Years and years ago, when Mr Penry and I were first wed, we lived in a small house on the corner of a very short street. It was easily about 150 years old, and had a small paved yard for a garden.

For such a small place, it also had a pretty stained glass panel just above the front door, but the large centre had been painted over with white paint. I decided to scrape it off and see what was underneath. Perhaps our little love nest had once had a proper name.

So I got out the ladder and an assortment of scrapers and knives and got to work, beginning with where I thought the first letter might be.

Almost at once I got lucky and uncovered the letter 'U'. My mind started to race. What sort of house name starts with U? The next letter was an 'N' and the third one was 'D'. Now I was pretty certain it had to be UNDER-something. Underhill, maybe? Underwood?

By the time Mr Penry returned from work, the name was revealed in all its glory and I had the paint out ready to cover it up again.
The 'house name' was ..... Undertakers.

Yep, at some point the previous owner had run their own funeral business, knocking up the coffins out in the back yard.

Well, I'm still not up to speed with my blogging, but am trying to get there.

But today is our wedding anniversary, commemorating the day, so many, many moons ago that we were manacled together

We decided to have a nice meal at home and because I love him so much he is going to have his favourite - bangers and mash (only I'm putting wine in the gravy, and adding onions to it!)

He is such an old romantic, I will never forget how he proposed....After a mere two weeks of knowing each other he said, 'Why don't we get married? I think we'd be as happy as pigs in s**t.'

Well, nobody can say I wasn't warned!

I hope you all have a wonderful day.

Sorry I've not been around much the last day or - have finally realised I need to take it easy.

I'll try and catch up with everyone very soon!

Brightest blessings
Tylluan

I'm not sure why I'm so fascinated with the moon. I know that it’s a lump of rock, but to me there’s still an air of mystery about it that no moonwalks will ever erase.

According to my mother, this was because man never actually landed on the moon – she reckoned it was all a set-up in a back studio in Hollywood. Years later, when I began using the Internet, I discovered she wasn't alone in this belief, apparently it's quite common.

There was a legend in my family about an ancestor who went mad through looking at the moon and thinking about time... well, they were a bit of an odd lot. He started off thinking ‘this is the same moon my father used to look at,’ moved onto, ‘this is the same moon my grandfather used to look at’ and gradually worked his way back through Francis Drake (not an ancestor, but interesting often believed to be a sorcerer by his contemporaries) to the dawn of time, by which time he was frothing at the mouth and had to be taken away.

I'm still not convinced this is a true story. I suspect it's up there with Strewel Peter and Augustus who Wouldn't Eat his Soup as a sort of Scare the Kiddies story. There were plenty of people years ago who believed that you went mad if you slept out under a full moon.

After all, the word Lunatic derives originally from the Latin for Moon.

Yesterday I went to Hay on Wye - bang in the middle of the Hay Festival. Only now, the Festival, despite it's name is no long held in Hay town, but in a field a few miles outside.

The reasoning behind this is hard to determine. Cars now park in waterlogged fields, people trek through mud and puddles, while the town centre is much less busy than before. One of the town centre car parks was completely empty, playing host to deserted funfair machinery that wasn't actually operating that day.

Hay Castle had some signs up for the 'REAL Hay Festival' but mostly people just wanted to get in somewhere, out of the rain. Many of them had children with them, and it was hard not to feel sorry for the poor little mites, wandering around in their wellies like unhappy, drenched, Paddington Bears.

Apart from the pubs and cafes, I'm not sure the festival brings much benefit to the town itself. And even less now that the festival has been moved...

I have written about our wine making escapades once before, but it seems Mr Penry and I could be mere novices compared to his Aunt.

There I was, sitting down at breakfast, minding my own business and scoffing some toast, and discussing potatoes with our youngest who had popped in to visit.

I happened to mention that the fruits of a potato plant may resemble unripe tomatoes, but are in fact quite poisonous. In fact both potatoes and tomatoes belong to the Solanaceae family of plants, which also includes Datura and Deadly Nightshade.

So you can imagine I nearly fell off my chair when Mr Penry announced, 'My aunty Vi used to make wine from Deadly Nightshade.'

Recovering my senses, I shook my head (it still hurts). 'No,' I said, 'she can't have done that.'
There was a long pause. 'Do you mean Elderflower, Dad?' asked our daughter, helpfully.
A sudden smile of recognition spread across his face. 'That's the one.'

Well, it's mostly my own fault. I haven't been out much today because I've been working on my book, and then when I decided it was time for a break I discovered it was raining. This is because when I write I tend to close the curtains so I won't get distracted (given that I seem to have the attention span of a goldfish).

The book I'm working on at the moment is the third and it's about plants. The first draft is completed, and now I'm working through it again. It's amazing how much rubbish needs pruning (I don't like reading a lot of padding in other people's books, and I try to avoid it in my own.)

At the moment the book is 120,000 words. That's a big book, believe me.

The trouble is I have other things on the go, too. Like working on my talk for Witchfest Wales, and also getting research done for my next book. It's not that I'm complaining, I love doing the work, but I suppose I'm trying to explain why I haven't been around on the blog quite so often lately.

Hope you're all looking forward to the weekend - I know I am!

Several times on this blog I've come across discussions about the validity of anything outside of science. Examples could be Herbal medicine, religious beliefs, etc. I came across this little gem this morning that might just sum it all up:

The graduate with a science degree asks, "Why does it work?"

The graduate with an engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"

The graduate with an accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"

The graduate with an arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"

Out and about today, I heard a young child screaming outside Somerfields. It was terrifying, I thought maybe she'd fallen over and hurt herself, or was having a tantrum because her mother wouldn't buy her sweets or whatever. It sounded serious anyway.

As I approached however, I saw the child's Gran turn to her and say, 'I've told you before, you can't go to school again until tomorrow!'

I think I can safely say nobody ever heard me screaming that I wanted to go to school....

Here you can see the vine in my garden just starting to come into leaf. Sometimes in a good summer we even manage to get a few grapes on it, but to be honest the thing I love most is the wonderful shade of green and the fantastic gnarled bark.

Magically, the Grape is useful whenever we need a safe haven in life, whether it be from an abusive or unpleasant relationship, or difficult work situations.

In classical antiquity people were quite prepared to wander round with wreaths of leaves on their heads (Sicilian magicians, for example, reckoned a crown of greenery protected them against lightning.)

I suspect a glass of wine would be a pretty acceptable alternative. Cheers! D

Sorry I've not been around much but we had a very busy weekend and I am just trying to catch up with things generally before settling down to blog...

I have recently finished the first draft of the book I am currently working on (about plants) so now I am onto the second draft which is, I'm pleased to say, going much better than the first! (Touch wood )

Hopefully shall be back in circulation later today, please bear with me!

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....

I have really tried to catch up on your posts this evening but the site has been very slow (it's not the internet because other sites seem to load OK) So apologies if I am late commenting.... it's just got too much after waiting and waiting for pages to load. I'll try again tomorrow!

I mentioned in my last post about other mythical islands apart from Atlantis. What is so interesting about these 'lost lands' (well, to me, anyway) is that many of them lie to the west. So there is Caer Sidi off the west coast of Wales (probably in or near Cardigan Bay) and Hy Brasil or Brasail (it has various names) off the west coast of Ireland.

I find this interesting because the west is traditionally a place of death and many tales about mythical lands and Other Worlds (and yes, even the Fairy Realms too) often seem to be places where people who have died young go for an after life.

People firmly believed in these places, some even claimed to have visited them, and they were included in many maps. There was usually an air of mystery about them, and there were some mythical lands that appeared from time to time. A number of sightings of Hy Brasil were claimed in 1908! And if that sounds strange, consider this: Hy Brasil was still appearing on otherwise accurate maps until 1865!

Another name for Hy Brasil was 'Beg Ara' - the origin of the famous 'Begorrah', possibly? (although it could equally be claimed that it was a more acceptable way of saying 'By God').

Or perhaps, as some have claimed recently, Hy Brasil really was Atlantis all along?

Apologies for not being around much today - am nearing the end of the first draft on my book. It should have been going smoothly when suddenly I found myself pitched into research on Atlantis! Now it must be said that actually there is virtually nothing whatsoever about Atlantis in this book... but there is mention of some mythical islands, Caer Sidi off the coast of Wales, and Hy Brasil (aka Brasail) off the coast of Ireland.

This has been absolutely fascinating, so I am going to take a bit of a break today and then hopefully come back and post something up about these places.

Catch up with you soon!

Mr Penry can be pedantic at times. This comes of his having had a far superior education to mine, and also, I suspect, due to the fact that he smokes a pipe. Whereas I tend to talk for Wales (something you can check for yourself if you make it to the Wales Witchfest), he can punctuate his thoughts and comments with long, thoughtful puffs on his pipe.

This can make conversation a tad onesided, especially if he's sitting there smoking a pipeful of his favourite tobacco (something dark and evil smelling...)

So there I was this morning at breakfast, yacking on about the supernatural (meaning, of course, things such as ghosts, magic and all the other odds and sods that come under this title) when he suddenly said, 'You can't really believe in the supernatural.'
This brought me up pretty damn quick. 'Of course I do.'
'No,' he said, 'Think about it. If you believe in something, then you believe that it exists. Something supernatural is outside reality, and therefore nothing that exists can be supernatural. It's a contradiction in terms.'

And all before breakfast! It reminds me of the time one of my daughters and I worked out why evil exists while doing the washing up one New Year's Eve.....

He's a thoughtful man, is Mr Penry....

It's not easy growing old these days... families are often fragmented and unable to offer support to elderly relatives, especially if everyone who could offer support is struggling to hold down a full time job and pay the bills.

If they do give up their job in order to care for a relative, the present level of Carer's Allowance is £50 per week - no matter how many relatives you may be caring for! So if you care for elderly parents, you are, in effect, being paid £25 per week for each parent - for 24 hour care, seven days a week. Think of it - there are 168 hours in every week, meaning that even if you care full time for one person, you are paid less than 30p per hour!

If carers were paid the minimum wage for just half the hours in the week, they should be getting over £500 per week! Makes you think, doesn't it? The shameful truth is that if the carers in this country said 'Sod it' tomorrow, the system would crash. This country simply couldn't exist without taking carers for granted.

The media often feature stories of how poorly the elderly are treated in so-called 'care homes' (a misnomer if ever there was one!) and even in hospital. We might want to live longer, but I don't think anyone relishes growin