Haworth and the Brontë thing.

The Moors just outside of  Haworth.

“ I  struck straight into  the  heath; I  held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I wade knee deep in it’s dark growth; I turned with it’s turnings, and finding a moss blackened  granite crag in a hidden angle, I  sat  down  under it. High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head; the sky was over that. Some time passed before I felt tranquil even  here;  I had  a  vague  dread  that wild cattle might be  near, or that some sportsman or poacher might  discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste,  I looked  up, fearing it was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep silence  that  reigned as  evening declined  at nightfall, I took confidence.  As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded; now I gained  the faculty of reflection. What was I to do? Where was I to go?”

(Jane Eyre,  Chapter XVIII, by  Charlotte  Brontë. First published 1847)

This passage comes straight after Jane has  left  Mr Rochester, in great consternation. The presence of his mad, sick  wife, watched and guarded in her  garret room  has been revealed to Jane, and  she has had to spurn Mr  Rochester’s approach to  her. For all  his powerful reasoning  she  has cast herself out into a wilderness. In this passage Jane expresses her fear of meeting anybody. She knows  she will  be judged. She has left her home for a “no mans land.”   Jane has cast herself out into a world of wind, rain, storms and barrenness and fearful imaginings.  All is left to chance. This scene portrays the mental and physical situation Jane  is in. She descends into deep despair and wishes for death. A human being could go no lower. Charlotte Brontë challenges us to experience this with her character. She shakes us up and makes us consider things we would not do normally.

 Charlotte Brontë explores  societies values about relationships  and marriage. The long argument between Mr Rochester and Jane and this moorland scene give us an inkling into the writing process that she went through and the purpose for writing she believed in.

 Emily, Charlotte and Anne

Recently, Clive, an old school  mate of mine and Paul , also an old school friend from our Liverpool days, and I visited Haworth Parsonage in the village of Haworth on The Pennine Moors. It was the home of the Brontë family that included the three sisters, Emily,  Anne and Charlotte who wrote some of the most amazing stories of the  English language. We always think of the Brontës, sitting  in that  stone parsonage miles away from all civilisation conjuring up  brutal  and emotional  stories through their imaginations brought on by  wild winds, rocky promontories and windswept moors..  This is partly true.  There  are  the  moors and the windswept promontories  at the back  of the  parsonage and reaching far off to the horizon, but the  parsonage is situated on the edge of  Haworth, which is  an extensive community. They were not alone. The sisters were the daughters of, Patrick  Brontë, the vicar  of Haworth, and this might have created a social  distance between them and the rest of the village.

 The Haworth parsonage where the Brontë sisters lived.

When we entered the parsonage, the first room we saw, to the left of  the entrance was  the parlour. Much of the furniture is the same as when The Brontës lived there. There is a large dining table and it was around this table the three sisters would conjure up their stories.  It was interesting to hear that they would often walk around the room and around the table talking about their ideas, verbalising their stories, exchanging ideas. This brings me back to the above passage from Jane Eyre. I can imagine the Brontë sisters challenging societies perceived values. Exploring the authenticity of accepted codes. I can imagine Emily or Anne playing devil’s advocate to Charlotte's Jane Eyre and arguing  Mr Rochester's view. I can imagine Charlotte pouring out the  emotions of Jane  expressing despair and the anguish Jane felt cast out on the moors.  That room and that table must have been witness to some  dramatic scenes. It is also interesting to discover that the Brontë sisters drew and sketched. By using, acting,  speakiing out, sketching and dramatising scenes they crafted  and formed  their stories. They discussed, in their writing, Christian morals, social conventions, such  as   marriage and challenged these perceived conventions, questioning and reasoning every aspect.  The moors had an emotional and physical presence which infiltrated their writing.  The weather and the landscape  were all put into the mix to create the conflicts and arguments. This is what makes them great writers. A great writer should  challenge the  reader.  

Being human  never changes. The process the Brontës went through to  write their stories is as valid today as  it was  then.  Jane Austen’s process took a similar path. She was more  discrete and private but  she read her writing out loud to Cassandra and Martha Lloyd. She mulled over sentences and phrases with them. She loved going to the theatre and loved to see stories acted out.  Her brothers had been a big influence on her in this process. Cassandra we know loved drawing and sketching and so did Jane. We can see these similar creative process between the Brontës and Austen. They each did it in their own way and with their own emphasis  but the process of thinking, writing, editing having somebody to listen to  their compositions,reading out loud, dramatizing and drawing  was very similar.  Charlotte, Anne, Emily Brontë, along with Jane Austen, loved language and words.

The Brontë sisters  in that parlour in the parsonage in Haworth, pacing  round  the  room, taking character parts,  reading out loud, trying new phrases, challenging each other, were in short , as  Pie  Corbett says in describing, “Talk  for  Writing,” making  their ,”prose flow…and bite and sting.”

 The Brontës lived in the Haworth Parsonage, from 1820 to 1861.Charlotte; Emily and Anne Brontë were the authors of some of the best-loved books in the English language. Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre (1847), Emily's Wuthering Heights (1847), and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) were written in this house over a hundred and fifty years ago. Both their father, the Revd. Patrick Brontë, and brother Branwell also saw their own works in print.

Looking down Haworth High  Street.

Haworth is a rugged little village with all the buildings constructed from local limestones and millstone grit. The village perches on the side of a steep hill.  The parsonage, where the Brontes lived, is at the top of the village and then beneath the parsonage is the graveyard followed by the church and then houses and shops sloping downhill towards the railway  station in the valley below. I should think the heart of Haworth, all  the buildings that comprise  the high street  and some of the houses just off  the high  street down small  alleyways, are the same structures that were there in the time of the Brontës. The Black  Bull  pub at the top  of  the high street is the very  establishment that Branwell  Brontë  used to  frequent and  get drunk  in. He was an alcoholic and a womaniser. He was thrown out of one job as a tutor to a young boy in a wealthy household in nearby Halifax because he had a relationship with the mother. What was embarrassing for Charlotte was that she was tutor to the daughter of the same household and had got Branwell the job with the family. She had left her employment with the family shortly before the fiasco with Branwell, fortunately.

A shop in  Haworth High  Street.

The High Street is full of quaint shops who  are using the Brontës to bring customers through their doors. Lovely, very good quality  tea  shops proliferate, Ye Olde Brontë Tea Rooms where Paul bought us an excellent lunch, Villette Coffee  House and  The Souk and lots more to choose from .  There are also  many good  quality artefact shops, woollens, books, antiques, art galleries, home made  sweet shops, clothing shops; Mrs Beightons Sweet  Shop, Silverland, Firths, The  Steam Brewing Company, Catkins of Haworth, Ice Shop and Gifts  , The  Stirrup, and so on .    Surprisingly few actually use a blatant Brontë connection but they all benefit and owe their existence to the tourist pull of The Brontës. It would be easy to criticise this but Haworth is situated in an area of poor employment and little investment  to create new industries and new wealth.  Tourism, sheep farming and  sports such as walking camping, pot holing and climbing are some of the main sources of income in the area and so the good people  of  Haworth use tourism to make a living. The stories written by Emily, Catherine  and Anne  help a lot. 

The  shop attached to  the Haworth Parsonage stocks all  the Brontës books including the biographies.  There are good quality guide  books and OS maps of  the area for  walkers  and those who want to  explore the moors. There are also pencils and book marks and a beautiful selection of cards. 

Clive and a gentleman singing Dylan numbers.

As Clive, Paul and I walked downhill along the High Street of Haworth a busker strummed his guitar and sang Bob Dylan songs.  Clive being a  proficient guitarist and singer himself joined in and accompanied the busker. They were a great duet. We walked on down to the bottom of the High street to the nearby station. Haworth station is a very important station.  It is run by the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway and Haworth station is it’s headquarters. They renovate and use old steam trains to run on the line. Haworth station itself has been used as a film set for The  Railway Children. It is used for period films when steam trains are required. We are lucky to  have steam train enthusiasts in different parts of  Britain who  have  taken on old disused stretches of  railway lines and renovated them. A few miles south of where I live in the beautiful Hampshire countryside  is the Watercress Line, a similar  organisation to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. It passes near Chawton, the home of Jane  Austen.

As we walked back up the hill to Haworth Parsonage, a large group  of Morris Dancers had arrived in the village.  They were dressed in their colourful regalia and carried sticks for the type of dance they were going to perform. They were dressed in costumes comprising strips of multi-coloured rags. Their faces were painted with mauves, blues and reds, similar to ancient Celtic tradition.  In the South of  England , Morris Dancers tend to  wear  white trousers and white shirts with bells and ribbons hanging off them. 

A  Wikipedia article describes Morris dancing thus::

“Morris dance is a form of English folk dance usually accompanied by music. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers, usually wearing bell pads on their shins. Implements such as sticks, swords and handkerchiefs may also be wielded by the dancers. In a small number of dances for one or two men, steps are performed near and across a pair of clay tobacco pipes laid across each other on the floor.

Claims that English records dating back to 1448 mention the morris dance are open to dispute. There is no mention of "morris" dancing earlier than the late 15th century, although early records such as Bishops' "Visitation Articles" mention sword dancing, guising and other dancing activities as well as mumming plays. Furthermore, the earliest records invariably mention "Morys" in a court setting, and both men and women are mentioned as dancing, and a little later in the Lord Mayors' Processions in London. It is only later that it begins to be mentioned as something performed in the parishes. There is certainly no evidence that it is a pre-Christian ritual, as is often claimed.”

 Morris men and ladies in Haworth.

Morris dancers and Mummers, create an old  way of story telling passed from one generation to the next. They are are an exciting spectacle. 

We left Haworth driving north towards the motorway and passed through some of  the  desolate moorland beloved by the Brontes  before reaching the old mill  town of Halifax.  I  had not  been to  Halifax before and I was  amazed at the site of many of the old Victorian cotton mills . They are enormous stone buildings that encapsulate the growth of industrialisation in the Victorian period.

  

Paul, a very good mate of mine from Liverpool standing in Haworth's  churchyard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_dance

http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/steam-trains/kwvr/haworth-station.asp

This link is an attachment to the Haworth Parsonage and will provide you with lots of information about the Brontës  and the parsonage.

http://www.bronte.org.uk/

POST SCRIPT; Pie Corbett has written two books to help teachers develop children’s writing. “Jumpstart to Literacy,” and “Jumpstart to Storymaking.”

They are full of games and strategies to help develop character, setting and to help a story move along. 

MY CITY (London)

Bait ul Futah Mosque in Mordern South London

When my youngest daughter , Abigail, started in  year 1 at The Sacred Heart Junior School, Burlington  Road, at the age  of five,  she had only been there a few days when she came home one evening. As I  was about to  take  her schoolbag from her  she retorted,  “ haji ma.”  I replied, “What did you say?” “Haji  ma,”  she repeated. “Konnichiwa,” she continued. My daughter was not only talking Japanese she was also talking Korean. She was able to translate for me. I had gone to take her bag but she didn’t want me to take it off her.  “Haji ma,” means,” don’t do it.” “Konnichiwa,” means, “good afternoon.” Abigail was demonstrating the ease with which she was able to, at the age of 5, fit smoothly into the multicultural environment of  her school. On the playground they were all  conversing in a variety of languages and each of them was learning from each other.

London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world. People from all over the world have come to live here over the decades and centuries.Some to esacpe persecution;some to have a better  life for themselves and their families. Each part of London has it’s mix but often each area has it’s most dominant immigrant group. Where I live it has a very large Korean community, hence my daughter coming home speaking Korean phrases from a very early age. Restaurants, supermarkets , hairdressers, travel agents, craft shops and clothing shops are all Korean. Streets of them.

Five hundred yards from my house, near Motspur Park railway station , there is a Greek Kebab house, a fish and chip shop owned and run by a Chinese family and further along the road, a Chinese takeaway with a giant steel wok prominently on view in the shop window. Motspur  Park Tandoori restaurant holds Elvis nights once a week with a Pakistani Elvis wearing all the gear, dressed as the star; Las Vegas era. We have a hal hal butchers shop which prominently exhibits a large photograph of a cuddly little lamb which all the local children love to look at, announcing, emblazoned across it, “Fresh lamb butchered for your Sunday Roast. Delicious.”Next door to the butchers shop is EKLEE, a delicatessen and a fruit and vegetable shop with much of it’s produce exhibited on tressle tables on the pavement.It sells  the most amazing range of olives and sells the most  delicious baklava, and sweet syrupy pastry's and spicy curries made in their kitchen at the back. The range of produce it provides is a greater range of herbs, spices and vegetables than your usual English greengrocers.It  is  owned and run by Mr Malik and his  lovely Iranian family who have lived in the area for  generations. Kami’s, the hairdressers are owned by a Turkish family. The local chemist shop is run by a Pakistani chemist and my dentist is Indian.

Two miles from where I live , in Tooting, the whole area is mostly Indian and Pakistanis. Sari shops displaying the most beautifully designed fabrics of all colours often emblazoned with  gold edging, proliferate.
We get many  people from the Southern Hemisphere,  Australians,  South Africans and New Zealanders. I taught for many  years with Katie  from  South  Africa  and  Evette from Zimbabwe or  Zim as  she  used to call it.  I met Evette in my local  TESCOS the other day with  her new baby  boy.We talked and  she  is very worried about her country. Her  Mum and  Dad still live  there  and are struggling along. They are too old  now to  move anywhere else.Next to  Raynes Park Station is a small South African grocers shop. You can  get your bill-tong there and other South  African delights.  

In Motspur Park,my local park,  the Sir Joseph Hood Playing Fields, is used for Australian Rules Football after the usual football  season is over.The Wimbledon Hawks use it as their home ground.. They set up  a bar selling cans of Fosters beer and hold an enormous barbecue that sends it's delicious odours wafting  across the fields  during every home game. Their  bright orange kit make them stand out at  some distance.

The Wimbledon Hawks at The Sir Joseph Hood Playing Fields.

These diverse communities also have their places of worship.. We have the largest mosque in Europe, the Baitul Futih Mosque, with space for 1600 worshippers at a time.

In Wimbledon Village is the Buddhapadipa Temple, with gold and jewelled designs all over it. It has a small monastery of Budhist monks and nuns and also runs a Budhist school.The Koreans have taken over an old office block which they have turned into their own Baptist  church. SomeKoreans are Roman Catholics and attend the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Wimbledon .There  is a  Christian  Science Church in Worple Road ;  Raynes Park Methodist Church, Holy Cross Church of England  and  St John the Baptist Roman  Catholic church are all within a mile radius of where I live.  Often they each hold cultural activities to which they invite all the community.  We get flyers through our front door inviting us to Buddhist and various Christian celebrations.

The Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church Wimbledon.

What I think is unique is that often these diverse churches and religious traditions organise things together.  Every year, for one week, there is the Raynes Park festival that includes drama and music events . They collect the money for charity. My church, The Sacred Heart at Wimbledon, has a semi-professional choir. They have purchased a Steinway Piano and also have   a giant organ with an amazing pipe system. They hold classical concerts and attract top classical musicians to perform. The Methodist Church in Worple Road has a vibrant and strong amateur dramatic society and there are various art and performance groups in the other churches too. They all come together for one week each year to put on an amazing festival. The money goes to a designated charity. The churches and different religious groups also combine to organise and run soup runs and provide accommodation for London’s down and outs throughout the year. The priests, rabbis, monks, pastors and leaders from each denomination meet regularly to discuss how they can work together and emphasise the similarities and positives between them.

The different religious groups also provide educational opportunities for the community. It is law in this country to teach religion in schools but it must be multicultural as well as specific. My children go to the catholic schools in Wimbledon. They have all been to the Sacred Heart Junior School and then Alice, Emily and Abigail have gone on to the Ursuline Convent and Sam, my son, went on to  Wimbledon College, run by the Jesuits. They are catholic schools and the catholic ethos is extremely important to them . However they must learn about all other religions, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. All the churches, synagogues, mosques and temples of various religions provide education programmes. We take our children to visit the local mosques, temples, synagogues and churches to learn about their history and beliefs. All children love learning about other religions. It really does help them understand and appreciate each other.

Occasionally, in a Christian school we might get children of other faiths. There is a trust between the diverse ethnic groups. I have taught  religion lessons in the past. When I  am  teaching about Islam for instance I will always find out if there is any child who prays to Mecca and holds Mohammed as his prophet, in the class. I will  then  get them to tell us about their lives and experiences. The rest of the class really appreciate this and ask their class mate all sorts of questions. This situation does two things. First it makes the child realise that everybody in the class respects him or her and their religion. When there is a particular festival, for instance divali, we will  get the Hindu mothers in to cook us food and bring in saris and costumes for the children to dress up in.Secondly, we all learn about each other.

In one of my classes, a few years ago I had a little Jewish girl. She got very excited about the  fact  we were going to look at Judaism and told her rabbi all about it. I got a message for the rabbi saying, if I wanted, he would come in to help me teach the lesson. So I got him to come in and we team taught. He filled in all the bits I wasn't sure about. He brought in a small piece of the Tora to show the class, some unleavened bread for them to taste and some artefacts from his synagogue for them to handle, draw and write about. I took photographs of the lesson  and wrote a report which the rabbi published on his synagogues website. I got a lot of great comments on the website.. The little girl  was ,"over the moon."

It would be interesting to see how the controversial Florida pastor ,Terry Jones , who  burned the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11, would survive and get on in Motspur Park in South London where I live. It might help educate him and  others of his ilk.

My London is a melting pot.  It is not about erasing cultural differences or trying to convert people from diverse religions. It is about celebrating each other’s differences and similarities. It is about learning from each other and creating a synergy of ideas and cultural influences.

And to conclude lets all  give it for the 50th anniversary of  Jamaican Independence.

Usain,  you  are the king  mate!!!!!!!


And lets give it up for "Marley Bob!!!!!!"

The Olympic Road Race

I walked into Kingston upon Thames yesterday with Marilyn and Abi.  We couldn't drive in because all the roads were closed to allow the Olympic Cycling Road race to pass through . Here are some photographs.

On the corner opposite Wilkinsons, Cotswolds outward bound shop and Costas Coffee.

Going past London Road and the leaning post boxes.

Here come the British team.

The British team closer.

More cyclists.

Police outriders.

Leading cars.

LONDON OLYMPICS 2012

COME ON THE UK !!!

COME ON THE WORLD!!!!

A little suggestion for you all.

WATCH the opening ceremony. It will BLOW YOUR MINDS. Ha! ha! You will just know this is England, this IS Britain!!!!!

Maybe you will even have a chuckle to yourselves. Ony here. 
Only  here. Ha! Ha!

A VISIT TO WORDSWORTH COUNTRY AND THE LAKES

William Wordsworth  within his beloved lakes, contemplating.

The Lakes

A smooth drive up the M6,my Nissan Serena purred like a contented kitten. The new exhaust was working well. The recently replaced water pump  kept the coolant system  going perfectly,”Ee ba’ gum. It were all workin’ a treat!!!!”  After  131,000 miles on the clock, great stuff.

Myself  and   Clive, a good mate  of  mine, were entering the land of Romanticism and the Lakeland poets along the A590 and the A5074 heading for the heart of Lakeland and  Ambleside  north  of Lake Windermere.

A distant view of  Rydal  Water from Allan House.

Romanticism was a very important movement of artists and poets who formed a new philosophy during the early part of the 19^th century from about 1800  to 1840. They encompassed imagination, myth and symbolism. Enlightenment previously dealt with science, philosophy, politics and revolution  and  also encompassed subjectivism, rationalism, empiricism and scepticism.  Enlightenment had marked   the previous centuries in  Europe from 1650 to about 1800 . It’s influence is still very much felt today and it shaped the modern world but Romanticism added another element to interpreting the human condition.

 The calm surface on  Rydal  Water.

The Lakes are a rugged  mountainous landscape punctuated by beautiful vistas of fells and glassy shimmering, silvery surfaced lakes. The lakes were the birthplace of  William  Wordsworth and the home of Samuel  Taylor Coleridge, the two most important Romantic poets.  Wordsworth can be described as instigating the whole Romantic Movement and it was this landscape that made him into a romantic.He was born in The lakes at Cockermouth in 1770 and he died a few miles away at Rydal Mount in 1850.he loved travelling throughout Europe, especially in France but it was always Westmoreland that he came back to and lived  most of his life. In his long biographical poem, The Prelude,  Wordsworth writes,

“ , -Was it for this

That one, the fairest of all Rivers, lov'd

To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song,

And from his alder shades and rocky falls,

And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice

That flow'd along my dreams? For this, didst Thou,

O Derwent! travelling over the green Plains

Near my 'sweet Birthplace', didst thou, beauteous Stream

Make ceaseless music through the night and day

Which with its steady cadence, tempering

Our human waywardness, compos'd my thoughts

To more than infant softness, giving me,

Among the fretful dwellings of mankind,

A knowledge, a dim earnest, of the calm

That Nature breathes among the hills and groves.

When, having left his Mountains, to the Towers

Of Cockermouth that beauteous River came,

Behind my Father's House he pass'd, close by,

Along the margin of our Terrace Walk.

He was a Playmate whom we dearly lov'd.”

The River  Derwent running at the bottom of his childhood home in Cockermouth sparked his life of emotional  and imaginative response to  the world.

Romanticism might conjure a less than realistic view of the world. However, although Wordsworth emphasised the emotional and imaginative response, a response through the senses,  he didn’t ignore the realities of  life and especially rural life in the lakes of his time.

The Lakes.

In the poem, “The Ruined Cottage,” Wordsworth relates the sad and  depressing tale of a family brought low and destroyed by failed harvests and loneliness in those beautiful  hills.

“ You may remember now some ten years gone

Two blighting seasons when the fields were left

With half a harvest.  It pleased heaven to add

A worse affliction in the plague of war

A happy land was stricken to the heart…….”

And in the poem,  The Thorn, ignorance, mythologising, and imagination appear to be used to express the detrimental ways of villagers who  all but turn  on a young mother, Martha  Ray,  when she loses her lover and baby. Romanticism is therefore not necessarily, about romantic things. It is about our emotional and imaginative responses.

Women’s contribution to Romanticism is less documented. William Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy, is an obvious candidate. Dorothy lived her life emotionally in tandem with her brother. Her journals written ,”because I shall give William, pleasure,” describe everyday chores such as the manual labour of gardening, cooking, writing letters to friends, visiting neighbours and general household chores but they are also full of her detailed emotional response to nature and the fells and lakes where she lived. Comparing her descriptions of natural things in the environment and her emotional response you can see that many of her observations appear in William’s poems. She also  wrote poems for children which were published alongside Williams poems in some publications and he she wrote other journals and  accounts mainly for William alone or members of the family. Brother and sister must have discussed their feelings and observations and ideas together.

 Helm Crag from  Loughrigg Fell.

Friday morning 16^th May 1800

“- all flowers now are gay and deliciously sweet. The primrose still pre-eminent among the later flowers of spring. Foxgloves very tall- with their heads budding. I went  forward round the lake at the foot of Loughrigg fell- I was  much amused with the business of a pair of stonechats.”

There is a discussion as to how Jane Austen fits into this Romantic period. She doesn’t seem to at all. She describes the interactions between people.  She does not express an emotional and imaginative response to the natural world around her. She must have experienced the beauties of nature and felt their emotional impact where she was born and where she lived for many years of her life but her concerns were marriage, inheritance and close, small communities. Wordsworth was revolutionary in many respects. His introduction of Romanticism in contrast to Enlightenment might not have endeared him to The Reverend Austen, Jane’s father. Wordsworth was an advocate of the principals and ideologies that fuelled the French  Revolution which  again might not have endeared him to  the Austens. He may not have been on the bookshelves at Steventon. The Brontë sisters in Haworth, on the other hand, used the landscape they knew well in their writing. They responded emotionally to the world around them. They could be classed as Romantics. Clive and I also visited Haworth and the Brontë parsonage on our trip. I will leave a discussion about the Brontës to a further post.

Wordsworth's office in  Ambleside. He was the Distributor for  stamps in Westmorland.

Wordsworth could not make ends meet by writing poetry as Byron was able to. He worked from an office in Ambleside as the Distributor for stamps for Westmoreland.  This gave him a comfortable living.

  Wordsworth lived in various places in The Lakes. He also lived in Somerset at Alfoxden near his good friend Coleridge for a short while in 1797 but eventually he settled permanently in The Lakes.  At Dove Cottage in Grasmere, close to Grasmere Lake, many of his most important poems were written and this is described in Dorothy's journal.  In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson , Dorothy, his sister,  remained part of the family. The three of them living together for the rest of their lives. Her role as close mentor to, William, appeared to not miss a beat.

 Dove Cottage where many of  Wordsworth's most important poems were written and where Dorothy kept her main journal.

Here is Dorothy writing on November Wednesday 18^th  1801.

“ We sate in the house in the morning reading Spenser. I was unwell and lay in bed all afternoon. Wm & Mary walked to  Rydal – very  pleasant moonlight, the lakes beautiful. The church an image of Peace- William wrote some  lines upon it. I in bed when they came home. Mary and I  walked as far as Saras Gate before supper.”

This sounds  matter of  fact but if you notice what is happening in this extract you can see the relationship William ,Mary and Dorothy had. It was definitely a threesome. Mary relates the emotional response William and Mary  had to their walk.  She would only have known this if it had intimately been told her. And later  Dorothy and Mary go  walking together.There is a seamless interchange between the three of them. They appear to be equally intimate with each other.

Allan House, on the north side of Grasmere overlooking Grasmere lake.

In 1808, Wordsworth and his growing family moved to the larger Allan House at the north end of Grasmere Lake with a wonderful view overlooking the fells. Over the years Mary gave birth to five children, John, Dora, Thomas, Catharine and William.  In 1812 Catharine died of convulsions and in the same year Thomas died of measles. 

Rydal Mount where the Wordsworths lived for the last part of their lives.

Finally they moved to Rydal Mount in 1813, not far from Grasmere and closer to Ambleside. Dora later died while living at Rydal Mount in 1847. William bought a plot of land at the bottom of the garden which was called Doras Field and had it planted with daffodils. It was at Rydal Mount, that William, Dorothy and Mary lived to the end of their days.

Doras Field which William, Mary and Dorothy planted out with daffodils in memory of Dora.

Clive and I wandered round Grasmere and Rydal.  We visited Dove Cottage and learned the history and stories of each room. The learned guide was able to relate to us what happened in each room and the daily chores that were performed in each room. I enjoyed the garden at the back very much. Dorothy writes in her journal how she and William would sit there contemplating nature or reading Williams poems. It was a place William often used to write in too. They planted new shrubs and flowers and gardened in this patch of steeply rising land.

Saturday 17^th  April 1802.

“A mild warm rain. We sate in the  garden  all the morning. William dug a little. I transplanted a honeysuckle. The lake  was still  the sheep on the island reflected in the water.”

 The graveyard in Grasmere church where all  the  Wordsworths are buried.

We walked through Grasmere village and paid homage at the Wordsworth graves including that of William. We wandered on to the far end of the village and walked up the side of a fell to see Allan House. We later drove to Rydal and spent a good hour or more inside Rydal Mount and gardens with its view over Rydal Lake. We saw William’s room where he wrote.

The Lakes are a wonderful magical place to visit.  The mountains are based on volcanic activity some 100 million years ago. There is a volcanic substrata overlain by grey wackers, sandstones and slates that have been metamorphosed from siltstones and mudstones. Glaciation and erosion have much reduced the mountains in size but the many faults, intrusions, the cutting and erosion of mountain streams have created and left a high rugged landscape of beautiful calm lakes, many with islands in them, shear sided cliffs and high sparsely covered fells. Walking and mountain climbing, sailing on the lakes, mountain biking and horse trekking are many pursuits suitable to this landscape.

 A  dry stone wall in The Lakes.

This is my poor attempt at following Dorothy Wordsworth’s inspiration provided by her journal. Clive and I walked in the very footsteps of Dorothy and William around Rydal Lake and up onto Loughrigg Fell and saw the views they saw and experienced the natural world as they experienced it.

 Clive and I looking chilled out. Must have had a couple of pints of local brew by now.

Thursday 12^th July 2012

Coming off the motorway we entered a humped landscape, rises, dips and sharp cutting streams, narrow roads that steeply climb up to blind rises followed by near vertical dips and sharp angled left and right turns. The landscape was dotted with shaggy woolly black faced sheep. Walls of neatly stacked and split grey stones formed into snaking and twisting dry stone walls threaded across the sparsely green landscape. The  landscape everywhere torn and ripped open by intrusive rocky lumps and gashed by bubbling streams hissing down over rocks and boulders. Mountains huddled in around us.  The underlying geology always close to the surface. Those road numbers  A590 and A5074 are a travesty. They need heroic names evoking emotions like a Wordsworth poem not clinical numbers that you might find on a storeroom list.

We had a pub lunch  at The Badger Bar, a stone constructed pub built into the rocks at the side of the valley overlooking Rydal  Water. The pub,  built in the  dry stone wall style seemed to hang against against the cliff face. It was  cool  and dark  inside away from the bright sunlight of the  day.

Later we walked across the road  and passed through a gap  in the stone wall  edging the road and dropped into the shadowy depths of Fieldfoot Wood. Oaks, sycamores and ash all around; then walked across a wooden bridge joining the two banks of a steely  grey  sparkling tumbling mountain stream. We walked through this shadowy cool  space along a rocky path our feet crunching on the stones until we  came out into  the bright blue skies of Rydal  Water.Sunlight lit up  the steep  fells about us, Loughrigg Fell  to our left, massive and mostly fern covered except for a barrenness  and rock outcrops  near the top. We made our way along a narrow path, bracken brushing our legs as we gradually climbed upwards. Thoughts of  grass snakes and adders  came  to  mind. Foxgloves, tall and slender still in their pink bloom stood erect randomly here and there. The views became more expansive and breath-taking as we rose near to the top of Loughrigg and looked back across the still,  silvered  water of Rydal lake and across to the massive hulk of Helm  Crag on the  other side of the valley.Helm Crag is hard muscled with bare rocks and sparsely grassed. Sunlight and clouds alternated bright illuminated patches with dark shadowy expannses on the sides of the fells.

We walked along the line of dry stone walls constructed with split slabs of Coniston Limestone and slate. Heathers and bracken carpeted all around. Bright red tiny Campions, periwinkle, vetch, stonecap, stitchwort,  toadflax, Herb Robert, crosswort, cranesbill and mustard, packed the crevices of  these stonewalls and were scattered between the roots of  trees amongst the mosses. Soft downy mosses softened the hard angular edges of stones and boulders.  Dark greens, light greens, mosses of complex intricate intertwining’s.

We stood on Loughrigg, just as William and Dorothy had done and looked out on the  fells  and photographed the  scene we saw before  us.

Wood pigeons cooed in Fieldfoot Woods.  Red Kytes circled above Loughrigg Fell their distinctive V shaped tail feathers and the flash of  white on  the sides of their long bowed wings.

On the way back to our car near,  The Badger Bar,  we saw a canoe come  out onto the lake.  Three people rowing gently across the still surface. As we entered again Fieldfoot Woods a mother and father and their young children sat on a small beach next to Rydal Water and they went swimming.

THE OLYMPIC FLAME

There are four days left until the Olympics start in London.Over the last few weeks the Olympic flame has been carried around the United Kingdom. Everybody in these isles lives within a few miles of where  the Olympic flame has been carried. There are 8000 Olympic torch bearers. The 8000 holes in the perforated stem of the Olympic torch represent every one of the torch bearers.

The Olympic Flame arrives at  Wimbledon tennis Courts.

With four days to go until the Olympic flame is transferred to  the Olympic Stadium in Stratford in the East End of London it  is getting close to it's destination.Today it reached the London Borough of Merton where I live.  It  was scheduled to visit  Wimbledon Tennis Courts this afternoon where Andy Murray and Venus Williams were waiting to take it in turns to  carry it a short distance. Marilyn, Alice, Emily  and myself stood outside the gates to  Wimbledon  Tennis Courts to see the Olympic flame  arrive. Crowds gathered and built up  in the roads and streets around the tennis stadium. Police and the Royal Marines were out in force.

The Police and the Royal Marines provide security.

 Police helicopters buzzed overhead. A large blue bus arrived first with cheerleaders dancing on the top  deck  encouraging the cowds to sing along.Grey tracksuit clad security guards jogged into  view and then  there was the torch bearer  in his white track suit with the flame held aloft. An exciting moment.Everybody cheered and clapped. The atmosphere  was exciting Most of the torch bearers have been chosen and nominated by people in their respective communities for  the good works they do for their communities.  They are people of inspiration.

Crowds gather on the pavement outside of Wimbledon Tennis Courts.

I was in London yesterday with Marilyn and my brother and sister in-law. We  took a trip up and down The Thames on The Thames Clipper.  The party atmosphere is really building in the streets of London. It is a very exciting place to be.

THE QUEEN'S DIAMOND JUBILEE

So it’s sixty years since the Queen came to the throne after her father’s death in 1952, while she was on safari in Kenya with the Duke of Edinburgh. She became Queen on February 6th 1952, the day her father King George VI died. As soon as she heard the news in the house she was staying in whilst in Kenya the documents were presented to her to sign. She became Queen immediately.Her coronation was a year later, in Westminster Abbey, in June 1953. I was born in the very same year the Queen became our Queen, June 1952. The Queen's Diamond Jubilee, her sixtieth as Queen  and my sixtieth year, coincide. This means that for my entire life I have only known one monarch on the throne and she seems hale and hearty enough and ready to continue in her role as our smiling, benign, motherly face of Britain and The Commonwealth, for a few more years to come. Today, Marilyn, Abi, my youngest and I stood in an enormous crowd beside The Thames on the South Bank next to The London Eye.

Having a sit down.

 At 3.30pm the Queen and the Royal family, aboard the Royal barge sailed past amongst a flotilla of a thousand boats. I can’t say we saw the Queen or the flotilla but we experienced the crowds amazing warm and heartfelt outpouring of affection for the Queen. Flags waving, cheering, clapping and a great feeling of warmth and friendship pervaded the crowds as we watched on large screens the whole event that was happening a mere few yards away on the river. It was worth being there.

 The Queen. " Good afternoon your majesty. I hope you are well?"

What has the Queen’s reign done for me? How has it shaped my life and made me what I am?

One of the main siren calls and professed aims of many of those governments over the last sixty years and accelerated by Tony Blair and the Labour governments he lead, is social mobility. Even our present coalition government of Tories and Liberals lead by David Cameron still mouth the mantra, “social mobility is our aim,” and, “ the highest quality of education for all,” even though many of their policies are going to create the opposite effect. Michael Gove, like all other ministers for education before him has wrung his  hands and anguished why it is still predominantly the upper middle classes and those from the wealthier families who get into Oxford and Cambridge. How can they possibly get more children from the working class into Cambridge? There is a minority who do already get into Oxford and Cambridge from a working class background but a very very small minority. And then, shock amongst many shocks some people still don’t aspire to higher things such as a great education. The government gasps, “Why not?”

 You are not coming this way!!!!!

To be fair, as an addendum to the above comments about the desirability to go to Oxford and Cambridge, we have many universities in the top one hundred in the world and Oxford and Cambridge are certainly  not unique as far as academic excellence goes in this country. Oxford and Cambridge are used as a symbol.

 The ONLY way to see the Queen.

But what has this meant for me over these sixty years? Have the policies and opportunities offered by successive governments during the Queens reign made me  aspirational and socially mobile? Socially mobile always infers moving up, not down, by the way. Have I suffered a fracture between my upbringing and my present life because of different governments emphasise on social mobility?

 Some gentlemen of the constabulary. 

In many ways I have shifted my social class. By getting a degree through the Open University and later a masters degree from The Institute of Education, London University, I have become middle class because of my educational achievements. One of my brothers got a degree before I did but I followed soon after and the two of us were the first to get university degrees in my family. My family always thought of themselves as skilled working class.  Getting degrees did not, however, create a cataclysmic rift between my brother and I and our family as happened to Rita, in Educating Rita, where her husband, friends and neighbours could no longer accept her. By getting an education she had moved sharply out of her social class. She spoke a different language. She felt and thought differently. Her family and friends had no aspirations away from the lives they lived.

Just look at those trousers.

 Education did not move my brother and I so sharply out of our social class. My father had studied hard at home in the evenings while working as an accounts clerk in an office and got his accountancy qualifications. My grandfather, on my mother’s side, had qualifications. He was a draughtsman in a shipyard. A great uncle of mine had passed his civil service exams. So being educated, studying and passing exams was always accepted in my family. Our family wanted my brother and I to be educated. We were not therefore fighting against our class or our social situation even if we were the first to get degrees. We were admired and the way we thought and our aspirations were an extension of our families’ aspirations for us.

 A decorated balcony just across the road from ,The Old Vic.

One of the greatest things educationally to move people on and bring a high standard of education within the grasp of all, has been the Open University, where I got my first degree. The OU was begun in the late sixties under the Harold Wilson government. To get accepted onto an Open University degree you need no prior qualifications. You have to show that you can write clearly and succinctly. The degrees are as academically rigorous as any other university degree. The degrees are as valuable and well regarded as any other degree. To achieve an Open University degree, you have to show and prove you can reach a good academic standard. This was the first real experiment with flexible further education in this country. Open University degrees are studied at home in the evenings after a days work. There are summer schools to be attended and nowadays, with broadband, there is immediate communication with fellow students, lecturers and tutors. Having a broadband connection also gives immediate access to resources. The degrees take longer to achieve because they are part time and they are divided into modules, which you can take one at a time and when they suit you. All universities offer flexible courses now. There are many ways to get a degree but the Open University was the first to try new ways. It is still at the top in this country as far as flexible degrees go and has been marketed worldwide. It has invariably ranked in the top forty universities in Britain and has always ranked in the top five hundred worldwide. Students globally can access Open University courses and gain degrees. The business school is the most popular in other countries.

 Live music at The National Theatre.

An educational revolution hatched by Harold Wilson under the control of Jennie Lee, who was the minister for education under Harold Wilson, has given confidence and unsought opportunities to many who thought they had no chance as well as those, like me, who did not get immediate access to a university course.

The crowds the crowds!!!!!!!!!!!

I think the Open University has provided a powerful force for social mobility in this country and has influenced social mobility worldwide. I think the opportunities offered by education and the education I have been able to access has been the main shaping influence on my life during the reign of our Queen.

No more use for a union jack at the end of the day.

And finally , the rain came down!!!!!!!!!!

The Open University: http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/

Educating Rita: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educating_Rita

The Queens Jubilee picture files from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-18329453

IOE. Institute of Education: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/