Some Old Sketches

Tags

childhood, drawings, lol look wat mike gone dun

Advancing Reader,

Over the summer I went through some very old pictures that I’d drawn – things from the age of seven upwards – I make no apology for these unhappy crimes against art that I now present.

I’ve got a few scraps of paper like these – back when I was in primary school I wrote a lot of short horror stories, so regularly illustrated them with ghosts and skeletons. This scrap of paper ended up getting expanded a bit, and whenever I’ve found it in the past I’ve added a new drawing. The oldest one here – 2000 – would have been when I was eight.

Here’s a haunted house from when I was about ten.

And here’s one in colour – probably when I was about the same age.

This drawing is very frustrating. I found a piece of the crest from a Bellarmine Jar when I was nine or ten and this is a drawing of it – I liked to record my finds this way. I’ve been searching for what happened to this interesting piece of pot for years and had hoped to find it this summer, but it’s still missing.

This illustration of odd finds is something I probably drew when I was about twelve, some of these are missing too. It shows a piece of 17th century pot, a medieval floor tile from Beeleigh Abbey, a lock plate from my grandparents’ house, a piece of jewelry and a statuette from a Victorian tip, a hypocaust tile and tesserae from Caer Went, and a brass loop from Duxford aerodrome.

Getting into more technical drawings, this is something I must have drawn when I was ten or so. It’s a plan for a Lego model!

And something even madder: my granddad gave me and my brother some old cupboards and a broken lawnmower one summer to build something out of. Here’s a plan for the plane that we attempted to make, with an explanation of the system to make the propeller turn and control the ailerons.

Going back to writing, I wrote my first reasonably lengthy novel attempt aged 13 – some 35,000 words that got me a detention when I gave it in for a writing project piece of homework and my teacher thought I’d just stolen it from the internet. This was my attempt at a cover image for that first one ‘In Half Light’

I wrote plenty of equally awful stories following on in the same fantasy universe up until the age of sixteen or so, this map must be related to one of the last ones that I wrote.

After that I went back to more conventional drawings, including this clock.

Then I began working with pens – this is a drawing of some pirates I drew to impress a girl I liked, I think I was about seventeen. Can’t say it worked, but at least I’ve got a fancy doodle.

And finally, this drawing dated Aug. 2011 would have been when I was 19, just before I went off to university and began filling up sketchbooks rather than odd scraps of paper (I suppose that’ll be a blog post one day). This and the previous one are re-creations of historical scenes from a bit of research and a lot of general guessing. Something that’s come to be a majority of the drawings I produce.

Adieu, my dear Reader.

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Wintery Rhymes

Tags

oh no look what mike's done now, poems, Poetry

Propelled Reader,

Yes, wintery can be spelled that way.

The Reader will allow me pause to put my odd attempts at poetic creativity here – not every blog post can be as interesting as others – and, now that I’ve been allowed this dull pause in interesting content, go and find something more interesting to read.

To the Happy West

I wandered by the waves last night
  In many a pleasant dream;
A youthful moon shone proud and bright
  And I within his beam
  But it was just a dream.

I felt the salt air in my heart
  And breathed the winter shore.
And thought that time would never part
  Those happy days before
  That stand up here no more.

The happy west, the conq’ring sea –
  These things I’ll breath again –
But there are hearts of lads like me
  That pine for them in vane
  And shall not come again.

Their hearts were willing long ago
  But clay makes good men still:
These dancing spirits wander so
  But time will cure what’s ill
  When I’ll go west and still.

Sunrise, 2016

The sheen of dawn
That ran aground
On the high idle mountain
Coloured the waiting room of stars
For a moment red
And newborn.
And the banners of darling things:
The diamond starlight
And baleful moon
Turned out,
And, done into nothing,
Poured down bronze
From out the autumn of the night
Into the bright rising spring
Of day.

A Tired Old Year

“That rhyme’s as broken as the rest of the world.”

  Big Ben strikes
Four and five and six.
He showers the evening down
And mocks at England’s politics:
The thorn of state and crown.

  The world shakes –
Another modern fear –
And happy news a tinderbox
To help it burn more clear.
Still turn those senseless clocks.

  Time and time again
Repeats old history
Philosophers mock at societies lot
And says’t no mystery –
Who wins or not.

  No, for sure
‘Tis clear as Bow bell’s chime
Evil asks only good does naught
And now’s its time –
How joy was short.

  But hope –
Lads, that’s an honest cure
Let’s not forget our friends
And when the world lays all unsure
We’ll work for better ends.

Night, 2016

Heaven transcendent
Crouched over a void of tears
That dribbled out
Towards the hue-forsaken west
And into a colourless tribute
Among newborn stars.

“There comes, you know,”
Spoke those time agnostic lights
“A day when dawns will be made of ash
“And dreams counted out
“When all things are up and done.”

The west sighed
And breezes from the bosom of home
Trembled forgotten things.
Charging good health
And happy days
And ignorant joys.
And starlight distant
Employed in their immaculate heaven
Mocked the quiet ambitions of man.

The trees breathed out together
And under the quiet reigns of night
And happy chords of heaven
Echoed those night wind stars again
“Beds of mould
And finite smiles
Are no comfort in this bleak eternity.
Starlight fades
And empty lungs
Tell no histories here.”

Adieu, dearest Reader.

Knocking Down the Shed. Probably the last part.

Redacted Reader,

Sadly, the shed is still gone, and several things as well as several other things have already been blogged about. How about some more curious things then, from more recent times?

I had access to far too many Victorian tips as a child, and spent far too long wandering around them picking up odd things. With my grandparents living in an 18th century farm house, there were also always things appearing in their flowerbeds. There were plenty of other places too that I found the most unexpected things, here we go:

We’ll start with the oldest bits – this is part of a late sixteenth/early seventeenth century Bellarmine jug – an upstart cardinal who attempted to get all of western Europe excommunicated following the Protestant reformations. He wasn’t liked very much, so was caricatured as a demonic bearded face on wine and beer jugs for some fifty years.

This slightly later piece must have been a beach find, it was loose among several bags from Pembrokeshire. It’s probably from a late 17th century salt glazed jug

These are just two large sherds that came out of a box of pieces of the same vessel from Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s probably 17th century ish, and a wonderful example of imported majolica ware that would have graced only the finest of fine tables.

There was a lot of blue and white china. An awful lot. These weren’t even the largest pieces.

A very masonic clay pipe bowl!

As a kid I had an obsession with collecting clay pipe and taking apart the shed uncovered my collection, some two and a half thousand pieces of stems and bowls of varyingly complete pipes, a few of them dating back into the 17th century. The novelty bowls were the best, and there were plenty of interesting ones including animals, faces, and even one celebrating the opening of Crystal Palace.

There were plenty of bottles – some hundred or so – including a lot of ink pots, like this one still sporting its glass stopper.

Some bottles were familiar, this bottle of Gordon’s Gin is about a hundred years old.

Others were from father afield, like this one that I had found in a local Victorian tip, but had been brought over from Queensland

And then some bottles were just fascinating local examples – this one was produced in my village when phones were so scarce that your number could simply be Danbury 129

Another local find was this musket ball, which came from the common in Danbury where that fool Hillary had set up his ill-conceived army camp

Military finds seeming to be a theme, these bullet casings came from my old primary school, where there had been a WW2 training camp

And that is it! The shed is clear, and I managed to stop myself from hoarding away too much of it again. These few things that I’ve featured here, though, along with several boxes of Roman, Medieval, and more modern things I will now have to try and find a place for, or rehome…

Adieu, happy Reader!

 

Knocking Down the Shed. Part Three.

Forthcoming Reader,

As you are hopefully now very aware on this integral subject, the shed is gone, and I’ve already blogged about some old stuff. Let’s continue (with the medieval bits).

My main area of historical interest, especially as a kid, was the middle ages – castles, knights, battles – all the sorts of things that the sensationalised parts of history encourage in the imagination of young children. So the shed just might have been full of a lot of stuff from then.

This long bit of metal was something I had really hoped I’d find – it’s a window catch, but the site this one’s from dates it to c1500

This wonderful knife blade is also late medieval, but very battered – it was recovered from a spoil heap put together by a JCB so was probably damaged by the digger.

Ironwork is a tricky thing to look after – it degrades quickly in the wrong conditions (similar to decayed glass) and what state it might be in was a bit of a worry, but I was very happy and impressed that the metal had actually lasted perfectly where it had been sat for the last ten years.

There was a surprising amount of building stone as well as brick and floortiles in the shed, this is a rather nice medieval window mullion

Good quality building materials are often scarce especially on medieval Essex sites, where a lack of stone means that pretty much everything that could be taken away and reused was. Bicknacre Priory for example, after that burned down at the start of the 19th century, was almost completely pulled down over the subsequent twenty years and used to build roads.

On one site we dug on the owner of the medieval house that stood nearby came and asked if anyone would need the bricks when the dig was over. There were so many bags of them that we’d just weigh them and put that in the report, so after that they went off and were used to repair his house!

These are two floor tiles, likely discarded having been broken when they were removed from the floor when whichever building they were in was being demolished. The one on the right still has traces of its green glaze

A close up of a nicely decorated medieval floor tile fragment

Danbury was of course a famous centre of tilemaking in the Medieval period, and since these tiles were found locally they may well have been made not far from my back garden where they now (or at least did until now) reside.

There was a lot of window glass. This medieval piece still had painted hatchings across it from whatever design it once had

This little thing comes from a monastic site – I didn’t know what it was when I first found it, but was later told it’s a stylus and could either have been used for markings on wax, or for drawing out template lines in a scriptorium

I suppose I should close this with something nice, and of all the pieces of pot this is a particularly nice one. It’s just the base of a pot, probably a storage jar or something mundane, but someone had clearly attempted to pick it up before it was fired, and left their mark!

Adieu, Happy Reader!

Knocking Down the Shed. Part Two.

Paradoxical Reader,

If you weren’t aware, the shed is now knocked down.

I figured I’d do three further small posts on what I found, starting with the very old stuff.

A rooftile, from a very old roof.

I’ll start with this rooftile – it’s classic L-shape and rather imperfect matrix are immediately recognisable as Roman, and in fact this could well be my first ever Roman find. I picked it up when I was about eight and for a long time was the pride of my shelf-of-very-old-things when I was a kid. It comes from Colchester, that noble capital of Cymbeline’s, and turned up in a playground that I happened to be at. (This piece was found on the same day that I picked up a beautiful piece of a coat of arms off of a Belarmine jar, which I have not seen in about fifteen years and had hoped, in vain, would appear from the shed.)

Then, from out of a plastic bag not far away, appeared these wonderful little shaped stones – several still with the white mortar adhering to one side – Tesserae. These would have once been a part of a very fine Roman mosaic since they were very small, very well cut, and made from stone rather than broken up tile or brick.

These will have been from one of my childhood trips to Caerwent, where there are more Roman finds laying on the ground than flowers.

The fine-ness of the previous Tesserae was all the clearer when a second bag revealed these pieces, much cruder and therefore probably from a much cheaper mosaic.

There was a lot of old pot in the shed. A real lot. These two above pieces were a particularly nice find, though, being probably 1st or 2nd century and fitting together.

I am definitely giving the impression that my archaeological collections here started with the Romans – of course that’s not true, there are plenty of older things than the odd bit of Roman pot. (I’ve already blogged about that.) The above pieces are two lovely flints, probably Mesolithic or Neolithic, which came off of a spoil heap from some building works that I happened to do some climbing over as a kid.

Some things were even older – and I did spend a few years when I was really young hunting for fossils. The above is one of my favourites and I actually thought I’d got it stored somewhere safer than down the bottom of the garden. It’s a fish head, and one of the finds that when I was about nine I was encouraged to send to a local museum along with some other things to get identified. I got a note back simply confirming that I had sent them a rock – apparently they weren’t particularly knowledgeable on fossils.

And it wouldn’t be a post on fossils if an ammonite or two didn’t make an appearance, somewhere I’ve got a few fools gold ammonites that I picked up. Not in the shed though, so no photos of them here.

I suppose I’ll do a post on the medieval things I found next.

Adieu, happy Reader!

Knocking Down the Shed. Part one.

Igneous Reader,

Like your own constitution, the fiery nature of the summer has taken my time away from my keyboard and away from this blog. At least I claim this, but I am redesigning my personal website so that may also have kept me busy. Although – happy Reader – let me blog a upon a little (now vanished) shed.

This year marks a whole 15 others since I joined my first ever archaeology club, aged 9, and it’s been over 20 years now since I started surprising relatives by digging toddler sized holes in their back gardens.

This summer was, however, the last summer for a little shed that has been sat at the bottom of our garden since me and my brother got it as a birthday present back in 1998. It started life as just a place to play in, but quickly had shelves added where odd finds appeared on display – and by the time I was ten it was basically my own museum.

When I moved bedrooms at about 14 I turfed a lot more odd finds out of my old room and into the shed, and since then it has sat pretty much undisturbed at the bottom of the garden. I moved out for university, came back, and left again – and the shed slowly began to fall down; this summer was time for the ruinous thing to go, and at last nearly two decades worth of pot, nails, tiles, bottles, and more to be sorted through.

There was a lot. Hence the title part one.

This cheeky little face was one of the first things I saw as we took off the roof and front wall of the shed – fallen off a collapsed shelf, it was an almost complete turn-of-the-century egg cup

Collapsed shelves were the first problem to be worked out before finds could be sorted through. Ivy had pushed through the back of the shed and forced a whole load of shelves over, miraculously with nothing breaking – probably because everything had fallen off slowly together.

A hole in the roof had also let in leaves and water, so a season’s worth of dead leaves needed clearing off of things. I won’t go into the re-homing of a decade’s worth of spiders.

Some things were still carefully boxed and tissue wrapped as I’d left them when they were found – this wealth of medieval window lead comes from a spoil heap or two at the first site I dug on.

How did I come by all these things? Well, a lot were scavenged from gardens of friends or relatives (I had one friend as a child whose garden was full of Roman pot, and we never found out why). Other bits come from beach trips, there’s some from just along local footpaths, and more bottles than I can count from a local 19th century tip. But the real wealth of things came from spoil heaps, which my child-self was allowed to climb over and keep whatever was found since it was out of context. This was at least until on one site I found part of a Norman font dropped onto the spoil by a digger – I did report that to the dig director and for some reason he didn’t want me to keep it.

There were plenty of boxes of pottery; from prehistoric through to modern, and certainly a healthy few boxes of medieval.

I was very careful from a very young age to label every single thing that I found as to where it came from – hence each box or in some cases even individual finds were accompanied by little labels, and my far too precise memory of my childhood adventures filled in any unclear gaps.

This medieval window glass comes from Beeleigh Abbey, and is the spoil-heap-recovered part of a small mountain of fragments that were found discarded in the remains of the guest wing, having been stripped of their valuable lead at the dissolution.

The happy Reader can kindly learn that I intend to post a few more of these little snapshots of the shed and its peculiar contents, and the little highlights – many of which I certainly had not expected to find.

Adieu, dear Reader!

 

Referendum Floods

Soggy Reader,

I’d thought hard enough on the long journey home tonight  (I was clever enough to move out having registered to vote back in Essex) to produce a poem upon the odd predicament, with more rain running than trains. Which I certainly have never done before, and never about flooding.

Enjoy.

Getting Home for Mum’s Birthday

23rd June 2016

It was a Thursday, dull and grey,
(A soggy referendum day)
When I was walking down the Strand
And saw a swimming pool at hand –
I was surprised, for though quite clean,
T’was where the underground had been.

The station master, rather wet,
Gave a speech I shan’t forget:
He calmly said, though unsure how,
That “Essex is aquatic now.
“For those of you who might have voted,
“We don’t know where your paper’s floated.”

The county, high in disarray,
Was fathoms now, not miles away.
Platform four and five were clear
And had become a working pier,
While on the route to Bethnal Green
There sat a stranded submarine.

Commuters, ragged from the stress,
Had donned more ‘buccaneering’ dress
And taken out the Cutty Sark
For ‘pleasure boating’ in Hyde Park;
(But sadly – t’was unlucky chance –
The wind had pushed them out to France.)

I think before next time it rains
We’ll need a vote upon the drains,
And hopefully, though wisdom’s thin,
We’ll have more votes to take ‘Eau’ in;
What good can ‘go alone’ pretend
And who would vote to lose a friend?

Some (more) Spring Poems!

Humble Reader,

Allow me, after an unexpectedly busy day of archery and then wandering around London looking for a flat, to introduce this little pile of poems that Spring has happily brought out of me. For their quality I apologise, but the necessity for content on this blog commands them to be presented immediately:

Maytime Musings

The gold-red dawn that rang with fire
Blew out from farm to wood and spire,
And through the valley hills alone
Tumbled down on moss and stone.

I trespassed on those care-free scenes,
A gleaner searching golden dreams,
Collecting dawns that rise and lay
Among the cherry tints of day.

It fell like this in years gone by,
Each sunbeam, every winter sigh,
When Arthur, Cranmer, or King James
Wandered through these peaceful lanes.

Here the Norman, sins confessed,
Stooped his way to home and rest,
Or the Roundhead, hot with wars,
Preached to others for his cause.

The quiet serf, or noble king
Crossed these paths now rich with Spring,
And by the wood or through the vale
Heard the pebble stones inhale.

The ancient breeze my carry still
The new-cut grass from Danbury Hill,
And while we gleaners pass and fade,
Each Spring sees those passed hearts remade.

The Saxon Field

It was an age and acre distant
When learned stone was met with sword
When kings were dashed in but an instant
And royal blood enriched the sward.

When here, just where you stand, the yeoman,
Glad of heart and topped with zeal,
Flew arrows out ‘gainst Viking rowmen,
And Saxons bloodied Norse-made steel.

The cry went up, the landers came,
There roared from hell the hate of years,
A blood-red firmament of flame
Filled with shouts and taunts and cheers.

All silent now, the grass is green;
The spring has tickled out the bloom,
And now we think, and fear to dream,
Of men whom here once met their doom.

A Trip to Chichester

On Sunday after half past two
I went to town as people do
To ‘take the air’ and ‘chase the geese’
And buy myself a bright blue fleece.
And getting there in healthy time
I thought I’d hear the church clock chime.
Those noble bells clucked loudly when
I realised it was just a hen,
And climbing to inspect the spire
I found it made of chicken wire.
I thought it was a little much
To fit the church inside a hutch.
The highstreet was knee-high with straw
Which seemed a quite tremendous flaw,
I thought “How will the cars get through” –
There was no parking space, it’s true,
For shops ‘t’weren’t even space for one
Which might explain why there were none.
And even the electric lights
Illuminated farmyard sights.
It seemed that on my way to town
I’d had my map held upside down,
And being lost, I had instead
Locked myself inside a shed.

Adieu, my Dearest Reader.

Hunting for Elf Shot

Complete* Reader,

Most weekends I go out for a good long walk around the woods, especially during the winter when they’re quiet and the atmosphere is crisp and dramatic. Living on top of an ironage hill fort, with bronze age and earlier earthworks in the woods around it, I often find myself picking up worked flints – blades, scrapers, and arrowheads. I would even kindly admit, with complete acceptance of my failure at understanding fashion for some years now, that for a brief while when I was in Aberystwyth I had a Mesolithic arrowhead hung on a leather necklace round my neck, which I’d put together after finding the arrowhead on a Welsh hill.

I’d always thought that our modern affection for these beautiful flint tools was a product of our advancing understanding of history and science over the last two hundred years, which had proved these were not chance broken stones, but in fact the work of people who had lived thousands and thousands of years ago. How wrong I was.

In fact, people have been finding worked flints on the ground for as long as history can remember, and for centuries there were far more fantastic legends surrounding them than just a tale of some five-thousand year old hunting party.

Some ‘Elf Shot’ of my own, the furthest right arrow head having lost its right-hand side

In pagan Scandinavia over a thousand years ago they were referred to as Thunderstones, and supposedly were the remains of thunderbolts fallen to earth. There they were worshipped as family Gods, and well after the Christian conversion of that country they were still seen as a protector against thunder storms.

The church quickly caught onto this worryingly pagan practice, and at least by the 11th century were spreading their own story that these worked flints were the left over weapons of angels that had fallen to earth when they drove the Devil out of heaven. Elsewhere in Europe and even beyond they are believed to have healing or protective properties, seen tokens of luck, and even supposedly to protect the carrier against witchcraft.

It is this protection against witchcraft that brings me on to British folklore around these flints, and the tale of Elf Shot.

For an unknown reason, even Roman Britons had a fascination with flints, and they occasionally turn up in burial urns. The British legend surrounding these stones, however, dates from a little later – with the excellent people who brought in the birth of our Britain – the Saxons.

Earliest written evidence of the story is found in the Wið færstice, a fragmentary Saxon medical text written some hundred years before the Norman conquest, it names the flints as the arrows of Elves, invisible creatures who follow people around and at any moment fire an arrow at them, causing severe pain. This was used to explain the cause of arthritis, aching joints, and other odd pains that people may have felt.

To ward off this pain, then, a person would have to go out and find a piece of Elf Shot and wear it – remaining archaeological evidence suggests as a pendant – which would deflect any further elf arrows. The original date of this legend is unclear, but a viking pendant found in the UK is one of the oldest extant examples of a piece of Elf Shot that someone has worn, and likely dates no earlier than the 9th century.

It is possible, then, that this practice of wearing elf shot to ward off pain is somehow descended from an earlier Scandinavian tradition brought over by the vikings. Later on in the legend’s history in Britain, wearing Elf Shot was seen as a protection against witchcraft in general, elves traditionally being one of the most mischievous magical creatures around according to British folklore.

A load more elf shot, although this lot I didn’t find locally**

The practice was still going on in more rural parts of Britain well into the 17th century, and it wasn’t until the mid-18th century when examples of Native American stone weapons were brought back to Europe that a connection began to be made between the stones and possibly an origin in earlier civilizations. With the church strongly against this view, since it would suggest that the world was older than the bible claimed, it did not gain much popular notoriety, and it wasn’t until at last in 1847 that a book was finally published proposing the idea, and, after significant opposition, the myth of thunderstones and Elf Shot finally vanished into the dusts of disproved myth at the end of the 19th century.

Have no fear, though, kind reader – for though the legend may have quietly fallen out of our folklore, you can still happily wander the fields and hillsides and pick up the flint tools that have fascinated mankind for well over a thousand years, and will certainly continue to be beautiful objects for millennia to come.

Adieu, dearest reader!

*if inaccurate, try checking lost property.

** All out of context of any archaeological layers, of course

The Devil of Bell Hill

Remarkable Reader,

I put together a tall tale about Danbury’s finest ghost story last Christmas, and this year (although I should and hope to put together a proper good old tale for this year’s fireside) I hope to drag on my incompetent prose with a short rhyme upon it.

Basically I went for a foggy-sunset walk and some verses popped up, so here they are.

High in Danbury wood there stands
A kingdom of bone fingered hands
     Stretched in winter’s haze
Fog-lit moonlight holds the wind –
Opal vapours curl and grin,
     A raindrop patter plays.

It’s here they say in olden times
That when the church was ringing chimes
     The devil stole the bell
He ran it down that hill toward
The copse where winter keeps accord
     (What secrets seasons tell).

For where the frost comes down to sleep
In their depths the snowdrifts keep
     A hidden secret too
For when the bell fell down that climb
It bounced and called out one last chime
     Then tumbled out of view.

The devil, starting with surprise
Found the bell was twice his size
     His strength no more sustained
And so he fled that ancient hill
(The one that stands so stalwart still)
     But yet the bell remained.

So now if walking Danbury wood
In winter’s beauty – which you should –
     You here a distant bell
You stand where once the devil’s feet
Tripped and fell at his defeat
     And that’s devil’s knell.

And when the folk in ages old
Would tell the story I’ve just told
     Young men would up and go
And climb their way through wood and vale
To search the truth from out the tale;
     They found but empty snow.