A winding track leads towards a tree-covered hill in the distance, under a grey, cloudy sky

A retrospective realisation from an old diary entry. A family visit to Beacon Hill, near Warnford, Hants, on 11 April 1976, after church, may have been a Palm Sunday observance. Probably my Catholic mum's idea, it seems to tune in with widespread traditions of gathering on hilltops on that day

PDFs of Olive-Drab Rebels and Harass the Brass freedomarchives.org/Documents/Fi...

Text: SPENCE'S PLAN FOR EVER

I was prompted to write this blog post by a post on the Surrey Medieval site this morning. In the course of composing I noticed I'd first shared this image with accompanying commentary on the old 'Bird site' on 7/2/2019 - exactly seven years ago today thegrammarofmatter.wordpress.com/2026/02/07/s...

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert and John Heartfield
modernismmodernity.org/articles/hak...

The Cross-Examination of Christianity Rida Vaquas on Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, the working poor, and the Cross.

On Franz Wilhelm Seiwert
churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the...

Delighted to find Seven Wells Farm on the OS 150 map (it features on the Saintbury Ley, in the Ley Hunter's Companion), the edge of which is on an alignment which includes Temple Grafton (Shakespeare's 'hungry Grafton'?). Looking forward to seeing Hamnet this week, which has its own haunted 'vibe'

The entry for 'Littywood' can be found here, in David Horovitz (2003) A Survey and Analysis of the Place-names of Staffordshire (PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham), pp.419-420
lichfieldlore.co.uk/wp-content/u...

An old map showing a place called Littywood, encircled by a moat, situated south of Furlong Lane

When I first saw this image of Littywood moated manor (Lvtiude in 1086), I thought, "Henge!" David Horovitz, in his survey of Staffordshire place-names (2003) thinks it may have developed from a prehistoric earthwork. Focus for an array of church and manor alignments, its name is 'puzzling'

First ring-necked parakeets I've ever heard at Southampton Common today. Didn't see any, though. Already seen in the last year at Riverside Park/Woodmill and Mayfield Park

Thanks for the Devereux tip! On OS sheet 150 (Worcester/Malverns) was pleased Pebworth church, Hillborough Manor & churches at Haselor, Oldberrow & Ullenhall align @ 10 miles. The line south after Pebworth goes off map. Shame the places Shakespeare names are on either side of OS 150/151. Awkward!

Honestly, it was a real revelation seeing that Shakespeare rhyme. Probably got a few Warks leys sketched out on the odd sheet of A4 in a pile somewhere (I'm sure of it, but no time to rummage). A habit of randomly picking up OS maps in charity shops of places I've never been and reaching for a ruler

Not heard of this rhyme before but an obvious source for a passage in Finnegans Wake by James Joyce - 'as strait a way
as your ant's folly me line while ye post is goang from Piping Pubwirth to Haunted Hillborough' (p. 340). I'd only taken it as an oblique reference to Watkins' 'old straight track'.

Portrait of Bill the Bard

Rhyme "describing" local vilages believed to be written by Shakespeare after he’d lost in a drinking contest at Bidford:
Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillborough, and hungry Grafton,
With Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford,
Beggar’s Broom and drunken Bidford.
#FolkloreSunday

Guerilla Birdsong YouTube video by paulglink

Guerilla Birdsong (Feat. Ronnie Ronalde)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xikS...

Ouverture-Suite, TWV 55:G10 "Burlesque de Quixotte": IV. Ses soupirs amoureux après la... YouTube video by Apollo's Fire - Topic

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN_L...

Kenneth Mgidi & His Mouth Organ - Musa Ukukhala (Violin Jive) (Go Go 503) YouTube video by WayhiTapes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_k_...

Applying historical materialism, ‘the conceptual expression of the objective social structure of capitalist society’, to non-capitalist societies naturalises capitalist social relations, mistaking purely historical categories (the economy) for ‘eternally valid ones’ www.academia.edu/39882309/Awa...

Merry Christmas and happy new Gemeinwesen

www.endnotes.org.uk/dossiers/jac...

Psalm 151 — Caesura By the light of Psalm 151, we ask, what poet, writing now, is so ready for catastrophe as Rachel Blau DuPlessis? What living poet can so masterfully take up the Lurianic myth of the Breaking of the Ve...

caesuramag.org/posts/rachel...

Hal Foster · Tightrope of Hope: Surrealism v. Fascism The Surrealists saw colonialism and imperialism as intrinsic to fascism, and from start to finish they campaigned...

‘As Adorno saw it, Surrealist art had been compromised by postwar conditions: made of “world-rubble”, the montages of Surrealism created only “nature morte”; “After the European catastrophe the Surrealist shocks lost their force.”’

Hal Foster on Surrealism v. fascism: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Cast iron circular finial of a road sign, bearing the legend, HAMPSHIRE WHEELY DOWN

A Bronze Age barrow at Wheely Down, which has been under the plough for many years, is just about perceptible as a bump on the skyline, in line with a trig pillar just over the horizon.

Liminal topographies: the guide post at Wheely Down which may have inspired the eponymous Richard Thompson song and the nearby Bronze Age barrow, implicated with UFO landing sites and an epic cross-country trip of Fairport Convention. In Northern Earth, Issue 182 northernearth.co.uk/product/nort...

T. W. Adorno likened his encounter with Ernst Bloch's first major work, The Spirit of Utopia (Geist der Utopie), to his memory of reading a grimoire as a child. Reading this piece offers other implications to Adorno's concept of mediation: for every mediation a medium!
brill.com/view/journal...

Adam Mars-Jones · Selective Luddism: On Alan Garner Children’s books revisited in later life may disappoint, but they are immune to the embarrassment associated with...

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Emblem of 'Eternitas' (Eternity) from Henry Peacham's Minerva Britanna (1612). A long-haired, female figure (who is suspended in mid-air over a harbour) holds up two orbs, encircled by her long tail, emblazoned with stars

To be the midpoint of triple Nature, to move all things,
You attach the soul and diffuse it through adapted members;
and Soul, cut in two, has globed its motion in two orbs,
goes forth to return to itself, turns about the depth
of mind, and curves the heavens to a like pattern - Boethius

publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebook...