Samhain and the Source of Halloween

The autumn equinox (the point of equal day and night) has just passed. Today we enter the dark half of the year. Like all turning points, it has always been a time of looking back and looking forward. The sun is lower and the days are shorter and colder. Plants and animals begin to hibernate. The warm half of the year has faded and died. It’s a time when we feel closer to death and those that have departed. In ancient times, the festival of Samhain was celebrated at the equinox. Records suggest that it involved gatherings and feasting after the cattle had been brought down from their summer pasture. Thanks were given for all the food that had been harvested, which was needed to keep those people and their animals through the winter months. Fire was an important part of the festival, symbolizing both death and rebirth. The spirits of the dead were thought to return at this time. A place was set for them at the table and offerings were made. Celebrants were believed to have worn masks and other costumes.

Over a thousand years ago, Samhain became transposed into All Hallows Day (or All Saints Day) by early Christianity, which chose to piggyback onto pre-exisiting traditions rather than to confront them. But the pagan traditions of Samhain re-emerged in Halloween (the Eve of All Hallows Day), with its attention to fire, the spirits of the dead, feasting and costume. So when lighting a candle in a pumpkin, putting on a witch’s hat or decorating the house with skulls and skeletons, try to remember where all this came from. And try to put yourself in the animal-hide shoes of those ancient peoples who lived here thousands of years ago.

Zoe

There’s a new woman in my life. We began to meet online. Then she shared some videos with me. And I was hooked. But T need not worry. I’ve not joined a strange Russian dating site. Zoe is a nutrition and gut health improvement programme run by eminent scientists from Kings College, London, and Harvard Medical School. And I’ve just become one of their thousands of guinea pigs.

Oddly enough, you begin the progamme by eating muffins. But not any old muffins. The specially prepared ones they send you. After the first meal of muffins you monitor your blood sugar, via a sensor in your upper arm. After a second meal of muffins you monitor your blood fat, by doing a pinprick blood test. Then you send them a sample of your poo. To some, this might sound a bit off-putting. But it’s very easy to do. Your results arrive fairly quickly.

My blood sugar response was graded good (in comparison to all participants) and excellent (in comparison to people of a similar age and sex). So my body processes carbohydrates very effectively and I’m not at risk of diabetes anytime soon. My blood fat response was graded poor in relation to both sets of comparators. To some extent I already knew I had a problem in this area. I’ve been taking a statin for some years to lower cholesterol. But now I need to do more. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my microbiome was graded as excellent. The poo sample showed that my gut contained a preponderance of good bacteria and very little bad bacteria.

So what next? The Zoe app has inputted my results. When I log the food I’m eating into the online diary, it scores every item on the impact it will have on my blood sugar, blood fat and microbiome. It also puts each food item I’m eating into four categories. Eat rarely. Enjoy in moderation. Enjoy regularly. Enjoy freely. Zoe has an enormous database of foods, so you can look up different items to see how they have been scored. Then you can change ingredients or substitute healthier alternatives. This is helpful, as I’m trying more actively to control the level of fats in my diet.

Joining Zoe isn’t cheap (it costs several hundred pounds for one year). But it’s already proving to be a valuable investment.

Celebrating Ciaran Carson

Next week sees an international gathering at Queen’s University Belfast to honour and celebrate the work of the late Ciaran Carson. As befits such a multitalented man, there will be music and art as well as readings and discussion. And all events are free. I will be reading a few poems at 4pm on Wednesday13 September in the Canada Room, along with colleagues from the Writers’ Group that Ciaran led so successfully for over a decade. He was a man with a keen attention to every detail of language. And when editing a new piece, I still find myself thinking, what would Ciaran say about that?

I first met Ciaran about 15 years ago. I crept away from my day job at the University to attend the meetings of the Writers’ Group, which were held every Wednesday afternoon. I’d just begun to write poems that were stimulated by real-life stories. Ciaran was most encouraging. These weren’t ‘found poems’. The real-life story was the ground from which the poem emerged, a launch point. Ciaran christened them ‘discovered poems’ and told me I had ‘found my metier’.

My own small contribution to the commemoration is a new book of poems, ‘True’. It is dedicated to Ciaran and brings together the ‘discovered poems’ I wrote during his years of mentoring the Writers’ Group. The book will be published later this year by The Black Spring Press. You can read more about the book in the leaflet that the publisher has prepared (see below). I will be reading poems from ‘True’ on Wednesday 13 September. The event is hosted by Paul Maddern. I hope to see some of you there.

Relief and Climate Change

T has just had a review with the surgeon. It’s six weeks since her op, and she’s recovered well. He examined her thoroughly and asked a series of questions about her symptoms. She explained that her main concern was the strange catching sensations she felt internally. Don’t worry, he said. That’s just the internal stitches. They’re dissolvable. But it can take up to six months for that to happen. Oh dear, that’s a long time, said T. He smiled. But the stitches won’t interfere with normal life. You can start getting back to that from now on. T returned home with a smile on her face. The op had been a complete success.

We were relieved. We’d both been worrying. You’re in the dark about symptoms until you speak with an expert. Before the review, T had been taking things easy. And I’d been doing most of the domestic work. I had been able to take the odd day off, which I’d used for bike rides. But the weather was consistently bad: rainy, windy and cool. More like autumn than summer. So I went on longer rides, because often there was only one day a week that was remotely cycleable. Even so, I still managed to get soaked regularly. One day in particular stands out. I rode around part of Lough Neagh and it poured down. I opened my saddlebag to find that I’d not put my rain jacket in.

The Met Office has now told us that July 2023 was the wettest in NI since records began in 1836, with double the average rainfall. And this followed June 2023 being the driest and warmest in NI since records began. Strange to think that some people still don’t believe climate change is an important problem.

Getting Back on Her Feet

It’s now three weeks since T had her surgery and she’s recovering well. For the first week she stayed in bed most of the time. She was so sore and tired. Her surgery was laparoscopic, under general anaesthetic. So she has four holes in her abdomen, rather than one long cut. But surgery of any sort is a serious ordeal. During the second week, she began to sit out in the chair. She was still sore and tired, so couldn’t manage this for long periods. But she slowly graduated from watching videos to actually reading books. This third week she has been walking. Around the house at first, but then she’s graduated to short walks outside. Under supervision, of course.

I’ve been in charge of household work all of this time. In the past we shared this. To be honest, T did more of it than I did. And it’s been eye-opening to experience how demanding it is to do 100% of this work. Shopping, cooking and cleaning up takes a big chunk of the day. No sooner have you completed one meal than it’s almost time to start on the next. So I’m housekeeper and nurse. But I’m glad to say that T is a model patient.

Being a bit more mobile this week, T has been exploring what she can and can’t do. I’ve been grateful for her help with preparing the meals a couple of times. She’s able to cut up vegetables and make a salad. But she can’t lift anything heavy, like a kettle or a cooking pot. She can’t bend down. But she can drive her car a short way. She went to the local petrol station and back, and managed it fine, with a pillow between her body and the seat belt. The nurse at our GP’s reckons it will take her six weeks to get back on her feet again. At her current rate of progress, she might get there a little sooner. And I might end up acting as a monitor to prevent her from taking on too much.

Surgery and Lightning Strikes

The night before T went into hospital for surgery, we had thunderstorms. We watched the heavy dark cloud boil and counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. The storm was getting nearer and nearer. Then there was a lightning strike and a huge rumble of thunder overhead. The lights went out and all our appliances went dead. We looked at each other. Was this some sort of omen? Then the power came back on. We checked the house. Everything seemed to be working, apart from the telephone. Slowly, the storm moved on and we went to bed with torches at the bedside. The next day, I took her into hospital.

T was having a planned abdominal operation. While she was waiting to be taken into theatre, we sent each other text messages. Then her messages suddenly stopped. And I had to wait. I paced around the house and tried to do the normal routine. But I was all on my own. It wasn’t reassuring. It only emphasised who was no longer with me.

Before, it had been me getting the operations. I was afraid, of course. Your pulse is sky high when you get onto the operating table. Everyone else is covered up in gowns and masks. They’re waiting to stick knives into you. Then the anaesthetist inserts something at your wrist and you’re out until you come round in the recovery room.

T had gone through the terrible ordeal of waiting three times for me. And all three operations were uncertain of the outcome. I marveled at her mental strength and stoicism. The hours ticked by. After four had elapsed I was almost pulling my hair out. Then a text message. She was alive and well. The operation had been a success. She’d spend two nights in hospital and then she could come home.

Eventually, the BT engineer came. The lightning had blown two master sockets inside the house, the cable at the gable end of the house and at the telegraph pole in the road. He spent an hour replacing the sockets and fixing the cable. With the landline working, I tried our three handsets. None worked. The lightning had blown those as well. But it hadn’t struck either of us. We’d both come through the ordeal. And now we could give thanks.

Long Covid - The TV Guide

Despite testing negative for the virus, I continued to feel unwell. When trying to do things, I was overcome with breathlessness and exhaustion. It was extremely limiting and made me very depressed. For five awful weeks I feared I had Long Covid. Then my breathing began to improve. I found I could do easy walks without needing to use my inhaler. I was even able to try harder walks and also easy cycle rides. I’m not fully back to normal, but I am well on the way. I don’t really know what led to my improvement. But I’m very grateful. Whilst in the thrall of the virus, I spent a lot of time watching TV drama. So here are my highlights.

My favourite TV channel is Talking Pictures TV. It’s on Freeview and Freesat and shows predominantly old films: British, European and American. I was tipped off about it by John Cooper Clarke, the Bard of Salford. Not personally, it was via an interview. He confessed that he hardly watched any other channel since he’d found TPTV. I feel similarly about it. My favourite programme on TPTV is Maigret. Every Tuesday at 21.05 they show a film of one of the novels, made for French TV in the 1990’s. The production values are good, the realization is accurate, the atmosphere is authentic and the lead actor is perfect. His name is Bruno Cremer and I think he’s the best Maigret I’ve seen. Rupert Davies in the 1960’s was quite good, but the production values were poor. Michael Gambon was fairly good too. Then came Rowan Atkinson. He was terrible: hollow, wooden and colourless. Georges Simenon describes the character as imposing and powerfully built. And Cremer fits the bill.

Other than that, I spent plenty of time on DVD’s. My favourite was ‘Pennies From Heaven’, by Dennis Potter, first broadcast in spring 1978 on the BBC (I missed it because I was working in Italy). I was astonished by how fresh, powerful and ambitious the six plays are. Using popular song and dance to explore and ironically comment on the motivations of the characters works so wonderfully well. The use of locations that I know from my childhood in Gloucester and the Forest of Dean is very evocative too. I think this is Dennis Potter's best work. The leads are all terrific: Bob Hoskins, Gemma Craven and Cheryl Campbell. The storyline involves deception, blackmail, rape, murder and prostitution, set amid the poverty of 1930’s Britain. All this darkness presents as a sub-text to the escapism of the popular songs of the time.This tension fuels the conflict (between fantasy and reality, desire and repression, delusion and inarticulacy) that drives the main characters and the narrative. ‘Pennies From Heaven’ gained audiences of 12 million when it was first shown on the BBC. Seeing it for the first time 45 years later, underlines just how safe, predictable and dull TV drama has become on the mainstream channels these days.