Winter gifts?

 

Winter gifts?

books for long, dark nights

Waiting for the quiet feathers,

That drift through the trees,

That smother the world into silence.

 Waiting, still waiting, for the snow.

Waiting for the snow, Gordon MacLellan

As the nights are drawing in and our thoughts turn to the lingering darkness and a need for something to keep us busy other than sitting knitting socks for sheep, and there are gifts to pursue for Christmas, Midwinter, Yule and All, Creeping Toad would like to offer a few extra treats for you, for a loved one or maybe for someone whose complacency you would simply like to disturb….

Books

Sacred Animals: creative, reflective and adventurous ways of exploring relationships with the animal world (or apply similar ideas to trees, other plants, fungi and stones: it’s up to you!) Here are ways of building meditations, composing poems, making outfits, masks, tokens and totems, £15.06 *

Waiting for the Snow: my most recent collection of poems: words for dark evenings and  desire for open spaces, for the northern seas on the rocks of Orkney, for ravens watching the world go by and for the kelpie who waits in dark still poems

50 pages, A5, £5.97

There are cracks in the pavement 

Where the bears live,

Feeding on the careless words we drop

Between one step and the next.

Whisper along the Wind: or you can listen and be drawn into stillness by the beautiful music of Gifts from Crows and words from myself: Orchards are here and the dark night of Vigil and the sharp Beaks of Raven

Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch: a small collection celebrating one of the wildest of the wild witches from her house that follows you through the crowded woods to herself polishing the rust off her teeth, £4.36

Old stones and ancient bones: an older collection poems with words from hollow hills, of bones and skulls and the satyr who waits on the Dancing Lawns

£5.00 direct from me

*Please don't blame me for the strangeness of pricings!  But you can order direct - cheaper! Email below

Ordering: you can go through eBay: the links will take you there. If you want the full set, message me directly as that might be easier!

Email: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

Hide a witch,

Inside a house,

Inside a wood,

Inside a beck,

Inside a bog,

Inside a crag,

Inside a world,

Inside a doll.

 

Old books, new places on bookshelves

I have been meaning to do a monthly "book of the moment" slot picking up on whatever I was reading at the time that seemed relevant

And this month i find myself with two books that cannot be called at all "recent". There is "The Guide to South and East Africa for the use of tourists, sportsmen, invalids and settlers" - 1914 edition - and "Introduction to Zoology Through Nature Study" by Rosalie Lulham, 1923 edition.

The first book is a fascinating tour of a vanished world, usefully sporting pages advertising ginger beer, Broadwood Piano Fortes, Union-CAstle Line ships to south Africa and hotels (Beira, for example offer sthe Savoy at 15s - 20 s, Queen's from 8s 6d and the Metropole for 8s 6d (that's s= shillings (24 to the pound, I think? and d = pennies, 12 to the shilling)

There are wonderful, delicate colonial maps with the great sweep of Rhodesia reaching right up to the Nyasaland protectorate (now Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi) and German East Africa (mostly Tanzania)

Cape Town: I found Kloof Street and other familiar places

Introduction to Zoology is an old favourite, full of careful drawings and detailed life histories for beetles, worms and dragonflies. There is a recipe for "artificial sea water" and a design for "a subterrarium for beetles". I was given this copy when i was about 12 (have just had it rebound) and with that and assorted Gerald Durrell volumes on my bookcase, I never had much of a chance really. Explains the current 9 aquaria (emergency tanks for stray tadpoles and toadlets and a refugee newt), the pile of bone sin the library and the boxes of useful pine cones and pebbles upstairs...

The same adventure that brought me the Guide, added a book on the Tortoises of Southern Africa and reprints of books Old Stone Monuments by J Ferguson (originally published 1872) and The Shire Highlands by Jim Buchanan (Malawi, 1885) and the brand new and magnificent The Wildflowers of Offaly by John Feehan, but they can all wait for another day!

Word on paper and other places

I tend to operate at a gallop most of the time and don't give myself the time I need - and want - to do more of my own writing and other personal creative pursuits. So, I recognise a degree of envy in recommending to people to go and enjoy these products of other people's creativity! Never mind! Buy a book, read a poem, visit a blog, regardless of some ol' toad muttering into his fishtanks!

Three places and ideas to recommend

The Beauty in the Beast

A new book by my lovely hedgehog fried Hugh Warwick. Following A Prickly Affair (his book about a lifetime interest in hedgehogs), he has gone out and talked to people as interested (or as obsessed?) in other animals as he is in urchins. It is a wonderfully unexpected selection of (British) wildlife from solitary bees to otters, dragon flies, and house sparrows to foxes. I've hopped in there, too, as an amphibian voice

Book details:

The Beauty in the Beast by Hugh Warwick, ISBN 978-0-85720-395-3

Hugh's website: www.urchin.info

Caroline Hawkridge

Ona quieter, and dare I say, more elegant note, why not visit Caroline's site? Poet and delighter-in-wildlife, Caroline writes beautifully and has just launched this site about her work including a poem inspired by the peregrines nesting on Derby Cathedral. 

Caroline has also written about bilberries

And then I did manage to get some writing done! Hoorah! (well I enjoyed it) and then we had to edit the piece down, so I'm going to post the missing paragraphs below. These were the opening sections for a piece for the Summer edition of an on-line magazine, "Native British Spirituality"

"The purpose of this website is to provide a focus of re-connection with these islands – so that we make the land well, and the land makes us well. Our intention is to share our lived experiences of these islands, their cycles and seasons, the elements, sacred places, spirits of place, and native flora & fauna, defining ‘spirituality’ as ‘connection with Spirit’, or ‘alignment with Nature’."

My piece is on the Air page and originally was due to start:

“Bright are the willow tops,

Playful the fish in the lake

The wind whistles over the tops of the branches

Nature is superior to learning”

All of a sudden, “getting out there and connecting with nature” seems to be the thing to do. BBC Wildlife is advocating “52 wild things to do this year”, the National Trust has “50 things to do before you're 11”. Even staid Natural England is trying to get 1 million children out into the countryside (but not all at once). There is also another strand which turns the need to make connections with nature into an intellectual discussion with debates on “nature deficiency disorders” and the problems of environmental disassociation.

Of course, none of this is new. A lot of us have never stopped “connecting” with the world around us. Simple test: are you still breathing? Connected! Have you stopped breathing? Still connected. Cynicism aside, of course it is good to encourage people to go out, to get out, to enjoy this beautiful world we live in

And it is so easy. Renewing connections doesn't need trips to National  Trust houses or Natural England Nature Reserves. A garden would do it, or  park or even shut a walk along a street....

  As “Creeping Toad” a lot of my work is about celebrating the relationships between people and places and encouraging individuals, groups and communities to explore their connections to  those places around them. We use activities like these, simple light-hearted adventures to invite people to step back into an awareness of the world......

(Opening quote from The Red Book of Hergest)