above and the one at the end of this post. And I Resolve to only check on the news once a day. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Winter sun. Flurries of snow. Wintery frost. Lockdown Three Point Zero. Rising Covid cases, hospital admissions and deaths. As Reignier says in Henry VI Part One

Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.

This is a Shakespearian line that should be tattooed onto the UK government’s eyeballs. For the best part of the last year, life-saving decisions have been slow, many have been contradictory and, from the week of Cummings-gate, have been interpreted to suit everyone’s own circumstances because that was the lesson learned from BoJo’s support of the weasel in the Rose Garden. Hopefully the newest campaign to take Covid seriously will make an impact and bring down cases. Time will tell.

The coward on the hill

The President of America, in the dying days of his reign of misinformation, vulgar speechifying and inconsistently perverse decision-making, has incited a crowd of his supporters to invade and riot in the Capitol building leaving (to date) 5 dead bodies, broken glass, stolen goods, vandalised furtniture, and a (future) string of court appearances and prison sentences Although Trump shouted “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…. I know everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building…” he only meant a “royal we” and “everyone” didn’t include his own bloated orange self, so he sent his supporters into notoriety and infamy as he returned, I imagine, to put his feet up on a padded cushion in the White House and eat a cheeseburger and pretend he was innocent.

Cartoon by John Shakespeare for The Age

The rebel without a plan

As ever, something in Shakespeare nagged at me and I realised it was Jack Cade in Henry VI Part Two inveterately boasting and inciting a mob. Even though his promises to the angry and starving peasants are impossible, the promises are still effective at rabble-rousing the mob to march and, of course, many are killed.

Valiant I am…. I fear neither sword nor fire…. When I am king, as king I shall be…. I thank you good people…. I will make myself a knight…. Burn all the records of the realm…. My mouth shall be the parliament…. I must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art…. Thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb…. Away with him – he speaks Latin!.... Take him away and behead him…. I’ll defy them all…. (Jack Cade in Henry VI Part Two)

Jack Cade's rebellion

The gardener with a pruning sword 

But Jack Cade’s life becomes (like Trump’s is likely to be), not a bang but a sad whimper away from the crowds. The witness to Cade’s death (indeed his unwitting executioner) realises who Jack Cade is as he dies and calls him “monstrous traitor” and ends the scene with a grim final action:

Hence I will drag thee headlong by the heels

Unto a dunghill which shall be thy grave….

Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon.

The identity of Jack Cade’s nemesis is – future High Sheriff of Kent in history, working class gardener in Shakespeare’s play – Alexander Iden – an English spelling of Eden…. Let’s hope 2021 becomes more of an Eden than 2020. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Walk. Love. Limit the News.

An Edenic Future Visualisation using snapshots of the past

Advent 2020

Countdown to Christmas

So muddy walks with family, jigsaw puzzles and posh takeaways continue to distract from Tier Three Restrictions. As do creative ways to meet up with longtime friends to catch up and Only Connect. It was easier this year to follow my instinct that Christmas fol-de-rol can only manifest on December 1st because lockdown meant that most shops were out of bounds and I’ve fine-tuned my ability to block out Christmas music in October and November…. Over the years, certain “traditions” mean that the Christmas countdown can begin: the Blue Peter Advent Crown (tinsel and wire coat hangers, anyone?), the decision about what day to choose (and who will decorate) a Christmas tree, the flutter of (fewer and fewer) Christmas cards through the letterbox (who will be first off the mark?), the slowing down of Autumn as Winter approaches and the military-style lists of “Things To Do” get gradually crossed off and, naturally, some form of Advent Calendar. Last Christmas Sue (in collage above) gifted us Advent Stockings and this year Sally secretly filled the Evens and I’m (naturally) Odd.

Out with the Old, In with the New

As Advent began, global miracles were occurring – yes, there’s the familiar….

• the rising Star of Bethlehem/Comet
• the approaching of the Three Wise Men/Kings/Astronomers
• the glimpse of Shepherds counting their socks and heralding Angels
• the longed-for arrival of a beloved baby in a Manger

But in the present-day, Advent 2020 heralds the start of a new world order with a few concrete miracles, in ascending order of importance….

• a new Christmas special episode of Call The Midwife
• the departure of some toxic staff from 10 Downing Street
• the very-nearly-complete dismissal of the TanToxic TwitterChundering US President
• the beginning of humanity’s vaccination FightBack against the Coronavirus – a triumph of international scientific collaboration 

– a sign of what the world can do with Wit, Wisdom, Will and Wherewithall....

The bridge from Strasbourg to Kehl

Rainbows, bridges of dreams.... they get everywhere.... a perfect synthesis of science and imagination....

John Hume, Peace Negotiator
I regularly get drawn into an absorbing project, abandoning myself in the merciless whirlpool of the siren call of knowledge and thought…. Last week I reproduced a shortened version of John Hume’s thoughts about DIFFERENCE being “an accident of birth.” During the week I’ve read as much as I could find about the man and reproduce at the bottom of this post a longer extract from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech (which explains the title of this week’s blog and connects the personal to the political.) But I’ll get there via the words of another historical figure who said some stuff that is still, 2000 years later, as radical as they come.
An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind
The saying in the subheading above (An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind) was a favourite quotation of the late John Hume which he attributed to Dr Martin Luther King Jr, though many have suggested it was a Gandhi quotation.  My research reveals that Louis Fischer, the American journalist and author, used the phrase twice in books mentioning Gandhi but never claimed the peace protestor said them. The origin of the phrase is first recorded in Jewish scripture and it concerned legal arguments, but it became more well-known via the Old Testament’s An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth in the books of both Exodus and Leviticus.  Jesus, however, knocked the Old Covenant’s concept for six in the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 5), with a typically challenging and subversive set of suggestions:

Turn the other cheek
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Love your Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Standing on the bridge…. (John Hume Nobel Prize Speech)
In my own work for peace, I was very strongly inspired by my European experience. I always tell this story, and I do so because it is so simple yet so profound and so applicable to conflict resolution anywhere in the world. On my first visit to Strasbourg in 1979 as a member of the European Parliament, I went for a walk across the bridge from Strasbourg to Kehl. Strasbourg is in France. Kehl is in Germany. They are very close.

I stopped in the middle of the bridge and I meditated. There is Germany. There is France.

If I had stood on this bridge 30 years ago after the end of the second world war when 25 million people lay dead across our continent for the second time in this century and if I had said: “Don't worry. In 30 years’ time we will all be together in a new Europe, our conflicts and wars will be ended and we will be working together in our common interests”, I would have been sent to a psychiatrist.

But it has happened and it is now clear that European Union is the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution and it is the duty of everyone, particularly those who live in areas of conflict to study how it was done and to apply its principles to their own conflict resolution.

All conflict is about difference, whether the difference is race, religion or nationality. The European visionaries decided that difference is not a threat, difference is natural. Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace – respect for diversity.

The peoples of Europe then created institutions which respected their diversity – a Council of Ministers, the European Commission and the European Parliament – but allowed them to work together in their common and substantial economic interest. They spilt their sweat and not their blood and by doing so broke down the barriers of distrust of centuries and the new Europe has evolved and is still evolving, based on agreement and respect for difference.

The UK is about to be a former member of, in the words of John Hume, "the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution." Time will tell if it's a price worth paying....

The stick-together families

Cockeyed Optimist
I have been accused on more than one occasion in adult life of wearing rose-tinted glasses. Of being too optimistic, too annoyingly positive; of being too prepared to see another person’s point of view. Of being a glass-half-full kind of sap. A dupe. Too gullible. (I could argue it’s the Libran in me.) Like Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, I try to imagine that I will never understand a person “until you consider things from his point of view…. until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” It’s very hard to do with some people in some situations but it usually allows me to store negative feelings in a box called There’s nowt so queer as folk and sleep at night, counting my own blessings.

Edgar Guest
The “People’s Poet,” Edgar Guest, was introduced to me by pupils I taught when they selected some of his poems to recite at Music and Poetry performance evenings. He was born in England but lived most of his life in Detroit, USA, and his grand-niece, Judith Guest wrote the novel Ordinary People, that was made into one of my favourite films in 1980. Edgar Guest’s poems are undoubtedly sentimental and unlikely to be studied for examinations, but they capture clichéd truths for cockeyed optimists like me and two poems, in particular, have resurfaced from my subconscious as my loved ones begin emerging from Covid-19 Lockdown.

See it Through by Edgar Guest

When you’re up against a trouble,
    Meet it squarely, face to face;
Lift your chin and set your shoulders,
    Plant your feet and take a brace.
When it’s vain to try to dodge it,
    Do the best that you can do;
You may fail, but you may conquer,
    See it through!

Black may be the clouds about you
    And your future may seem grim,
But don’t let your nerve desert you;
    Keep yourself in fighting trim.
If the worst is bound to happen,
    Spite of all that you can do,
Running from it will not save you,
    See it through!

Even hope may seem but futile,
    When with troubles you’re beset,
But remember you are facing
    Just what other men have met.
You may fail, but fall still fighting;
    Don’t give up, whate’er you do;
Eyes front, head high to the finish.
    See it through!

The Stick-Together Families by Edgar Guest
The stick-together families are happier by far
Than the brothers and the sisters who take separate highways are.
The gladdest people living are the wholesome folks who make
A circle at the fireside that no power but death can break.
And the finest of conventions ever held beneath the sun
Are the little family gatherings when the busy day is done.

There are rich folk, there are poor folk, who imagine they are wise,
And they're very quick to shatter all the little family ties.
Each goes searching after pleasure in his own selected way,
Each with strangers likes to wander, and with strangers likes to play.
But it's bitterness they harvest, and it's empty joy they find,
For the children that are wisest are the stick-together kind.

There are some who seem to fancy that for gladness they must roam,
That for smiles that are the brightest they must wander far from home.
That the strange friend is the true friend, and they travel far astray.
They waste their lives in striving for a joy that's far away,
But the gladdest sort of people, when the busy day is done,
Are the brothers and the sisters who together share their fun.

It's the stick-together family that wins the joys of earth,
That hears the sweetest music and that finds the finest mirth;
It's the old home roof that shelters all the charm that life can give;
There you find the gladdest play-ground, there the happiest spot to live.
And, O weary, wandering brother, if contentment you would win,
Come you back unto the fireside and be comrade with your kin.

New Deal

Brian and Sue on VE Day, the milky way, Monument Valley - everything changes, incrementally

Weaning off Zoom
So today, pubs and restaurants can begin re-opening and hairdressers can return to work. Some cinema chains are making tentative arrangements for opening but theatres and concert venues remain closed for performances. The Covid-19 Lockdown is “easing” further in the direction of a “New Normal.” The New Normal is likely to be with us for a few years. We’ve booked our first restaurant. We’ve booked our first social event with geographically distant friends (Sue and Brian above, making merry on VE Day.) How have we all coped? Have we learned anything about ourselves individually, as communities, as a country, as a continent, as a planet? Or will we strive to return everything to being the same as it was before? I don’t think that’s possible. Time (and circumstances) change things – notice the images below (the two adverts are absolutely genuine – from 1890 and 1964.) Some things will never be the same: any references to driving to Barnard Castle to test your eyesight, for example.

VE Day Afternoon Tea, the glorious Sophia Loren telling truths, genuine advertisements that wouldn't be printed in 2020

What’s past is prologue
The current UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to his family) has declared a New Deal and has given the impression he will now be able to deliver on his election manifesto promises (see No Excuses Now for a reminder.) I hope he succeeds in doing everything he promised, though I suspect the Coronavirus pandemic will be used time and again in the next decade to excuse failures. The first political New Deal belonged to President Roosevelt in America in 1933-34. To avoid further economic catastrophe, liberals pushed through the Second New Deal in 1935-36. History doesn’t show how many further New Deals might have been needed because The Second World War demanded everyone’s attention and other economic opportunities arose in the fight against Fascism. Hopefully, a World War is not around the corner in the 2020s. Still, we might as well talk about a New Deal – it sounds more energetic and optimistic than a New Normal. But I hope we can learn and build a better world. Shakespeare’s line from The Tempest (What’s past is prologue) is inscribed on the National Archives Building in Washington DC and can now be applied to any situation where past events should be used to determine exactly what happens next. We should learn from the past. Shouldn’t we? Happy Independence Day!

Summary of the forthcoming (expensive) Enquiry into the Coronavirus Pandemic

Stand by me

2020 (top two) and times gone by (bottom three)

Baby Harriet Rose
And so, in the middle of a gradually-relaxing Pandemic Lockdown, it was time to celebrate the birthday of the adult daughter formerly known as Baby Harriet. And there is much to celebrate in this unsettling period of history. For a start, we’re all alive. So what to do to celebrate a birthday in June 2020?

Tramping in Wharfedale
Less industrial than Airedale, not as dramatic as Malhamdale, Wharfedale is a lovely place to walk. And so we did. The dale was formed in the last ice age, and named from the Old Norse Hverf that became the Old English Weorf, both meaning winding river. Small settlements date back to Neolithic times, working farms have been established for generations and local people and tourists alike have tramped meandering paths across the moorland countryside. Above Burley in Wharfedale we climbed up the side of the valley to enjoy cows, sheep, fields, meadows, scrubby bushes, wild foxgloves, streams, rivulets, stiles and views…. Oh, the views.

5,000 miles
We managed around 6 miles up and down, along and beyond. The 5,000 miles in the sub-heading refers to the estimated length of all the dry stone walls in Yorkshire. You can’t beat the sight of a dry stone wall: such a familiar sight, so welcome and reassuring when returning from elsewhere in the world to "God’s Own County."

Birthday 2020 and "at home" at Versailles

Picnic and Prashad
Sitting on big rocks somewhere high we revelled in a picnic with fizz (is there anything better than eating and drinking in the open air?) And later, socially distancing in the garden, we had a Gujerati Indian takeaway from the excellent Prashad in Drighlington. The main glory was being together, being healthy, reminiscing, looking forward, blowing away the cobwebs during the day and putting the world to rights as the sun set.

2020 feast from Prashad and snapshots from America, France and Italy

Stand by me
Songwriters: Jerry Lieber, Mike Stoller, Ben King
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid
Oh, I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
So darling, darling
Stand by me, oh stand by me
Oh stand, stand by me
Stand by me
If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
Or the mountain should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry
No, I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

Won't You Be My Neighbour?

The significance of the feet washing is explained in the documentary....

Interview to Article to Documentary to Movie

It’s hard to spell neighbour without a letter u but as this post is about an American documentary and movie, I will do so (apart from in the post’s title!) Daughter Emily introduced me first to the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?. The documentary was partly prompted by a November 1998 article in Esquire magazine entitled Can You Say...'Hero'? by Tom Junod. Two screenwriters (Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster) then fictionalised the encounters between Tom Junod and his subject and recruited Tom Hanks to play the interviewee and Matthew Rhys to play the interviewer (renamed Lloyd Vogel for the movie.) It’s a bit complicated to explain but both the documentary and the movie are bigger than the sum of their parts, in my opinion, and have profound things to say about both society and education. The subject in question is Mr Rogers. I’d not heard of him or his seminal children’s TV programmes before watching the documentary.

UK equivalents - including some I didn't mention in the text - can you identify them?

UK equivalents?

I think the nearest in the UK we have to Mr Rogers might be people like Floella Benjamin, Carol Chell, Chloe Ashcroft, Johnny Ball or Brian Cant on Play School or Play Away and maybe, for Mr Rodgers’ Neigborhood, The Magic Roundabout for a weird alternative world – or Hector’s House or Mr Benn or…. If you are of a certain age, you’ll get the references…. But if you don’t know the world of Mr Rogers and his Neighborhood, or Daniel Tiger, Lady Aberlin, Mr McFeely, Officer Clemmons, King Friday the Thirteenth and more, then I can recommend you watch the documentary (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) or the movie directed by Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.)

Characters from Mr Rogers' Neighborhood

I like you just the way you are

I can imagine spoofs of Mr Rogers (indeed some feature in the documentary), but somehow the genuine article seems to mean every word when he addresses a vulnerable child with the words:

I hope you know that you made today a very special day by just your being you. There's no one in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.

And when he speaks to a graduation class and

From the time you were very little,

You’ve had people who have smiled you into smiling,

People who have talked you into talking,

Sung you into singing,

Loved you into loving.

So, on this extra special day,

Let’s take some time to

Think of those extra special people.

Some of them might be right here,

Some may be far away,

Some may even be in Heaven.

No matter where they are,

Deep down you know they’ve

Always wanted what was best for you.

They’ve always cared about you beyond measure

And have encouraged you

To be true to the best within you.

Let’s just take a minute of silence to

Think about those people now.

I'm glad I’ve learned about Mr Rogers.

Around the World at Christmas

Around the World

The world is a big place – and in some ways a small place – and a marvellously diverse place. As I’ve said before, home is where the heart is. By the end of 2020 the UK will have “Brexited” whatever that might mean, deal or no deal, with full sovereignty or, more likely, the illusion of sovereignty. The rich of England will continue to get rich, whoever pulls the invisible purse strings. In the meantime, one pair who I usually spend time with in the Festive season went off to Europe on a train (see central image above – Amy and Maggie on a sledge not a train at that point.)  This past Christmas season, home was Badby, home was Saltaire and home was Around the World in Christmas-themed displays at Chatsworth House….

“I think I might be different, I might not be the same.”

Michael cooked up a feast or two in Badby (and Janet and Alex turned their hands to a gingerbread house.) This year’s Royal Shakespeare Company Christmas show was only tenuously Christmassy, but it had a very witty set, enthusiastic performers and very jolly songs, though one (If I don’t cry) made my eyes moist…. David Walliams’s The Boy in the Dress has been adapted by Mark Ravenhill with songs by Robbie Williams, Guy Chambers and Chris Heath. The main character, Dennis, sings of being Ordinary but by the end he is anything but – he’s extraordinary – and the message, I thought, was all about the intrinsic value of individual differences – an apt reminder in this most divided of eras. 

Sparkle round the globe

The differences between Morocco, China, Japan, India, Portugal, Italy and America were celebrated in exuberant style at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire this year. Some of the differences were artistic and involved traditional (stereotyped?) imagery but some of the displays were harder to spot: Venetian masks, the Russian dolls on the huge Christmas tree in the Painted Hall, and the Nativity scene in the baroque Portuguese-inspired chapel.

“It’s really useful to travel, if you want to see new things.” (Jules Verne in Around the World in Eighty Days)

Quirky nods to fictional traveller Phileas Fogg and historical aviator Amelia Earhart guided you through imaginatively lit rooms containing hidden and not-so-hidden delights, like the Chinese lanterns and paper dragons. Floating candles hovered around the Nativity in the Chapel, warding away Damien Hirst’s Exquisite Pain statue of Saint Bartholomew.

Cherry Blossom

Probably my favourite display was in the Japanese-themed room, partly because it was a potent reminder of Spring in the dark days of Winter.

Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa

A calligraphy desk, paper fans and more blossoms framed 3d art work reminiscent of Hokusai’s Nineteenth Century woodblock print Kanagawa-oki Nami Ura.

Effortless glory

Staff at Chatsworth apparently unite from the middle of Summer onwards to prepare for the Christmas displays and it certainly impresses with thousands of baubles, wreaths, swags and greenery. I particularly like the charming homemade smaller items that appear when you have time to stop and stare.

Decking the Hall

It’s impossible to walk around grand Christmas decorations without Christmas carols ear-worming into your subconscious and I was amused to read about the two variations of Deck the Halls 

Deck the hall with boughs of holly,

Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!

'Tis the season to be jolly, (Fa….!)

Fill the meadcup, drain the barrel, (Fa….!)

Troll the ancient Christmas carol (Fa….!)

See the flowing bowl before us, (Fa….!)

Strike the harp and join the chorus. (Fa….!)

Follow me in merry measure, (Fa….!)

While I sing of beauty's treasure. (Fa….!)

Fast away the old year passes, (Fa….!)

Hail the new, ye lads and lasses! (Fa….!)

Laughing, quaffing all together, (Fa….!)

Heedless of the wind and weather. (Fa….!)

Censorship of meadcup, barrel, bowl and quaffing

The tune may well go back to medieval times and the original lyrics were in Welsh, with the variation above appearing in 1862, the lyrics being attributed to Scottish musician, Thomas Oliphant. In Chatsworth’s gift shop I learned that the Pennsylvania School Journal attempted to rewrite the lyrics changing all the references to getting drunk:

Deck the hall with boughs of holly,

'Tis the season to be jolly,

Don we now our gay apparel,

Troll the ancient Christmas carol,

See the blazing yule before us,

Strike the harp and join the chorus.

Follow me in merry measure,

While I tell of Christmas treasure.

Fast away the old year passes,

Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!

Sing we joyous all together,

Heedless of the wind and weather.

Soft bosoms

Even the quaffing version of Deck The Halls is a dilution of the Seventeenth Century version which celebrates bosoms and blisses and kisses – and why not? It’s Christmas, after all.

Oh! How soft my fair one’s bosom 

Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!

Oh! How sweet the grove in blossom (Fa….!)

Oh! How blessed are the blisses (Fa….!)

Words of love, and mutual kisses

Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!