Elin Gregory

As last year, just click on the image to the left to be taken to the A-Z website and links to other blogs taking part. Good luck to everyone and I hope the inspiration keeps flowing.

Norns

These lovely ladies are part of the Norse pantheon, both loved and feared by those big hairy Vikings. The three most important Norns were Urðr), Verðandi and Skuld, who functioned as minders of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, and prevented his roots from rotting, but other Norns governed the fate of mankind, turning up at births and deaths and determining what happened in between.

The Valkyries were a separate branch of the Norns, responsible for harvesting the souls of the most valiant amongst the recently slain. Other norns fulfilled the same function as Morai did in Greek mythology, spinning the thread of a man’s life and deciding when it should be cut short. Although it’s possible that the idea of these spinning females had cross-pollinated from the Mediterranean to the chilly North, I prefer to think that warriors all over the place looked at the complexities of weaving and thought, rather uneasily, that women might be a bit more clever than they ususally gave them credit for.

Tomorrow – actually I have no idea what to write about tomorrow so it’ll be a nice surprise for me too.

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As last year, just click on the image to the left to be taken to the A-Z website and links to other blogs taking part. Good luck to everyone and I hope the inspiration keeps flowing.

Karakoram

One of the most hostile environments in the word, and therefore of endless fascination for the types for whom anything impossible is a challenge.

The Karakoram is part of the huge range of mountains that extends from Afghanistan in the West to China. Everest is the highest mountain in that range but the Karakorum has the highest concentration of mountains over seven thousand metres.

My other half was a climber in his youth, and a big fan of the extreme climbers who tackled the highest peaks. We have a shelf full of biographies of the climbers and accounts of great climbs. So when I was trying to think of a K post, Karakoram popped into my mind and I decided to talk about The Ogre – that’s the really tall spiky bit in the next picture.

It’s proper name is Braintha Brakk. The highest point is 7,285 metres (23,901 ft) above sea level, so it’s a good bit shorter than Everest, but is considered to be the most difficult climb in the world. It wasn’t climbed until 1977 when a team led by Chris Bonnington comprising Doug Scott, Mo Anthoine, Clive Rowland, Nick Estcourt, and Tut Braithwaite, scaled it by the easiest possible route, which was still a terrible effort.

Early on in the climb Braithwaite was caught in a rock fall and injured but the rest continued with their attempt. They divided into 2 teams, one to halt at the western summit and the other to carry on to the highest peak.

Bonnington and Doug Scott made it to the summit, but on the first abseil on the way down Scott fell and broke both legs. With the weather closing in and no hope of rescue he began to crawl down the mountain.

This photograph of doug Scott clinging to a rope as he shuffles along on his knees was taken by Bonnington on the descent.

Together they made it to the camp where the other climbers in the team were waiting and shortly after Bonnington fell, broke some ribs and contracted pneumonia. So that was two of them crawling down the mountain.

It took them five days to reach base camp and several more until they reached a place where Scott, Bonnington and Braithwaite could get more than basic medical treatment. Luckily all three climbers made a full recovery and went on to climb many more mountains.

There are many more tales of badassery in the Karakoram but doug scott’s epic crawl down the Ogre is the one I always think of. 😀 there are enough K mountains to keep me going for a few years.

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As last year, just click on the image to the left to be taken to the A-Z website and links to other blogs taking part. Good luck to everyone and I hope the inspiration keeps flowing.

Idolatry

This post stems almost entirely from the fact that last years A to Z challenge I post is the most frequently visited on my blog. It gets several hits a week even now and I know exactly why this is, thanks to wordpresses handy search engine term displayer thingy.

It’s because I used the word string “Brad Pitt in a tiny leather mini-skirt”. For some reason people search for that term a LOT.

Now I’ve used the term again I expect to get a few hits on this post too so – to make it worth their while coming I’ve added a picture.

It’s interesting what people idolise, isn’t it?

Okay I think he has nice thighs and I love the juxtaposition of the vaguely ancient look and the fact that he’s on a cell phone but the first thing that I notice is that the armour is all wrong.

This armour, on the other hand is correct and would not be hard for Hollywood to make. I wonder why they never bother.

Layers of linen and fine leather stiffened with animal glue and strapped together with leather thongs and metal eyelets, more strips of the laminated leather/fabric to provide protection to the belly and groin without hampering movement and under it the finest most densely woven material possible to prevent chafing, rather than for modesty’s sake.

This painter KNEW his stuff – so did his audience and if he’d painted something that was wrong the audience would have not bought his work. Designers who are working on modern films HAVE to get the clothing right – would you believe a man heading out to a nightclub in frogman’s flippers and a bowler hat? Or the head of a drug cartel driving a Toyota Yaris? But for historicals it’s always the LOOK of the thing that’s important rathe than any kind of accuracy or even comfort. The Lord of the Rings, though very imaginative, escped, that flaw because Peter Jackson got Jonathan Howe and Alan Lee in to do the designs, two men who really know how armour works and how to make it pretty enough for the modern movie going audience while making it possible for the actors to move. I think designers who do their research and try for a bit of practicality and authenticity are worthy of just a little idolatry, don’t you?

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As last year, just click on the image to the left to be taken to the A-Z website and links to other blogs taking part. Good luck to everyone and I hope the inspiration keeps flowing.

Garibaldi

They say that the surest road to fame for any commander is to have an item of food or clothing named after him. So if you’re wearing your wellington boots and a cardigan while eating a sandwich, how about rounding your snack off with a Garibaldi, known to all in the UK as ‘squashed fly biscuits”.

Please note: this is a British blog so biscuits = cookies. What you might well call a biscuit I would call a scone.

These biscuits were made in direct response to a visit to the UK from the great revolutionary leader Guiseppe Garibaldi in 1854.

As with so much in political history Garibaldi’s life is incredibly complicated. He was born in France from Italian parents and qualified as a sea captain. While in Russia he met an Italian political activist who so inspired him that he signed up to support the Risorgimento – the idea that Italy should be united again, as it once was under the Romans, instead of being separate city states more or less influenced by other European powers. He supported a popular insurrection in the Piedmont that ended so badly that he was sentenced to death – in absentia because he had fled, firstly to North Africa and then to Brazil.
Not one to step back from any available fight he joined in the delightfully named Ragamuffin War aided by a marvellous woman called Anita, later Mrs Garibaldi, who taught him how too be a gaucho and fought at his side, and a legion of exiled Italians. They also fought in the Uruguyan Civil War where Garibaldi commanded the fleet, sailing under a black flag to signify their mourning for the oppression of Italy. He and his men all wore red shirts liberated from a textile factory in Montevideo.

With a new liberal Pope in Rome Garibaldi and 60 of his red shirts returned to Italy in 1848 and fought with personal success on several losing sides in the 1st War for Italian Independence. Eventually he and 250 supporters were driven to San Marino where Anita, who was carrying their 5th child, died. Garibaldi and his supporters withdrew to Tangiers and Garibaldi took ship for America, hoping to raise funds but ending up working in a candle factory. But you can’t keep a good man down and he went back to Italy by working as a sea captain via central America, Australia, China, Manila, Peru and Newcastle in the UK, where he was greeted enthusiastically by the working men of the city, maybe hoping that he’d help them shrug off the yokes of their oppressors. He didn’t but THERE was where they invented the famous biscuit!

I could spend another hour of so writing about Garibaldi’s campaigns but we’re supposed to keep these posts short, so I’ll just end by saying that he lived long enough to see Italy at least partially unified, served in their parliament and founded a democratic society espousing universal suffrage, abolition of ecclesiastical property and the emancipation of women. He died in 1882 at the age of 75 having fathered 8 children, written at least 2 novels and two sets of memoirs.

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