averilburystedmunds: News from Nowhere

William Morris
1834-1896.

Strawberry Thief.
A William Morris design.

I wrote the above title without much thought, intending to write a blog on several small items, noticed or experienced by me but chiefly unconnected to each other. It was a title to suggest Odds ‘n’ Sods, already used previously. BUT News From Nowhere is a famous title of a novel written by William Morris, that prolific writer; poet; designer of carpets and cloth; artist looking back nostalgically to the Middle Ages; leader of the Pre-Raphaelites; social reformer with a formidable work ethic and actor. In his relatively short life, 1834-1896, he gathered a huge accumulation of achievements and remains a well-known name today. His designs for furniture, fabrics, stained glass, wallpaper and other decorative arts generated the Arts and Crafts movement in England.

First edition,
News From Nowhere.

His utopian News From Nowhere, published in 1890 as a series, imagines a future in which common ownership and the democratic control of the production of life’s necessities are based in a pastoral paradise where people find pleasure in nature and in their work. The book explores the organisation of society and the relationships that society engenders, tackling a common criticism of socialism, the supposed lack of incentive to work in a communist society. So, my title is borrowed, but not stolen!

'Borrowed' from The New
Statesman, 15-21 July 2022.

My list of sights and sounds, unrelated to each other but catching my attention this week, must begin with the ghastly Conservative Leadership contest which goes on and on, It also happens to be a process to choose the next Prime Minister for the 60 million or so of us uninvolved save for the forced witnessing of the populist theatre being frantically played out by two people [one, able; one, less so] each, no doubt, quietly promising Cabinet seats in the future for public support now. It is not a pretty spectacle nor is it a just and civilised way to choose a country’s leader.

Much more interesting and beautiful is the present state of the Great Churchyard stretching in an abundance of headstones from St Mary’s into the Abbey Gardens. I was astonished yesterday,[3/08/2022] to see that overnight, the tall dead or dying grasses and seed heads wreathing round and hiding the stones, had all disappeared, scythed to the ground by unknown hands to reveal far more headstones than I had thought possible. Dramatic and oddly touching to see so many quiet memorials to past lives. The earliest reference to this same churchyard [once part of the Abbey of St Edmund] is in 1197 when Jocelyn of Brakelond, the great chronicler of the Abbey, commented that wrestling bouts between the Abbey’s servants and the townspeople in the cemetery, led to bloodshed. It is now perpetually serene. On my early morning walks, I often go along an avenue lined with trees leading to the West Front and stopped, months ago, to read one tombstone adjacent to the path and only partially covered by earlier cow parsley. It bears the names and dates of William and Harriet Chapman who lived in

A view of part of the Great Churchyard after
the great mowing earlier this August week.

Austenian times and seem to me to have had the perfect names for early, early nineteenth century Bury St Edmunds. I nod in recognition and greeting each time I pass!

I live in anticipation of a hosepipe ban in the present drought though perhaps, fear would better describe my feelings. I water with a hosepipe from a water butt; all technically correct in these climate change times BUT the fact is that I now have to stagger out with four bucketsful of water each morning as the original plan to harvest rainwater in my politically and environmentally correct water butt, does not work in a drought. Times are hard and difficult decisions lie ahead; water as usual but at 4.30 a.m. when all neighbours are abed, or let my beautiful plants die.

My water butt which would provide my Green
credentials were it ever to rain!

Last week I was 88. I knew that the supremely lucky number for the Chinese is 8 so I went online to check, hoping that 88 might mean double the luck. Not for the first time, China disappointed me. 8 remains the luckiest number in Chinese culture, BUT 88 symbolises good fortune and luck. By happenstance, I also discovered an interesting fact should I ever have to appear in a quiz! The 2008 Beijing Olympics opened at 8.00 p.m. on the 8 August [8/08/2008]. I tried to ignore the fact that the Nazi abbreviation for Heil Hitler was 88, H being the eighth letter of the alphabet, and comforted myself with the thought that Hitler lasted less than twenty years while Chinese superstitions span centuries!