Category Archives: ramblings

music, personal, ramblings

A Secular Carol

Yesterday morning I happened into BBC Radio 3’s Breakfast show just after 08:30 – well actually I blame the alarm clock! Between two pieces of very mainstream classical music the presenter Petroc Trelawny played what he described as a secular carol. It was rather entrancing, but I didn’t catch what it was. And oh dear, it isn’t listed in the online playlist (it is now!). A quick email to Radio 3 got a very prompt answer …

It turned out to be the Halsway Carol, performed by a group called The Neighbours on their (short) album Winter (2020). The lyrics are by Iain Fisk, melody by Nigel Eaton. And no wonder it was entrancing as Eaton is listed online as “internationally renowned Hurdy Gurdy maestro”. It goes like this:

Lo for the tiding of the long night moon
Let the sunrise call about the morning soon
Short is the biding of the fading light
Sing for the coming of the longest night

North wind tell us what we need to know
When the stars are shining on the midnight snow
All of the branches will be turned to white
Sing for the coming of the longest night

A winter day, the summer grass turned hay
Frost in the field ’til the dawn of May
A summer’s light never shone as clear or as bright
So dance in the shadows of a winter’s night

Lo for the tiding of the long night moon
May the harvest last until the springtime bloom
Home is our comfort at the winter’s height
Sing for the coming of the longest night

All of the colours of the sunrise sky
Shine a light upon us, as the day goes by
Sun-setting shadows fading out of sight
Sing for the coming of the longest night

A winter day, the summer grass turned hay
Frost in the field ’til the dawn of May
A summer’s light never shone as clear or as bright
So dance in the shadows of a winter’s night

The Neighbours’ album Winter is available as a download from Amazon; it’s altogether a rather nice 30 minutes seasonal folk music. However I can find out nothing about the band.

There are quite a number of renditions of the Halsway Carol on YouTube, and I’ve listened to several. After The Neighbours’ version, I prefer this one from Jackie Oates.

And, just for my Godparents, there’s also a version on Northumbrian pipes. There’s also some basic sheet music online.

An unexpected delight! But who can tell me about The Neighbours?

ramblings

Monthly Quotes

It’s time again for our monthly round up of recently encountered quotes.

When you’re dead, you don’t know you’re dead. The pain is felt by others. The same thing happens when you’re stupid.
[unknown]

The world is full off horrible things that will eventually get you and everything you care about. Humour and laughter is a universal way to lift your head up and say: “Not today you fuckers”.
[Billy Connolly]

We agreed that the true enemy of man is not man. Our enemy is not outside of us. Our true enemy is the anger, hatred, and discrimination that is found in the hearts and minds of man.
[Thich Nhat Hanh, on his friendship with Martin Luther King]

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
[JRR Tolkien]

The finest clothing made is a person’s skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.
[Mark Twain]

Time to remember the best voting advice I have heard – voting isn’t marriage – it’s public transport. You are not waiting for the one who is absolutely perfect. You are getting the bus. And if there isn’t one going exactly to your destination, you don’t stay at home and sulk you take the one going closest to where you want to be.
[unknown]

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.
[Isaac Asimov]

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
[George Orwell]

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
[Blaise Pascal]

Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
[Richard Feynman]

In capitalism, freedom is 80 brands of circus peanut.
[MK, @qualia.bsky.social]

It’s quite rewarding watching KCs, rather than journalists, go after politicians. They’re much better at it. No need to cultivate contacts, no requirement to ensure balance, no pressure to let them talk so they’ll come on the show again – just cutting right through the bullshit.
[Ian Dunt; https://iandunt.substack.com/p/matt-hancocks-broken-half-formed]

Some men improve the world only by leaving it.
[Oscar Wilde]

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
[Jimmy Carter]

Most of us have forgotten that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, it means that we have lost our connection to ourselves.
[unknown]

There are places, just as there are people and objects and works of art, whose relationship of parts creates a mystery, an enchantment, which cannot be analysed.
[Paul Nash]

arts, history, ramblings

Christmas Stamps

Royal Mail have released this year’s Christmas stamps, and yet again we’ve managed to create a perfectly horrible, ever more nauseatingly religious, set of designs – which isn’t helped by this ubiquitous barcode.

UK 2023 Christmas Stamps
This year’s British Christmas stamps
[Click the image for a larger view]

Royal Mail had (at least until recently) a policy of alternating religious and secular themes year-by-year. This seems to have gone by the board as the last five years’ designs have all been religious.

Yes, I know Christmas is supposed to be a religious festival, and this is a nominally Christian country. However it would be really good to (a) have some stamps celebrating the pagan Yule – or Roman Saturnalia which provided much of the Christian festivity – and (b) some decent, simple designs.

We’ve had special Christmas stamps every year since 1966 (thanks to the then Postmaster General, Tony Benn, whose idea it was). But to my mind there have been few really good designs. From all the years, perhaps the one I like best – for their clean simplicity – are the ones from 1980.

UK 1980 Christmas Stamps
1980

With 1969, 1973 and 1993 following on (not necessarily in that order).

UK 1969 Christmas Stamps
1969
UK 1973 Christmas Stamps
1973
UK 1993 Christmas Stamps
1993

As for the rest, they span the range from merely OK to abominably awful.

Not that other countries’ stamps are necessarily any better, although many are.

ramblings

Fediverse Test

I’m testing a way to add this blog to the fediverse, so it becomes visible to services like Mastodon, and can be followed by users from their fediverse server.

If you see this post on a fediverse server, and wish to follow this Zen Mischief blog, then search for @zenmischief.com (to pick up all new posts and pages) or @kcm (to pick up only those posts/pages I create – which is likely to be all of them).

This post is to check if this works; there is no significant content beyond the above.

Here’s an image to see how that works.

test image of a scented geranium

That’s all.

history, ramblings

On this Day in 1923

Our monthly look at what happened 100 years ago.

On this day, 3 August 1923 …

Vice-President Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as the 30th President of the United States as a result of the sudden death of President Warren G Harding in San Francisco the previous day

Photo from PBS