Carpe Diem

...if I may?

I have been asked if I would tutor a young lad with 'Word Finding Difficulties' to help him pass his English GCSE.  He is absolutely brilliant in mathematics and music, has an artist's talents and has perfect hand eye co-ordination judging by his juggling abilities.  He has already passed his 'A' levels in Maths and Music at 17.  He needs to get to Uni and has chosen Kings in London but he cannot get in without his English.

Does anybody have any advice to give me on this 'Word Finding' problem?  It's not part of the Dyslexia syndrome, nor is it related to Aspergers or Autism.  If you showed him a picture of a swan, he would say it was a duck, so he can relate and he knows it's wrong even as he says it.  If you ask him to name 10 foods, he will name a group i.e. meat, veg, salad - he will not name them individually - if you see what I mean?

I have looked it up in fairly authoratative journals but whilst they explain the reasons behind it, they're not big on supplying teaching methods.  He has been assessed recently, as the school unfortunately, don't recognise the syndrome.  I'm specifically looking for methods of getting him to remember words, even though he is not actually short of vocabulary at all.  It's difficult and I thought maybe someone out there would be able to help or at least point me in the right direction.

So, all advice gratefully received.  Many thanks for reading.

So, I thought I would share it all with you.

Today, I am preparing a lecture on the Anglo Saxons - this is the deep joy part!  They have reared their heads again after the hoard found in a Staffordshire field.  Isn't it interesting how history has a future?

It is clearly a battle hoard, made up of armour and coins and basically, it is the spoils of war.  The problem is, we know very little about the Anglo Saxons and, what we do know has been written by the monks and priests, who were Christian and so, what they say about the pagan Angles, Saxons, Fresians and Jutes must be taken with a pinch of salt! 

The intriguing part about the hoard is...how and when it was collected...what significance did it have for it to be collected in the first place and was it left to be picked up later.

It is believed that the Celts took the heads of their enemies, to give them insider knowledge about their enemies and thus defeat them better.  Quite how they extracted this knowledge from dead heads is open to debate!  Anyone?  As there are no body parts (yet!) found in the hoard, one can probably rule out the gaining knowledge scenario.  Unless, of course, it was the Celts who won that battle and it was them who collected the spoils, having already beheaded the enemy...they then took their wealth.  Or, did the Anglo Saxons fight each other?  The Celts certainly did.  The problem historians have with the Anglo Saxons is that most of what we know comes from archaeology, like the Staffordshire find and that of Sutton Hoo.  Archaeology is open to interpretation and that makes historians a little antsy about it. Some historians consider archeologists to erase pages of history as they dig and that may certainly be true of early archaeologists but not really of today, where they record everything.

Still, finding burial sites and seeing the things they were buried with, is fascinating but doesn't really give us the significance of the why.  Tacitus, a Roman writer based with the legions in what is now Germany, wrote that the Germanic tribes were fierce warriors, that the women were as fierce in fighting as their men and that if they weren't fighting would stand at the sidelines, bare-breasted encouraging their men forward into battle. Yet no such evidence has been found in the Anglo Saxon graves here in Britain.  The women have been buried with jewellery, keys and sewing kits, buttons, shells and cloak pins.  Ne'ery a sword, buckle or shield boss to be found as they have in male graves.  So basically, if the women were warriors, they were not expected to be warriors in the after-life or their grave goods certainly don't indicate this in any case.  Yet, these were the same people, weren't they?

Furthermore, we are taught in school that the Anglo Saxons invaded Britain but this has now been disproved.  A  study of English place names would indicate that they did in fact come as settlers, bringing their wives and children with them.  Invaders would immediately have made settlement names their own but England has many place names that have roots in Celtic, Latin and Anglo Saxon as well.  This, to me at least, implies a quiet settling, relatively at peace with those indiginous peoples already here.  Of course, I could be wrong, it has been known!!! 

So...to the writings of Gildas Badonicus, a Celtic monk who spoke of the invasion of the Anglo Saxons as a plague of biblical proportion...a lesson if you will for the tyrant kings, the corrupt church and indolent priests in Britain.  Forward to the Venerable Bede, himself an Anglo Saxon, who despite plagiarising Gildas' work unashamedly, described the Anglo Saxons as beloved of God!   They were writing in the 6th and 8th centuries respectively.  Which just goes to prove that they had hidden agendas even back then!!!

Oh dear, as I write, the lovely autumn day has clouded over and the wind chill has increased exponentially.  It is a timely reminder that I should not be writing lectures on my blog for the instruction of all (and, let's be honest to the disinterest of many!!) but rather that I should be applying myself to writing it for my 2nd year Medieval History Uni students, who will, of course (!!) dazzle me with their sparkling insights into the cosmology of the Anglo Saxons but who are, unfortunately, more likely to ask me the worth of the hoard and whether or not it is worthwhile going out to buy metal detectors!!! 

Therefore, I must away and be industrious, so, as they say in Anglo Saxon - cheerio for now!!!

Hello again everyone and a special hello to those who greeted me back again - you know who you all are, so no use labouring the point.

As I have had a little time now to amble back around the ongoing world of blog, immersing myself yet again in the wonder of words and writing, I have come to notice an enormous gap in my blog world.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have lost a very good blog friend.  Not that all my blog friends aren't very good blog friends, if you know what I mean but I am one of the lucky few, that has quality friends not quantity friends and therefore, when one goes missing, I notice very quickly.

Now, I don't know her reasons for leaving.  I know only that she was troubled and wrote some of that in her various blogs.  Yet, despite this being a virtual world, with virtual friends, some can get to you more than others.  Not becaue they are any wittier or cuter, or anything more tangible but simply because maybe just one thing they say resonates so much with you that suddenly you have a virtual soul mate.  Okay, that's a bit strong but I'm sure you know what I mean.

I hope that wherever she is, she is working it through in her own way and that she is making progress.  I shall definitely miss her pithy remarks, her cartoons, her gravitas, her sharing of sorrows, without feeling sorry for herself, her insights, her happy moments and our virtual wine sessions.  Nothing like a good South African red, we said.

She used to call me by a pet name which, from others may have sounded patronising or odd in some way but from her it was nice and she kind of made it into a compliment somehow!  I always thought as well that one day she and I might actually meet in the 'real' world and have a few reds together.  How strange that seems now.

Worse...having been gone so long from blog myself, I will always wonder now if there was something I could have said that would have helped or made a difference.  Whilst that sounds vain I don't mean it like that at all.  I'm sure my absence did not make a huge difference given the amount of friends she had anyway.  There were people she had been friends with for far longer and, I suppose if anyone could have helped her, I'm sure they would all have done their very best.

I guess I just wanted her to know, in case she ever stops by, that I am thinking about her and yes, that I am worried about her as well.  Also, that if she ever comes back in whatever persona she chooses, that she will let me know, so that we can catch up again and have a few more virtual reds.  Although, having said that and, of course, being one that needs no excuses, I bought a red tonight from her home country as I knew I was going to be writing a eulogical blog!  Don't know if that's a word but it sounded okay to me!!

I hope she knows who she is...I haven't been deliberatly obscure or anything, just tried to maintain privacy for her to some degree, as her disappearance clearly indicates she wants anonymity for a while.

So, I have composed a REALLY bad poem for her to make her laugh...especially as she was brought up a good Catholic!!

May the sun warm your days
And the moon light your night
May they show you the ways
And guide you aright

May you find all the peace
You so long to find
May all your doubts cease
To calm troubled mind

AT the end of the day
When all work is done
I would just like to say
It's now time for fun

So, pick up that glass
Fill it full of red wine
Make sure it's class
And don't forget mine!!!!!

A toast to success
Little dragon is roaring
I hope she has guessed
And isn't ignoring...

...that her absence I'm feeling
With her pithy prose
And I wish her much healing
My South African Rose

Apolgies to those of you who have a poetic bent...I do realise I'm rubbish and it was only meant as a little light-heartedness.  I just hope she gets to read the nonsense and appreciate the agony and ecstasy I went through to become a poet for a few minutes!!!!  See, even when she's gone, she can inspire - what a GREAT teacher she is.

Miss you hun xxx
Blessed be

To you all.

I would like to start with a question if I may?

Does anyone know why my blog is being hit by incomprehensible gibberish about gold?

I'm not even a fan of gold.  Being ruled by the moon, I am a silver lover.  Oh and that's another thing...being ruled by the moon, how come werewolves can be killed by silver bullets?  You'd think they would absorb them instead.

Anyways, how are you all?  Hope you are well?

Life, as usual has interfered with my blogging and it has been a tad overwhelming.  I am a fairly laid back person (for that read horizontal) and when things go at a pace outside my comfort zone, I tend to be a little disgruntled.

Aaarrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhh!!!  I have just scrolled down the page and noted the dreaded word Twitter!!!!!  Good grief, when did that happen?  More to the point...why did it happen?  The hippy who, despite his title, is a technophile, has a site on Twitter - whatever that means.  Whilst being a medieval historian is no excuse or reason for being a Luddite and, in all honesty, I am frankly, quite well versed in technology, despite MY title, nevertheless, there are some things that I have yet to grasp.  One of those is Twitter.

I am sure that there are thousands of good reasons to use it but, I have not yet managed to get my head around them.  Can someone please tell me what is SO great about being told that a friend is in a supermarket queue?  Or, that a friend is washing dishes or...blimey, the list is endless.  I though that accommodating such banalities was why FACEBOOK was invented.  Okay, I admit I am on Facebook but...it's the preferred communication medium of many of my friends and who am I to stand in the way of er...progress????  My younger generation friends, including my time share children, have this fashion of writing on Facebook that is second only to text messages.  Seemingly, vowels are out of date and show your age!  Why type whole words when a single letter and numbers will do?

Indeed.

Nevertheless, the purist in me has a knee jerk reaction to bastardised words, which is funny given my general mode of communication - English!  Which reminds me, appropos of nothing English - go figure! - I am going to start another blog, which will basically just be me making notes to self regarding general medieval stuff, lecture info, lesson plans and other stuff no use to man or beast unless you are a medievalist or masochist, or perhaps, BOTH!  I say this because it will have a Welsh name, in the hopes that I wont get any rubbish about gold, or anything else of similar pointlessness!  You are naturally more than welcome to view it but of course I certainly will not be offended if you don't comment on it.  In fact, if ANYONE does, I shall be gobsmacked!!  So, it will be LLEUADYDDRAIG, which is effectively Welsh for lunadraconis, in English dragonmoon.  I did once have a site on here called dragonmoon which was going to deal with my spiritual issues but sadly I allowed it to lapse.  I might start that again as well.  One is nothing if not categorisingly challenged - if that even makes sense!

Of course, the problem with having blogs that deal with lots of different aspects of your life, is that there has to be a crossover.  Nevertheless, I do feel sometimes that I burden my blog friends with things they don't necessarily need to know, as overshare isn't always the answer.

As I have said before, I really do hope that you are all well and I apologise for not having caught up with you all sooner.  I have tried to log in when possible to keep up with you all but unfortunately, you are all such prolific writers it has been a difficult task.  So I apologise to you all unreservedly.  My karma will get me no doubt.

So, until the next time, I will love and leave you all - blessed be xxx