To make it worse, I haven’t seen the snowdrops this year – the “fair maids of February” that have usually made their appearance by now, nodding in the keen wind. I don’t know enough about gardening to know if it’s possible for snowdrops to just die out, but they’ve come up every year we’ve been here so far, without human intervention of any kind, in fact they have previously seemed to thrive on neglect. Maybe they’re just late. As for crocuses, there’s definitely no trace. Which is a shame, because I always take the sight of the first crocus to be the harbinger of Spring. Still, maybe they’ll come up yet, like the snowdrops.
One thing that has survived the destruction of winter is Maisie’s daffs, which were originally planted next to Russell’s mosaic. When Deb dug out the new, smaller, pond, this summer, the daff bulbs were lifted, and I was going to store them and then put them back in when the weather was better. But at the end of a long day of gardening last autumn, when I was feeling tired, instead I just laid them rather haphazardly in a square concrete planter just at the end of my ramp, and slung a bit of soil mixed with compost over them, fully intending to come back and do the whole thing of taking them and wrapping them in newspaper, but, in the way that things do, it got forgotten in the hurly-burly of autumn – forgotten entirely, in fact, until this week when the snow melted and I saw green shoots coming up. The indestructible daffs have survived and colonised their new home – helped, no doubt, by the shelter afforded them by the bulk of the old camper van, which is now an empty hulk, awaiting its final disposal as time and weather allows. So it’s not all bad news on the garden front, this week; despite the Holme Valley being ravaged by the sort of storms that wouldn’t have been out of place on the surface of Pluto, I have managed to grow some daffs. By accident.
Matilda’s been largely opting out of the weather, in favour of her new adopted place of rest, namely the foot of my bed, just where the morning sun streams in through Colin’s back window downstairs. In fact, she has got me so well trained now that, when I get up in the mornings, I make sure that there’s a cat-sized hollow dented into the duvet, then I spread out first one, then the other, of the two Maisie-blankets on top of it, then add Mr Hedgehog so she won’t feel lonely, and leave it all ready for her whenever she cares to jump up there and curl round. Not that she’s spoilt or anything. Other than that, for her it’s been a week of bird-watching from (as she sees it) the relative safety of behind the conservatory door, where those fierce birds can’t get her, an occupation occasionally disturbed by Freddie hurling himself past her and crashing into the grass every time he sees a squirrel.
Freddie and Zak went home on Friday, having – I think – largely enjoyed their stay. Zak was exceptionally fussy and kept giving paw as I trundled past him into the conservatory. It can get very wearing if you are doing something such as putting the shopping away, which involves multiple trips, but he means well, poor soul. Once during the week he “gave” one of his hind paws by mistake, and then looked worried when I accepted it, as much as to say “there’s something not quite right here, but I just can’t put my finger on it”. I saw a TV programme this week which indicated that a dog’s brain is just one-tenth the size of a human brain, but the part of a dog’s brain which is to do with smell is 80 times larger than the corresponding part of the human brain. This may well be true of Zak. The remaining crinkles of his furry little walnut are almost certainly taken up with random acts of food-snaffling, finches and fairies. Freddie’s brain is mostly full of dog treats, mince, smells and squirrels, I should think.
Granny returned, anyway, and they went home. For some reason, she has started to take an active interest in grammar, of all things, and rang me up the other day while I was still in bed (and Debbie was in the shower) to ask me how to spell “voyeur”. I didn’t ask why. I recounted this to Debbie, who then promptly accused me of always asking her how to spell things when I was sitting here writing, and I replied that it was because if I was into a good bit, I didn’t want to lose my train of thought, and she said my train of thought was more of a sleeper than an express. I was just about to make a smart remark which involved her thought processes and the late, great Dr Beeching, but thought better of it.
Anyway, somehow we all made it to the weekend, apart from the camper van, which is up at the garage for serious life-saving surgery in order to satisfy the insane and grandiose demands of the Ministry of Transport. Saturday was an interesting day in the year’s calendar, February 2nd marking a variety of ceremonies and anniversaries. For me the most poignant one is that it marked five years since Nigel, our old ginger cat died. I can’t believe it, but it really is five years. He died at home, in his favourite armchair, in the warm, curled up asleep, just as Match of the Day was coming on. As I have observed before, we should all wish for such an end, but I still miss him, poor old ginger odd sock that he was. In fact, Matilda shares some of his vocal trills and other odd characteristics (sudden bursts of stiff-legged galumphing, run-like-a-chicken activity across any wooden floor for instance) so in some ways, the spirit of Nigel lives on.
February 2nd is also Candlemas, in the Christian calendar, although it’s probably grafted on to the Celtic ceremony of Imbolic, one of the four great ceremonies of their year, the others being (correct me if I’m wrong) Beltane, which always makes me think of Marc Bolan, Lughnasa, and Samhain. Candlemas in folklore is often connected with weather-related sayings and prophecies. A traditional rhyme says:
If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.
If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be two winters in the year.
So, judging from the cold, clear, bright weather that marked Candlemas in the Holme Valley, we’re not out of the woods yet.
In the USA, a similar weather-forecasting tradition involves Groundhog Day. I could re-hash the Wikipedia entry about it, but it’s probably easier just to quote it in full, since it gives a fairly accurate summary:
‘Punxsutawney Phil Sowerby is a groundhog resident of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. On February 2 (Groundhog Day) of each year, the town of Punxsutawney celebrates the beloved groundhog with a festive atmosphere of music and food. During the ceremony, which begins well before the winter sunrise, Phil emerges from his temporary home on Gobbler's Knob, located in a rural area about 2 miles east of town. According to the tradition, if Phil sees his shadow and returns to his hole, he has predicted six more weeks of winter-like weather. If Phil does not see his shadow, he has predicted an "early spring." The date of Phil's prognostication is known as Groundhog Day in the United States and Canada. He is considered to be the world's most famous prognosticating rodent. During the rest of the year, Phil lives in the town library with his "wife" Phyllis.’
You’ll have to make up your own jokes about Gobbler’s Knob, as I have promised to try and avoid bringing too much smut into this blog. Still, as place names go, it can only increase my rankings with the search engines. People who know much more than I do about folklore have apparently written learned treatises on this tradition, linking it back through the German immigrants into Pennsylvania, to much older traditions involving badgers and other animals which were held to be similar weather-predictors in Medieval Europe. For my part, I just love the phrase “prognosticating rodent”, and have been trying to think of other occasions when I could work it into polite conversation.
And so, somehow, we arrived at Sunday, St Blaise’s day. St Blaise, despite his name, is not, sadly, the patron Saint of firemen, but of throat illnesses. Again, the internet is our friend here:
Many Catholics might remember Saint Blaise's feast day because of the Blessing of the Throats that took place on this day. Two candles are blessed, held slightly open, and pressed against the throat as the blessing is said. Saint Blaise's protection of those with throat troubles apparently comes from a legend that a boy was brought to him who had a fishbone stuck in his throat. The boy was about to die when Saint Blaise healed him.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the miracle, such as it was, consisted of St Blaise sticking his fingers down the kid’s gizzard and hoicking out the offending obstacle, but as I’ve said before, the entry requirements for sainthood were obviously a lot more lax in those days.
Very few hard facts are known about the life of St Blaise, although this has not prevented a richly-woven tapestry of conjecture and folklore being associated with him. He was supposedly a Bishop, in Sebestia, in what was then Armenia, a Roman province under the Emperor Licinius. Licinius was known to be tolerant of Christians, so whatever Blaise did to annoy him he must’ve gone out of his way to do so.
Apparently, St Blaise received a message from God to go into the hills to escape persecution. Men hunting in the mountains discovered a cave surrounded by wild animals who were sick. Blaise walked among them unafraid, curing them of their illnesses. Recognizing Blaise as a bishop, the hunters captured him to take him back for trial. On the way back, he talked a wolf into releasing a pig that belonged to a poor woman. When Blaise was sentenced to be starved to death, the woman, in gratitude, sneaked into the prison with food and candles. Finally Blaise was killed, on the orders of the Governor. He was martyred by being beaten, attacked with iron carding combs, and beheaded.
In iconography, Blaise is often shown with the instruments of his martyrdom, metal combs, and the similarity of these instruments of his torture to wool combs led to his adoption as the patron saint of wool combers in particular, and the wool trade in general. In addition, he is also the patron saint of wild animals because of his care for them. Who said men were no good at multi-tasking?
He died in the year 316AD and Marco Polo, in his travels, makes reference to a shrine dedicated to his cult in Sebestia, a shrine now long lost. In the wonderful way in which the Catholic faith continues to grade us all into the rich man at his castle, the poor man at his gate, even after death, St Blaise is now officially one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, which sounds like it ought to be a Marvel comic devoted to super-heroes. His remains now allegedly rest at the Basilica over the town of Maratea, on Italy’s Tyrrhenian coast, where the local mountain, Mount San Biagio, is named after him. A silver statue of the Saint is processed through the town on his feast day.
In this country, the Cornish town of St Blazey derives its name from him, where the parish church is still dedicated to Saint Blaise. The council of Oxford in 1222 forbade all work on his feast day, but then in those times they were always on the lookout for a reason to down tools and broach a barrel of ale, and why not? Other churches dedicated to St Blaise may be found at Haccombe, near Newton Abbot, Shanklin on the Isle of Wight and Milton, near Abingdon. He also lends his name to a well in Bromley, which issues water considered to have medicinal properties.
In England in the 18th and 19th centuries St Blaise was adopted as mascot of woolworkers' pageants, particularly in Essex, Yorkshire, Wiltshire and Norwich. The popular enthusiasm for the saint is explained by the belief that Blaise had brought prosperity (as symbolised by the Woolsack) to England by teaching the English to comb wool, harking back again to the carding combs with which he was martyred. According to this tradition Blaise came from Jersey, in the Channel Islands. However, this legend is an example of oral tradition ending up with the string bag inside-out because it’s almost certainly an instance of confusion with a different saint, Blasius of Caesarea – Caesarea also being one of the Latin names for Jersey.
So there we have St Blaise. As to what lessons we can learn from his life, the answer is probably not a lot, although (as with St Francis of Assissi) there is of course the empathy with wild creatures and the desire for them not to suffer unduly, which I would like to think is an aspiration shared by many. Once again, as with many martyrdoms, ancient and modern, as I said last week, the situation could probably have been defused by both sides cutting each other a little slack and displaying tolerance, but I guess if you are the Emperor Lucinius, you don’t get to that position, in the decaying years of the Roman Empire, by “live and let live”. You probably err more on the side of decimating the Armenians, to be honest. And the more you are threatened, the more power seems to be slipping from your grasp, the tighter and more desperately you will cling on to it, as shown by the current antics of David Cameron and George Osborne, whose determination to press on regardless, ever deeper into the mire, is seemingly undimmed by the muddy waters lapping around his ankles.
If it wasn’t so tragic, it would almost be funny. But, sadly, it has ramifications: George Scollan, 58, had worked for Remploy, which specialises in providing work for people with disabilities, since 1973. But the factory, in Springburn, Glasgow, closed this week, with the loss of more than 40 jobs, and he was found dead on the day it closed. Colleagues said he had “lived for his job” and grown “more and more depressed” about the prospect of unemployment, according to the Black Triangle blog, which makes a point of documenting the excesses of the Junta’s war against the poor. Phil Brannan, a friend of Mr Scollan and a senior shop steward for the GMB union/Unite the Union consortium at Remploy, said: “George never claimed a day’s benefit in his life and he felt that once he had been made redundant he would be labelled as a scrounger. “Through no fault of his own, he lost his job today. The government know full well that many of these people now face long-term unemployment. It is a disgrace.”
Mr Scollan worked as an oxy-acetylene brazer, assembling wheelchairs. If only he had been able to make missiles, or knuckledusters, or guns, or bombs, his future welfare would have been assured. I suppose it was his misfortune to live under the Blight of a Junta who are dedicated not only to phasing out wheelchairs, but also their occupants, with the help of people such as Atos. Like the homeless, we will soon cease to exist altogether, hidden in plain sight by the blinding blizzard of black-is-white bullshit emanating from 10 Downing Street. Massaged away, into imaginary jobs and imaginary hostels, creatively manufactured from imaginary statistics.
Spring is, of course, inevitable (climate change notwithstanding) and eventually the snowdrops will come, and the crocuses. George Scollan won’t be around to see them, though. He’s another sad statistic, another name added to the “plaguey bill” for which the Blight is responsible. An illustration that it only takes one party in the bargain to decide that you’re going to be a martyr. At least the efforts of people such as Black Triangle will ensure that these crimes, these disgraces, are documented, enumerated and remembered. Avenging them is a different matter. Revenge is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. I really hope I live to see the day when that repayment falls due, and those responsible receive the final demand of destiny.
As I have said before, we’re all only three bad decisions away from being on the streets, and with the current set of clowns in charge, the bad decisions don’t even have to be your bad decisions. Spring ought to be about renewal and relief, release from the dreary slavery of Winter. Some “springs” also bring political release from slavery and injustice. Not always, of course; I can remember the Prague Spring of 1968 being crushed by the Russian tanks. The so-called “Arab spring” is degenerating into chaos as we speak, and looks set to suck British troops into the maelstrom it has left in its wake. Is it too early to hope for an English Spring, with perhaps a better result? Best out of three, perhaps? Apparently so.
So once again, I’m ending on a downbeat. Winter’s obviously winding itself up to have another go, and we’re not shot of it yet. February comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Next week will be another week of watching, and waiting: except the Lord keep the City, the wakeman waketh in vain, though. Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself, as the Zen masters say. Right now, I’d settle for some snowdrops, in preference to more snow drops.
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