Mindfulness and Candles

 

 

 

I normally conceive a blog the night before but a week last Thursday, fate took a hand. Our hub went down and we were without internet for a week. A good friend lost her internet recently, and I commiserated but without really understanding the full horror: TV, the Sonos sound system, the Hive controls for lighting and heating - all were affected. Okay, not horror. Inconvenience perhaps. 

The inconvenience began first thing in the morning before being fully awake. No Sonos amounts to no radio. I had to rummage about and find one we mercifully hadn’t recycled. And now it was time for the first strong tea of the morning, and I realised, again, how perverse human nature can be.

I remember hearing about a very old lady who regularly got up at 5.30 in the morning, made herself a cup of tea and lit a small candle. There she sat in semi darkness looking at the candle, letting her mind wander, thinking and praying for all the friends she had lost. Ian McEwan reinforced the point, lamenting the growing lack of solitude in life which allows you the time to wander through 'the garden of your mind.' 

I spend a lot of time wandering through my mind-garden, so I don’t feel too bad about the glaring inconsistency in my response to having no internet. 

Before I thoroughly wake up, I’m a slave to routine. My early hours are spent in reading the papers online, sipping tea, and listening to the news. In theory, it’s a perfect example of juggling time. In between the boring bits— interviewers discussing the mating habits of frogs —I’d sip or scroll down to an interesting headline. Recently, however, to my shame and mortification, I’ve discovered I can no longer juggle these three things at once. I can sip tea and listen to the radio or sip tea and read a newspaper article—but now all three are taxing my concentration, bit of a workout you might say, like a magpie on speed, the mind switching from radio to newspaper and back again, while the tea grows steadily colder.

Well, I thought. No internet. No online paper. Just me and tea and the radio. (Better than cold turkey – tea and a candle.)

The first item was on the Ukraine, then an interesting discussion on AI. From there it went downhill, discussions on tit warblers, obscure artists enjoying their two minutes of fame on the radio, good farming practice. I found myself staring at the sky trying to read clouds and eventually settled on an old wine catalogue, then a small advertising booklet called Monnow Voice in-between boiling the kettle.

I learnt all manner of things: the virtues of roof cleaning utilising Soft-Washing technology and anti-microbials, Hot Tubs, Acorn Triple Glazing, a Baptist Talk on Biblical Women and Equity – which sparked my interest but was a week out of date. Juggling a mere two balls was just plain tedious. I even contemplated cleaning the kitchen. But now bliss—we are connected to the world. My powers of concentration have been rested to the extreme and I’m enjoying a return to routine, mindfulness and candles just a bad dream.

The Pearl of York

 

This is the ancient street of York, mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its name, The Shambles, is derived from Shamel meaning stalls or benches where butchers laid out their meat. The street was rebuilt in 1400 and has remained largely the same, but without the dismembered carcasses. Butchers have been replaced by gift shops from the high end to Harry Potter emporia. It does however house an unexpected treasure, the house of Margaret Clitherow, known to many as the ‘Pearl of York.’ 

We are walking up to the house now, and the plaque gives you an inkling that something important happened here.

You enter into a small, intimate room with an altar at the far end, a far cry from a family home and Tudor butchers.

We’d been in there a few minutes, when a woman with her daughter entered, the young girl rightly inquisitive:

What’s a martyr, Mummy

Someone who wants to be noticed

Why did she want to be noticed?

She wanted to be a martyr.

Terse, admirable in its way, perfect for Twitter, but missing a fair bit out.

Margaret Clitherow was born around 1552, daughter of Jane and Thomas Middleton, a wax chandler and freeman of York. Aged 22 she married a staunch protestant, John Clitherow, who had no idea what life had in store when she moved in with him in the Shambles. In 1574, she converted to Catholicism influenced by the faith and quiet piety of other Catholics living their secret lives around her. From that moment on 

there was no stopping Margaret – hiding fugitive priests and providing friends and neighbours with access to the holy sacraments. 

Her uncomplaining husband remained a staunch Protestant and paid the numerous fines her activities incurred. When these failed to deter her, she suffered periods of imprisonment which also had little effect. It may be she actually relished the almost monastic regime, fasting and deprivation associated with gaol. 

Margaret, though, was no grim ascetic. She was attractive, full of wit and merriment. Reading between the lines, you sense the local community quietly sympathised with her, but as the laws against Catholics became stricter and paranoia increased, it was only a matter of time before the gloves came off.  In 1585, harbouring Catholic priests became a capital offence.

On 10^th of March 1586, her home was searched.  A terrified child revealed the secret room where a priest had been hidden. He escaped and took refuge with a neighbour. Margaret didn’t. 

She was charged with harbouring an enemy of the state but refused to plead or accept a trial by jury. In her words: ‘I know of no offence whereof I should confess myself guilty. Having made no offense, I need no trial.’

Family, friends, even Protestant preachers begged her to cooperate, but Margaret refused, and Judge George Clinch pronounced his sentence: death by crushing. 

Margaret took it calmly. ‘I feel the weakness of my flesh which is troubled at this news, but my spirit rejoices greatly. For the love of God, pray for me and ask all good people to do as well.’

On March 10^th 1586 Margaret Clitherow was taken to the toll booth on Ouse Bridge and stretched out on the ground with a sharp rock under her back and pressed to death by her own front door laden with heavy rocks. Her bones were broken, and she died within fifteen minutes, crying out ‘Jesus have mercy’ three times. While good  Englishmen quivered at tales of the Spanish Inquisition, her body was left exposed for the rest of that day.

Margaret's hand in its reliquary housed in St Mary's Convent York

Her Feast Day is on March 26 just over a week from now.

Poor John Clitherow suffered a different kind of martyrdom, staunch Protestant though he was, John had remained loyal to his equally staunch Catholic wife. Now he had lost her and was soon to lose his children who followed their mother’s faith. Ann Clitherow became a nun in a French Convent; Henry Clitherow studied to become a priest; her stepson, William,  became a seminary priest in 1608, and Thomas Clitherow died in a Hull prison in 1604 accused of anti-Protestant activities.  John Clitherow's story remains to be told. but it is the dialogue between mother and daughter  that continues to ring in my head:

She wanted to be a martyr

Why?

She wanted to be noticed.

Tik Tok history making it sound like a career choice, Martyr, up their with ‘influencer’ or ‘Celebrity,’ and the way things are going, a degree course, the profession strictly regulated and made safe.

Goblin Vomit

My gut talks to me. It often makes loud noises before or after eating a meal. Expressing dissatisfaction or gratitude it’s impossible to tell. I've never been what you might call a 'body botherer' but  I decided, at last, it was payback time for years of devoted service. 

I’m talking about gut bacteria, the key to mental health, heart health, the key to everything good from weight loss to spiritual plenitude. You can even get this good bacteria in pill form—essentially dehydrated poo from more enlightened eaters.

I’m grateful for the sterling job my stomach does but not that grateful. I decided to go for Kimchi and Sauerkraut, little plastic containers of the stuff found in my local Waitrose.

The problem is how to eat it? I dug a spoon into the Sauerkraut, held my nose and swallowed. Horrible. Horrible. The Kimchi was even worse. I’m all for fermented stuff. I like fermented stuff. Never had any trouble with beer. But this?

Goblin Vomit

 

So how to eat it? Maybe a spoonful a day, like cod-liver oil, but there’s no spoon small enough for this. Eat it with something then; what might smother a repugnant taste? Now, Sauerkraut goes well in the Polish dish, Bigos, but the recipe calls for kilos of sundry meats, and mounds of white cabbage, in which the Sauerkraut is heavily outnumbered.

 Far too complicated. 

It apparently goes well with the classic American hotdog sausage sold over here in jars, but one reading of the jar put me off. Enough nitrates there to sink a ship, the Sauerkraut a Trojan horse for everything bad, a sugar-coated cyanide pill.

Every day I wander duty-bound to the fridge, stare at the Kimchi and Sauerkraut and shut the fridge door again. Subconsciously I’m waiting for their expiry dates to come and go and then bin them with a clear conscience. Replace them with a four-pack of Guinness. My gut bacteria, I think, would approve. 

I hate to break it to Tom

Fresh from the Roald Dahl controversy, I’m wondering whether it’s about time we thought about sensitivity readers for music. There’s so much hanging fruit. A few exploratory nibbles have already been made. 

The Sun Has Got His Hat On was recorded in 1932 by Ambrose and his Orchestra, and the Henry Hall BBC Dance Orchestra. The song is a light, infectious ditty but contains a problematical line:

He’s been tanning n…… out in Timbuctu

Now he’s coming back to do the same to you. 

The fact it was recorded by the BBC Dance Orchestra illustrates how socially acceptable it was in 1932. Times changed, to a degree at least. Jonathan King released the song in 1971, changing the line to ‘He’s been tanning Negroes.’

Stephen Fry played it safe in his 1984 revival of Me and My Girl by changing it to ‘He’s been roasting peanuts.’ The ditty last made the headlines in 2014 when a BBC local radio DJ unwittingly played the original Ambrose version on his show and was forced to resign. 

Cliff Richard’s sixty-year-old Living Doll has the immortal lines: 

I’m gonna lock her up in a trunk so no big hunk 

Can steal her away from me

Got myself a walking, talking, living doll.

Disgraceful!

But it gets worse!

The Stones with their Under My Thumb

Under my thumb

It’s a squirming dog who’s just had her day

Under my thumb

A girl who has just changed her ways

As with the Stones, the Beatles: Run for your life is another song where it's hard to pick out a verse  any 

worse than the other. But in verse three, for example, we have:

Let this be a sermon

I mean everything I’ve said

Baby, I’m determined 

And I’d rather see you dead

followed by the jaunty chorus:

You’d better run for your life if you can, little girl

Hide your head in the sand little girl, 

Catch you with another man 

That’s the end little girl.

 And back to the Rolling Stones again with their Brown Sugar now ‘resting’ from their concert set lists.

Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good, babe?

Ah, brown sugar, just like a black girl should, yeah

Subsequently, Jagger changed a line ‘I hear him whip the women just around midnight to ‘You should have heard him just around midnight.’ This wasn’t enough for the music critic Tom Taylor who in 20221 declared that the song: ‘does not offer one considered thought to the subject matter that it sings of (and) the atrocity of the slave trade, rape and the unimaginable suffering therein should not be adorned with gyrating, glib lyrics, guitar solos and no redeeming features in the way of discerned appraisal.’ Umm, I hate to break it to Tom, but that’s not really the purpose of rock music. 

What muddies the waters farther is that after the song was written. two black women fought over who the song was about: Marsha Hunt, Jagger’s girl friend at the time, and a former Ikette, Claudia Lennear who was also dating Jagger at the time. Presumably, they saw something in the song that Tom Taylor didn’t, and it goes to the heart of the issue. 

All of these songs reflect the insecurities, the shallowness and the fantasies of male adolescents. It is what rock music was and is about. Today, with women playing an increasing role in Rock/Grime/Rap music you’re seeing parallel examples of misandry reflecting the same angsts and bravado of earlier male performers. 

 Back in 1966, Under My Thumb would strike a chord, one of wish fulfilment in many a pimply youth who had just been dumped. Run For Your Life is very much the mid 1960’s macho Liverpool swagger reflecting the fear of being dumped, and Brown Sugar is over-heated fantasy touching upon heroin, sadomasochism and hot sex—with an irresistible beat.

What can we say about Living Doll? Much tamer stuff, the fantasy of a nice middle-class boy crowing over having found the perfect girl who he’ll turn into an idealised 1950’s housewife. 

As for The Sun Has Got It’s Hat On, it perfectly illustrates a central fact about history: people were recognisably the same but essentially different. It’s not the job of the historian to  judge. Their job is to observe and understand.

The central question must always be why? You’re studying people, movements and ideas, not judging them by our standards, but accepting them as products of a specific time and culture. The biologist doesn’t tut-tut and wag their finger at an errant microbe or a mutant strain of Ebola. It’s studied for what it is, where it came from and why. It’s much the same for the historian or was until recent times. 

And now, because the contrast is interesting, 'Under My Thumb' played by ageing men. Creepy? or a knowing/naughty homage to the past.