Worms Upon Their Wombs Shall Wend

Dec 22, 2020 | Covid-19 Diary, Dead Water, Goggle-eyes

An early trip to Sainsbury’s this morning passed without incident. We beat the rush, so the store was reasonably quiet and stocks were good. At lunchtime I donned my Mystic Ian persona when, as I suggested yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon dropped heavy hints about a possible full lockdown in Scotland in the New Year. I reckon that’s more likely than not as we seem to be in at least as bad a situation now as we were in March when we didn’t act soon enough.

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I got some writing done this afternoon–about 500 words with maybe a few more to come this evening. Before that I started to revisit Britannia season 1. In March 2018 I said that it is junk, but very entertaining junk and I binge watched it. Two and a half years later it’s still batshit, and still very entertaining. (spellcheck doesn’t like ‘batshit’, by the way, and suggests ‘batsmanship’ instead.)

As regards the writing, I’m now pretty sure that, once the work in progress is at complete first draft stage, I’m going to look at self-publishing what I’ve written already. This includes making a decision about a platform. My strong preference is to avoid Amazon, but it has advantages, which is how they sucker you in. My current plan is that the work-in-progress, and the volume of short stories that precedes it, will be the lead-off titles.

On the subject of publishing, this essay resonated.

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Music: Shepherd’s Arise is another Christmas favourite of mine, one that crops up under various names. It survives as a hymn, but the variant that’s in the folk tradition comes from the Copper Family of Rottingdean, Sussex. I first encountered it in the Rob Brydon and the Cottesloe Company of the National Theatre’s magnificent The Mysteries on Channel 4 in 1985. Disgracefully, this is not available on DVD/Blu-Ray. I’ve looked into it before, but no-one can say for sure where the rights are.

The first video is the version by Waterson-Carthy; the second is how it appeared in The Mysteries, with a young Brenda Blethyn as Mary. The band is The Home Service and I think it’s Bill Caddick on lead vocal.

As an added treat, I’ve added the first quarter of an hour of the first part of The Mysteries : The Nativity. There’s a large ensemble cast, but featured are Brian Glover as God; Jack Shepherd as Lucifer; Don Warrington as Gabriel; Stephen Petcher as Adam and Eve Matheson as Eve. John Tams is mc with the melodeon and there’s a glimpse of Linda Thompson singing.