I have known about the Man in Seat Sixty-One website for a while now, being a train travel aficionado, particularly when abroad. The site is an emporium of information, not just on train travel across the world, but on other novel ways of getting to, from and around the most distant lands, including ferries and buses. While it is primarily aimed at those who travel from the UK, it could be easily used by others. The information seems to be up to date and the descriptions of the sights you pass through on recommended voyages feel genuine and original. From the ferry-mounted train between southern Italy and Sicily to travelling to Australia by sea and rail (32 to 40 days), there is very little here that a traveller would not find engaging. And it doesn’t push any particular package deals or agencies, it’s barebones world public transport, and options for that little bit of extra luxury such as sleepers and dining services.

Check it out: http://www.seat61.com/

A couple of weeks ago I attended an introductory cheesemaking course at Hartpury College, Gloucester. We were taught by Judy King, cheesemaker from nearby Wharf Farm Dairy. We made a cheddar method goats cheese which will mature in about two months. The photo shows the second cheddaring which is the process of re-cutting the curds, placing one block on top of another for more whey to drain out. See all my cheesemaking photos to understand the process.

Cheesemaking was a wonderfully fulfilling experience. The combination of the preciseness of a science to the magic of applying your intuition to get each stage right (the art) made for a truly religious experience. Cheesemaking allows all your engergies to flow from your head to hands to feet (you’re on your feet most of the day) which is a refreshing change after book reading. A lot of people are suspicious, ignorant or otherwise indifferent to cheese. A lot of things that parade as ‘cheese’ are not. Especially things like ‘cheese strings’. which is little more than a plastic drainpipe, melted, compressed, fried and dyed. Even the ‘cheese’ you get in most lunch time sandwiches has never felt the gentle hands of a cheesemaker or even the slow stir of a semi-mechanised dairy overseen by highly knowledgeable cheesemakers. Why do we so readily accept insipid pale sheets of linoleum? They should call this stuff ‘imitation cheese’ or something else altogether like ‘food slices’.

Cheese is a miracle. It’s alchemy. Turning milk into such brilliant fast food with the addition of starter culture (‘friendly bacteria’) and rennet (based on fungi) should amaze people. It should also gladden people that cheese is still made in the way it should be, slowly by hand, with love.

Following our delayed Spring, I was happy to see bluebells come up in our tiny garden. They all grew tall and handsome and I made a photographic study of some using a diopter (magnifying) lens. This close, the little lilac-blue flowers seemed angelically alive and some of the photos captured their blue haze (something like an aura perhaps). They reminded me of the association of the colour blue with heaven and also dreams. Also the colour of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s cloak and all that that beholds, so it is believed.

This is a map of the countries I have visited, apparently 5% of the world’s countries.

create your own visited countries map

Before dawn on 21 June a group of 11 people made their way to a meadow in Wiltshire. The journey was made to found and witness the Circle in the West, a new stone momument that will comprise seven ‘circles’ in homage to Stonehenge. The dawn was clearing as Sun was about to break the flat horizon and we were all quieted by the spectacle in front of us while archaeological surveyors plotted the various angles and positions of the sunrise in relation to the centre point of the Circle. The Ox-eye daisies (the day’s eyes) unfurled and stretched in recognition of it.
There was no overt ritual or founding speech. We all were, and the Circle came to be. A great sense of occasion without the need to be vocal or large-gestured. The Circle in the West will give people the best idea yet possible of what Stonehenge looked and felt like when it was ‘first’ built. This in itself happened over a long period of time in about three phases, first c.3,100 BCE a circle of timbers surrounded by a bank and ditch, second c.2,500 BCE the henge is rebuilt in stone using Preseli blue stone from South Wales, and third c. 2,300 BCE after what seems like an abandonment of the site, the henge was expanded to something that resembles its remains today – that is, the re-erection of the blue stones in their current positions and giant sandstone Sarsens from the Marlborough Downs which, among other features, form the unmistakable trilithons. There is also a ring of ‘x and y holes’ which some have posited might have been prepared for a ring of stones that were never erected. The Circle in the West will include these.

The stones for the Circle will come from all over the world and when polished up will represent each of the seven colours of the rainbow (not dyed or tinted, the colour will be the natural hue of the rock so the effect quite subtle but dramatic). The new circle will have polished blue stones from an extant quarry in Preseli. The blue stones are dolorite, an extremely hard rock that is midnight blue (indigo) with small flecks of other colours such as green and grey, quite different to the eroded lichen-covered and pock-marked grey of the stones at Stonehenge today. Other rocks will come from Agra (‘red’ stone also used in the building of Taj Mahal), Norway (blue rocks with large flecks of quartz crystal), Canada (green), Jerusalem sandstone (yellow, also used in the building of Solomon’s Temple) and a ring of amethyst may form the middle ring of purple.

People will not only be able to visit the Circle but there are also plans for a visitor centre that will explain something of the fasination humans have and continue to have with megaliths and stone circles, as well as provide learning and information about the natural environment in which the Circle will exist. The building and planning of the Circle and its visitor centre will hopefully include local people from its adjacent communities, scientists, astrologers, astronomers, archaeologists, natural historians, ecologists, botanists, meglithophiles, healers, Druids, musicians, acousticians, writers, artists, perhaps a hippy or two and anyone with a vested interest in showing what wonders can be made when combining inspiration from the past, a naturally beautiful environment and good minds. Whatever the opinions about the merits of this project (which will not be seeking public funds but rather sustain itself in a not-for-profit manner), I feel it will be a 21st century momument to cherish as much as our old friend that was built over a period of at least 800 years. As I said in response to the announcement of the project, there are no neo-pagan pretentions here for any continuity of tradition or a ‘right’ to worship, neither from Stonehenge fanatics who may seek to replicate the ancient henge momument. The Circle will indeed be a fine co-creation. Thoughts from others at Past Thinking and from Pete Glastonbury.

On Boundaries is a new blog created by my friends gesta and reivers, a medievalist and a mathematical scientist, approaching life, people and the universe from their divers perspectives. If they don’t mind me saying, this will blog will challenge all sorts of rubbish that is believed by lots of unthinking or otherwise ignorant people. They are compassionate intellectuals, highly defined by their own life experiences in learning, knowledge acquisition and wisdom sharing.

Yesterday, I bought an amazing bed of tangerine quartz. Today, I have been trying to find out what causes the fabulous tangerine-orange hue. The colouring is translucent and comes from the surfaces of the quartz, rather than from the inclusion of a foreign mineral within. Tom (my extremely excellent other half) asked about what causes the similar but man-made effects displayed by aqua, ruby and opal aura quartz and Dave Watts (a mineral dealer) and Ian Williams (a physicist) explained that the effects are created by a process called Thin-film Deposition, also referred to as the ‘plasma treatment’ where (explained simply by me) clear quartz is placed in a vacuous chamber in the presence of metallic particles such as gold, silver or platinum. Then, a low-voltage current is passed through the quartz and the metal particles adhere, electrostatically, to the quartz creating hues of irridescent blue, ruby red, and irridescent pearl or white respectively.

Quartz (silicon dioxide), or rock crystal, itself has piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties which means it will undergo any manner of transformations when subjected to pressure or heat, or in the presence of other electro-magnetic charges (even human). Such changes do, of course, occur naturally in the earth and it seems that tangerine quartz is created while quartz is in the presence of of haematite dust (iron oxide) in intense heat causing the iron to adhere and create this wonderful colour. It is also referred to as haematised quartz. The Mineralology of Novia Scotia website contains good explanations of this and other types of minerals. See another picture of the tangerine quartz on courgettelawn’s flickr blog (that’s mine).
What a literally brilliant orange thing!