Lanterns , Sweets And Silly Songs

Sonata :

Here I am , all ready for lanterns and silly songs .

The evening of St Martin's feast day is celebrated here by children who go round their neighbourhood with lanterns they've made at school .

There's giggling and shuffling feet outside and it usually begins with

"Sint Maarten , Sint Maarten , de koeien hebben staarten ,

De meisjes hebben rokjes aan , de jongens hebben sokjes aan

Heir komt Sint Martinus aan ."

Open the door and there's a circle of bright little faces , wobbly lanterns and optimistically big bags . If you're lucky , you get another silly song after you've handed over the loot . Meanies who hand over apples or mandarins , the healthy alternative , presumably get a raspberry once they've closed the door .

Lantern designs vary wildly from windmills or toadstools to goldfish . This year our playschool made these . I hope it earns them a surfeit of brightly coloured sugar and lots of praise .

P.S. The words of the song translate as

"St Martin , St Martin , the cows have tails ,

the girls have skirts on , the boys have socks on ,

here comes St Martin ."

Yes . It does sound better in Dutch ....at least it rhymes !

But I'm not sure what it has to do with a Roman soldier who ripped his cloak in two to give half to a beggar .

Remembrance Sunday

Smitonius:

Perhaps this will be too somber a post.... but I thought I would share a sad little family history story on this day of remembrance.

On both of my parent's sides there have been soldiers who found themselves caught up in WWI and, also, WWII. Some women also played their part in WWII, as one of my grandmother's was in the WAAF and the other volunteered in a military hospital whilst an army wife in Rawalpindi (now Pakistan).

My mother's grandfather survived WWI to have to go and do it all again in WWII (and he survived that too!), but some men on my father's side did not come back from France. I already knew about Major William Ernest Watson DSO (6th Dragoon Guards) who went missing in action in November 1914. His family, in hope, put a notice in The Times in February 1915 requesting information, but it was eventually concluded that he died in the Battle of Messines on 31 October 1914. William left a wife and two girls. His name is engraved on the Menin Gate. This is his portrait:

But yesterday I was reconstructing another family branch, the Beckett family (Hindon, Wiltshire), and I kept coming up against a brick wall for a Philip Arthur Beckett (born 1892). Most of the rest of the family emigrated to America in 1910, but Philip did not go with them. I checked through various photocopies that my father had sent me, and then saw a note that said a certain Arthur had been shot by a sniper as soon as he reached France.

So I checked various websites, and then all the pieces began to fit together. Philip Arthur had stayed behind because he had managed to get a place at Clare College, Cambridge. He completed his education, but in November of 1915 arrived in France with the Royal West Kent Regiment. He rose in rank from private to 2/Lieutenant and was attached to the 7th batallion by the start of 1917. I then found that C T Atkinson's history of the regiment was available online, and it states what happened on the 14th of February 1917. The batallion had had two months of respite after hard fighting in Ancre, and they then returned to the front line. Trenches, I found out, had names then: they had control of 'Desire' Trench but where trying to recapture 'Grandcourt' trench. 2/Lieutenant Beckett and another one called Dix commanded the lead platoons. Unfortunately, it all appears to have gone horribly wrong in the dark, and the casualties were 'deplorably heavy'. Although he was never found, Philip Arthur's name appears on the Thiepval memorial.

Sad, and such a waste.

I Could Be On A Winning Streak ....

Sonata:

I suspect I'm still five years old at heart. One of the local supermarket chains has a promotion ....for every 15 Euros you spend you get a little shiny bag , containing one of the characters from Snow White ....only 2"high ( or smaller , obviously , for Dopey etc. ) .

Now , I'm not five and I know that tiny bits of plastic are a Bad Thing environmentally and I promise not to accept anymore . But .... I had to look just once .... and I got Snow White !!

And now she's supervising my latest quilt for Hitty . And for anyone who was thinking , "I wouldn't have put those colours together ", before this is finished I'll have sewn around 400 of these together . It all works out in the end , you'll see .

But if I'm on this sort of lucky streak , perhaps I should have listened to the overexcited chap who's just called from "Zurich ....Switzerland ", to tell me that I'm in the final draw for a Major Prize . I might have won , who knows ? But , since I'm not five years old , I put the phone down on whats'isname from "Zurich .... Switzerland " , while wondering why he had a local accent .

Woolly All Over

Sonata:

It was 3 degrees Celsius this morning . A chill mist enveloped everything , me included , as I pedalled along the river bank to work . Perhaps it's time to embrace head-to-toe wool

and a brave face ?

or an alluring balaclava ?

My grandmother was of the opinion that one could never look one's best when one was cold so , at the very least , I ought to buy 12 balls of Sunbeam Cilicia and get cracking .

Ghostly goings on...

Smitonius:

In Bamburgh (northumberland), the church is the resting place for Grace Darling, a local heroine. But what really caught my eye was a stained glass window which illustrates a virtuous woman. Now I know my price is not far above the proverbial rubies, but, for crafty reasons, I rather liked this particular stained glass window panel:


It was far too rainy to take decent photos of Northumbrian castles, and we took refuge in a pub for a gastro lunch. There was a van parked outside with the following ghostly transfers on the doors.... erm, now we know already which of the two ghosts I might be! But I rather like the moto: 'reality is an illusion created by a lack of alcohol'.

Floating About In The Ether

Sonata:

Felled by a headache at work yesterday , I came home early and spent the rest of the afternoon under a blanket on the sofa , like a moulting owl .
I never get headaches .....not as a matter of principle , I'm just lucky and don't . If I get anything , it's a sore throat ( no smirking from those who know how much I talk ) . So I had to consult my handy Enquire Within for remedies .


I see that one " should lie down in a darkened room with a cold bandage round the head . A few drops of ether may be used on a rag and added . Cover all with oiled silk to prevent evaporation " .
Unable to face climbing back on my bike to seek either oiled silk or ether , let alone do anything so noisy as rip an old sheet into bandages , I looked again . Luckily I then read that some cases are benefited by taking a strong cup of tea or coffee .
And it works .

Bubbly on a beach

Smitonius:

On academic sabbatical this year, and one of the perks is not being tied to the schedule of meetings and classes, which means that I can accompany my partner to Northumberland for a week. Both of us are working during the day, one sorting out someone elses archives, and another catching up on reading (my challenge this week: to read a novel relevant to my research which is in Catalan, a Romance language I am not familiar with but can, with the aid of a dictionary, interpret adequately... have completed 200 pages out of 399!).

The evenings, though, are our own, and last night we dashed with a friend down to the beach at Beadnell. It was a rare evening without rain, though the sea was rough:


We toasted the three brave Guillemots that bobbed unperturbed on the crashing waves with a glass of bubbly wine.
Hope to snap a shot of a castle or two tomorrow on our return home!