V is for...

(A friend's child was set homework to list and illustrate words starting with the letter 'v'. As a result I have verdigris vases and vitriolic valkyries hovering around inside my head....)

  Valentine was a vagabond -

But valorous? Oh, verily!

He vanquished vampires and vipers vast

but vaunted not his victories.

Where the valleys are veiled in violet

and when Vespers is vague in the wind

Valentine vents his violin for the vixen

and all of her vulpine kin.

Ice Dragons

Ice dragons (Draconis borealis) inhabit the far north and live on elves and flying deer. When they display, either to frighten encroachers or find a mate, they send vast plumes of freezing flame into the sky, which we call the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights.
Unlike dragons in temperate regions, which hoard gold, ice-dragons treasure the feldspar stones - labradorite, spectrolite, and moonstone if they can get it, which they generally can't. An Eskimo legend has it that these stones were formed when flickers of Aurora Borealis got trapped in rock. Moonstones, usually found far from the poles, caught their flames long ago when the world was otherwise arranged. Polar explorers wary of dragons often take moonstones with them as propitiatory gifts.
Some people believe the Southern Lights (Aurora Australis) are also caused by dragons but of course this is nonsense - the Southern Lights are a result of the Earth's magnetic field interacting with particles flung out by the Sun. (Either that, or they are the energy released when phoenixes hatch from their opals.)

Hibernation

My husband brought home a cold a few days ago, and we've both been at home sick for most of yesterday and all of today. I have to admit that, even though I have a stack of work waiting for me in my office, I'm glad. I think some of us must be more closely related to hedgehogs than biologists would suggest. My sister's two hedgehogs (they're rescues that can't be returned to the wild) go to sleep around this time of year and only wake up when the sky has sorted itself out and the sun is putting in a proper day's work.

This seems immensely clever of hedgehogs. And they eat snails, which shows good gardening skills and an admirable penchant for haute-cuisine. Although I don't eat snails, I agree with hedgehogs that winter should be a time, not for working and gadding about, but for curling up somewhere warm and quiet and thinking about things, and snoozing.

This might be why so many people dislike the daylight savings arrangement. It doesn't really save any daylight, it just makes it dark earlier. We should just accept that there is less daylight, and agree among each other that in the winter we are only expected to be awake and contactable for, say, four hours instead of eight.

'But why four hours?' the hedgehogs ask. 'Why not none?'
And there, you know, you can see the difference between people and hedgehogs, and the reason that we have operas and medicine and Nobel prize-winners and telescopes, while hedgehogs do not have any of these things and eat snails without even a bit of garlic butter.

Of course, apart from all these things, it's still worthwhile to get out of bed in the winter, providing it's decently light out. For one thing there is the way trees turn into patterns of intricate lacework. And there is the intriguing notion of everything being stored away till next year; bats and butterflies and crocus-bulbs, packed away like summer clothes. Andrew Wyeth described it perfectly:

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.”

The Phoenix

There has only ever been one Phoenix, and the reason for this is obvious when you consider how it reproduces. It lays an egg, builds a pyre, incinerates itself, and hatches out of its own egg. It's the only bird that does this, and although all the other birds wonder why, none have had the nerve to ask it.

You can of course read all about the Phoenix on Wikipedia, but I wanted to research this properly. After all, an early chronicler, Herodotus, is still nick-named 'the Father of Lies' on account of his inaccurate reporting. And I don't think he was even quoting Wikipedia.



As I live beside the Phoenix Park I thought I'd just wander round it a bit, keep a sharp eye out for gold-and-purple birds. I've come to the conclusion that the name is a trifle misleading, and I am in the process of writing a letter to our new President to suggest the addition of a disclaimer; the park will, if President Higgins agrees, be called 'Phoenix Park - Does not contain any actual Phoenix'.

As November sets in, the park itself is as stunningly beautiful as ever. It makes up for the dark evenings to see the view from the old barracks, across the War Memorial Garden with its pagoda engraved with a poem, to the Wicklow Mountains. (Or Dublin Mountains, as we Dubliners call them, to annoy people from Wicklow).

It seemed appropriate to choose the Phoenix for the December page of my calendar. After all, that's when the solstice occurs, and the sun, almost dead, comes back to life again. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (which is brilliant), Dumbledore tells the young wizard that the Phoenix can carry heavy burdens as if they weigh nothing at all. And Dumbledore should know, what with his long beard and everything. So if you do happen to spy the Phoenix when you're out walking in the park, I hope he lets you hitch a ride. I think it would be quite a view.

Happy Hallowe'en!

If this is the season when ghosts take the air

what carnival spirits must they all appear
From graves deep in harlequin leaves they arise
to be greeted by bonfires and Catherine-wheel skies
In the candle-cast shadow they await eagerly
those tales told for equal parts terror and glee

Hurray for Hallowe'en! Here is a recipe for my own witchy concoction. It looks vaguely like frog-spawn, and tastes like magic:

Green Stinger Cocktail
(makes two)

Non-alcoholic:
2 kiwis, peeled (no New Zealand jokes please)
juice of half a lime
2 parts ginger beer
3 parts orange juice

Pour ingredients into a blender, blend on high for several minutes till completely smooth.

Alcoholic:

2 kiwis, peeled
juice of half a lime
gin (depending on where you are on the alco-meter)
dilutable ginger cordial* (about 3 shot glasses)
orange juice (about a glass)
Blend till smooth

*I use Rock's Ginger cordial. This comes in a beautiful bottle and I also sometimes include it in hampers for friends. Here's a piccy of it. You can usually find it in health food shops, including Nourish if you're in Dublin.

A gorgeous thing I found online is this timeline of spooky words, courtesy of Oxford Dictionaries.

If you are preparing for an evening of story-telling by the fire, you can brush up on your Edgar Allen Poe and your Algernon Blackwood on this page of online ghost-stories.

BBC4Extra have their yearly cornucopia of deathless prose, including a series of MR James tales which starts today.

October is for knitting!

True devotees will tell you that any season is knitting season, but October has an inviting little nip in the air that especially recommends woolly pastimes. If you are planning on giving knitted gifts for Christmas, you're probably already waving needles about and counting stitches. Knitty.com is filled with browsable treats like these pumpkins:

and some really strange things, including a knitted umbrella!

You can combine knitting with your love of hens (for who amongst us doesn't love hens?) by knitting jumpers for the featherless urchins of Little Hen Rescue.

For those of you whose idea of a wild night is knitting while listening to radio plays or audiobooks, I can tell you that Dublin libraries has a copy of Paul Magrs 'Never the Bride' on cd, which is seasonably Halloweenish.

Here is a blog all about knitting, and it includes details of the charity Knit-a-thon which has been going on since September.

Why all this talk of knitting? Well like many people, I was forced to knit a doll's dress in primary school. It never got finished. For years I could still see it sometimes, taunting me. But earlier this year I shelved my resentment and bought some needles. I already had wool. I don't know why.
Anyway I knitted myself a really cool pair of woolly sleeves. These were necessary because shops (bear with me on this one, it's a bit like particle physics) shops sell woolly dresses, with short sleeves. Now. If it's warm, you won't want to wear a woolly dress, will you? And if it's cold, you'll need long sleeves. But yet, there they are. And yes, I bought one of these dresses. I think I imagined a kind of not-warm-not-cold day, dry and kind of autumnal, when it would be perfectly comfortable to wear it. Of course Ireland has a weather system which is conscious, and which plots against us. So that perfect day was never going to happen. Anyway I've knitted the sleeves now, and in doing so I have exorcised the ghost of that unfinished doll's dress, and discovered a love of knitting. Everyone I know is getting a scarf for Christmas.