Getting Better, Getting Better All The Time...

[poliphilo]

I must be feeling better because I've been out in the chill wind and quicksilver November sunshine lopping brambles old-style. I kept to the lower field because the top one is full of horses- five of them now- a proper horse that gets ridden, two shaggy, spotty colts- half pony, half appaloosa- and two Shetlands. I don't mind them, I'm not afraid of them, but I hate to be crowded.

I had my best night's sleep for a while. Wendy, who doesn't have the excuse of old age, says she too wakes up in the early hours of the morning and mucks about on her phone until her eyes get heavy again. She's read that this kind of sleep pattern is natural and it's how our ancestors used to live. Get up in the small hours, see how the goats are doing, go back to bed. I think that's likely; the present arrangement of twelve hours on and twelve hours off is suggestive of the needs of the boss class of the industrial revolution who needed people to clock on and off shifts- rather than any natural rhythm. It was about conforming humankind to the machines they were now expected to serve.

I have purposefully arranged my life so I wouldn't have to work regular hours. And I have never ever worked in an office or a factory. Something in my DNA or race memory or whatever it is warned me against it. It was the same inner voice that said, "Don't ever let them put you in uniform."

I don't normally bother with stained glass of the late Victorian/early 20th century era but the staircase inside the tower of Boxley church brought me nose to nose with this character- and I was intrigued by the intensity of the stare and the oddity of the helmet.



I don't know who they're supposed to be. There was no text and no identifying symbols- as, for example, the cross of St George or the wings you'd expect to be attached to an angel. Is it a war memorial? Seems likely. There was another less interesting figure alongside who might just have been the archangel Michael, though, again, no wings....

Perhaps there's a connection to the nearby memorial tablet which commemorates a young officer of the Cornwallis family who got caught in a Russian ambush outside Sevastopol and disappeared off the face of the earth. The family liked to think he was shot in the ambush and died in a Russian hospital- and prefer not to countenance the idea (though it's what immediately occurred to me) that he spent the rest of a short life in Siberia. Like the inner voice said, "Never let them put you in uniform."

But that helmet; ain't it weird? Is that a visor at the front? It appears to be hinged- but if you let it down it would prevent you seeing anything- unless, of course, it's made of glass or crystal. Is it symbolic? heraldic? Or just a preposterous flight of fancy?

Comments

[cmcmck]

Joan of Arc perhaps- she became popular around then as her beatification was going through.

The Brits have always had a sense of guilt and quite rightly.

My birth day saint, which some might consider rather apt! :o)

[poliphilo]

I don't think it's St Joan, though the idea crossed my mind. She's always (?) shown in clothing that's at least approximately of her era. I wish now I'd taken more pictures, including one of the whole window. There could be clues there I've missed by concentrating on the head and shoulders.

[shewhomust]

My first thought - after 'But WHAT is that helmet?' - was that there's a luminosity to the thing in front, rather like the torch on a miner's helmet. I don't want to say 'lightbringer', which doesn't feel right, and doesn't explain the wreath, either; but I can't shake off the association with light. (There's that star above, for one thing...)

[poliphilo]

I'm foxed- and that doesn't often happen to me with Christian iconography. This figure must represent someone or something but I've no idea who or what.