thesweetcheat
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Winter Solstice
Dec 21, 2020, 08:04
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We've made it to the turning of another year, one of the strangest in my lifetime.
I hope you all find some time for peace and rest, looking forward to the returning life of Spring.
Love to all of you.
TSC
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moss
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Edited Dec 21, 2020, 08:31
Re: Winter Solstice
Dec 21, 2020, 08:30
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Christmas and Solstice blessings to all in a time of worry. Just brood on the good things of life, as TSC says spring will be here soon. xxx
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spencer
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Re: Winter Solstice
Dec 21, 2020, 14:07
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Echoed. All best, folks. The snowdrops are coming through....
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tjj
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Re: Winter Solstice
Dec 21, 2020, 20:18
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Thanks TSC and back to you. It is the strangest year in my lifetime too - sometimes it feels like an apocalyptic nightmare ... then I go out for a walk, albeit mostly locally. Today along the old Wilts& Berks canal in my town, saw hazel catkins (out already), a muntjac deer in someone's back garden, a grey wagtail on the path, and loads more, all more or less in an urban setting.
And reading of course takes you someplace else. Have just started reading a paperback called 'Once Upon A River' by by Diane Setterfield. She sets the scene in a storytelling pub called the Swan at Radcot on the Upper Thames:
It was solstice night, the longest night of the year. For weeks the days had been shrinking, first gradually, then precipitously, so that it was now dark by mid-afternoon. As is well known, when the moon hours lengthen, human beings come adrift from the regularity from their mechanical clocks. They nod at noon, dream in waking hours, open their eyes wide to the pitch-black night. It is the time of magic. And as the borders between night and day stretch to their thinnest, so too do the borders between worlds. Dreams and stories merge with lived experience, the dead and the living brush against each other in their comings and goings, the past and the present touch and overlap. Unexpected things can happen. Did the solstice have anything to do with strange events at the Swan? You will have to judge for yourself.
Now you know everything you need to know, the story can begin.
Needless to say I was reeled in.
Also dipping in and out of Neil Oliver's 'Wisdom of the Ancients' - in one of his essays he has something illuminating to say about the movement of prehistoric peoples from east to west and how the Yamnaya migrants from the Russian Steppes may have brought with them more than language and metal weapons. Wound around the DNA of six of them were telltale twists of Yersinia Pestis, the ancestor of the Black Death bacterium.
Going back into prehistory is indeed therapy for the present.
All the very best to everyone
TJJ
aka June x
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Rhiannon
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Re: Winter Solstice
Dec 23, 2020, 09:59
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"They nod at noon, dream in waking hours, open their eyes wide to the pitch-black night."
That is definitely me at the moment, I don't know if I'm awake or asleep half the time!
It's nice to hear of your nature spotting. I know that getting out there is the cure, I must just brace myself and do it (the interminable drizzle is not encouraging).
Happy solstice greetings to you all likewise, and I wish everyone the strength to cling on until spring!
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nigelswift
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Re: Winter Solstice
Dec 23, 2020, 11:46
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Thanks for that thought Rhiannon.
Let's all just hold hands, figuratively, and say F... you, 2020!
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Rhiannon
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Re: Winter Solstice
Dec 23, 2020, 19:07
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Hah, so right, Nigel, that's the attitude. Good riddance to it and let's hope things look up soon. I hope you have a relaxing peaceful Christmas, and stay away from germ-ridden hoi polloi please!
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nigelswift
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Re: Winter Solstice
Dec 24, 2020, 03:20
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"stay away from germ-ridden hoi polloi please"
I always have, given my upper-class credentials (my gt grandma was allegedly put in the family way by the Earl of Dudley on the banks of the canal at Tipton).
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Vybik Jon
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Re: Winter Solstice
Dec 24, 2020, 04:42
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Taken up the cut.
Blimey!
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nigelswift
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Re: Winter Solstice
Dec 24, 2020, 05:08
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She says don't trivialise what was a beautiful moment.
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