November Days

fallen leaves & fire magic

With its long, long coastline, Norfolk, like Cornwall, is more or less a peninsula. So, especially close to the coast as I am here, the weather can shift and turn restlessly over the course of a single day. Whether I open my bedroom window to low mist over the field opposite, rain cascading down the lane or a perfect sunrise it’s perfectly possible that everything will be completely different by lunchtime. Having said that, the past two days have been, let’s be honest, pretty grey and chilly with plenty of rain and drizzle and mizzle. Well, it is November!

And actually, it’s one of the things I love about the month. There will be a day when all is flaming rosehips, golden fairy-flag birch leaves strung along the boughs and a last fiery flash of bracken. A couple of days later after a rainy or frosty bout (no frost this year yet!) and the world has changed again. The woods are see-through and go on for miles. Droplet-laden twigs and wicked spikes emerge at angles between the few remaining blackthorn leaves and clusters of sloes. The bracken melts away, autumn’s alchemy turning them from golden syrup to caramel to burnt toffee to black treacle. The wren and the robin flick in front of me as I walk and I can see the spot where they dip into the waiting hedgerow. Fresh dug earth and skid marks down the bank reveal the places where night-wanderers cross the lane. 

In the midst of winter’s quiet decay, paradoxically the world seems more alive, more full of movement and curious happenings than it does in the warm lull of summer. 

This morning, walking over the heath before settling down to write this, three roe deer stood gazing at me, white rumps bright against the soft russets and bronzes of heathers and grasses. Their perfect ears making me smile as they always do. November arranges its colours and forms to perfection. 

It feels like a paradox that we are waiting for the first chink of light as the moon waxes its fullest, brightest expression. And all the time, we are sinking further into the darkest part of the year. By the time the moon is new again, the shortest day will have passed. To me this makes this moment very special. It’s a time to light a candle, or candles; to reflect and to stay as cosy as we can, while feeling grateful for the warmth of flame and of four walls.

Welcome to the November New Moon newsletter from The Old Shop!

My plan is to write about what’s happening in the countryside, around the cottage and garden, and little snippets of seasonal lore. A swirl of salt, earth, and circling dragonflies. With recipes, and, I hope, a dash of inspiration to carry with you to your own corner of the landscape. Certainly it will be a winding trail. So, if you would like to step out beside me (as I very much hope you will) you will do well to top up your flask with a steaming brew and make sure your backpack has some tasty treats in the pockets to munch as we journey along the way together. There will be news from The Old Shop each New and Full Moon, which no doubt will vary subtly as the energies shift. But time will tell. It’s free to subscribe, so please share this with any friends who may be interested. The more the merrier! 

Old Clem

Clementing, Clementing once a year

Apples and Pears are very good cheer!

One for Peter and one for Paul

And One for Him who made us all!"

As my friend Jacqueline so beautifully puts it (and I wholeheartedly recommend her Substack blog Radical Honey): ‘This is a full and rich week in our Old Advent journey, chock-ful with festivals and feast days.’

‘Old’ Advent, because we are already moving through a hidden advent, a Celtic advent which runs for 40 days leading up to Christmas just as Lent is counted as the 40 days before Easter. And I, for one, say why not? Advent is, of course, a time of waiting and reflection but also of excited anticipation. I think you’ll agree that when days are short, the more feasts and festivals we have excuses to celebrate the better. And today is the feast day of St Clement, an early Christian martyr who died either in the first or the fourth century according to source. He has become the patron of sailors and blacksmiths, although it’s with the latter that he is most generally associated. Without going into the story of the saint here (read Jacqueline’s post for that!) I just wanted to say a little about his wilder avatar. 

Sharing his feast day with the pagan Anglo-Saxon blacksmith deity Wayland (and here in Norfolk, incidentally, there’s a Wayland Wood, said to be the true-life location of the fairytale Babes in the Wood) Old Clem was the more friendly and familiar name traditionally given to Saint Clement. Blacksmiths took the eve of his feast as a holiday, carrying his effigy from house to house asking for beer, while children went ‘Clementing’ for apples, pears and other sweet treats in return for reciting a verse. Another tradition was the ‘firing’ of anvils, by placing gunpowder in a small hole and hitting the anvil with a hammer! According to Nigel Pearson in ‘Walking the Tides: seasonal magical rhythms and lore’, it may be that St Clement took over the celebrations of Wayland, which would explain why he is especially associated with the horse trade and its magical elements. Although his symbol is officially the anchor, it doesn’t take much to assimilate that with another iron object, the horseshoe. Reaching back further still, Wayland is believed to be a memory of the Roman fire-god Vulcan:

Come all you Vulcans stout and strong,

Unto Saint Clem we do belong.

(Song of Dartmoor Blacksmiths, performed on this day)

I discovered this year that one of my great, great, great grandfathers was a blacksmith named Patrick Sullivan, plying his trade and working his Smith Magic in Shoreditch and Lambeth. I love to think of him looking forward to this night of revelry amidst the harsh everyday conditions of this poor part of Victorian London where he lived with his family (many of whom in later generations seem to have been mattress-makers).   

Intriguingly, Nigel Pennick in ‘Secrets of East Anglian Magic’ speaks of 'Old Clim’, a fire spirit who lives in and guards the chimney. Nigel does say that in the middle ages Clim was associated with Saint Clement, but suggests that since the Reformation he has assumed an independent existence. And THAT brings us back full circle to gratitude for our warming November hearth fires. Perhaps it would be fitting to acknowledge Old Clim this evening…

Old Clem’s Fiery Golden Porridge

Warming inside and out - and even to look at!

Oats - approx 90g

Oat/almond/dairy milk to taste

1 apple, skin on, grated

handful of sultanas or raisins

Fresh ginger root, thumb sized piece, chopped small

Ground turmeric, 1 tsp

Ground cinnamon, 1 tsp

1 tbsp milled flaxseed or chia seeds (both optional)

For topping:

honey, almond butter, flaked almonds, chopped fresh ginger

Make porridge as usual, adding in the apple, most of the ginger, sultanas, and spices as it thickens. Too much turmeric can make it separate, but a few milled flax or chia seeds will bring it back together. 

Serve immediately, topped with flaked almonds, honey, almond butter and the remaining ginger.

Feste

I can’t think about stables or horses without remembering my favourite children’s book. The protagonist, a seven year old boy named Toseland, (known as Tolly) becomes entwined within the story of the three children who had lived at Green Knowe, where he is staying with his great-grandmother, in the seventeenth century. Toby, the eldest and Tolly’s hero, had his own horse named Feste. And Tolly has just found the wooden name plate bearing the spidery word ‘Feste’ in one of the old mangers in the stable block, where it had been lost for decades.

‘Granny, I do want to hear Feste neigh. Is my bedroom too far away to hear him - if he did, I mean?’

She smiled gently at him. ‘No, I don’t think it’s too far away.’

‘Did you hear him when you were little?’

‘Oh yes, I heard him. Generally at sundown. There were other horses then, of course, but I could always tell Feste’s voice.It is quite individual.’

There was a long silence while Toseland imagined having a horse of his own, even a ghost horse.

‘I did a silly thing,’ he said at last. ‘I put a lump of sugar for him.’

‘That wasn’t silly at all, darling,’ she said.

L M Boston, The Children of Green Knowe

Two years ago ….

23 November 2020

It was darker than I thought, earlier than I thought, but really I should have known better. What is it about November? It’s as if I’d never lived through a November before, the way it all seems so new, so hard to find the shape of. Again and again time slips between my white-tipped fingers and the day is gone. Ever hopeful, I’d wanted to go barn owl spotting. It was going to be sunset now, but perhaps that was subliminally why I had held back: sunset is a fine time to witness that sudden pale flicker low across a dark furrowed field, or passing behind the bones of a hedgerow. 

Out on the lane the cold slapped my face. Gloves, hat, scarf, my thickest jacket: yes, I had prepared well. But the sharpness of the air in my nostrils, that was something I hadn’t yet experienced this year. Four o’clock and the dark had already fallen. It was clear that this was not a night to be wandering on my birch track with its hidden hollows and teasing tree roots. With not a slip of a visible moon, it would be tarmac all the way. 

And so, unusually, I headed left at the end of the lane and followed the rosy remains of the sunset towards the infant Hundred Stream. On the bridge - which rises so barely that you can easily pass over it without even noticing the crossing - I stopped, heedless of the chill, and gazed in awe. The sun had touched the surface of the stream and fallen headlong into it, transforming the trickle of water into a silvery ribbon shot through with molten copper and mercury.

A few resources

Radical Honey on Substack

Old Clem & the Forge of Midwinter

Walking the Tides: Seasonal Magical Rhythms and Lore by Nigel G Pearson, Troy Books, 2017.

Secrets of East Anglian Magic, Nigel Pennick, Capall Bann, revised edition 2004.

The Children of Green Knowe, L M Boston, Faber & Faber 1954.