Yes, I didn't make that one up. I've just read a ghastly article about a man who went into not one, but TWO supermarkets today and 'sprayed' the fruit and veg stands using - wait for it - a piece of plastic tubing/rubber hose.

Honestly, life gets more like Withnail and I every day.....

[Originally I watched that film thinking the title was Witch Nail and I...]

On the weekend I made the most of the lovely weather and took a few photos. Looking at them now, it's hard to believe how hot it was then. Now I am sitting here, wrapped up in a cardigan and outside it's just the usual rain and white skies....

This little flower, the Toadflax grows on walls, in tubs etc and is usually considered a weed. But look at it closely and it's like a miniature pansy or viola, no wonder people thought of it as a fairy flower! But the name, may of course mean something else entirely. 'Toad' could be a corruption of the germanic word 'Tod' which means death. So 'Toadstool' is sometimes thought to mean 'Tod Stuhl' i.e. the seat of death.

Now for something a little less sinister:

This lovely jasmine grows around the arch in my garden. When it is finished flowering, the wild roses will be just about ready to bloom.

Our dogs are relieved the hot weather is over, because none of them liked it very much. Only Homer likes to lie in the sun so when I was taking photos he was out in the garden with me, looking photogenic...

Here you can see him striding purposefully towards me.... and in the following photo you can see him at his most cajoling....

Happy days!

I was amazed to read the other day that some schools are going to try teaching in eight minute chunks as a way of keeping pupils' attention. I seem to have missed something here. Children are perfectly capable of spending hours on end texting their friends or playing computer games. There is nothing wrong with their concentration and treating them to 8 minute chunks is patronising codswallop.

Witchcraft and magic take years of work to master. There is no way to make this any easier, because it's a test of character as much as anything else. The sort of person who wants to be an 'instant witch' would do better to go and watch a Harry Potter film. By the time it's finished he or she'll will probably want to be something else....

I've never begrudged the time it's taken me to learn my craft. In the same way I've never begrudged the hours I've spent learning to play the piano or the harp or learning to paint... the end results were worth it.

In the same way, writing a book doesn't just 'happen.' It takes days, months - even years sometimes - of research, drafting, polishing and yes, even then you can end up with rejection slips by the bucket load.

I think it's time we began to emphasise the real value in education. It's not just about learning something 'that will be useful' such as how to flip a burger. It's about learning the things that will enrich your lives, give you an idea of the bigger picture. Dickens understood this perfectly in Hard Times with his character Gradgrind.

So - if you had a choice, what would you like to learn next?

Nowadays the Cross is an almost exclusively Christian symbol. So it may come as a surprise to realise that it was used in pre-Christian times in many societies to represent a wide variety of themes. For the ancient Assyrians it represented their Sky God, Anu.

In the early 16th century, when Cortes arrived in South America, he and his Spanish countrymen were mystified by the number of crosses found in the local (pagan) temples. The only reason they could think of was that the cross had been introduced by the disciple, St Thomas, traditionally regarded as the Apostle of the Indies. They just couldn't imagine that these crosses were anything other than Christian in origin.

In fact these South American crosses were associated with their gods Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl.

In Egypt, the Ankh, nowadays associated with the Christian Coptic Church in the country, was originally the property of the ancient Egyptian gods, symbolising immortality.

Food for thought, eh

Lighting a candle was a traditionally pagan way of connecting with whichever deity you honoured. Although the early Christian church tried originally to discourage the practice because of its pagan and heathen connotations, eventually it adopted it, especially in the ROman Catholic Church.

This website : http://www.gratefulness.org/lighting candles (NOTE : this link should be : http://www.gratefulness.org/candles/enter.cfm?l=eng ) is a lovely place to visit when you would like to light a candle for whatever purpose in your life. It could be to hope for something, to heal someone or to give thanks for something. THe choice is up to you.

Hope you enjoy it!

I got the idea for today's blog from Jack Frost's comment on my blog yesterday.

It was traditional in my family to make your own wine (also beer, and very occasionally spirits, but that's another story....)

So when Mr Penry and I got married, and were totally strapped for cash, we decided to make our own wine as a way of ensuring there was something alcoholic to drink at Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries etc. My father was a keen amateur brewer and wine-maker, and passed on a number of useful recipes. Some we used, others (such as upping the alcohol content by judicious addition of vodka and raisins) we didn't.

It must be said that sometimes our efforts went amiss. Once a demi-john of red wine over-fermented, shot its bung and sprayed the walls and ceiling. The living room looked like a maniac had been at work with a chain saw...

Once we made orange wine that knocked out everyone who ever drank it. Thank goodness we only made a few bottles of it or we'd probably have been arrested.

It had stopped fermenting early on, so we'd restarted it with more yeast and sugar, and then it became incredibly clear, like water. It was pleasant and dry to taste - if you remembered anything afterwards, that is. Most people didn't.

Mr Penry tried many times to replicate this wine, but never succeeded. Maybe the fairies sprinkled something in it...

Well, today was great. I sat out in the garden for hours with our visitors, talking, laughing, listening, taking photos.... and then we had moussaka with Californian red wine that tasted like plums and cherries exploding in my mouth.

All in all a brilliant day. Didn't get anything done, but what the heck! Once in a while we all need days like this! *hic*

I hardlly ever blog on financial matters, but today I was struck by a strange coincidence. It all began a few weeks ago, when I was in my local bank and the cashier was warning people to look out for some very good forgeries of £20 notes. Then someone else chimed in and said that his friend in a nearby town had been offered £20 notes for £12.....

The thing is, everywhere I go I hear this same story. Today I heard these forgeries aren't even confined to Wales, but are plentiful up in Nottingham and even further north.

I wonder then, if it's any coincidence that the UK is in the currently grip of a financial crisis at the same time as the country appears awash with counterfeit £20 notes?

Introducing large scale forgeries to destabilise the economy is nothing new - Nazi Germany did pretty much the same thing in World War II.

It's just a thought.... but an interesting one....

Here are a few interesting thoughts for you, this misty moisty morning in Blogland.....

The last woman tried for witchcraft in the UK was Helen Duncan. The trial took place in 1944 under section 4 of the Witchcraft Act of 1735. She was found guilty and sent to prison. Interestingly, one of her supporters was Winston Churchill!

One of the last times the fairies were involved in a murder trial was in Ireland (then part of the UK) in 1895, Bridget Cleary was murdered and burned because her husband and neighbours believed she wasn't the real Bridget but had been changed by the fairies. Although tried for murder, her husband was found guilty of manslaughter instead.

In Ireland 1968, the people of Ballymagroartyscotch were outraged when road builders threatened to cut down a fairy tree. Several contractors refused to destroy it for fear of fairy reprisals. Eventually, the road was diverted.

Also in Ireland, in the 1960s when a fairy mound stood in the way of a planned airport in Ireland the builders refused to demolish it and found a way to bypass it.

No, I am not going to rant. It's just been busy, that's all. And I jammed my finger in a cupboard. And I still have a load of cleaning to do tomorrow because we have some visitors on the weekend. And I have the first draft of my book on plants to finish, and a talk to prepare for the Witchfest.... and my food cupboards are a disgrace and need clearing out.

And the dawn chorus this morning was just out of this world....