The Windy Hill

[smokingboot]

Up to Cairnpapple, ancient site, tomb and henge, with the tendinitis and the face-pelting hail and the husband giving me the 'You're not well in your head' face! Up to see the shadows of sea and loch, land and forest changing all the time in the mist, and the cool air filling my lungs. Feeling alive!

In practical terms it may have been a mistake; the tendinitis was awful afterwards. R is very gentle with me being the worst kind of patient, the one who keeps doing the thing that make them ill. I definitely got some side-eye from him about this adventure, but the truth is I can't just sit there; I do too much of that anyway.

This was a late imbolc celebration with a couple of friends. It was the first time I had been to Cairnpapple, I don't know why I had been holding off. Maybe I wanted it to be a special occasion. There were a few bodies buried there during the Bronze age and later at the beginning of the Christian era; offerings of broken pots seem to have been made and apparently it was that rarity, a henge at the top of a hill. Our archeologist mate told us his theory, that henges were about connecting with the gods in places of big sky. He deplored the use of the phrase 'ritual landscape,' because he spoke of the ancestors being intensely practical, and I can believe it; but between the Cnoc, Persephone's Rest, Cairnpapple and not so very far away what looks like a cave or an entrance to the old silvermines (Underworld!) the idea is very hard to avoid. Plus the area is full of standing stones and refuge stones. I would not be at all surprised if many of these came originally from Cairnpapple.

I want to explore the cave/ mine, though I had better wait until this inflammation is gone, in fact I have to because it is painful now. Also, I think the pixies nabbed my glasses while I was up there.

Return was to a snugglesome front room, hubby and rugby, with Wales being strangely inadequate against Ireland, and a damn good game between England and Scotland.

My dreams were interesting last night possibly a little beer infused. Dreams of London, a bit I used to know but can't name now, like Holborn but not quite, full of scaffolding, a...

Wait a minute, no, it is coming back to me now. A muddle but definitely something about a book in which I thought I saw some inking of a moorish gentleman. The sketch was of an angular face, moustache and beard...Something about him and a lady whom I assume was Christian. There was a story there...

There is a story there. Maybe some day I'll find it.

There was also a lovely black guy encouraging me to have some weed, a joke contest to be entered, like some equivalent of an Eastern European Eurovision song Contest. A friend and I had put some kind of performance duo together, the judges had loved it and wanted videos of it for this new thing. Someone asked me where they could buy lunch, and I directed them through the scaffolding that seemed to be everywhere on this street to where they could choose between one direction where there wasn't much good food, and the other where there also wasn't much good food and it was more expensive. I tried to buy a newspaper, which a stall holder just wouldn't sell me. And there was something about me needing a cashpoint. There was a totemic bit, but that will take a bit more mulling over.