In the Blues

Usually, the blues get to me from time to time - many reasons, all familiar, common even. Each one particular to me, and probably you too. They are different to the panics, when I fear it will all come tumbling down, because it hasn't now for quite some time and, so far as I can tell, it won't, because of all the its I know, none of them are precarious. Music and poetry are useful carriers, and I have in the past let Schubert's songs to carry me along. He knew his panics too, and knew they were coming to pass. Poetry carries deep feelings for other bloggers and sometimes, jolts in time, they resonate with ours. Thank you RM.

Easter has been tricky, a reminder of the darkness before the light ... though it now feels more mature to celebrate the light as our forebears did ... leaving behind the darker side of Christian beliefs, in company with those who believe its just short of a couple of millennia since the life of Christ was grafted onto older beliefs. Celebrated in my post Happy Eostre which I would now love to relive, so here to click on is the LINK. The comments to that from blogging friends are a joy.

This Easter I seem to have bypassed the sorrow and emptiness and leapt straight into a resurrecting spring. The weather, this glorious unprecedented warmth and light and joyfulness, carries me along. With the Tramper. Into these blues ... and out of the other sort.

(Old Blogger used to let me insert pictures wherever in my text I wanted to ... not now ! Does anyone know a way round current Blogger slapping them at the top, and not letting me click and drag to where I want them to be ?)

Testing out the Tramper's capabilities in prep for a planned eight mile walk with friends on another of these repeating bank holidays. The Tramper's manufacturers (click on this LINK) say thirty miles on flat tarmac, and I have whipped in for three hours over dry plough and through bosky glades, so there is some confidence to setting out today, alone, at the Tramper's Class 2 limit of 4 miles per hour - which I reckon is a good comparison to fit friends' walking pace. So today, for three and a half hours I circled high droves and blue woods, flicked the switch to 8mph for a quick dash past the smelly farmyard, then slowed and kept out of the sun along long rides through thinned plantations. Oh, bliss it was. Then I found myself at the end of a long walk I used to do with Airedale Sally, thrilled to be there again after fifteen years, forgetting the gate, the forbidding gate with a view of my WAV - it took me another half an hour to get back onto the bridleway that returned me, gateless, safely to my starting point.

Safety is good.

Everything in the Garden

Metaphorically ~ Everything in the Garden is not yet lovely; but I am optimistic. The Local Government Ombudsman's Investigator has written that he has received "initial comments" from Dorset County Council social services and will keep me informed. Well, I am quite happy to let it ride for the time being. It is good not to have to do anything just now, about social services' delays to disabled facilities and adaptations. I haven't fallen recently, just a few minor stumbles, its warm indoors and out, so pain and stiffness is slightly less. I have not had to engage in written correspondence with anyone official for a few weeks, so I am content. I am calm, relaxed even, which is a pleasurable place to be.

Literally, now everything in the garden is lovely and it is warm and sunny, 25 degrees C and clear blue skies. The leaves pictured above were picked in the grounds of Kingston Lacy last week, and not photographed but the live leaves arranged and placed on the scanner and sent straight to my laptop. Literally life size on your screen. I don't yet have a digital camera, so this is my current favourite option.

I have been reading Medieval Gardens by Anne Jennings*; lots of pictures from medieval illustrations, and quotations. Bartholomew de Granville wrote in the 13th century:

For trees move not wilfully from place to place as beasts do;
neither change appetite and liking, nor feel sorrow ...

He was describing the difference between plants and animals ! The view below of Kingston Lacy house is very familiar and I have done many pencil sketches of the magnificent cedar with the white circular seat around its base and the house in the background (the tricky architectural detail variously hidden by branches). Last week it looked different - had it moved ? The tree with the seat around was different. Took me a while to realise; they had moved the white circular seat to be around another tree close by, so the original cedar must be getting wider as well as taller.

Kingston Lacy, Dorset - National Trust

I know how it feels (width not height). Its summer - I eat lots of fruit and healthy raw vegetable salads, but sitting outside in the shade with a pot of Early Grey, has to be accompanied by cake ! I am good: clotted cream on my scones only once this summer.

My garden is very green and lush, as it has been raining since May and only stopped last week. Paul who cuts my grass (and who is a straw bale building consultant) struggled to make it wheelchair friendly last week, but it looks more chopped than mown. No matter. Usually at this time towards the end of summer it is sparse and more brown than green; but together with the cut hay meadow beyond, is unseasonally but pleasurably green. Hugh of Fouilloy (c 1132-1152) wrote:

The green turf which is in the middle of the material cloister refreshes encloistered eyes and their (the monks) desire to study returns.

It is truly the nature of the colour green that it nourishes the eye and preserves the vision.

Paul, who has been keeping my garden under some control for almost fifteen years, is a very interesting man, and often has fascinating nuggets to share. This week he reported seeing two ravens on his land , which is on the slope of one of the great Dorset hills, and commented that a few years ago a raven was captured from that hill and taken to the Tower of London. There to have its wings clipped (as all the Tower ravens have) so that it might extend the breeding stock of Tower ravens. Imagine how the raven must have felt - one minute minding its own business, sailing along in the thermals admiring its birds-eye view of the Dorset landscape, then netted; wings clipped, incarcerated in the Tower for no good reason (such as treason or other fellony) and expected to perform.

http://www.toweroflondontour.com/beauchmp.html

This wet summer is not kind to those who rely on the the seasons to perform in the expected way. Paul's plan to import mature olive trees in response to recent hotter dryer summers, has not got off the ground this year. Maybe next year. We all hope. A friend, who is almost self sufficient in vegetables, has lost her crop of Pink Fir Apple potatoes to blight, even though she grows them in raised beds and many others have reported their problems with courgettes and tomatoes. My Bump's Plum trees are laden though and the blackberries in the overgrown bit of my garden look promising, but others' runner beans are either heavy cropping or slow to get going and flower due to the cold and wet. I am glad that this year I did not sow and have planted (by Paul) my usual row of runner beans - I would not have been able to get the wheelchair onto the soggy garden to tie in the young growths. I decided in March not to sow runner beans this year (which is the only vegetable growing I can manage these days) as I truly thought that, after five year's delay, surely this spring building work would begin for adaptations. In April it became obvious that the delays were continuing, hence my request to the LGO to investigate Dorset County Council' social services department delays.

All Enjoyers of gardens in soggy England hope that autumn is postponed by a late summer of gentle September days. But already there is a change; this morning I was awake unusually early, and at a 6.30 am a thick white mist, lit from above by the already risen sun, shrouded the garden beyond a few metres. As the sun burnt it off, the first of the autumn coloured dry leaves fell from the twin trunked ash tree just the other side of my garden boundary, a tree that appears on Ordnance Survey maps from over a hundred years ago.

It is too soon yet to be thinking of autumn. I am just beginning to enjoy the summer.

(* Medieval Gardens - Anne Jennings - Published by English Heritage ISBN 1-80574-903-5)

Daily witterings

'Blackmore Vale' - Jake Winkle

http://www.jakewinkle.co.uk/

A lovely meander around the back roads of north west Dorset, not to the Gillingham and Shafetesbury Show, as the mud would have defied the wheels. Shame that. Through the lovely Blackmore Vale. Narrow slow roads, wide verges, wide thick hedges enclosing varied shaped varied greened fields, oaks and silver poplars, stone houses, deep streams (as deep as January, but its August, so what will the streamside roads be like after the winter rains !).

On to a nearby town to follow up my Bump's recommendation for a new pillow.

There is a whole subset of vaguely cripped not-strictly crips, who stress about their pillows; a different subset to those crips who do similar about their beds or sheets (yes, Charles that's you).

One of the many aspects of Meniere's Syndrome hyper-accussis is the noise that pillows make. Well, I have at last found a solution. Its that NASA-inspired stuff Tempur and not only does it not make a noise in my ears as I fidget to get comfortable, and dissuades me from fidgeting, it even silences the full volume pulsing roaring whooshing sound that comes, unbidden unwelcome, once or twice a month and stays around for a few days rendering me incapable of sitting still and listening to it, or getting to sleep at a reasonable time.

Now I want the matching mattress too. And, bless me, I thought it was just the lack of love that made me sleepless.

Some new information, well new to me, detailed here for the record for other travellers on this noisy tinnitus deafened route, trawling the blogosphere for information on Meniere's.

I have recently found the evidence* for my belief that Meniere's, which I have had for decades, is all the fault of my Lupus, which was diagnosed almost one decade ago, but I now understand has been around for most of my life. Its called Auto Immune Sensoreonuro (nah, not going to work is it, the spelling, I'm just going to have to get up and find the printed article).

*Autoimmune Hearing Loss. Author: Elaine Moore. Published March 30, 2007. (Found where ? Sorry, lost the source.)

The article was found via my blog site meter; if I follow a query that led to my site, often I find interesting related stuff to what I have been blogging on about.

In this case, the article discusses Auto-immune sensorineural hearing loss and is not focused on SLE, indeed it only crops up as: "... other causes of auto-immune sensorineural hearing loss such as ... Systemic Lupus ... should be rule out before a diagnosis of auto-immune sensorineural hearing loss is made." Complex because I don't have any hearing loss, and this 'almost as an aside' reference to Systemic Lupus in the picture, is the closest yet I have come to finding proof for my belief in the connection between the two conditions. Because I have not got an official ENT signed diagnosis. The Meniere's Society have been my only source of information.

I gave up on the ENT (ear, nose, throat) consultant years ago, when he began to go down the same route as my then (male) GP: Female, no obvious cause, therefore neurotic. Thankfully my female GP has always supported my belief and been happy to discuss Medscape articles with me, once she realised that I do not visit the wilder shores of internet medical diagnosises (sees ?) and cures.

The meandering route today through the Vale in my new vehicle, was to train my posture in the new driving position, to encourage my joints and muscles to adjust to a new seat and steering wheel configuration. My WAV is beautiful, and I don't wish to be heard complaining , so I will whisper this:
the seat is very uncomfortable and unsupportive but I am sure, given a month or three, I will get used to it and stop whittering on about it to anyone who happens by to admire the new wheelchair accessible vehicle. It does not help that everyone who sits in it enthuses on the wonderful seats -well, all I can say is: VERY short torso and VERY L O N G L E G S may equal average height but it don't fit the average seat.

Village Life

I mentioned the formidable Giant located in Cerne Abbas village, in my reference to the Elusive Dorset Dragon http://lifeintheshire.blogspot.com/2007/01/elusive-dorset-dragon.html, although I did not post a picture of the incoming masculine symbolism that took over from the time of Feminine Powers, as it was copyright, although I did give the link to Pete Harlow's photographs at http://www.catnip.co.uk/cerne (Why, why doesn't the Edit Html tab work?)

I was watching Marge Simpson only last evening being seduced by a bowling coach, so you see I am a fan, but really, Homer's do'nut (doughnut?) is not the guaranteed fertility site for rumpy-pumpy as the Cerne Abbas Giant's ..... is. And I have it on good authority, from two sources, that it worked.

Homer, you have a lot to live up to.

For the full story follow this clunky link: (deleted)

I apologise for that link, anyone who may have been shocked. It seems the Independent site got hijacked. Instead, go to http://www.independent.co.uk/ (edited later, thanks Goldfish!) and see the story headlined Fertility Wars.

Enjoy.

POSTSCRIPT: The excellent local weekly free Blackmore Vale Magazine http://www.blackmorevalemagazine.co.uk/ informs that Homer arrived in Dorset courtesy of painter Peter Stuart, and yes it was a commercial stunt.

The End to A Perfect Day

Corfe Castle, Dorset

thewalkzone.co.uk

Feeling very relaxed after a Perfect Day Out, I have spent some time this evening reading your blogs and re-visiting my own writing and your comments. I have often felt over-whelmed by the beauty and determination blogged elsewhere. A bit teary too. Being here is a good end to a Perfect Day.

I had to be in the relaxed frame of mind a Perfect Day brought me to, to push my fingers to type wwwdotbloggerdotcom because so much got tied up with blogger and blogging. I have felt incapable of writing as the Sally I know and feel comfortable with, until I had let time weave a new skin over that lesion. I have felt incapable of connecting with this important part of myself.

Update on my life, for the record, which apart from my Perfect Day, still sucks ...

The dinosaurs and money-bags are still lumbering over different ways to delay meeting my disability needs. Even my last resort, the Local Government Ombudsman, did not reply to my complaint about Dorset Social Services within four weeks as stated, but four weeks and one day on, emailed me to say: sorry, going on holiday for a fortnight, will contact you as soon as possible when I return. So that is alright, is it? I ask - to myself, as he has disappeared on holiday. I will still be here when you get back, provided I haven't fallen again, worse than last time.

The organisation I referred to as Adapta-Crip when I self referred myself to them last September, (as Social Services were going on holiday before they had time to refer me), have written and answered my question on why they have done nothing to help me with social services (keep up, sorry, but its a long sentence), as they are contracted to by social services and other government funding; saying social services have not made a referral so we do not have an open file on you. I cannot untangle that enough here or in my own mind, to add it to the list given to the LGO about the four year delay, sorry its now four and a half years delay, to answering my request for wheelchair access into and around my home.

The Speculative Burglar (no, not Burglar Bill, see post below, sorry too brain tired to link) may have been my neighbour after all, unlikely though it seemed at the time, due to ... well, nevermind, but he is receiving treatment. This is just supposition. That his sudden onset medical problem led him to behave in such an un-characteristic act. I could be wrong. But, sorry though I am for him, his dog and his wife, for me its preferable to the Speculative Burglar suggested by Charles Dawson's comment.

I miss Charles Dawson. His writing was always informative, entertaining, inclusive and intelligent. Whatever happened in the backgroud, it is shameful that a published diatribe, sorry, comment, on someone else's blog, should have been instrumental in his departure. For whatever reason. It is rare, as someone else put into words for me, better than me, for there to be a male crip writer, writing regularly, and that is not to detract from the other male crip bloggers, here in the UK, USA, and New Zealand, but you male bloggers know you are few and far between, so we could not afford to loose another valuable, respected and well loved one. For whatever reason. Shame on you that was the very public party to his departure. For whatever reason. Blessings on those of you who have visited (here) and emailed me. You have been in my thoughts.

Enough. Charles if you are lurking, blast you, come back ! Fight the good fight.

My Perfect Day:

Cloudy not sunny, warm not hot, Friday not Monday (not neuro-toxic drug day drugged), bouyed up by steroids, on a roll. Home Helps back in harness this week (fully forgiven; one's husband serving in Iraq, the other's friend died while they were on holiday - what am I complaining of !) and because they are back, the housework, shopping, laundry, all worked smoothly, so I have been able to have the energy to see a way clear to going out, safely with my PA. Which reminds me, not to complain of Social Services alllllll the time. I have had a budget through Direct Payments for some years now, 9 3/4 hours home care and one session 'day care' per week which pays the PA, which means I am able to go further afield safely. I acknowledge that many other crips are struggling, as I write this, to achieve the same basic rights for themselves.

I GOT TO GO TO THE BEACH !!!

My PA drove my Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle, the twenty miles to the bit of the coast at Swanage that has disabled parking next to the short slope down to the short sandy beach with the wooden groynes to hang onto when the walking stick sunk into the sand, and to sit on at just the right height to have my feet in the waves ebbing and flowing away and towards me. I just sat there, blissed out, for an hour, and it is years since I have been able to do that. A combination of circumstances; steroids, PA, cloudy and just warm so able to cope, and a parking space right next to the bit where I could manage the beach, leaving the wheelchair in the car. Last year I tried the same town but could not park.

On the journey there, taking a back road that up until the last century had been the main road, we drove through leafy cuttings in the rolling slope, passing old stone farmhouses with stone tiled rooves (rooves ? roofs !), over tiny bridges over deep narrow streams, and small fields with thick hedges being left or cut for hay. One field gate open, so we pulled in and stopped for a picnic lunch. The field fell away down the hill in front of us, the restored Swanage Steam Railway toot tooted along the valley below, and the magnificent splendour of Corfe Castle stood in the gap between the two hills off to the right. We lunched with a hare, who was wandering along the field in front of us, delicately choosing which herbage to nibble for her lunch. Skylarks, chaffinches, honeysuckle and dog roses in the hedge, unchanged for hundreds of years.

I have been earning my living also. Using what spare energy I do have to put something back into the community as a volunteer, in recognition that I live off benefits.

Dorset is one of nine areas in the country to trial a Local Involvement Network: LINk. Being facilitated by the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health. To replace the Patient and Public Involvement forums, which, word has it, are being disbanded by the government because they were successful, or depending on which side you are on, because they had become local vehicles for party politics.

Anyway, my thinking is there is no money at County Hall for the other love of my life, disabled rights of access to the countryside and coast under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (Class 1, 2 and 3 vehicles - wheelies), so rather than use my energy banging on about that, when there is little funding for replacing stiles with wheelchair accessible gates, I may as well see if the LINk can make a difference to funding for, wait for it, Health and Social Care. Another government initiative, bringing together (mixing up?) the previously separate National Health Service -v- Social Services and calling it 'Social Health and Care' (or was it Care and Social Health, or Health and Social Care ?). My entirely personal view is that it will start a war between the two, with each one grabbing a potential client a.s.a.p. in order to get a bit extra funding. As a community volunteer, to me it feels like I am involved in a game of chase the funding; use your energy in the field of community involvement that is the current government initiative of choice for government funding. Cynical, me ?!

I went to the first 'Event'. Well, they paid me (£10 food voucher and £4 travel expenses) and they had cakes and strawberries. I watched the Powerpoint presentation, read the information boards, talked to the bods with name tags on, and still didn't understand the questions. To one very helpful man from the Commission (helpful initially with my wheelchair ramp, then with the form filling and questions) I said; this seems very nebulous. He laughed. It is, he said.

That's all right then.
Its not me, not my cogdysfunct, not my impairment.
Its the government !

As a friend of mine says whenever his farming hits another batch of form-filling:
" Bloody government ! "

Swings and Roundabouts

www.art4all.co.uk

Today was a 'day off', but as I happily no longer have to work 9-5, it was planned as a day off from my particular daily grind. I needed to get out of the house and away from the stack of files that support my complaint about Social Services to the Local Government Ombudsman.

My P.A. was booked and it was "anyone for liquorice icecream?" and off we went ... but it rained so instead of the icecream in the farm's lovely garden, we diverted to Kingston Lacy for a pot of Earl Grey and a big slab of chocolate cake. Well, I told you I was celebrating didn't I !

"Whaaaat ?! No Earl Grey,in a National Trust tea shop. What is the world coming to. Or chocolate cake ... I blame the hordes off the tour bus ... but the cheese and chive scones were scrumptious. Once those were polished off, the rain had cleared leaving the azaleas brightly washed and the avenues of trees and acres and acres of park land a welcome freshly greened space on which to rest my weary eyes.

I had found myself a bit tearful and shaky mid-morning. What's happening here, I mused. I can do it, I have it sussed, I've coped with much worse than this. But, no, giving myself a good talking too didn't work this time... I find that even though in my head I think I am all o.k., the physical symptoms show I am not. I found that I am, actually, quite scared. Not scared of what I have done, in a regretful 'oh my god what have I done' sort of way, by contacting the Local Government Ombudsman, but scared because I know that my Lupus was triggered by the Employment Tribunal scenario. Involving the 'big guns'. Stating my case, proving my case, having my case accepted and ruled on, officially, by officials. Then becoming very ill when it was all over.

I am rambling, I have lost the plot a bit, the plot I started out with under this title. Gain some, loose some, I think. Yes, I remember ... fighting the good fight and all that, so feeling shaky about Social Services but cheered by the National Trust who have come up trumps.

Three years ago I (politely) wrote on one of their 'Suggestions and Comments' cards that their published map of the grounds, picturing routes and features, showed that their wheelchair accessible route around the parkland did not meet up with their dog walkers' route, so how was a wheelchair using dog walker, or a dog with a wheelchair using owner, going to access their facilities ? "Oh, no we hadn't thought of that" said the very helpful lady at Reception - that a wheelchair user might also have a dog. That a dog might also have a wheelchair related job to do. I heard nothing more.

Last year I requested a meeting with their Estates Manager, which was very helpful, and we did Badbury Rings as well, checking accessible gates. At Kingston Lacy they took my suggestion of a route to link the wheelchair paths to the dog walking routes, and laid a plastic heavy duty mesh as a trial. Last summer it was fine, passable in a bumpy sort of way, but the grass soon grew over it, and no one else seemed to be using it. This season, (fanfare ... ta dah ...) the route I suggested is included officially, on their published map of the grounds, as a wheelchair route and as a dog walking route, linking all up very nicely indeed ... and they are cutting, and keeping cut, a wide swathe of grass so it is visible on the ground too. Well done National Trust. I happily pay my annual subscription to the National Trust to have this safe haven where I can trundle along whenever I need some peace, space and calm.

I returned home to find a hand written note pushed through my letter box. I give it in full, so you can get the full effect:

Dorset County Council

26/4

Dear Sally

So sorry to have missed you today.

I was looking forward to catching up on old times with you.

It seems ages since I saw you.

With best wishes

H..... (B....)

This from the big boss lady at Social Services, who had written two weeks ago asking if she could "... pop by, just for a chat ..." My response had been "read the 20 page letter sent yesterday to (your underling)." That was the letter in which I had stated I was frightened, anxious, exhausted, unable to cope with any more stressful meetings.

The only contact I have had with this big boss lady in seven years was when (1) she visited me at home to persuade me not to act to protect disabled people from being manipulated (allegedly) by a paid outreach worker at the charity I was a trustee of, which charity was part funded by social services, so they had a legal responsibility, (2) when I expressed an interest in addressing the lack, in this county, of an advocacy service for physically disabled people of working age (which fell on stony ground), and (3) when she was called in by another 'Community' organisation to stop me going to the police about the male (alleged) 'stalker' from whom they had not (alledgedly) protected his targetted single female wheelchair users (including me), preferring (allegedly) to quietly let the community initiative dissolve (allegedly), wasting (allegedly) thousands of pounds (I saw the accounts) of public funding (allegedly).

Well, would you have felt intimidated by the big boss lady from social services wanting to chat about old times, in these circumstances ? I am, and I was unable to stand when I read it, literally, so I know that this is having a serious physical effect on me.

So I wrote ....

" ... your wish to visit me at home, for a "chat" feels intimidating and inappropriate, when I have had enormous difficulty getting a professional and timely response to my disability needs under Fair Access to Care criteria. Yours sincerely"

.... and drove off (before the beta blockers had taken effect) to post it in time for the 5.30 am collection at the main post office, so it will arrive on her desk in the morning.

So that I can now relax ... and take the neuro toxic drug MTX this weekend, knowing that when brain be-fogged and mood-depressed, I should be safe from anything that is likely to, metaphorically or literally, rise up and attack me.

This is what we, we crips, we bloggers, do, when we need a hug. We blog. Dammit

This too will pass.

EDIT: This is the second installment of the SocS saga. This first installment is here and also labelled SocS under older posts. Yes it has been going on for some time.

Sally in the Bluebells

Me and my P.A. went for a 'walk' this afternoon. The ground around here is so dry (no rain for a month or more) and hard that it was possible to go in the wheelchair along an old drove road (now a footpath) which runs by the side of a wood, further than I have been able to go for over eight years since the Lupus began. It was wonderful, on the side of a ridge, just below the top, able to see for miles along the chalk downland, some fields bright ploughed chalk, others bright green with new crop growth. Deep breaths of fresh spring air.

At the start of the walk, close by where I parked the car, a wire fence that had been there forever, had been removed and a well trodden path led into the wood where recent coppicing had cleared the undergrowth, providing ideal conditions for bluebells, and me . I was able to take the wheelchair actually inside the wood, which has no legal public rights of way, but the newly worn path is obviously used regularly, but by small numbers so not sufficient to bother the estate owners, or the estate workers we heard deeper in the wood.

So I sat in a sea of blue-green bluebells in grass, doted about with white wood anenomies, laced with yellow celandine on the edges. To be surround by blue is a sensory experience beyond mere sight. The consequence of blue as far as the eye can see is an appearance of a haze of blue hovering above the actual flower growth. Blue is imbibed.

The wood is a plantation of various years growth, and has young oaks and spanish chestnut as well as pine grown as a crop for timber, but one edge of it along the drove is ancient woodland. There were clumps of violets and we looked for 'Archangel', which my PA said is evidence of old woodland. I had not heard it called that before; it is a yellow flowered dead (i.e. not stinging) nettle. None to be found there. Growing in the older part of the wood was sloe in frothy white flower; my favourite spindle in young leaf, and lots of beech, older oak, holly, ash and hawthorn and blackthorn. In another area in denser damper woodland there was a mass of wild garlic in full leaf, but not yet in flower. That too is a total sensory experience, to walk or wheel through it, the pungent bruised leaves scenting the air with garlic.

On the return journey we crossed a bridge and saw this minature water mill over the stream. Notice the brick and flint banding and proper Dorset roof - clay tiles, with stone tiles along the bottom edge. The building is no higher than 3 metres, and was originally built to provide water powered electricity for the dairy, but it is not in use as such now.

After the winter rain fall the river water is deep and powerful and water cascades over the top of the small weir and often spills over into the adjoining water meadows, the silt fertilising the land as it was designed to. Not flooding in the negative sense, but water flooding the grazing land to warm it and provide ideal conditions for early spring grass growth for the dairy cows. In the summer this small river often dries completely and the little mill wheel stands still.

This post is really just an excuse to include my favourite Airedale picture again, taken in the very same bluebell wood.

(Sally in the bluebell wood 1994)

More Hares

Hasenfenster Paderborn

(caption translation edit: Hare Window, Paderborn)

Oh Blogging Mone, what a fantastic find. Thank you so much.

AND MORE AND MORE ... I have been on a short quest, thanks to Blogging Mone alerting me to the fact that the Three Hares symbol is not only found in England. See the Three Hares Project. Which web site also shows the Green Man, another favourite symbol of mine. I have a small one on the dining room wall (and an elf hiding in the chimney alcove above the AGA, but that was made by the builder as a present, bless).

The Elusive Dorset Dragon

Durdle Door, Lulworth Cove

This has been troubling me for some years. Like most visitors to the coast, whether grockles, incomers or indigenous Dorset people, I had assumed it was just sea erosion around some pushed up rock strata. Then I acquired an old print which showed me, for the first time, that what we had in our midst was evidence of magic, as practiced thousands of years ago, back in the mists of time.

What I now think has, obviously, happened, is that when the Blessed Time of the Goddess was coming to the end, the upstart magicians could not cope with Her Companion Animals continuining to roam around as if they owned the place, so they were magically encapsulated, first in chalk and then encased in rock. Over the millenia they became covered with natural deposits and their shapes became just another mound in the landscape. Some, such as Silbury Hill and the mounds at Badbury Rings, were used for other practices in following times, but this particular Dragon, in its magical encapsulation, became visible through coastal erosion.

This picture, although small, shows most of the Dragon's length, beginning at the right from his nose dipped in the sea, drinking or scooping up molluscs, along his arched neck, up the ridge of his back and continuining along the length of his spine, his tail buried under the sand in this idyllic little bay.

southwestcoastpath.com

I became convinced of my theory when I found the following photograph when trawling the web for some insight, evidence even. It is impossible to identify the person who is feeding the dragon, doubtless some anonymity was desired, but it was posted on a blog and is obviously the Dorset Dragon. It is good to know that Her Blessed Companion Animals are still recognised, and venerated, where they are found.

travelblog.org

The time of the magicians also came to an end. I think the figure cut into a chalk hillside, known as the Cerne Abbas Giant is their own attempt to ensure their prowess is not forgotten in following centuries.

POST SCRIPT EDIT: At the time of writing this I did not know of the Centre for Fortean Zoology

who, I believe, have reported on a Dorset Dragon skull.

3 Year Campaign = 2 Days of Work

I cannot believe how the Universe works, don't the gods who organise these things know I get tired tired tired !

Regular blessed readers and commentors to my blog will know that I am currnetly campaigning on two fronts; one - wheelchair access adaptations to my home; 2 - wheelchair access adaptations to the great outdoors, no not my garden - to countryside and coast, village paths and town routes, under the Countryside and Righs of Way Act 2000 and Local Transport Plans.

Yesterday I had the biggest most significant meeting with Social Care and Health that decided, after three years, that yes IT will happen, soon, without delay, with funding, with my needs taken into account. SC&H will appoint project managers who will prepare plans, obtain planning permission, invite tenders, appoint contractors, get the work done. SC&H will find me somewhere to live for the three months it will take (I will believe that when it happens). All this has finally unequivocally been agreed. With no more faffing about by the Dorset County Council Major Adaptations Panel, in fact after a total climb down by the Dinosaurs who have not read the legislation and government guidelines. My Member of Parliament has been immensely helpful and his quiet polite interventions have no doubt had an effect on the Dinosaurs. I have yet to decided whether to let the Local Government Ombudsman take a look at my experience and the three years delay to achieving wheelchair access in my home, and decide whether to make their own recommendations to Dorset County Council on the workings of SC&H and the Panel.

Today, fulfilling the role Dorset County Council appointed me to three years ago, I have the most significant meeting of the Rights of Way Improvement Plan sub group of the Dorset Local Access Forum, where after three years of meetings and discussions, finally we meet to decide what we will be recommending for funding. Where I alone will be fighting for wheelchair access to paths, routes and access land that in their natural state are wheelchair accessible at dry seasons but are currently blocked by man made obstacles such as stiles and locked gates. Where I alone will be fighting for an allocation of the budget for wheelchair access, against the historical and numerical lobbying might of the other calls for funding allocation; from the Ramblers Association, Cyclists and Equestrians. Where I alone will be asking for an allocation from the budget for the Dorset County Rights of Way team to recruit a volunteer group of independent wheelchair users, so that there are trained volunteer wheelchair users who can be consulted in a way similar to those long established volunteer organisations, the Ramblers Association, the British Horse Society and Cycling clubs, who have all had years of volunteers lobbying for their causes - just look at the huge number of footpaths signs, and sign-posted bridle paths for horses and sign-posted cycle routes. Compare those with the number of sign-posts in towns, villages, countryside, coasts, with the wheelchair symbol on them. I am not alone in the greater picture; there are many other individuals and organisations (the Disabled Ramblers) campaigning for disabled access to the countryside and coast and accessible urban routes, its just that in Dorset to date a volunteer group of independent wheelchair users has not yet happened effectively. It will.

Why can't these important and tiring events be spread out a bit more - why do the most critical but exhausting meetings happen together, why oh why oh why.

Why am I blogging about it, rather than getting on with meeting preparation ? This is my meeting preparation, to get it straight in my head first.

Isn't blogging wonderful !

Sustenance

Sat in my garden, I miss their quiet heavyness on the dry warm grass. Standing, shuffling, come to this place again. The grazing beef cattle; untroubled, stolid, progressing around their kingdom, up bank and down ditch, stopping to gaze, at me or a tree or a hedge. Munching or treading, the grass was the key.

In the grass slide the slow worms, march the toads, scurry the mice and voles; buzzards climbing high thermals above, watching for the wave disturbance below that shows where the food moves along.

Hovering little birds above tall unbroken grasses, to dart in for a fly or a bug. Daringly plodding crows or rooks, turning about circle in the same speed of strutt around the whisked tails from cattle butts sat together in a particular favoured place.

The grass is all. Munched, flattened, sat upon, shat upon, fly breeding for baby birds; swallows and house martins busy as gliders skimming fast, mouths open taking in sustenance.

Gliders flew from grassy fields, over seas and fields to drop sustenance, took off from the next hill over there, to France, to bear arms and bear witness that they came from what is right. England.

Not patriotism, just that is where I am and that is what I speak of. My bit of England. The bit that I know, which is known differently to how it is known by my neighbours. The know their land differently. Theirs' to do with as they wish. They wish to dig it over, plant it with sheds, greenhouses, concrete paving slabs, metal and canvas furniture, parasols, bedding plants, rockeries. They may do as they wish.

It is someone else's field, my borrowed landscape, and they do as they wish.

Cut it, shave it weekly, disallow the cattle, the cowpats, the flies, the food sources. Each day the hour or more's pollution of air and quiet and visual peace, is their perogative.

I just wish it was not so.

Yet there is another field beyond them which is not their's, and another three adjoining not their's either, that remain; quietly not cultivated, owned, not altered. Where skylarks, buzzards, foxes inhabit, where deer come if I am up early enough to see them, who come regardless of whether or not I see them. Mother alert, watching eyes, neck flicking from side to side, head looking around, behind, while her two daughters (I imagine), slighter, softer, gentler fawn brown, content and unconcerned pick out the morning's break-fast delicacies from amongst the grasses.

I pleaded with the field owner for the grass beneath the old wide spreading tree and he has left that to grow up again and nettles and buttercups are beginning to come again and a variety of grasses. So the flies come again and make the tight figures-of-eights worthwhile for the house martins; just a quick few yards dash from the babies in their mud cup nests under the eaves, over the fence, round the tree and brambles and nettles and back again, with a soft balled insect meal.

There are two breaths in this afternoon's air; the fresh sea tinged (I imagine) breeze from the south east, and the thick sense of the warm grass rising up from the ground.

Two sources of noise on the afternoon air: the ancient denizens; chaffinch and blackbird, he singing after his drink in my garden, the woodpigeon in the tree: the recent arrival; cottagers no more in this old settlement, but house owners newly invigorated with tower tools and leisure time; threats to the landscape of this ancient settlement. This too will pass.