Book & site list

[Boreades]

A lovely old couple of Ridgeway Walkers are with us this evening. After a cold and miserable afternoon slipping and sliding up & down the edges of the Downs, in dregg & dismal weather, they are enjoying the warmth of our log fire.

They have just lent me their copy of "The Old Ways - A Jouney On Foot" - by Robert MacFarlane. It's a rather poetic and hauntingly beautiful collection of stories, from the author's walks on some of Britain's most ancient paths.

In return, I have given them a copy of TME for bedtime reading.

Update: 1 x TME sold.

[hvered]

I recommend the second one, The Wild Places, in the trilogy. Macfarlane writes beautifully but he's not in the same league as Patrick Leigh Fermor. I enjoyed the book though, hope you do too.

[spiral]

As someone unable to read or write books, I was slightly disappointed to discover a present from Saint Julian under the tree.

It's a hefty tome, that weighs about the same as a New Forest pony, who has eaten, a few too many discarded sandwiches.

My copy is in a cardboard case covering, with a circular hole in the middle. Once you get the book out the casing, you are left with a serious problem. How on earth do you put the book away again?

I reckon it is a type of megalithic puzzle, you have to align the megalithic symbol on the book, with the hole in the casing....I will give you a clue, the main problem is weight. I reckon, probably the best method is to use rope and pulleys, but I am yet to master it. Presumably the ancients, used to feasting on wild bear, found this sort of thing much easier.

Unable to put the book away, I was forced into reading it. I must confess that I barely made it to the end of the title "The Modern Antiquarian: A Pre-Millennial Odyssey Through Megalithic Britain.", but I, rather heroically, persevered. Unfortunately as it is 438 pages, I confess I will never make it to the end.

Still, I am going to warmly recommend this effort, the maps and photographs are truly wonderful. This is surely a book to strap onto your roof rack, and then head off in search for ancient monuments.... It is for the enthusiastic explorer rather than the academic. There are thumbnail sketches, of every megalith site (over 300) the author has ever visited, so you can compare your notes with those of the author. And, of course, there are poems. Err, lots of poems......The pages come in a selection of colours, that helpfully match those of the rainbow.

The first section is entitled Essays, and is commendably bonkers. Saint Julian weighs into the establishment, with all the gusto of M. Harper on acid. He seems to have a thing about mother goddesses, whom he likes, and academics, whom he hates. Most folks who have reviewed this section describe this as "new age" nonsense.

It's highly enjoyable. Thought provoking. Probably best to get it in paperback, and read it with your kit off, cuddling your significant other, looking into the sunset.....

I gave it 9/10

[Boreades]

Something that often surfaces here in the TME forum is a frustration with regurgitated history, and orthodox historians who present as fact the opinions of previous historians, without going back to original material.

It's rare to find books that cut through the dross and provide some insight into what the original authors originally meant. On such gem is:
The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe
By Arthur Koestler.

A work of deep insight into how we understand the universe. Or invent it in our own image. Along with some great myth-busting on Newton (Kepler "invented" gravity 70 years earlier) and Galileo (condemned by the Church for his refusal to refrain from theological interpretations of Scripture, not for his scientific views, which the church had actively encouraged)

Recommended as essential reading for all.

[Mick Harper]

This was the start of my own intellectual uprising along with its companion The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.

[Boreades]

How many more copies of TME have I got to sell before you order a reprint? Just want to know, so I can set Chateau Boreades' house staff a decent sales target. Another copy sold to a walker this morning. I think I've cornered the market in sales of TME to walk-in walkers.

[Mick Harper]

That was one of our mystery shoppers checking up on retail outlets. The report is confidential.

[Boreades]

Here at Chateaux Boreades, the house staff is recovering from the seasonal deluge of Avebury Summer Solstice visitors. As always, they were under firm instructions to wax lyrical about that wonderful TME book. Especially about Silbury and what it orginally looked like.

Wessex Archeo has come up with another interpretation.
http://www.wessexarch.co.uk/images/aveb ... dith-dobie

It it was a classic British car, we'd have had it properly restored and working by now!

[macausland]

If it was a classic British car it would have been sold to the Chinese or anyone else capable of filling brown paper envelopes.

Rather like the NHS. The Health Minister Jane Ellison has just declared herself 'excited'.

"I don't know how much any of you realise that with the Lansley act we pretty much gave away control of the NHS …it is a bit like being on a high wire without a net at times, it can be quite exciting."

As for the imaginary Silbury Hill, are they really serious? First of all it looks like a poor imitation of Breughel's Tower of Babel only without the pulleys and hoists and other things that make hard work easy.

Are they really suggesting the builders were skinny hippy types in rather dodgy underwear? And as for carrying baskets of stones on their heads. I've worked on building sites in the past and have never seen anyone daft enough to try that.

I wonder what the whiskery druids in their bedsheets would have to say. Speaking of which have they got any original art work on the construction of Stonehenge?

[Boreades]

Are they really suggesting the builders were skinny hippy types in rather dodgy underwear? And as for carrying baskets of stones on their heads. I've worked on building sites in the past and have never seen anyone daft enough to try that.

It made me chuckle as well. This is an EH artist's attempt to understand megalithic engineering, not a Civil Engineer's. Pyramids on a G-String.

That's given me an idea, maybe we should ask Jon to put up a competition in his circle of professionals. How would they have built a multi-faceted spiral pyramid in Wiltshire 5K years ago?