Panic late last night as we discovered that we'd forgotten it was Mother Julian of Norwich's Day. We'd said last year, when we had no hazelnuts to celebrate her with, that we'd store some up in the Autumn. But Bry-anne got peckish and ate them on Boxing Day.
So we send Burton down to Tesco to see what he could get. Last year we ended up with de-shelled nuts - this time he brought back a bar of chocolate. He told us that having Moscow'ed the requirements, he'd decided that having some kind of nut-based product was a "Must" but havimg whole hazelnuts was a "Should" - so he'd bought a pack of Snickers Bars. Personally I thought this was more of a Marathon than a sprint*.
In the end we agreed that Burton's brain is no bigger than a hazelnut. But how can you meditate on Burton's brain and see the wonders of the universe? To be fair, Young Keith removed the trepanning equipment before I could find out.
So we ended the day by agreeing that, in honour of Julian, we would wall Burton up in a small enclosure on the outside of the Moot House. We're going to let him out now. Poor soul, we forgot to give him a roof and it's been a rainy night. And people lobbing Snickers in to feed him hasn't helped.
*Joke only suitable for Agile developers who can remember what chocolate bars were called in England 30 years ago.
I celebrated Mother Julian at Holy Communion in our Parish Church yesterday. She wrote some wonderful things to ponder on.
ReplyDeleteWhat confuses me is that she was walled up in a church, but is described as an 'Anchoress', surely that would mean that she would have been walled up in a boat of some sort? Because Anchors are commonly used to secure boats against drifting.
According to the found of all knowledge, Wikipedia, Anchoress is the female form of Anchorite - which makes sense, but as they are actually a sort of Hermit, walled up in a church, the maritime connection continues to escape me.
I can see that it would be a bit inconvenient for a ship to have someone walled up in or on it, but it makes more sense because the description would be entirely accurate.
Surely, someone walled up in a church should be described as a 'churchite' or even 'wallite' which would immediately allow one to know what someone is talking about.
Wondering if Mother Julian could swim? Because if she was actually attached to an Anchor, she'd need to be a very strong and powerful swimmer to avoid the dunking involved.
Wonder if this is the origin of dunking witches in ponds.....
I think we have to delve deep into textual analysis at this point. "All shall be well (2).....All manner of thynges shall be well" certainly indicates a watery mindset. As for being walledup, I expect she got fed up with people making jokes about her having a bloke's name - and probably someone made a merry quip about "Julian the Apostate" and it was the last straw (another liquid connection there.
DeleteMOSCOW was a DSDM invention back in 1993/4, blatantly stolen by the agile lot much later... Not that this adds any value whatsoever to this post, but, being a pedant and an ancient developer with a penchant for chocolate bars I felt it needed to be clarified ;)
ReplyDelete