Yew musings

Before I step out for a misty solstice walk, and hopefully while Simon Bradley and Phil Harding race to the Halifax Beacon in order to save Time itself, here is a link to some work my husband has been doing with recordings I made at the Llangernyw yew.

Phil is calling for participation to contribute to a 40 minute piece of (rather wonderful) music, open until January 20th, 2013.

 While considering what the voice of Angelystor might sound like, he decided that it would be an aggregate of voices of all ages and sexes – the ancestral voices of the parish.

Phil would like people (globally) to contribute to the project by sending a recording of themselves saying a name.

This could be either: “Sion (pronounced ‘Shon’) ap Robert” – a man who, local legend tells, heard his own name spoken by Angelystor, or the name of a friend, family member or hero you wish to memorialise.

 If you would like to participate, please read more at his blog, Larkfall.


We have been using the Ancient Yew resource in order to find more local old yews to visit and pay homage to, sadly the gazetteer flags up many 'lost' yews, cut down while still healthy and relatively young. Last weekend we visited Hazlewood Castle's yew, which you can see in all it's glory as the first photo in this PDF.  Sadly on our visit the tree had been pruned to just it's central trunk, losing much of the bulk of the tree.

Hazlewood Castle overlooks Towton battlefield near Aberford, a place which we seem to be gravitating towards currently. We seem to have followed the course of the Cock Beck for a while now, either through Barwick, treading ancient paths, at Whinmoor, searching for the site of Penda's last battle or at Aberford, hunting blood-stained roses.

In final, and slightly less landscape related news, I have been photographing artwork created by a dear friend named John Godbert, who is a talented archaeological illustrator, also having his art featured on a myriad of album covers (such as The Fall's Live at The Witch Trials cover). He is also a rather spectacular performer, or rather, is never seen in the same room as Herb Diamante.

His collages mix imagery of the physical; biological technicalities and planets collide, with the paraphysical, John is interested in all kinds of the surreal but some of his most striking collages involve magic and the otherworld, mediums delivering reams of ectoplasm, Crowley sitting astride K2, the Cottingley fairy images. His artwork is available to purchase from my Facebook album or alternatively, Etsy.