Six Spot Burnet Moth & Buttercups

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bugs, buttercups, Cinnabar Moth, day flying moths, entomology, insects, meadow, moths, Six Spot Burnet

Photo by Candia Dixon- Stuart this evening.

Repeating History

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agapanthus, Bosphorous, Bradford on Avon, Caracas, City of Eternal Spring, dianthus, Dux, emporium, entomology, flying carpet, grandiflora, Istanbul, Iznik tile, Jesse Tree, kelim, National Trust, Panama, Simon Bolivar, Turkish Delight

Great-Aunt Augusta unwrapped the Turkish Delight as she sat

in her velours recliner in the private area of the Recreational

Room of her Care Home.

Now, are you sitting comfortably? she addressed her great-niece,

Drusilla Fotheringay.

The exophoric reference wasn’t entirely lost on Dru, so she nodded

and gave the signal for the old bag to commence on the veritable

Jesse Tree of the family genealogy.

(Jesse Tree Chartres: Wikipaedia)

Now, your great-grandmother-also Augusta-was a bit of a goer, or

a flibbertigibbet, as I told you before.  She bounced around the

Bosphorous with her rug seller for a number of years, before settling

down in Istanbul and establishing a kitten sanctuary, once her partner

had flown off on his flying carpet, to that large emporium in the sky.

Your great-aunt Berenice, my elder sister (God Rest Her Soul!), was a

bit of a gadabout too.  In the genes, clearly.

She used to go to parties almost every weekend, in big, country

houses.

In Turkey?  Dru looked confused.

No.  We had both been sent to boarding schools over here.  She used

to frequent the Wyvern Estate and that was her downfall.  She GOT

INTO TROUBLE.

Difficult in these days, no doubt.  Dru sympathised, as well she

might, given her own personal history.

Not difficult at all.  It happened all too easily. They were pressurising

Berenice to get rid of the ‘problem’.  They offered her a lot of money and

a contact in Knightsbridge.

‘They’?

The family of the alleged father, of course.  Augusta looked at

Dru as if she was somewhat dense.  But I persuaded her to have

it- your father, I mean.

But who was..?

No proof, but someone with an interest in entomology.

Ent..?

Yes, Berenice was a social butterfly and he netted her.  But he couldn’t

pin her down!  None of us could.  She wanted her freedom and so our

mother took the baby for a while, but she felt her own style was being

cramped, so eventually I arranged for your father to start prep school over

here as a full boarder, at St Birinus.

So, Father has spent his whole life at St Birinus?

Except for when he was at University- yes!  He’s completely

institutionalised.

What happened to Berenice?

We don’t know.  She’s one of the disappeared.  The last we heard

of her she was in Caracas, City of Eternal Spring.  El Libertador

was one of her heroes.

El..?

Simon Bolivar.

Ah. Dru’s South American historical knowledge was rather

vague. Who paid Dad’s fees?

The Wyvern Estate and, once my mother passed on, her demise

hastened by an infected feline scratch, I inherited all the antique

kelims and sold them off, as and when, along with some Iznik tiles,

to cover his ‘extras’.

Fascinating.  Did Berenice ever reveal the paternity of her son?

Not exactly, but she did take Gus to the estate very early on,

before she ran off, to meet some gardener or other.

Gardener?!

He lived in a converted stable block at Wyvern Mote.

But that’s National Trust, surely?

Ah, yes, but I suspect that it was grace and favour ‘accommodation’,

in both senses of the word.  He wasn’t much of a horticulturalist; didn’t

know his dianthus from his agapanthus, from all accounts.

Maybe he was a natural son of the old duke?! Dru’s eyes burned with

revelatory fire.

Peut-etre, surmised her great-aunt, who now looked more favourably

at her visitor.  Look, she said, rummaging in a shoe box.  Oh no,

that’s your father aged six months, lying on a sheepskin in his birthday suit.

Dru averted her gaze.

No, here it is!  Augusta produced a faded sepia image of a man remarkably

like Gus.  He was reclining in a striped deckchair, wearing a Panama hat and

he had a glass in his right hand.  There was a large mansion behind him.

So this is possibly my grandfather?  Dru scrutinised the photo. I wonder what

his name was.

Oh, I call him Eamonn Teabag Grandiflora, Aunt Augusta scoffed wickedly.

All these men in Panama hats look the same- ie/ better when they wear

one.  Compare that Kermit MacDulloch who presented a ‘History of

Christianity’ and then the latest posho who is following him around,

probably with the same camera crew.  They visit the same graffiti and

make identical comments. They are all clones!

Grandiflora?

Well, Seaweed Millefiore, or Hymen Montezuma.  Whatever.  Anyway, your

possible ancestor, whom I call Grandiflora, almost certainly spread his seed

around.  Perhaps like the old duke himself.

So perhaps I have links to aristocracy?

Well, Miss Grandiose, I’d let bygones be bygones, if I were you.

But may I ask you one final question?  Dru was conscious that a storm

was predicted and that she had a long journey back to Bradford-on-Avon.

Fire away! replied the elderly one, nibbling on a cube of Turkish delight and

not offering to share any from the box.

What boarding school did you and Berenice attend? Dru asked.

St Vitus’ School for the Academically-Gifted Girl, of course.  But in those days

it was just St Vitus’ for anyone who could pay the fees.  My name is on the

Dux Board over the main stairwell.  Surely you have seen it?

Strange.  ‘Augusta Snodbury’.  Why had she never noticed it? And was there

something in her own genes that constrained her to repeat history?  She

hoped not.

And the way things were going, there may be a future titular amendment

to the establishment at which she earned her crust:  St Vitus’ School might

end up as an Academy for the Academically-Challenged.  Qui sait!

Sweetness and Light

Tags

Aphrodite, Aristomachus, Aristotle, Asiatic hornet, Astarte, Benedictine, Brother Adam, Buckfast Abbey, Clocalus, Daedalus, Empedoclean, entomology, Erice, Golden Honeycomb, Huber, John the Baptist, Maeterlinck, Mexican honey, Minos, ovipositor, Pantalica, parthenogenesis, Pindar, Plagues of Egypt, propolis, Sicels, Sicily, Superbee, The Sunday Times, Tim Rayment, varroa, Vergil, vespula germanica, Vincent Cronin, Wasp Factory

Have you read that book, The Wasp Factory? I asked Brassica, while flicking

away yet another of the little pesks.

(Suttonford seems to be overrun with the stripey menaces.)  It is as if we

are being afflicted by one of the Plagues of Egypt. I wonder what we have

done to deserve this castigation?    Perhaps it is part of our having

experienced at least seven lean years.  I do hope that the River Sutton

doesn’t turn to blood, or we find frogs in our beds.

No, can’t say I have read it, Brassie replied.  It seemed to be a bit violent,

from what I heard.  Wasn’t it Iain Banks’ first novel?

Yes, it was… Well, perhaps I have been accused of being waspish, I continued,

but it is only my tales that have a sting. These wretched vespula germanicas

had a go at me in my own kitchen when The Husband was making apple juice.

I was oviposited when I tried to open my fridge door.  One of the blighters

was skulking behind the handle and didn’t take kindly to being squeezed.

They say that Asiatic Hornets are going to invade us, so I don’t know what

we humans will have to do to wreak revenge on the whole entomological pack

of them.

I thought ‘entomological’ meant something like ‘cut into pieces’, Candia.  So

couldn’t you chop them up and anatomise them?  But you don’t hate bees,

do you? Didn’t you write a bee poem once, Candia?

Ah, yes, but bees are different. I did write about them.  I was incensed when

I read an article by Tim Rayment in The Sunday Times about Buckfast Abbey

stocking its gift shop with Mexican Honey when they had Brother Adam, a

world expert in their community, cultivating his own hives.  He knew all about

bee genetics and the coming dangers of varroa, but they didn’t appear to fully

value his lifelong expertise.

(Brother Adam: Wikipedia)

Ah well, expertise is not valued as it was in our day. Buckfast Abbey?

Isn’t that where monks produced that fortified wine? 

I was surprised that Brassie had heard of it.

The one that all the down and outs imbibed, to drink themselves

into oblivion? she persisted.

Yes, I laughed. I don’t suppose they could afford Benedictine proper.

It was a favourite tipple in Glasgow, as I recall. I’d be surprised if Ginevra

didn’t have a couple of bottles stowed away.  She probably developed a

nose for it when she lived up north.

But, surely all that outcry about Brother Adam was ages ago? Brassie

queried. I remember people being cynical and re-naming the abbey

Fastbuck!

Yes, it was in the Nineties, but the wise old monk is dead now, I elucidated.

Tell you what, though, I will try and find that poem and give it an airing. 

You might find it a tonic!

Bad pun, Candia!

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

That consummate Cretan craftsman Daedalus

delivered the golden comb to Astarte,

at Erice, in Empedoclean obedience-

a votive for deliverance from vindictive Minos

and hospitality in a land far from home.

The divine sanctuary was perched

on a parched plain, pervaded by mists.

Clocalus, King of Sicily, harboured him,

though homicidal.

When Astarte became Aphrodite,

the bees performed for the Romans.

Pindar sang with a swarm surrounding his lips,

savouring ambrosia; waxing lyrical,

achieving honey-sweet immortality.

Bees no longer born from bulls,

were winged messengers, bringing fortune;

reciting rosaries;

nourishing neophytes, even as in Nazareth-

before honeycombs became catacombs.

Man would not live by bread alone

and John the Baptist found this so.

Parthenogenesis proved paramount;

passion usurped by agape.

But now the Fastbucks,

who neither know nor care about

Aristotle, nor acarine disease;

Vergil nor varroa

usurpthe Superbee with entrepreneurial excess.

He could hermetically seal them up

in a sepulchre of propolis and wax,

like acherontia atropus.

Brother Adam could have them balled,

or left like open-eyed statuary of Daedalus.

For this monk, equal of kings

and approaching the gods

has known Rule without recognition

and obedience rendered-

a Pope, and regulator of reproduction;

equaliser of wealth and

dabbler in dethronement,

halting hostilities and honing harvests,

unveiling the comb as blind Huber.

Aristomachus may have had a bee in his bonnet,

buzzing around for nigh on sixty years,

but Adam, superceded after seventy,

degraded, drone-like, yet faithful to his queen

will enter Pantalica’s passage

and swarm, immortal in a golden prism.

The king will bate his barb,

but abbots should not suffocate their saviour.

Notes to follow-

Daedalus, although reputed to have come from Athens, probably came

from Crete. He was said to have made a fantastic golden honeycomb and

presented it to Aphrodite, or Astarte, at Erice, Sicily.  He was thought to

have brought apiculture to Sicily- see Vincent Cronin, The Golden Honeycomb.

Daedalus was on the run from Minos, King of Crete.  Daedalus’ nephew and

apprentice had been murdered.  Maybe Alan Sugar ain’t that bad!

Empedocles suggested that Aphrodite could be made propitious by

offering her honey.

The bees- this was a nickname for the priestesses of Aphrodite.  Two

hundred Roman soldiers guarded her shrine at Erice.

Pindar wrote about Sicily. A poet described him as above.

Bees were thought to have been born from bulls- a superstition much

like scarabs being thought to originate from dung.

The boy Jesus was given a honeycomb so that he would associate

scripture with sweetness.

John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey.

Parthenogenesis- reproduction in insects, without the ovum being

fertilised.

Aristotle wrote treatises on bees.

Varroa- a bee disease

Brother Adam created the Buckfast Superbee

Maeterlinck describes how the invader is not expelled but suffocated

in the hive.

Daedalus was the first sculptor to represent the eyes as open.

Balling -to surround the old queen until she suffocates, rather than

directly killing her.

Huber- blind and born in Geneva in 1750.  he devoted himself to the

study of bees.

Aristomachus-another ancient bee lover.

Pantalica- where the Sicels built tombs in the gorge.  Bees swarm into

the rock clefts and produce inaccessible combs.  Was this the site of

Daedalus’ missing masterpiece? A possibility, according to Cronin.