Signs of Change in the Post

A couple weeks ago, two letters came in the post: one with the queens head (which has been the only head on a stamp since moving here) and one with the kings head on.  This is the first appearance of the kings head for me.  It is interesting because I do not use stamps: I just print out the postage at home. It has no monarchs head... just a QR code.  And I rarely handle cash.  So there will be little opportunity there.  I guess I feel like in the past there would have been this distinct change that shows up in ordinary life via cash and stamps but now these are not so much present in the ordinary lives of some.  I suspect for younger people, it will be even less.

Barrows, some stone circles, and other stuff

A few recent trips.

In April, Flowerdown Barrows, a well preserved bronze-age  disc barrow (about 4000 year old)

Only a short walk away from the barrows, resourceful Littleton has converted a telephone box into a library (at least 70 years old based on the shape of the crown)

And a short jaunt over to Winchester where we perused the ruin of Wolvesey Castle (around 900 years old)

Next door in the Winchester Cathedral (parts of it are as old as Wolvesey) where we saw a GreenMan carved into a column

And this Antony Gormley sculpture (40 years old) in the crypt (around 900 years old) with the haunting groundwater infiltration

In May, we ventured to Scotland and visited Croft Moraig stone circle (4000 years old, evidence of timber posts from 5000 years ago)

We also stopped at the Scottish Crannog Centre nearby with a delightful mix of artefacts and reproductions and the most engaging staff you will be meet at a museum.  The image is a reproduction of a 2500 year old crannog.

Kinnell stone cirlce (maybe 3000 years old)

And we stopped at Hadrians Wall (about 2000 years old) on the way home.

Also ate in a bridge over the motorway

All photographs by my beloved and I except for the Crannog: https://lochtay.co.uk/things-to-do/attractions/scottish-crannog-centre/

Old Money

I occasionally read stuff that references old money. While I am very grateful to Project Britain for their explanation, I find it hard to hold onto the information because it jumps all around. While stuck in quarantine, I made a list based on the Project Britain page so that it would stick better in my head.

The list is in order of how many pennies each unit is worth

   e.g. a farthing is a quarter of a penny

'Slang' terms are in quotes

   e.g. coppers is slang for pennies

(Other useful non-penny unit) breakdowns are in parentheses

  e.g. a crown is worth 5 shillings or a quarter of a pound

[Abbreviation] terms are in brackets

  e.g. d stands for denarius

The UNITS in all caps are the ones used in writing prices and sums

  e.g. 1l.2s.5d.

The list uses a fixed-width font so that the pennies align

Viola

farthing        0.25d

halfpenny       0.5d

PENNY d.        1d  'copper' [denarius]

half groat      2d 

threepence      3d (0.25s) 'joey'

groat           4d

sixpence        6d (0.5s) 'tanner'

SHILLING s.    12d   'bob'  [solidus]

florin         24d   '2 bob bit'

1/2 crown      30d (2.5s)

crown          60d (5s=0.25l) 'dollar'

1/2 sovereign 120d (10s=0.5l)

1/2 guinea    126d (10.5s)

POUND l.      240d (20s) ** [libra] 

guinea g.     252d (21s)

  ** £coin='sovereign'  £note='quid'

Photo credit

Florin: Leeds Museums & Galleries

Quid: Wikipedia

Survivor

It is the most ordinary of things to survive our parents. Yet I find myself so unprepared to live the experience. Emotions appeared suddenly like squalls in the sky of my mind. Then just as suddenly, there was an equally disturbing stillness. Words fail to carry the true essence of it.

I had the perfect parents.  When I say perfect, I don't mean that my childhood was constant pleasure, or that we fully understood each other. They were perfect in the sense that there was balance. For example, I felt safe most of the time, but I was not in a fake bubble. There were times when I did not feel safe. But these happened in a larger context. I learned the important lesson that I would not always be safe, but there was an intention to provide safety. And there was space to get it right, and to get it wrong. And there was space for taking action, or taking none. And space for not knowing what to do.  And there was space for the waiting and the ripples of the after effects. And there could be love in all these spaces, even if I couldn't always sense it at the time. I am still learning that, really. But the root of all that is from my parents. So my parents were/are perfect, for me anyway. And I am grateful.

Photo Credit

Silhouette: The Swaddle

Rare weather

 

A few days ago, I was lying on the settee looking out the window and thought: wow, now there's something you don't often see... a clear sunny day. So I snapped this photograph. Little did I realise, a few days later, I would be looking out the same window at snow, which we definitely see less often than a clear sunny day...

On the move in Surbiton

I am having trouble keeping up with pretty much everything, including this blog. I am at a complete loss as to how I am spending time differently. But there you go.

I failed to log on the blog that we like Surbiton so much that we moved there again, even though we were already living here. But this time, we are attempting ownership, which is a step that seemed completely improbable until fairly recently.

Anyway, yada, yada, yada... we own a flat. Completion was in October and we moved in November. The move was more fortuitous than we could have imagined at the time. The new place is about twice the size of the old one. I honestly do not think we could have psychologically survived the pandemic lock down (which started in March) in that little flat.

It's a one bedroom and the stairs are inside the flat so that gives us a space at the top of the landing that we use as my beloved's office: really handy in a pandemic. It has a lovely back garden. And I have a shed!!

It was love at first sight. We hope it is a very long term relationship.

Photo Credit:

me!

     

Fixing broken windows with my dad and the essence of humanity

When I was a kid, I used to play various ball games outside, which inevitably led to broken windows.  Dad was fairly understanding.  He just expected me to help him repair it.  We would remove the glass and chisel out the hardened putty from the wooden frame.  We had to keep an eye out for these little metal pieces that held the window in the wood frame because they were so small, they could easily be lost.  Then we would first put in the new window, then the little metal pieces, then the putty.

This is just one of many skills that my parents had that most of us in present time do not.  Dad did all the maintenance on the boiler.  He repaired his own car.  Mum was even more skilled.  She made made and repaired our clothes and cut all our hair.  And the food... where do even I begin?  Well, the meat grinder is where: a cast-iron hand-cranked contraption that attached the end of the table, giant pan catching the minced meat as it came out.  When we had chips, she made them from whole potatoes, oil and salt.  Oh, and by the way, she was also a full time branch manager for the biggest bank in the neighbourhood.

But it's not like my parents were some kind of standout super couple.  My friend's father literally built the house they lived in.  He and his brothers dug out the basement foundation with hand tools!  And his mother also did their clothes, hair, meat grinding, and she worked at the neighbourhood fish and chip shop.

That memory of the adults from my childhood neighbourhood has me thinking about how today's society is so much more individually focused than it used to be.  This is downright laughable when previous generations were so clearly more self sufficient than we are. But it is also within our time too: If we substituted me and my mates for their usual team mates, Cristiano Ronaldo or LeBron James would not be enough to compete against even a mediocre opponent.  The individual is nothing without the support of the surrounding group.

Even in the midst of a pandemic, the dogma of individual independence is so unshakeable, despite evidence to the contrary right in front of us. Throughout human history, cooperation and collaboration has been our super power. I cannot take on a gorilla or a tiger individually. But as a group acting cooperatively, we can. And in case you are thinking: I could take on a gorilla or a tiger on with gun... that's just me against the animal, right?  But is that really just me?  Did I mine the ore, smelt it, and forge it into the individual pieces of the gun?  Did I mine the minerals and mix them into gunpowder and make my own shot? But even if I did all that, where did the tools come from that I used to mine, smelt, forge and assemble?  Did I make them, or did somebody else?  And what about the energy to heat the ore? Did I produce the fuel for that, or did somebody else?  And how did I get to be in the presence of the animal?  Did I take a vehicle? Did I build that vehicle?  Was there a road?  Did I build that road?


I am not denying unique skills and contributions that could only come from a particular individual. I am saying that these individual skills and contributions are often meaningless outside the support system around them. As someone who frequently struggles to follow social conventions, I am also not suggesting that acknowledging the interconnectedness of our existence rises to the level condoning enforced conformity.

I am simply stating that right from the moment I opened my eyes this morning that almost everything within my field of view came to be there because of thousands of people that I will never meet. Looking out from these opened eyes, I am finding it difficult that we attribute so much to the dogma of individual independence with barely a thought of where the constructed world we are immersed in comes from.


Photo Credits

Window: Allstate

Meat grinder: Etsy

Hunter: FASA Games

Nonconformist: The Radical Center