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Happy New Year to you all.
As may be seen from the listings at the back of the journal, the programme for 2006 is shaping up – additional details of meeting times and venues for field trips will appear shortly, along with information on this year’s long weekend.
It’s with great sadness that we hear that Nora Morris passed away recently. Our condolences go out to all her family and friends.
The first trip of the year will be at The Lawn, Swindon. Normally referred to as The Lawns by us locals, this site is situated in the Old Town area of Swindon off the High Street, and is an attractive spot as well as being of historical interest. Since it is likely to be cold at this time of year, with possible icy roads early in the day, we will be meeting later than usual, at 2pm at the High Street entrance.
The nearby car-park in Old Town Square is the best one to use. The Square has historical interest itself. Poring over an old map recently, I found it marked on the map as a bull-ring.
The Lawn is now a public park area of 35 hectares but has a few remains of what was once the Goddard family estate. The ice house was built in 1774 and still exists. The mansion house, [originally Swindon House], was declared unsafe and demolished in 1952, although remains of the Italian Garden adjacent to the site of the house can still be seen today.
Also on site is the original parish church for Swindon, first mentioned in documents in 1154. Only the chancel and a few arches still remain and is scheduled by English Heritage as an ancient monument. Unfortunately it is usually kept locked and only opened up for special occasions.
Earliest records show that in 1086 the owner of the Manor of Swindon was Odin, Chamberlain to William the Conqueror but changed hands several times until the Goddard family bought it in 1563 for £520. The price included several houses, woodland, meadows, heath-land and the title “Lord of the Manor”.
Man has occupied the area from 5000BC, and one of the things that we hope to dowse is the remains of an old stone circle that was believed to be on this site. There are certainly a number of large sarcens dotted about although these have almost certainly been relocated from the place where the circle once stood. S.C.
Seen in a round-up of notable events of last year.[the “Daily Telegraph”] was the following:
“Feng Shui underpants designed to bring spiritual balance by having something lucky next to the skin, were launched in time for the Chinese New Year.
The Life Enhancer Company, of Hong Kong claims that they will also help ward off evil spirits and bring harmony.”
Maybe the WDS should get some of these invaluable items for our sales table?
After our victory in the Ashes, there was a bit of a run on cricketing gear in the shops, so my Tarot reader Plumb Bob was sent to scour the industrial estates and warehouses of the Midlands, assembling a fine collection of Merlins, Pumas, Slazengers, Dukes, Morrants and associated leisure-wear for the squad.
I took some of the items round to Cyril's place, some books, some memorabilia, hoping to familiarise him with the rudiments of the game. With our crunch match coming up against an Archaeologists' XI, nothing could be left to chance.
Cyril was going to be our spinner. He looked in good shape. Gaunt. Craft. Dependable. But he'd been thinking, and thinking is to Cyril what drinking is to others.
"Are we not dowsers? Then cricket shall be like dowsing. There can be no rehearsal," he asserted. "Only a succession of divine moments in real time. If you find yourself slipping into another dimension, you must not observe the moment, you must simply follow."
"This is a picture of Richie Benaud," I said. "We may find that he rehearsed quite a lot."
"Benaud is a modern player. A professional. An Australian," said Cyril. "He doesn't quite come within the scope of my enquiries. The dowser is the object, not the subject. How can there be any pretence to mastery?"
"Ever seen one of these?" I said.
What is it?"
"A cricket ball," I said.
"Heavy," said Cyril, setting it aside.
"That raised seam thing," I said, "that controls the flight of the ball.
"No," said Cyril, "what controls the flight of the ball is the doubt that is raised in the batsman's mind."
He was like one of those dowsers who spends a bad winter holed up with a collection of maps. Unable to get out on the frozen ground, they work on the beautiful contours of the Ordnance Survey.
Unbidden, connections start to form. Then diagrams. Grand theories about triangles, churches, and the sacred landscape just beyond the village. The dowser's abiding fondness for Egypt may become a factor too.
"Cyril," I said, "you are truly one of the sublime Edwardians.
"Wilfred Rhodes," said Cyril, "Yorkshireman. Blunt. Down to earth. Respect is due. Do you know what he said?"
"'T ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it?"
"He said two things of great moment which we should bear in mind next Sunday. You can't flight a ball, only an over. That's number one, and I think you'll find it holds true in the great game of life as well."
"Cyril, how many balls are there in an over?"
"Eight."
“Six”
"Well, that should be enough. Mmm... hexagonal. Do you think bees come into it anywhere?"
"Cyril, I can't tell you what a pleasure it will be, if you get some wickets.
"Wickets? I thought you'd bought some. They're those spindly wooden things, aren't they? You won't forget to bring them along, will you? You're such a great fat useless lump sometimes. We must have stumps to put in the ground. We don't want the match to dissolve into abstraction."
"Do you think there's a danger that it might?" I said.
"The second thing Wilf Rhodes said, and you have to imagine this in a Yorkshire accent. He said, If a batsman thinks ball is spinning, it is spinning."
"You may devastate the opposition," 1 said, giving credit where credit is due. "But remember, if you take too many wickets too quickly, there will be no game."
"Yes," said Cyril, "that's what happened to Bosanquet. He came to regret the Googly."
"Still known as a Bosey in Australia...
"Yes. An off-break bowled with a leg-break action," said Cyril with his veneer of authority. But would it be enough? Did we have enough time? What was time'?
I was drifting into the role of coach. In the modern game of cricket, it is not the role of the coach to find fault.
After the glories of the Ashes summer, England went to Pakistan for the winter and struggled. The 17 minarets visible from the ground, the intermittent and unfamiliar calls to prayer, the smog, the spent cartridges on the pitch, the gas canister exploding on the boundary as someone tried to dispense a fizzy drink. Unfamiliarity. Discombobulation.
The coach is not allowed to strike an interventionist pose. The lads will find their way.
Pietersen got to a century in Faisalabad with a six, then got out next ball trying to repeat the shot, recklessly exposing the middle-order and tail to the demon pace-man Shoaib Akhtar, who had the new cherry in his hand just after tea.
It was not up to the coach to say, Kev, you're a genius, mate, but pull your horns in, you daft nutter.
The coach has read his Sigmund Freud and his Michael Brearley and is aware of the rise of feminist studies.
He knows that the stern father-figure has been displaced in the modern matrix.
He knows that he is coaching youngsters who have never sent a Christmas thank-you letter in their entire lives. He knows that if the little bastards were required to pause for a moment to show gratitude or thankfulness, it would disastrously inhibit the flow of their life-energy.
He knows that aunts and uncles will just have to do without that phone-call on Boxing Day morning. No text will ever arrive in the New Year, no e-mail creeps through in February with a belated note of thanks and contrition.
A good coach knows that Youth is an unstoppable force evolving towards the higher Mayan consciousness of 2012 at an unprecedented rate.
I too had been snubbed by nephews in the aftermath of Christmas. Whether I had given £10 or £1,000 made no difference. I was just another Santa Claus, who doesn't exist, and didn't require thanks for all those crisp notes in an envelope.
Benevolent paternalism must now be invisible. Not to mention benevolent avuncularism. A good coach knows this. Bring it on. I was upfurrit.
When I was a teen, What a Wonderful World was a popular song. In it, Louis Armstrong was always saying "The bright blessed day and the dogs say Goodnight".
Even when I learned that the proper words are "the dark sacred night" I went on seeing dogs in starlit alleyways bidding one another au revoir until day.
That would be my style, as coach. I asked Cyril if he knew where the leg side was.
"Leg-side, off-side. Success, failure. These are relative terms," he said.
The side was shaping up.
Grey Wolf
As is usual for the December Meeting, we had not hired a speaker since numbers attending are normally small, due to the hectic time of year. This was a purely social occasion, giving those who attended time for a leisurely meal or drink, a chat and a browse round our sales table.
Here is a story I’ve been told a more than once and have I have seen variations in the press a couple of times.
A carpet layer was putting down a carpet one day. The lady of the house informed him that she was going out for an hour. During the woman’s absence the carpet layer managed to get the carpet down after a bit of a struggle. When he had finished he noticed a small lump in the middle of the carpet. When he checked the lump with his hands it felt soft. Following the best traditions of the British worker and not wanting to lift the carpet to sort out the lump, he gave it a firm wallop with a mallet. As he was packing his things away the lady of the house returned and they chatted for a few moments. Just as the carpet fitter was about to leave the lady asked if he had seen her son’s hamster………………
And if that wasn’t gruesome enough here is another favourite of the lazy press. Reports point this story to both the South of France and California.
After a gruelling fight to extinguish a major forest fire, the fire fighters were doing the rounds checking that everything was out. One of the firemen stumbled across a scuba diving gas cylinder and what appeared to be some heavily barbecued remains. The police were called and an investigation was started.
It would appear that a few days earlier a man had reported that one of his companions had disappeared while scuba diving in the sea. Unbeknown to them, they had been diving in an area that the large water lifter aircraft used to fight fires had been picking up water, and it appeared as though the man had surfaced at that critical point when a lifter was picking up water. He was then dumped on to the forest fire along with tons of water to help kill the flames.
While dipping into a Folklore Almanac recently, I came across an entry for St. Antony of Padua, who was invoked for the finding of lost property. A couple of methods were suggested for finding the culprit who had appropriated the missing items:
“The Magic of the Sieve and Shears. The shears are stuck in the wood of the sieve, and two maidens hold up the sieve with the top of their fingers by the handle of the shears. Then say ‘By St. Peter and St. Paul, such a one [suspect’s name] has stolen [state the missing item]’. Others then say ‘By St. Peter and St. Paul he has not stolen it.’
After a number of such adjurations, the sieve will turn at the name of the thief.”
John Aubrey, who mentions this method of dowsing in “Remains of Gentilism” [1688], does not specify whether the sieve holders have to be maidens in the strictest sense of the word, or if any-one will do, but the interesting thing, I thought, was that this is the only method I have yet encountered where it states that the dowsing implement should be held by two people.
The Almanac also described another dowsing method for finding stolen or misplaced property, this time using a key and a bible. A modern key will be no good if you want to test this method, it is necessary to use one of the very old types which have a hollow stem
“To find out a thief by the key and bible. Fasten a key into a bible or book of Psalms, at the words ‘If thou sawest a thief, thou didst consent to him’, in the fiftieth Psalm. Then write out the names of each suspect on pieces of paper, and push these one at a time into the hollow stem of the key. When the culprit’s name is put into the key, the book will wag, and fall out of the fingers of them that hold it.”
Both the above methods are useful reminders of how it is possible to improvise a serviceable dowsing tool from domestic bits and pieces when you don’t happen to have your high-tech Revealer® L Rods or aura-meter to hand. S.C.
No doubt even the hardiest of our members will by now have suffered a few of the colds, aches and pains that the wonderful British winter usually sends us. However, on St Blaise’s day, February 3rd., a few churches hold ceremonies of Blessing the Throat, when hallowed candles are tied together in a cross shape and touched against the throats of sufferers. St Blaise is traditionally invoked against all throat ailments after he miraculously cured a boy who had a fishbone stuck in his throat.
“The Kalendar of Shepheardes” [1604] lists some things that are good for the throat: Honey, sugar, butter with a little salt, liquorice, soft eggs, hyssop and a mean manner of eating and drinking.
Things that are bad for the throat include: Mustard, lying on the breast, pepper, anger, things roasted, lechery, too much work, too much rest, smoke of incence, old cheese and all sour things.
Also in February, eschew all slimy fish, foggy fen fowls – [does any body know what these are?-ed], milk and suchlike food of a phlegmatic humour, that do oppilate the liver and veins and blood.
Too much chocolate at Christmas? – a good cure for toothache is “The grey worms that breed under wood or stones and having many feet. These pierce through with a bodkin and put into the tooth that acheth.”
Or, John Aubrey’s method – “Take a new nail and make the gum bleed with it, then drive it [the nail I presume], into an oak. This did cure William Neal, a very stout gentleman, when he was almost mad with the pain, and would have pistolled himself.” [Miscellanies, 1695.] S.C.