Tales of Home

{{ took a quick wander round my childhood play fields. In particular the fields around the village I grew up in, and Adams Grave, as its locally known, a neolithic chambered cairn. Theres still a full chamber under the mound, though long since robbed out. On the surface all that remains are the two entry pillars, the collpased roof of the entrance, part of one side wall and various strewn stones.







(if you pause at 3.42 you can see the housing scheme I grew up in, and the farm the road leads to you can see at 3.36 is where I spent many a happy childhood summer helping out with lambing and dipping and occasionally watching chickens get their heads chopped off with an axe on the block! It was very different then though, most of the buildings you see didn't exist, there was the one old farmhouse at front and the shepherds cottage behind and two big barns and that was it. Ah old McColl the shepherd and is brilliant but very dangerous sheep dog Mick- tired to take my arm off on one occasion, fortunately my very thick all weather jacket stopped his teeth getting to flesh or he'd have had my arm off) He was never without a pipe in his mouth MccColl, had the weathered leathery skin of a man who spent his days on hillsides and was as kind a person as Ive ever met.)

It dates from about 3,500bc. But its not the oldest stuff I used to play in, at the foot of the hill known (from its shape) locally as Camels Hump, but officially as the Dunan, is a settlement that was occupied up until the late medieval period, but began an astonishing 6,500 years ago (based on dating charcoal found in the oldest hearths).

You dont really consider when youre a kid the sheer antiquity of these places, but they always had an allure, a strange mystery hanging about them. The atmosphere in such places is, odd. Closest I can think to it is the sense you get entering a cathedral. Even though there is no impressive architecture to look at. It's in the air. }}

It's a barrow down!  You're lucky you weren't scooped up as a kid.

{{ One of the reasons I love the whole Bombadil barrow bit is I could picture exactly what they looked like, and then go to similar places when I put the book down. No wights though, its the faery folk you got to watch out for, they are perilous.  

But in a sense youre not wrong Halfy, these type of barrows which also dot England were exactly the sort of thing Tolkien had in mind, and as I mentioned elsewhere the dates between when the neolithic barrow mounds were raised and Tolkien's time almost exactly matches the time between the Shire being part of the old north Kingdom and Frodo's time.

I'd suspect places like Weyland's Smithy and the Hoar Stone in Oxfordshire where some of Tolkiens inspiration too-




}}

"watching chickens get their heads chopped off with an axe on the block!"

that explains everything.

{{ We also used to hand rear the lambs who were rejected by their mothers, or the mother had died in birth. So they were put in a small pen and we'd go hand feed them from bottles every day- then at the end of the summer we'd help load them onto the slaughter van.
It sounds harsh, especially for kids, but McColl the shepherd was very good at making us understand why these things happened, pointing out not least that had we not taken them in and fed them they'd have died cold, alone and slowly starving on a hillside months earlier. Plus on a Sunday there was a 50/50 chance I was going home to a lamb chop dinner, so I understood well the farm to table process.
The chicken thing was a bit more of a shock the first time, as it was unexpected. He had a few too many chickens and one was for the pot therefore, so he just grabbed one, on the block, whack . The thing about chickens running about when you chop their heads off is sort of true, they dont run about, but they do kind of spin round on the ground with their legs going and wings flapping for about half a minute or so. I wasn't too keen on that I have to admit, but then again I also ate a lot of chicken in my youth so would have been rather hypocritical to complain. }}

that story about the lambs makes me want to go vegan.

{{ Well lets just say we quickly learned it was a bad idea to give them names!

But those lambs had no future, left to nature theyd have been dead a few days after birth at most, least this way they got 1 summer of carefree life before the end, might not be ideal but its better than dying alone on a hillside.
The cost of hand rearing them, theres was usually about 4-8 lambs in this position every season, was way too high and their worth only diminishes as they age in terms of being food. And had they been turned lose theyd have died at that age out on their own. So what do you do?

And if everyone is vegan we dont really need that many sheep, just for wool which doesnt get good prices so rather than at least 1 summer of life, they'd never exist at all. And of course those lambs going for slaughter helped pay for stuff like winter feed for the rest of the sheep, keeping them alive through winter.

Its the economics of farming.

Ive always been of the view if you are going to eat meat then you have to accept the process. }}

{{ if it makes you feel better Figg there was a way to save some of the lambs that were rejected by their mothers, but its also sort of a bit macabre.
What you do is you get a lamb that has died during birth or is still born, then you skin it and you tie that skin onto the orphaned lamb and then the mother who lost her lamb recognises the scent and adopts the stray as her own, eventually the 'fake' skin falls off by which time the lamb is either big enough to manage, or already accepted by the mother sheep and they both live happily ever after. }}

Lovely view from the top of my street overlooking the Indian Ocean

color in the trees like autumn. Is that permanent or are they actually changing with the season?

thats gorgeous

{{ I can feel the heat radiating out from that picture! }}

halfwise wrote:color in the trees like autumn.  Is that permanent or are they actually changing with the season?

Just started winter here in Australia.

There's been some massive forest fires in Canada, and for the last few days a big high pressure has funnelled the smoke down making New York have the worst air quality of all the major cities in the world.  On Tuesday before I heard the news I smelled smoke and wandered the neighborhood trying to figure out which building was on fire.  Yesterday around 3 pm I looked out the window and wondered if I had fallen asleep until 8 pm.



Satellite image the day before the smoke reached us.

{{ Weather has been glorious here last couple of weeks, been getting in a few walks, everything is so green and lush though the water levels are starting to run low. }}





{Ive never seen the bottom of this pool before let alone the branches that have been caught down there for god knows how long, normally its so deep the bottom is lost in pitch blackness}





















{ I think I must be a bi tlike how Bilbo describes Frodo, as even after all these years I'm still in love with little woods and streams. I think thats why I've never had a huge desire for travel. I still havent seen everything here yet! }}

Looks almost tropical.

"sorry about the hill" thats great.

Lovely pics. Love that sort of stuff.

Looks almost tropical.- Halfy

{{ Nah, we keep tropical for the shore line! (excuse the smudges, I didnt notice lens was dirty as was so bright I couldnt actually see the screen }}

Crikey that's not how I imagined Scotland, its looks like the South of France.

You may have moisture in the lens. I know mine does and will be ordering some dessicant packs to deal with it. Right now I can't take a decent photo of anything.

{{ Um turns out more a case of no lens at all, well there is a lens, but the glass cover has um, apparently shattered and smashed into bits and the camera now stares out a jagged hole! I may recall the crabbit moment that induced, but tricky through the buckie haze to pick the exact one....   }}

View from the bottom of the street.
Nice little park with duck pond.

{{ Lovely park, but you Aussies just cant be trusted round any sort of body of water can you?! }}

I got similar sort of plants in my back yard Petty.