Old drawing of the Kersal Cell.
from geruki.org
This old building still stands about a mile and a half from where we live, in fact there is a massive double stone wall at the end of our garden, which according to our deeds was the boundary wall for the Byrom Estate. The estate covered over a hundred acres and was first mentioned in 1142 when there was a monastery on the site. 
It's supposed to be haunted!  The monastery's were suppressed by King Henry the Eighth resulting in numerous monks being murdered and the estate was sold on by the King to a Baldwin Willoughby in 1540 who, in turn sold it on, until a third of it was transferred to the Byrom family who were wealthy Linen drapers in Manchester.  There was one famous member of the Byrom's, John Byrom, who was a Jacobite, a Hymn Writer/Poet, and a Shorthand Inventor.  It is said that John was born in The Old Wellington Inn in the Shambles Manchester.

But some sources say he was born in the old Kersal Cell house.  He was educated at Trinity College,Cambridge of which he became a 'Fellow',and afterwards travelled to study Medicine at Montepellier, France.  He invented a form of Shorthand which he patented as,'New Universal Shorthand', and it was taught officially at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and used in the House of Lords.  He was also a published Poet, writing the hymn 'Christian's Awake' as a Christmas present for his daughter, and he was reputed to be one of the tallest men in the kingdom.

Did I mention that the old house is supposed to haunted?  Course I did...... Years ago we had not one but two members of our family who were policemen, and I happened to mention the Kersal Cell in passing conversation to one of them.

"Ah...yes...Kersal Cell, your Uncle had a rather odd happening a good few years back.  You'll remember he was a Dog-handler in the Force, and that night he was down to patrol the Kersal Cell area.  This was in the days when 'Bobbies' actually walked the streets and generally made people feel safer in their beds.  It was really dark down that area overlooking a bend of the river Irwell opposite the cemetery. He'd made a round of all the out-buildings etc., and was making his way back up the driveway when he heard footsteps behind him on the path.  He stopped.  They stopped.  He continued, only to hear the footsteps again.  Suddenly the dog by his side stiffened, pointing his nose in the direction of the noise.  The footsteps began again advancing towards your Uncle and the dog.  The dog's hackles went right up and with a yelp he yanked the lead from what by now must have been a very sweaty palm of your Uncle and legged it off out of sight.  Your Uncle stood his ground, he was after all a stalwart member of the British Constabulary and a Forward-Prop on the Rugby-Team.  The ghostly footsteps came up level with him and passed on by with not a soul to be seen he said.  I think we can say however he made a dignified exit at a run...to retrieve the dog he said...!  He got a right load of stick from his compatriots at the station of course, though I can tell you myself lots of us contrived to do the round in two's after that it certainly was a spooky dark old place down there and I don't mind admitting it."

In Memoriam A.H.H.Obitt
by Alfred,Lord Tennyson

.............And suck'd from out the distant gloom

A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,

And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose,and flung
The lillies to and fro,and said

"The dawn, the dawn," and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.

Three years and four days before the Twin Towers fell I was standing beneath them at 8:45am on my honeymoon.  We could have gone in.  Gone up to the Observation deck, we didn't, I'm strangely glad we didn't.  Even though by 2001 three years had passed since I stood there looking up at their magnificence, I still felt such an affinity with New York, with the people and the tragedy and horror of all those lives lost.  As I watched our television screen, I kept thinking of those who that day had gone up to the top unlike us, and thinking of all the people working away in their offices the day I stood there who were most probably the very same people loosing their lives so horribly that day.  We were lots of us doing that-putting ourselves there...trying to gauge how we would feel, my God!... We most likely can't even begin to understand what it must have been like.  Nine years gone now. I would like to go back.  I love New York . I hope I can return one day to stand where we stood that morning.

A beautifully sunny birthday in the City.....a glass of champagne with coffee at eleven.  September, ....soft September sunshine and ducks swimming on the river.  Reflection and shadow.  Slowly summer ebbs into cooler mornings and my city is quiet, the children returned now to school desks with new uniform begin to fill their  notebooks once more.  Solitary mothers stroll, perhaps relishing the peace.  Somewhere a piano plays a mellow melody and I want to take the day and preserve every particle of it!

'i thank You God for this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes'
e.e.cummings

People    by Charlotte Zolotow

Some people talk and talk

and never say a thing.

Some people look at you 

and birds begin to sing.

Some people laugh and laugh

and yet you want to cry.

Some people touch your hand

and music fills the sky. 

            

'What's it all about Alfie?  Is it just for the moment we live?...' Song.


I spend most of my time in the house, it's been like that for nearly twelve years now.  After a while it feels like you've disappeared.  You forget who you really are when there is little interaction with others.
Tick doesn't follow Tock!
Sometimes...B o n g follows tick, sometimes even Bang-bang....B o n g..

Thank heavens there are cats!

Against all odds...

The sun is shining this morning after a couple of weeks of heavy downpours and thunderstorms.  By heck it's just such a lifter, especially first thing on a Sunday when no-one else is up and the road where we live is sleepy and traffic is intermittent.  I'm standing at our lounge window opening the blinds, enjoying the greeness. Ooh! The simple, sleepy snoozyness of the morning.  When my eyes drifted into my neighbours garden.
  Our next door house has been standing empty for over a year now; what with the state of the world market etcetera etcetera no-one seems prepared to buy it.  Years and years ago when the people she bought it from were preparing to sell they dug up the front garden, dragging out all the old plants and bushes grown leggy and bedraggled.  Our gardens are on a slope, so they laid old railway sleepers across to make ledges, first laying membrane and presumably weed-killer  then covering the whole lot with gravel.  Hummph....not very picturesque.  Not a plant left standing and surrounded by a privet hedge...typically a suburban eyesore, neat but barren, especially bounded by..a privet!  Privets always make me think of 1960 intercity parks, all uniform and soulless, or Glasgow council estates or Salford, where 'the Salt of the Earth' live but they haven't got the cash to splash on dahlias and geraniums. (I'm not knocking anyone..I've been there done that bought the tshirt.)  Anyway.... there, in amongst the gravel, which is a bit sparse by now having been ground hither and thither by the aforementioned rain I espied two tiny white cyclamen!  Straight as dyes,standing out  proudly and twice as delicate!  I snook over a low fence and grabbed a photograph.  I say snook as I was in my pyjamas and I didn't want anyone to see me...don't ask.   Oh well... if you must!  Oversized men's supermarket tshirt and washed-out pink bottoms, plus old beige cardigan, you should have seen me, SJP I'm not!
Right away 'Against all odds.'  popped straight into my mind.  I thought, there they are, sooo delicate looking, creamy white against the gravel and snatches of black plastic membrane, battling through to get to the sunshine and the warmth.  Tiny, tiny beautiful flowers, 'pearls amongst the swine' but still triumphant.
I thought, there's a sign for me!  Two tiny flags saying, "You know what...

Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not nor faileth,
And as things have been, things remain;

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers-
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back,through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent,flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look! The land is bright."
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)

We live in a suburb area between two hospitals so consequently we hear Ambulance sirens all the time.  Both hospitals have Accident and Emergency departments and they must regularly use our road to transfer patients.  You'd be amazed at the number that scream past, it makes you think every time of some poor person whose life has just taken a turn they maybe weren't expecting.  I send them a thought when I can.  I try my best to take each day as it comes, what more can you do?  We only have this moment...and this moment, a Buddhist philosophy though I'm not a Buddhist.




 I was told I had something called M.E. nearly fifteen years ago now, I suspect I've had it longer.  M.E. or Myalgic Encaphalomyelitis is a distinct organic neurological disorder recognised by WHO the World Health Organisation with the neurological code G93.3.  There is substantial evidence indicating that M.E. is caused by an enterovirus causing damage to the brain.  As yet there is no one single test with which to diagnose all patients.  There are tests available but many people do not have access to these and most standard tests are inadequate in revealing M.E.  These standard tests may give normal results in up to 90% of M.E. patients, of which I am one.  Try http://www.hfme.org/  should you be curious to find out more, this is a brilliant site written by a lady with severe M.E. who writes succinctly yet in language you can actually understand!

It's taken me three years to pluck-up the courage to put this 'out there'.  There still remains such controversy and downright ignominy about this disorder.  As Jodi Bassett says,

'You soon find out that the disease you have is one of those that is treated differently from many others, that not every disease is treated equally and that bizarrely this has nothing to do with type of disease, the severity of the disease or its symptoms or testable abnormalities, or the possibility of death, but other non-scientific and non-medical factors. It has to do with political and financial factors, and marketing...........leaves you with no real care at all.  Even worse, not only with no appropriate care at all, but often subject to serious mistreatment from the professionals meant to be there to help you.
Most people trust absolutely that if they get severely ill, they can go to an emergency room and be given appropriate medical care. I used to think that too.'

I used to think that myself, one time being asked by a young house-doctor at hospital, 'Have you ever heard of the word hypocondriasis? I suggest you go home and be at one with your body.' On a different occasion during a crisis visiting a GP I was told,  'I needed a kick up the bum'.   Consequently I only visit the doctor when I absolutely have no alternative.  I have reached the age of sixty, lived and worked in five different countries, had three children.  Like most people my age I've lived through life changes and money worries, tragedies, divorce and unexpected deaths, all serving to give you a chance to find your own inner strength.  So I take umbrage at being told,that I don't recognise when I'm feeling truly ill, that I....'just need a kick up the bum.'  Believe me if I thought I could cure myself that way I'd be walking around with a sign over my rear end saying, 'Kick here!'