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Napowrimo

Napowrimo #30: Advice for mice

Advice
for mice.

If Lanius excubitor
(the Great Grey Shrike)
should happen to impale you on
a big sharp spike,

it’s really nothing personal:
it just intends to rip
some chunks of flesh from off your bones
and needs a better grip.

They call the shrike the butcher bird
and butchery is harder
if you do it without any knives
and a thornbush for a larder.

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Daily Links

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Other

Manchester United 1-0 Barcelona

… and Paul Scholes scores. It’s just like the old days.

Really, though, I know we’re all supposed to get terribly excited by the prospect of all-English semifinals and finals, but I don’t watch the Champion’s League for the chance to see Chelsea play Liverpool at Stamford Bridge. I watch to see games like today’s: English teams playing against glamorous foreign opposition, with players like Messi, Eto’o and Deco that have amazing reputations but who I’ve rarely seen play.

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Napowrimo

Napowrimo #28: bees and wasps

Honey, of course, is made by bees
but some may not have heard
about the hives of Cornish wasps
that make the lemon curd.

~~~

a bit late, but at least I’m back to only one behind schedule.

Categories
Culture

The Century of Revolution by Christopher Hill

The full title is The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714; i.e. the century in question is the longish C17th from the death of Queen Elizabeth to the death of Queen Anne. I guess most centuries are centuries of revolution somewhere, and in one way or another, but the C17th was the only time the English have had an actual literal political revolution. In fact we had two, or one and a half. The first one, in the 1640s, definitely was a revolution — with parliament deciding to put an axe through the king’s neck, and power resting with the army and so on — but is usually referred to as the ‘Civil War’. The second one is referred to, at least by the English, as ‘the Glorious Revolution’, but was really something else: half invasion, half coup. It’s probably a bit strong to describe it as the Dutch conquest of England, but it was probably something closer to that than a ‘revolution’.

I bought this book because I was aware of a gaping hole in my knowledge of British history when it came to this period; I mean, my historical knowledge is patchy anyway, but I’ve read quite a few books about the C18th and C19th, and some about the Tudors and the medieval period, whereas my knowledge of the C17th didn’t go much beyond the clichés; right but repulsive vs. wrong but wromantic, and all that. So I bought this book hoping to get an overview.

And it did provide that; if anything I think I should have gone for something slightly more specific. A book that covers a whole century of history in a few hundred pages is inevitably going to be a firehose of facts; an enormous amount to take in, and not much of the kind of detailed context and human interest that sugars the pill a bit when reading history. Hill divides the period up into four sections, and for each, he organises the material into  ‘Narrative of Events’, ‘Economics’, ‘Politics and Constitution’ and ‘Religion and Ideas’. Which works pretty well, and I do feel that I’ve been given a good grounding in what was going on. I don’t know how much of it I’ve retained, though. If I was really serious about trying to get a handle on the period, I should probably read it again. Which I don’t think is going to happen.

It’s an interesting period, though. The Elizabethans seem so distant and exotic; the Georgians are so modern in comparison, and that difference, that spectacular change, is what makes the C17th so fascinating. Constitutional power shifted from the monarch to Parliament, Cabinet appeared, the civil service started to develop, economic power shifted from the landed gentry to industrialists and merchants, the stock market was established, credit notes removed the need for all business to be done using discs of shiny metal, the religious monopoly of the Church of England was broken, Britain became a dominant naval power, agriculture was modernised. We became modern: or at least more modern than most.

» The photo of a Loyalist mural in Belfast was posted to Flickr by Benjamin Harrison and is used under a CC by-nc licence.

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Napowrimo

Napowrimo #27: Barnaby the Wonderhound

Barnaby the Wonderhound
can leap tall buildings at a single bound
and his amazing supernose
can track a man wherever he goes.
He’d be superb at fighting crime,
but he prefers to spend his time
looking for a place to snooze
and widdling in his owners’ shoes.