I returned from my run around the village this morning to find tree surgeons at the bottom of the garden. Well, not really our bit of the shared garden but the part that belongs to the house next door. I had been reflecting just the other day how nice it was to have the tree hiding the industrial estate behind our houses. And we have all appreciated the shade offered by the tree. And now someone had decided it needed to come down.
On investigation, I discovered that a wall separating our garden area from the industrial estate had collapsed. There was a council order that the tree had to be removed, roots and all, so that the wall could be rebuilt. Apparently the next door neighbours had been shown all the paperwork. Talking to one of the neighbours later in the morning, I was told that they had been informed about 6 weeks ago that the tree had to come down but she had no recollection of seeing any paperwork. Maybe her husband had seen it, she reflected. They’ve been a bit busy with her having been very ill so maybe things have slipped through the net. However, she would have liked to have been informed that today was the day.
Some years ago trees at the bottom of the garden area were cut down because the industrial estate people said the trees were undermining the wall - that very same wall. Whoever did the job was not very efficient because over the years those tree stumps produced new growth, leading to the current situation. It’s not going to regrow this time. The roots have been excavated! So it goes!
World Cup fever continues apace. I saw this headline this morning:
“England to get bank holiday if team win World Cup, Starmer expected to announce.
Prime minister understood to be poised to give England a day off should the nation’s team bring home the trophy for first time since 1966.”
I wait with bated breath! (Not really!)
The cyclists in the Tour de France continue to cycle in the heat. I’ll catch up withbtem later tonight. Q
I have no idea what’s going on at Wimbledon.
Granddaughter Number Two and I have spent the afternoon at the sports day at the primary school Granddaughter Number Four and Grandson Number Two attend. We moved around watching the two small people’s classes in turn participate in the sprint, the egg (tennis ball) and spoon race, the hurdles, the obstacle race and the javelin (if you can call spears made of foam javelins). It was quite a masterpiece of organisation on the school’s part. All children had to wear sun-hats and carry a bottle of water. Granddaughter Number Two and I had to be very organised also so that one of us was watching one of the children at all times.
It was very hot. Granddaughter Number Two does not cope well with the heat and complained all afternoon, protesting that it should have been cancelled or at least postponed. When they called for volunteers for a parent’ race while they totted up the scores, I thought she was going to have an apoplectic fit! She just wanted to go home. But eventually we collected the small athletes and headed for home.
To add to her misery there were roadworks outside the primary school and our bus stop was closed. We had to walk some distance to the net stop! Such is life!
Granddaughter Number Two has taken up embroidery, or cross stitch, as a hobby. I am considering buying her a kit to embroider a replica section of the Bayeux Tapestry. This would cover her interest in history as well.
Here is something I found online about the Bayeux Tapestry:
“Picture a woman in Canterbury, sometime in the 1070s, bent over a strip of linen with a needle in her hand.
Her country has just been conquered. The men who did the conquering are the heroes of the scene she's stitching. And she is going to work anyway, because the bishop who commissioned this thing, Odo of Bayeux, is William the Conqueror's half brother, and you don't say no to him.
The Bayeux Tapestry isn't actually a tapestry. A tapestry is woven. This is embroidery, wool thread pulled through linen, about 230 feet of it, telling the story of how the Normans took England in 1066.
Most scholars now agree it was made in England, probably in Kent, by English women. The needlework style matches what Anglo-Saxon embroiderers were famous for across Europe. So the conquered were stitching the story of their own conquest, panel by panel, for the man who helped lead the invasion.
And then there are the borders.
Above and below the main narrative runs a strip of smaller figures. Lions, griffins, farmers plowing, a fox and a crow acting out one of Aesop's fables. In places, naked men and women. A cleric reaching out to touch a woman's face in a scene that has puzzled historians for centuries. Bodies stripped of armor and dignity after battle.
Some of it is decoration. Some of it isn't.
The fables in the margins tend to be stories about trickery, about the strong being fooled by the clever, about promises broken. They sit directly beneath scenes of Norman triumph. Whether the embroiderers chose them or were told to include them, the effect is the same. The official story runs down the middle. Something quieter runs along the edges.
We don't know their names. We don't have a single signature, a single record of who held the needles. The tapestry survived the Reformation, the French Revolution, and Nazi interest during World War II, and it still hangs in Bayeux today.
The men on horseback got the glory.
The women in the margins got the last word.”
A little tribute to the women who stitched the tapestry.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment