If you get the chance to visit this incredible exhibition we can’t recommend it enough. It is for us what art and creativity is all about. There’s an amazing amount of diversity in the works, from Grayson Perry’s pots and tapestries to knitted landscapes, paintings and automata created by all sorts of people and celebrities.
Exhibition themes include Love, Heroes and Heroines, Normal Life, Inside my Head, Holidays, The Future, and The Queen. It democratises art and really makes it accessible - added to that the Midlands Arts Centre has a policy of pay as you feel for this show too, making it financially within the reach of anyone who can get to the venue. Grayson Perry has the ability and skills to communicate with everyone and makes us all feel that we can express ourselves creatively, in fact perhaps that it’s essential that we do. Just what we are all about here in the Happy House too. Beautifully curated the exhibition is touching, colourful, hopeful. Grayson’s Art Club MAC Birmingham March 21st - June 25th Pay what you feel
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 These biscuits, from Brittany, are just gorgeous - buttery and rich and perfect with a cup of tea or coffee. Scott recently discovered them on a baking course at the wonderful Cocoa Black in Peebles, Scotland and they’ve become a real favourite and they’re so easy to make! We’ve adapted the recipe a little and it really works for us.
Makes 12 Ingredients: 4 egg yolks (medium eggs) whisked a little in a jug 120g caster sugar 120g butter (French, if you can get it!) 1g salt 170g plain flour 11g baking powder 1 dessert spoon of runny honey (optional) Method:
 It’s almost the time of the Spring Equinox!
It varies according to where in the world you live, but here in the Yorkshire Dales it falls for 2023 on the 20th March. The old name for this event, when the darkness and light of day and night are perfectly balanced, was Ostara. Linguistically it’s a short step from this to the word we associate with Spring: Easter. The year is reborn, longer days return to the Northern hemisphere and it’s not surprising that, for a long time, New Year’s Day followed the equinox closely, being celebrated on March 25th. Here in England this was New Year's Day right up to 1752. And why is spring cleaning an annual ritual? Besoms, or brooms, were traditionally made from birch twigs and it’s the birch which sends out its fragile leaves as one of the first heralds of spring. At this time besoms were made and the debris of months of close confinement through winter were swept out of the house. The importance of the tree is reflected in a multitude of place names: a few miles from Masham lies Birk Gill, and it's the same root for so many Birkenhead and Berkhampstead. It's a wonderful time to walk out daily and see the small changes which announce spring, and to feel yourself renewed along with the natural world.  Just down the road from the Happy House is a very special place which has recently been in the news. This group of three Neolithic monuments is sometimes referred to as “the Stonehenge of the North”. Their survival had been threatened for decades, but now two of the henges have been given to the nation by quarrying companies Tarmac and Lightwater Holdings. Now that they’re in the hands of Historic England and English Heritage they’ve been removed from the “at risk” register. The third henge is in private hands but has permanent public access. So what is there at Thornborough? The site comprises three henges built about 4500 years ago - circular monuments consisting of a high earth bank enclosing inner ditches and a broad central space with two entrances. They’re each about 250m in diameter. The entrances are aligned on the sunrise of the midwinter solstice. The brightest star in the sky - Sirius - also rises at the same point. The banks were originally plastered with white gypsum making them stand out brilliantly from the surrounding landscape. Though somewhat eroded, the banks still stand 3m high in places. But what also makes Thornborough special is that it is part of a huge Neolithic landscape of barrows, standing stones and other earthworks which lie on the plateau between the rivers of the Ure and the Swale. From the work of many archeologists we know that people have gathered, many travelling some distance, at the henges for gatherings and funeral rituals for at least 2,000 years. Standing in the open circles or under the trees of the Northern henge is a wonderful experience. There is something amazing about his place. And it’s good to know it’s finally safe. Further information and details of how to visit Thornborough Henges can be found HERE There's a short video below of a short walk in the northern henge. Photo ©English Heritage  Keisha Thompson writes poetry so unlike the verse we're all familiar with that it takes a little while to get your head around the miraculous things she's doing.
Rather than writing in neat stanzas her work takes on all sorts of shapes: layouts of grids with words appearing like drawings in a cartoon strip, lists divided and titled like the closing credits of a movie, Venn diagrams showing how emotions intersect and plans of the solar system which turn out to be a biography of Florence Nightingale. Her remarkable book explores language, parent/daughter relationships and includes the script of her play "The Man In The Moon". If you're a poet or you love words this is a great book to have on your shelf. Lunar by Keisha Thompson published by Crocus  Find Your Voice describes itself as “a guided poetry journal for your heart and your art”. It’s not a book to teach you how to write, and it encourages the creation of accompanying collage art work, but it doesn’t set out to teach that either. Rather it wants to “take you on a creative journey” with the intention of guiding you towards your own writing style and, perhaps, your own illustrative style too.
Noor Unnahar has divided her book into three parts: Uncover Your Writing Stye, Discover Poetic Devices and Find Your Voice. She encourages you through inviting prompts and suggestions on how to mine your daily life for ideas. She finds ways for you to be inspired by things and opinions you hold that are uniquely yours. It’s a great little book with far more depth than its slight size would suggest. We can’t rate it highly enough! Find Your Voice by Noor Unnahar. Published by Clarkson Potter Semerwater* is one of only two natural lakes in the Yorkshire Dales. It's a gorgeous spot in little Raydale.
It has a great legend. Here it is: One day an old beggar passed through the city that now lies under the waves. He asked at every house for food and drink, from the humblest hovel to the highest palace, but was turned away. Walking out of the city he came to a shepherd’s cottage high on the hillside where he was welcomed in, given cheese, ale and backstone cakes (a kind of Dales oatcake) and a bed for the night. In the morning the beggar stood at the cottage door and looked down at the city in the valley bottom. He muttered these words: "Semerwater rise, and Semerwater sink, And swallow the town all save this house, Where they gave me food and drink.” At once waters began pouring into the valley from the surrounding hills until the city was drowned and every dwelling beneath the water, save for the shepherd’s cottage. And this is why, if you take a boat out onto Semerwater and listen in the quiet of the evening, you can hear faintly, from the beneath the water, the church bells rolling and tolling in the slow currents below the surface of the lake. *Semerwater is the subject for Watching Paint Dry in November 2022.  Grow Your Own Physic Garden: Use the Power of Medicinal Plants Grounded in Science
by Elaine Perry, Valerie Laws and Nicolette Perry Grow Your Own Physic Garden is designed to inspire readers to take an alternative approach to their health, one which is rooted in the scientific study of medicinal plants. By nurturing our own gardens the writers, who include a professor of neuroscience and a pharmacognosist (a person who studies medicines derived from plants) encourage us to grow the elements of our own remedies and put them to use. The book covers a huge amount of ground. It takes plants individually and details their special features, the folklore surrounding them, the scientific evidence for their inclusion and their medicinal uses. In addition the text discusses the history of physic gardens, how to choose plants for your climate, plus tips on design, layout and labelling. In terms of plant care there are also extensive notes on pests, pruning, sourcing seeds, foraging, harvesting and staying safe while doing all of the above. And, of course, there are detailed descriptions of how to utilise the power of the plants in your garden. This book is incredibly comprehensive, covering everything you need to know to create and, more importantly, make medicinal use of, your own physic garden. Published by DPG Publishing ISBN number 978 1 9163504 0 3 www.dilstonphysicgarden.com On a hill overlooking the Vally of the River Tyne there’s a handful of acres devoted to some very special plants. Dilston is a physic garden - not a pairing of words we’re used to hearing now, but a few hundred years ago everyone would have known its meaning. It’s a botanical medicine chest. When we visit gardens open to the public we’re accustomed to carefully curated displays chosen for height, colour and dramatic effect. Dilston is different. In what appears to be a kind of chaos, the plants are arranged by botanical and curative relationships. Everything you need for a healing balm lies close together, aromatic herbs for creating teas or infusions are grouped in neighbouring beds. And the smells! To brush through the garden is to journey through an aromatic landscape. We’ve been on a couple of courses here - Wild Medicine, Wild Food and Making Autumnal Remedies. The results sit in our kitchen: a lotion for aching joints, an infusion to warm you on cold days, cough lozenges - all made from the plants of Dilston and all grounded in serious medical research. Inspired by our experiences at Dilston, a part of the Happy House garden is now being developed as a physic garden. So far we’ve outlined a quatrefoil sequence of beds, dug the trenches for brick paths and laid down a mix of healthy topsoil and compost. By this time next year we hope to be making our own remedies at home! www.dilstonphysicgarden.com   The Comfort of Things is a beautiful book by Daniel Miller. Along with Significant Objects by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker and Taking Things Seriously by Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes they form a magical trio of books that increase our understanding of how and why objects carry meaning and importance for us far beyond their material worth. Balanced on top of this stack is a small opulence of a book - 'Tiny Treasures' written and illustrated by Yorkshire artist and designer and yogi Hannah Nunn. Hannah is a person who really gives the world the gift of her attention, she finds treasure every day in the natural world and this perfectly presented book captures that. Sometimes we keep objects because they link to our memories, or they are culturally significant to us. Reminders of who we are, how we got here and what is important to us. Sometimes it's the aesthetic of an object or its function that makes us want to treasure it. But those items we choose to keep, from the thousands and thousands that pass through our lives have stories that we treasure. “What five objects, things, or memories would you like to own again and why” Edith Marks (a question that is part of the Jewish Druts'yla tradition from my studies with Shonaleigh)  |
AuthorJosie Beszant and/or Ian Scott Massie, both artists from Masham North Yorkshire, Uk. Archives
March 2025
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