365 Project, week 36

[curiouswombat]

The week has gone by quickly. It has included at least one of those meetings where you find yourself thinking 'Well that's an hour and a half I'm never getting back...' a lovely meal out, changeable weather.

The pictures reflect some of this, but not all of it. There is one which will gladden hesadevil's heart, remembering her post about 'guys', and there is quite a long bit about Remembrance Sunday as well.



Last week cbtreks, from northern Indiana, commented on how nice it was to still see flowers in these posts both on my journal and debris4spike's. So, at lunch time on Monday, I went out to the yard and looked at what was still in flower. I have three or four geraniums still in bloom, a couple of roses, a verbena, and two fuchsias, not to mention cyclamens and wallflowers that are just starting to open.

This is a close up of one of the fuchsias. not a brilliant picture, but the colours are so vibrant that I really like it.



Tuesday - I went up to the small industrial estate where our equipment store is. The drive way down has the usual bushes and trees, but also a number of clumps of pampas grass. I am not sure if this was someone 'landscaping' the industrial site with a quirky sense of humour (or a stock of the stuff they wanted rid of), whether it is self-seeded, or whether the people who previously had a farm on the land planted it in their garden and the new road down goes through it... But we have bare trees and pampas grass:



The weather all week has been a mixture of sunshine and showers - almost spring-like in the way it has switched from one to the other in seconds. Good weather, I thought on Wednesday, for rainbows - and then looked up as I went past the couple of open fields between Onchan and Douglas - and lo! There was a rainbow -



I saw an even better one yesterday, but wasn't anywhere that I could easily stop to get the camera out.

Thursday was November 5th when Britain generally remembers that a group or Catholics failed to blow up the Protestant Parliament in Westminster over 400 years ago. Celebrating the even was compulsory, by decree, until the middle of the nineteenth century - bonfires were to be lit and much fun was to be had by all - or else! Which probably explains why the Isle of Man joined in, even though it wasn't our direct parliament. That, and the ease at which the bonfires for the Old New Year and Sauin (Samhain) could simply be moved by a day or two...

Anyway, we happily joined in the bonfires, fireworks when they became part of things, and the stuffing of old clothes to form a 'Guy' to burn on the top of it all. I don't think I had any idea why the figure was called a guy until I was at secondary school, it just was. It was as common here to see children standing outside shops begging for 'A penny for the guy' as it was in mainland UK - even though we'd all made plenty of pocket money at Hop tu Naa singing from house to house. But, as in the UK, this has almost disapeared - as an article hesadevil linked to in her journal pointed out. And then, on Thursday afternoon I called into the shop on a council estate in Douglas and here were two young lads with their guys.

OK - not brilliant - but they even had the 'traditional' pram to push one of them in!

They were more than happy to have their picture taken -



Friday I was travelling over the mountain road. The clouds hung just above my head, but it was clear looking down towards Laxey - and the greens, yellows and purples of earlier seasons have now given way in swathes to the brown of dry bracken -



I liked the pattern of the fields below, too - it reminded me of a small boy at church who has patterns clipped into his hair.

On Friday evening my sister and I, along with another four representatives of our Church, went to Ramsey to join our sister uRC as they celebrated 175 years as a congregation and 125 years in their church which a lot more traditional than ours. It is worthy of note that when they committed to erecting that building there were only 45 members - as my sister said, a real act of faith.

We celebrated, in true Manx fashion, with a good feed and good cooish. The history of the congregation was recounted, with most emphasis on the last sixty years or so, by people who remembered - and each of the 'official' speakers then invited everyone to add their own memories of that period - real history. We were also entertained by a couple of members of the congregation telling silly stories and reading poems - all over by 10pm and a good night had by all 80 or so of us!

I went to Mum's on Saturday - and one of her Christmas cactii has decided to burst into flower during the past week. It is a bit early...



Today is, of course, Remembrance Sunday. We always start our Sunday worship with the silence, the reading of the names on our memorial, and the laying of a wreath. (Hmm - those who read Brotherhood and the service to remember the fallen elves can make of the similarity what they will...)

This year we made it a family service, with the children participating, and it was the most moving of services. So many of the congregation came up to those of us who took part to say so afterwards, too.

I just want to share the bit I did - I gathered together cards for all occasions - new baby, birthday, Mothers's day, wedding anniversary, wedding, 21st Birthday and so on - and we talked through the life of Joe who was born in a cottage in Marown in 1878, which cards he would have got during his life, which ones he might have given, where he lived when he got married - cards he might have given his wife. Then another young man, Walter, who was born in 1900 and lived in Windsor Road in Douglas; what cards he might have got or given - did he remember his mother's birthday? And so on. Except that he never got any 21st birthday cards. For both Joe and Walter we finishing with a Sympathy card - because they died in 1918, and you can see their names here on the memorial in Church -



JD Cretney, and W Kewley...


..................................................


And now I must go to finish off dinner - there is a casserole in the oven, I just need to do potatoes to go with it - and be grateful that I am here, and I have food to eat, in peace.

Comments

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

Lovely fuschia!

I miss being at church on remembrance day, but we wouldn't be there today, anyway; I'm sick from the combination of dental work and painkillers and flu shot, maybe. And on the 11th itself, since nobody's got school, we'll be weaning calves here.

Julia, remembering anyway

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

There is a pale pink fuchsia still in bloom too - it is a hanging one that I miss-planted and kept wondering why it drooped over... Now it is in a pot on the end of the shelves by the wall, and 'hangs' over the edge!

Ugh - dental work and pain-killers - not my favourite at all.

I have just been sitting eating my dinner watching the march-past at the cenotaph with tears in my eyes.

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

Two hours of crown prep, two and a half for the root canal, because the tooth refused to go numb. There are finger-mark bruises on my jaw that still hurt, and my upper back is hammered butI don't dare take any analgesics today because my stomach is very unhappy. UGH.

My hardy fuschias got hammered in Friday's hail storm, and need moved to a more sheltered position. Unfortunately the Manchild got stuck being a shoulder to cry on during a coworker's break-up until seven this morning, so my able hand is currently zonked out; luckily today is his day off.

Julia, hoping thisnastyweather is all system-clearing and December will not be snowy.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Ooh - ouch!

My fuchsias are fairly wind-proof - the one out the front would be there with the cockroaches after a nuclear holocaust I think, and the ones out the back are fairly sheltered.

No wonder your able hand is zonked out - poor lad.

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

Great photos as usual. It's surprising how many of your flowers are still blooming - all of the flowers around here have gone already and it's freezing in the mornings...

Loved the idea for the remembrance service. Always such a sad thing to reflect on those who died so young.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It's the Gulf Stream... even the triffid-fuchsia out the front is covered in flowers, despite S2C's best efforts to kill it!

The minister, Wilma, who took the service had been really worried when we said, as Elders, that we wanted it to be a family service - and yet it was just wonderful.

Mind you, the number of e-mails flying backwards and forwards between four of us to make sure we had a bowl of water to drop pebbles in, the words to 'Let there be peace on Earth', and a whole lot of other things was quite high! Goodness knows how we'd have coordinated it without the wonders of the internet!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

That one with the pampas grass came out really well - I was so pleased with it.

When you look at the colours in my garden there is a lot of pinks to purples - it's a real girly garden really!

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

Great photos, as always. I love the view (looked up your Mountain Road on googlemaps - I can see why it doesn't need any other name!), and it's good to see that a few guys still exist.

I missed our war memorial service, sadly; it's the last vestige of my C of E-going and I do try to get there. If anything, it becomes more important as I age past all those uncles and cousins we lost.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The mountain road is the quickest route from Douglas/Onchan to Ramsey and much of the north - so a route I travel a couple of time most weeks, and I really love being up there, even when the cloud base is a couple of hundred feet below me and I'm driving in a cloud.

As for the service and the age of those on the memorials - the children thought that Joseph D. Cretney was very old to still be a soldier - and yet, to me, he was really quite young all of a sudden.

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Crazily enough, I still have flowers blooming. My latest coneflower is blossoming, as are my "Heritage" rose and my Sweet Alyssum.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It is lovely when they keep blooming well into winter - something to look at!

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

The view is simply gorgeous and what a lovely way to remember those lads. I haven't been to a Remembrance service in such a long time [church for me has rather become a thing of the past in recent years] but this year I did officially take on the poppy collect for our hamlet though I've been doing it unofficially for years. I'm waiting now for that little card which tells me whether I did better than last year!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The view from the mountain road is one of those things I see so often - and I do appreciate it, but it is good, sometimes, to stop the car, get out, and actually look!

Apart from my bit about the names on the memorial, we had crepe paper poppy petals floating onto water and pebbles, as little pieces of love, dropped into a big flat bowl by, first, the children and then the adults so we could see the ripples, as well as serious readings - my sister said she needed tissues almost all the way through...

I collect for Christian Aid; we don't need house to house for the poppies - we have ex-soldiers sitting in the doorways of all the big shops, and boxes on the counters of all the small ones.

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

That's a beautiful fuchsia! Wow, the purple middle is amazingly vibrant.

A note of trivia re: Guy Fawkes... it was one of my distant ancestors who was the Lord High Magistrate that sentenced him. I'm not sure what the actual relation is... there's sections of the family tree that have been lost through the years, but he's a distant relative of some sort.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The fuchsia is just in a pot out under the pear tree - sometimes rather overshadowed by the paler, more showy, ones - but it does have lovely 'underskirts'.

As for the Guy Fawkes connection - that is really fascinating. I have a lot of very ordinary farmers and farm labourers in my family tree...

[keswindhover.livejournal.com]

My violets have started blooming again - madness.

And I remember the kids begging for a penny for the guy, but not with any huge affection. Making a guy and burning it, on the other hand... whee!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Plants just seem to be confused these days.

I am not inordinately fond of the 'penny for the guy' tradition - it was just odd to see some so soon after P's post!

I used to love it when we built a bonfire on the waste ground beside the house next door, as children, and have fireworks on the wall, and a couple of rockets in milk bottles - long time ago!

[keswindhover.livejournal.com]

And I burnt my eyebrows off setting fire to a failed rocket that landed in our garden. Those were the days!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Oh - I never managed to do anything as exciting as that!

[evilawyer.livejournal.com]

That is some bright fuschia!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I guess it's why they call that colour fuchsia pink! Although I really like the colour of the 'underskirts' even more.

[hesadevil.livejournal.com]

The guys are definitely 21st century versions of the ones of my childhood. They look as though they're based on characters from horror films. And the children are definitely too young to buy their own fireworks with the 'pennies' they collect.

Love the pampas and trees shot. It's a great viewpoint and looks almost as though the camera were set on black and white. Very dramatic.

Your island may be small but it's beautiful in every season.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I have seen better guys... there again I've seen even worse! I would guess the money would actually have gone on sweets from the shop - they had about £2 or £3 each.

I like the pampas grass one too.

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

All lovely, but I particularly like those two boys and the fuchsia, whose colors are almost unreal.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I have a soft spot for fuchsias - and our weather seems to suit them. I have a couple of pale pink ones, but that one is possibly my favourite, colour wise.

[melegyrn.livejournal.com]

I do enjoy your pictures. It's something I look forward to now on Sunday. This week I especially liked your photo from the mountain road. And the flower pictures are so welcome. We've not had a "killing" frost yet but there are not many flowers hanging on, although I think I have a few brave Basket of Gold flowers still.

I used to work with a woman from London who would always come in to work on Nov. 5 reciting the rhyme about Guy Fawkes. She told me how the day was celebrated. I remembered the other day and missed her not being there to talk about it. So I much appreciated your post, and the picture of the boys with their "Guys".

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It's my pleasure. The trip along the mountain road is one I do regularly and I am always aware (except when the cloud base is so low that I am driving in thick mist!) of the beauty of the views. But I don't often stop and take the camera out.

I usually have some flowers all through the winter - I must take the camera out into the garden in Christmas week. There are usually cyclamens or wallflowers at that time.

Everyone says that they are rather inferior 'guys' these days - although ours weren't all that brilliant - I remember packing a pair of my grandfather's pyjama trousers with screwed up newspaper and a similarly stuffed old shirt of my dad's stitched to it with great big tacking stitches to hold it all together. A head made out of a stuffed brown paper bag with a face drawn on finished him off - not exactly high art!

[quinara]

I love that fuchsia! And the very Halloweeny guy.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Fuchsias do well here - that one lives in a tub out in the back yard.

I thought it was rather a sensible bit of recycling to use up the halloween mask for a guy - beats the brown paper bag with a face drawn on it that I remember from making guys as a child!

[quinara]

sensible bit of recycling

Though presumably the masks will burn rather toxically...

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

I've never seen a "real" fuschia before, just the crayon with its name. So it was quite a shocking treat!

Here we call Remembrance Day Veterans' Day, and, as more people in living memory remember World War II and all the wars after that, it's more a memorial to WWII soldiers than anyone else. Though soldiers from previous wars and later wars shouldn't be forgotten either. :)

I found a paper model of a Guy Fawkes mask free to download. It may be a little difficult for less crafty posters here, but by following the PDO file (which requires the free downloadable software Pepakura) you can figure out where all the folds are. So, for crafty LJers with some time on their hands, here's a mask for next year: http://kimpix.net/2006/11/25/guy-fawkes-paper-craft-mask/

P.S.: I also found a simpler mask of a Doctor Who Cybershade and one of David Bowie! Here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/misc/advent08/december_13 and here: http://www.bowiewonderworld.com/downloads/wallpaper/bowiemask.jpg

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Fuchsias grow well here - that one is in the classic colours but I also have one which is all pale pink.

As you can see we have the dead of both the big wars on the memorial and, on the one in the village and the one in Douglas, there are dead from more recent conflicts - Northern Ireland and Korea if I remember rightly.

[gillo]

Good pictures, as always. We still have a few flowers left, but it was frosty last night, and a lot of leaves turned suddenly, so I suspect some of the flowers will be looking a bit sad by now.

We have a full Remembrance service as school assembly actually on the 11th, with a wreath for our memorial board which is next to the library, itself built by subscription in the late 40s as the school's new war memorial - the original WW1 memorial was destroyed in the bombing in 1941. (The school survived the famous big raid but was gutted by incendiaries a year later.)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

That very fact about the destruction of the WW1 memorial in WW2 must really bring it home to pupils even today.

We haven't had a frost yet - but they are rarer here - we probably won't get one until December. Now that's tempting fate!

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

I love that second shot with the pampas grass-- very striking!

Also I'm impressed that you still have some flowers. Mine pretty much gone, though I do have a few leggy pansies in the pot by my front door...

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

There are still a few spots of pink in my garden (I have come to the conclusion that it is a very 'girly' garden - high on pink!) - but I am not sure if the pansies are going to bother this year, or whether they are past it

[appomattoxco.livejournal.com]

Just wanted you to know that you've rewired my brain. My sister asked me if I knew somebody who wanted to give a little ginger Manx a home and it took me minute to think "cat."

Now if it were only so easy to bi-pass the CP part of said brain!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Hee! Here is a little ginger Manx in the icon...!

[meaghann.livejournal.com]

The pagan in me is fascinated by Hop-Tu Naa. I went and looked it up on Wikipedia and the word cooish. It's a whole new world. I found you by way of tx_cronopio, hi from another islander, at least Vancouver Island that is, hehe :)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Hello! Welcome!

I did a post about Hop-tu-Naa a few years ago - here (http://curiouswombat.livejournal.com/42747.html#cutid1) - you might find it interesting. Also, I am really pleased to meet someone from Vancouver Island - I heard a lot about it from a much travelled elderly Manx lady (http://curiouswombat.livejournal.com/4298.html#cutid1) a few years ago. So many Manx emigrants went there - possibly because it is an island - that if we dug down far enough we might well find that we were related!