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While the county of Greater London- which no-one much loves- doesn't possess a county flag, the historic county of Middlessex- which London entirely swallowed up- has been accorded one- and here it is.

Flag_of_Middlesex.svg.png

The cutlasses are known in heraldry-speak as "seaxes". The County of Essex has them too.

Shall I post the flag of Essex?

Yes. Indeed. Why not?

Flag_of_Essex.svg.png

Middlessex means the territory of the Middle Saxons, Essex means the territory of the East Saxons, Sussex means the territory of the South Saxons and Wessex- which no longer exists except in the works of Thomas Hardy- means the territory of the West Saxons. I don't know why there isn't and never was a County called Norssex but that's just how it is.

The seaxe is supposed to be the weapon of choice of the Saxons, but did those serious-minded Germanic tribes really fiight with such fancy Islamic-looking blades? I don't believe it for an instant.

Flags are fun. Lets have some more!

These are the flags of the Counties surrounding Sussex. Thanks to Wikipedia for the pictures and most of the information......

First the famous white horse of Kent. This is sometimes called the Invicta flag

Flag_of_Kent.svg.png

Next comes Hampshire. The Saxon crown is a homage to Alfred the Great who had his capital in Winchester and the Tudor rose references the one painted on the "Arthurian"round table in Winchester Castle

County_Flag_of_Hampshire.svg.png

And here's the flag of Surrey, it's chequered pattern echoing the arms of Surrey's sometime Lord, William of Warenne.

Surrey.svg.png

And now two surprising facts.

1. The heraldry may be ancient but the flags themselves are new. They were designed in the past few decades and then had to be recognised as "official" by something called the Flag Institute.

2. The County of Greater London (constituted in 1986) doesn't have one.

The Cock at Ringmer- where we had a very good lunch yesterday- displays a brewer's dray being drawn by carthorses as its inn sign.

Why?

"It should be a cock," I said- which led to a conversation of the Carry-on variety, ripe with innuendo.

Which led, in turn (I think you can see how it might), to a conversation about flags.

"I'd like to fly a Sussex flag in the front garden," I said.

The Sussex flag looks like this

Flag_of_Sussex.svg.png

Those funny heraldic birds are called martlets. They're an abstracted version of the house martin or swift and are supposed to spend their whole lives in the air- which is why they don't have any feet. Shakespeare (who was, ahem, a good Sussex man) works them into the Scottish play, where Duncan, observing them flitting round the battlements of Dunsinane, describes them as "temple-haunting". Little did he know. There are six of them because Sussex used to be divided into six administative areas called "rapes"- with Eastbourne belonging to the rape of Lewes. The flag was only officially recognised as a thing as recently as 2011 but the iconography is ancient and seems to derive from the coat of arms of John de Radynden who was a big noise in the County in the 12th century.

Flags are remarkably cheap. You can get a nice one for £20. Flag poles are rather more expensive. I don't suppose we'll actually get one because we're not show-offs.

Here, by the way, is the Cock. It couldn't be more traditional.

Ailz had fish and chips for lunch and I had a Sussex Smokie- which is smoked haddock with spinach in a cheese sauce. The Sussex smokie is the finest dish known to man- and was a favourite of William the Conqueror's who, having landed at Normans Bay near Pevensey and fought a decisive battle at Battle, always thought of himself as- like Shakespeare- a good Sussex man.

Some of that last sentence is actually true.....

Our friend Edna passed me a magazine which carried a review of this book. Channeling and Rudyard Kipling- two of my favourite things. I had to have it.

Sullivan started chanelling in 2013 and was introduced to Kipling in 2018. The "passages" of conversation in the book (passages is her preferred word) postdate Covid. There are dark times in her recent past....

Kipling in spirit is a wise old thing. He regrets putting less intention into his life as Kipling than he did into his writing. He addresses Delilah as "dearie' which the reviewer found tiresome, but I find, well, endearing. Did Kipling in life call people "dearie"? Well, why not? It would be in character. His love of language embraced the vernacular. For instance he called his children "kids" and sometimes "beloved kids." "Dearie" is something he'd have heard his Sussex neighbours say....

He eschews the language of religion and the New Age. He doesn't speak about "God' or the "Unity" and all those other terms that are losing their vibrancy the more they're used. instead he says "Fortune". He says "Beauty". You know what, I'm tempted to start using them myself.

And he's still a poet. Here's a passage I really like....

R.K. You know Delilah, when I used to write at my window, I would see the horizon upon the fields. Sometimes the horizon would speak to me. But I wouldn't listen. I would let it wash over me. but I wouldn't listen.

Delilah: What did it say to you?

R.K. It would say: Keep still while I look at you.

A younger friend of ours is getting into crypto. The way he explains it is you buy low and sell high. Very like the stock market but more streamlined. The streamlining is something to do with blockchain technology- a thing I keep hearing about but just can't get the hang of. Apparently it's the future.

Incomprehension is one reason why I won't do crypto. The other is that I can see how it could become an addiction. On the couple of occasions I've inherited stocks and shares I've cashed them in.

Quakers don't gamble. Ostensibly for moral reasons, but also because it's sound business practice. Refusing to take any penny that hasn't been honestly worked for was the foundation of a good many fortunes back in the day. A lot of 18th and 19th century Quakers got very, very rich.....

Picture Diary 81

1. Ever Deeper

2. It must be here, somewhere....

3. Moi, Je t'aime

4. Angelus ad Virginem

5. Inner child

Seems like its all but official now that there were two shooters at the Kennedy assassination.

Only two? Well, it'll do for a start....

Say what you like about Trump but I can't think of any argument against his opening up of the government's secret files.

The timescale seems to be: First the assassinations (JFK, RFK, MLK), then UFOs, then the Epstein client list....

The kitchen is nearly finished.

Nearly, nearly, nearly.....

And when it is we we'll be putting things away in cupboards, rationalising as we go.

Yesterday we went in search of kitchen chairs. specifications were: secondhand, armless (so they'll fit under the table), wooden (by preference).

We found three in a furniture warehouse. Mismatched, but why not? It makes them more interesting. And because nobody else wanted them we got them all for £20.

The fourth we've had for well over 20 years. it has a carved back with the face of a woodland spirit who pokes his nose into your back. Proper witchy!

Excuse the stae of the living room. The whole house looks like that- and will continue to do so until we're able to move stuff back into the kitchen.

With the kitchen being out of bounds so much of the time I've been eating poorly. Lots of fibre, very little protein. That must stop.

I haven't really been a vegan for a good while now. I eat fish, I eat cheese. And doing it so often it's hardly honest to call it lapsing.

Recently I've been craving eggs.

The body has its own wisdom. It knows what it needs.

So no more pretending.

British films made immediately after the end of WWII are either all about the War or else ignore it completely. Case in point: The October Man (1947) an effective little thriller about a man recovering from a serious head injury who is falsely accused of murder. So how did he get that injury- bullet to the head? piece of flying shrapnel? Colliding with a tree after baling out of his Lancaster? No, he was travelling on a late night bus and the brakes failed and it smashed into a wall. Why, yes, of course- an entirely civilian accident. I look at him and all the people round him and I think, "Two years ago all of you were either in uniform or sheltering from air raids and it's as if none of it ever happened"

I think I get it. The war was such a big thing in everybody's lives that it had either be dealt with full on- as in your standard war movie- or not at all. Refer to it even casually in a story about something else and its going to take over. It's not yet- and perhaps never will be- something to be treated casually.

I think something similar is happening with Covid.

A touch of vertigo this morning- not bad enough to be incapacitating but enough to keep me from going to Meeting. I could have sat quietly for an hour- no problem- but all the other things I do, all the busy work and socialising- would have been a trial. Ailz came home with a couple of Friendly suggestions for vertigo-busting exercises (which I haven't tried yet.) Also with some leftover chocolate cake which Helen saved for me, having bought it with me in mind.

There were 27 people in the Meeting this morning. At the back end of last year we were getting attendance in the mid teens, but this year- four weeks in a row now- we've hit the 20s....

I dreamed the Quakers were meeting in a new venue- much smaller than our current Meeting House- and Keith (who died last year) was there. Im the dream I was calling him Ken But I don't suppose names matter very much- if at all- on the other side. I knew he had been ill and told him how glad I was that he was better now. He'd regained weight, his face had filled out and he was wearing a big overcoat with a voluminous cape. The coat was red and gold and beautifully embridered. "I'd like one of those," I said to Ailz, but maybe not quite yet...."

Turtle soup is a great delicacy- and expensive. And so cooks faked up alternatives and called them mock turtle soup. The recipe varied but the ingredient most usually substituted for turtle meat was calf's head- not something you're likely to find in the modern kitchen.

Wikipedia tells me that Heinz used to do (perhaps still does) a mock turtle soup in a tin.

I expect it still appears on menus hither and yon, though I can't think I've ever seen it. As a vegan I am precluded from ever finding out what it tastes like.

I am writing about soup, because I was thinking about poetry- and more specifically how durable comic verse can be- and how the best of it outlasts the serious stuff- and even more specifically how I'm pretty damn sure that more people read and enjoy Lewis Carroll than read and enjoy his friend Alfred Tennyson.

No disrespect to Tennyson. I love him, but I love Carroll more- and, to complete the circle- deny that Tennyson ever wrote anything more touching, more deeply moving than the Mock Turtle's song, with it's unforgettable chorus......

"Soo-oop of the e-e-evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!"

What could be more plangent than that?

Our next door neighbour is reminding me that the fence between our properties needs renewing. I wish it didn't but I suppose it does.

One of the drawbacks of living in a material world is that things decay and fall apart. Nothing lasts forever. Even pyramids eventually turn to sand.....

If we were living at even a slightly higher vibration we could repair the fence with a thought.

The weather is mild, the sun is up, there's a veil of thin gauzy cloud across much of the sky. February isn't such an unkind month down here on the south coast. Every day I check the daffodils at the bottom of the garden; they're not far from blooming.

I was chatting to a young man who knocked on the door to raise funds for a local charity. He's a Londoner, African heritage, first name Italian, surname Welsh; I liked him so I signed up. He said he was thinking of moving to the coast. I encouraged him. "Sunniest spot in Britain," I said.

I never miss a chance to talk up my home town.

We Europeans like to mock Americans for their ignorance of Geography but I've got to admit that ahead of Sunday's talk I couldn't have placed Guatemala on a map except to say it was in the western hemisphere and somewhere south of the United States.

Neither Ailz nor I enjoyed Geography lessons at school. I don't rember much about mine apart from being required to draw contour lines- which I didn't understand and never got right- and having a teacher who was a stranger to soap and water. Most adult males in that era stank of tobacco (which I quite liked) but this fellow just stank.

Our plan to send Terry to Thailand in the care of Wendy and Mary has fallen through. Terry isn't well enough.

And where exactly is Thailand? "Erm, somewhere over there" (waves arm distractedly in the direction of Bexhill.)

Picture Diary 80

1. Christology for beginners

2. Halloween party

3. Cracked

4. Nothing

5. Welcome home

I dreamed....

.....Ainsley S and his gang were drinking coffee in an open space off the Charing Cross Rd and Ainsley was boasting about all the people he'd killed . He said he'd killed 100. There was a genocide in progress and children were singing about it. Cheerfully. Apart from the violence, which was happening out of sight, everything seemed quite normal. The sun was shining. Ainsley was in his shirt sleeves.

Ainsley S was a friend of my early boyhood- a sweet little curly headed imp. I'm preserving his anonymity in case he's still alive and should happen upon this. Really the idea of him as a mass murderer is the height of incongruity.

Yesterday a Friend was giving a talk about his time in Guatemala. Within living memory (I'm talking about the '80s) a war of genocide was waged by a succession of military regimes against the Maya. "But," he said, "That's for another time, another presentation..." Instead he showed us pictures of processions, festivals, markets, buildings, costumes. Every surface was painted, every fabric patterened. And everywhere there was colour, colour, colour, colour.....

I hold onto the odd fragment of the occasional dream- and when I look at what I've got- lay the pieces out on the counter- there's often nothing there that's worth keeping. So into the bin with them. The essence of the dream has escaped me- because it's been a matter of feeling, of ambience, of emotion- and the images that remain convey little or nothing of all that.

Sometimes when I'm trying to remember a dream I'll uncover images that seem to be from dreams I had long ago and had forgotten. Last night for instance I recalled a steeply sloping weedy field with a thick hedge running down one side of it. Where was that from? It had nothing to do with the dream I was trying to reassemble. Was it even a place in a dream or a place I'd known in waking life? I really don't know....

Fancy us already being a month into 2025!

I want to be saying that Marianne Faithful was always more interesting than her sometime partner Mick Jagger but that would be unfair. Lets just say she never stopped being cool.

Nostromo is Joseph Conrad's most ambitious novel but also the one which most flagrantly displays his limitations- which are that he could only write about Europeans and never treated the indigenous population of the exotic locations he favoured as anything more than background noise. It isn't his masterpiece. His masterpiece is The Secret Agent- which is entirely set in London.

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poliphilo

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Put Out More Flags

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A Metaphysical Conversation With Rudyard Kipling: Delilah Sullivan

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Picture Diary 81

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Don't Talk About The War

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Want One Of Those

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