When Pentagon accountant Murdoch Brown retires at 70, his wife persuades him to make an extensive European tour and to visit an unknown, distant cousin in Scotland. Excited by titbits of information from his brother who had been researching the family tree, Murdoch agrees to include Scotland in the itinerary, thinking it would be a fine way to conclude the Grand Tour. It doesn’t turn out to be uneventful.
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I feel strange writing a thank-you note to someone I see every day yet only know as the mailman. For a year, you have been boldly walking up the neatly laid apron to my red front door, but never ringing twice.
All the same, thank you for last year’s service – delivering my letters. I wish you a happy Christmas. The used, unmarked notes, enclosed are in appreciation of your performance and will help with those little extras we need at this time of year.
But, as I have taken the trouble to write you this letter, I thought I might ask a favour or two.
Last week saw a gathering at St Non’s Well on a remote part of the Pembrokeshire coast to witness a water ritual on the Feast Day of St Aiden. St Aiden, known in Pembrokeshire as St Madoc, founded the church at Haroldston West in 583 AD when he came to Wales from Ferns in Ireland as a disciple of St David. In later life, he returned to become the first Bishop of Ferns in County Wexford.
David Pepper pours St Mogue’s Holy Water into St Non’s Well watched by pilgrim and artist, Merran Coleman.
Holy water was gathered from St Mogue’s Holy Well in Ferns, Ireland (St Mogue is another name for St Aiden) on Sunday, 29 January 2023 and transported back to St Non’s by Iain Tweedale of Journeying. The water ritual on the following Tuesday celebrated the friendship of St David and St Aidan and reconnected the Wexford-Pembrokeshire Pilgrim Way.
“Three Cambridge players in bow ties and black dinner suits ostentatiously posing before a brand new Rolls Royce Silver Wraith.”
Seven-year-old Johnny Walters’ life changes when his Pembrokeshire home is bombed and he is traumatised by explosions. Simultaneously, young Uschi Heidenreich is confused and upset when she is called an SS bastard in her home Bavarian town, Selb. Ten years later, the pair meets briefly, leaving a lasting impact on them both.
As Johnny tries to overcome his severe anxiety and step away from the shadow of sinister Ollie, his former schoolboy idol, Uschi simultaneously tries to unpick the enigma of her mysterious father. Five years later in London, they meet again and embark on a long journey to unravel and resolve their individual dilemmas, together and apart.
Susan Layland said: If I had your book on my nightstand, I would not be waiting for the next instalment, I’d just turn the page and keep reading.
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The first four pilgrims led by Iain Tweedale. L to R: Cheryl Tettmar, Iain Tweedale, Jane Moffett, Karen Crussell, Joanne Reed
In a forgotten corner of Wales overlooking St Brides Bay in the garden of St Catherines stands the mythical Harold Stone, which gives its name to the local community. The monument probably dates to the Bronze Age (c. 2300 – 800 BC). The stone measures 5ft 6ins x 3ft 3ins x 2ft 6ins. Cadw means “keeping/preserving” in Welsh and CADW is the historic environment service of the Welsh Government and part of the Tourism and Culture group. It claims “the monument is of national importance for its potential to enhance our knowledge of prehistoric burial and ritual practices. It is an important relic of a prehistoric funerary and ritual landscape and retains significant archaeological potential. There is a strong probability of the presence of intact burial or ritual deposits, together with environmental and structural evidence. Standing stones are often part of a larger cluster of monuments and their importance can be further enhanced by their group value. The scheduled area comprises the remains described and areas around them within which related evidence may be expected to survive.”
Just half a mile up the Haroldston hill lies St Madoc of Ferns. It has stood resolute below the skyline in a hollow which protected it from seafaring Viking invaders fifteen hundred years ago. In 583, St Madoc from Ferns in Ireland, a compatriot of St David, founded the church. It stands on sloping ground at the head of a small river valley.
By the nineteenth century with a prosperous community of agricultural workers, the Victorians rebuilt the church substantially in 1883. They added four stained glass windows dazzling the tiled floor with reds, greens, and blues when the sun shines from a certain angle. In one window stands St Madoc, his docile face carries an enigmatic smile. He is content.
The meteorology office issued a red warning, and at four in the afternoon when the storm was fearsome, the electricity was cut off. I had been using the mobile phone at the time ignorant of the outage and had run its battery down. No mobile. Only our trusty old phone, connected directly into the phone socket, now linked us to the outside world
‘Community spirit’ is a phrase, which I had thought was overused whenever I saw it on TV news programmes about local disasters, house fires, floods, and deaths caused by out of control cars or lorries. Old ladies with benign faces would comment about how good they had been in helping a poor unfortunate victim, or a man would declare that no one suspected anything like the disaster, which had occurred, could ever happen. Yet within the first hour, neighbours called to check we were OK, so did my uncle from London, 300 miles away.
Prince Andrew was born on 19 February 1960 at Windsor Castle, the first child born to a reigning monarch since the birth in 1857 of Queen Victoria’s youngest child, Princess Beatrice
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born on 19 June 1964 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Charlotte Fawcett, (died13 September 2021) an Oxford-educated artist, being the first married female undergraduate at Lady Margaret Hall. She was supposedly a socialist who, in later life, was said to be the only red in the village when the Johnsons lived on Exmoor.
Novak Djokovic was born on 22 May 1987 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, as it was then.
His father told him a thousand times, ‘Eye on the ball and hit through it. Return, return, return,’ and no matter how many tennis coaching courses he’d received in the intervening twenty years, Yves’ mind still recalled his earliest paternal instructions.
Yves became world-class, fourth in all of France, and qualified for the finals at Wimbledon where the grass courts and the polite clapping of a crowd, more interested in strawberries and cream than the tennis, gave the impression that it was little more than a game in the park.
Whilst for many cutting the grass is a tedious and onerous task, for me mowing the lawn is a therapeutic exercise. It allows my mind to wander as the lawnmower engine chugs gently away and the blades whirr across the grass trimming it to a satisfyingly even height. Of course, grass grows everywhere and not every bit of lawn is so neatly cut as the fairways of Augusta or the square at Lords.
The windows of our house look out over a small garden lawn that I keep for best, rather like the front room my nan used to keep in her house for special occasions. And it is this small area that I love to mow often ignoring the other more awkward areas of long grass around flower beds and trees out of sight of the house.
With lively anticipation, I pull the cord and the mower kicks into life with a constant hum I commence the exercise by trimming around the edges, in a way defining the problem.
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