When I think of the word ‘pebble’ the words that come to mind are: shiny, smooth, polished, round, wet… But the word ‘stone’ conjures much more. In addition to the preceding, I might also think of: rough, lumpen, angular, pitted, sharp… and then there are also stones so important we have added names to them: hearth stone, lode-stone, philosophers stone, millstone, whet stone, altar stone, headstone… Some even have their own gods.
All pebbles are stones, not all stones are pebbles.
When I was a student I had a summer job at the Butlins holiday camp in Minehead. I hasten to add I was not a redcoat. Redcoats were not popular with other members of the workforce. While maintaining a superior air to everyone else, nevertheless they had to smile all the time at the campers. This seemed to the rest of us to be too high a price for the privilege of wearing a polyester blazer. I sold ice creams.
Shortly after I started the job an army of decorators arrived at the camp, along with several men carrying a piece of optical equipment on a tripod. The men would set up the tripod in a particular place, look through the optical device, then confer with the works foreman who would, in turn, go and talk to the decorators. After a few days I began to see they weren’t redecorating everything, just the parts that were visible from these standpoints. I was told this was because they were preparing for the company who were going to take the photographs for the new brochure.
On the big day when the company arrived, there was a buzz in the air. Certain parts of the centre of the camp were roped off: the pool, the funfair, the monorail… I stationed myself as near to the pool area as I could get. Inside the enclosure, lots of important looking people milled around. Make up artists attended one of the most beautiful and yet normal families I have ever seen, while technicians adjusted huge lighting arrays and positioned reflectors. There were also two redcoats I didn’t recognise wearing suits that could have been fresh from the box and fitted perfectly. The rest of the world stood outside the perimeter. Crowds of campers looked on with excitement while various officials kept them from pressing forward into shot. Several redcoats (our redcoats) tried to engage the production team in conversation, but they too remained outside the barrier. As the lights were switched on it was as if the sun had come out. Then, after only a few minutes, the dismantling process began and our normal day resumed.
You may have read my entry about fairy loaves and my delight at finding one (if not read it now: Tues 11th Nov 2014). Well, look what I’ve found now (see last picture on today’s contact sheet): a fairy baguette! Surprisingly heavy too (must be wholemeal). I mean, only in Brighton would even the fairies make bread in the continental manner. It’s got those diagonally cut ridges and everything, and it must be a fairy loaf because its so tiny, about the size of a small cat poo… oh…
Were there cats in the cretaceous period? They’d have to be underwater cats because the geological strata that it would have emerged from would have been under water when it was laid. I mean I think it’s a fossil. I haven’t just brought an extremely hard cat poo home with me have I? Only one way to find out…
Damn. I think I’ve broken a tooth…
A man goes into a bar and asks for a double entendre so the barman gives him one.
Red sky in the morning, shepherds pie tonight…
(Traditional English proverb)
You know it’s been a wet autumn when you start finding squid on the pavement outside Lidl.
In fairy stories, you will always find witches cottages in the middle of the woods, at a crossroads, or on a mountainside, places that are out of the way, but also, importantly, places you need to go close to in order to accomplish a task. They are always sited on the lonely route from A to B.
Magic always takes place on the borders of things: the threshold between life and death, coming and going, doorways, portals, mirrors…
So where might you find witches cottages if they existed today? The woods are full of picnic tables, the mountains are filled with skiers, and few of us still live the pastoral ways, yet have we not created our own woods out of our endless streets – the urban equivalent of the scary forest full of bad things that might waylay you?
They would have to be on or near somewhere we have to pass each day, most likely still the traditional crossroads, and also be sited at a border, a liminal space which is neither one thing or the other. And while unnoticeable except to trained eyes, passing them would be made difficult.
The fact is, they do still exist and one is sited quite close to where I live, near the viaduct at the point where the railway crosses New England Hill. This might explain the daily traffic snarl ups on this route and the constant train delays in and out of Brighton. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is actually lived in, but it is inhabited. I know of several others around the city. Maybe there is one near where you live?
The practice across England of collecting fairy loaves and placing them in burial mounds and graves, dates back as far as the Palaeolithic era and persisted up until Anglo Saxon times. Indeed within local lore they have been seen as protection from witchcraft, this belief even continuing today in certain circles.
But what are fairy loaves? Small stones with five-point symmetry shaped remarkably like a small loaf of bread, they are in fact the fossilized remains of sea urchins, pre-dating our own species by millions of years. The chances of finding one on a seashore covered entirely with pebbles, so that the beach here acts like an enormous grinder, are about as likely as finding hens teeth. Are they magic? I do hope so since I’ve now got one, found on my search for today’s stone of the day.
I was going to tell you a story about a flock of starlings and some tandoori chicken but that’ll have to wait till another time.
“Why should I not wander over the pastures in search of the wind?” (Gilgamesh lamenting the passing of Enkidu from ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’)
Who needs rain when the wind is blowing so hard you can taste salt spray within a block of the sea? Pampas grass thrashes, pigeons huddle and runners do a 3-minute mile with ease (as long as they are travelling in the right direction). How do you define something you can’t see, but can feel all around you, something so solid it can knock you off your feet and mould the shapes of trees with its fingers? You can only see what it does, not what it is.
So many questions.
Umbrellage 