Posted by Michael Webster on Dec 10, 2019
Paradise Lane In the parable of the Good Samaritan, a Jewish traveller is stripped, beaten and left for dead at the side of the road. A priest and Levite come along and seeing him, cross to the opposite side of the road and pass by. Later, a Samaritan, a traditional...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Aug 3, 2019
Donald Trump on Africa `We are having all these people from shithole countries come here!’ And in a tweet aimed at Somalia-born Democrat, Ilhan Omar `Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Whose...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jun 30, 2019
In the Book of Daniel, King Belshazzar, having trampled his foes and trashed their temple, held a great feast to celebrate his victory. When the party was in full swing, the hand of God appeared, and as the King and guests looked on in horror and amazement, it began...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on May 30, 2019
It’s getting like New Delhi around here for begging and street sleeping. Unprecedented in my lifetime; on busy shopping days they line the routes like sitting Buddhas, creating eddies in the pedestrian traffic as it to’s and fro’s along the streets; and it’s rare that...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Apr 1, 2019
This time last year the Treasury sent out a self-congratulatory tweet announcing that millions of us had helped end the slave trade through our taxes. The 184-year loan, taken out by the government in 1833 to pay out slave owners to end slavery, had finally been paid...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Mar 14, 2019
For those checking in for tips on outdoor marijuana cultivation, I’m sorry to disappoint. The weed in question here is Himalayan balsam: introduced into parks and gardens by Victorians with a penchant for the exotic, only to rapidly spread along the country’s...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Sep 3, 2015
Anyone visiting or living in the Lake District, or any other place of natural beauty for that matter; and who are sensitive and at peace within themselves and their environment will have on occasion sat on a rock, a bench, a tussock; looked out across a valley and in...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jul 1, 2015
These are austere times for many families. The ‘tightening of belts’ is squeezing the life out of many of our communities. Minimum wage jobs, zero hours and short-term contracts, flexi-hours; coupled with welfare cuts which has reduced government...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on May 25, 2015
The Solway Firth forms a natural border between England and Scotland. Over ten miles wide at its mouth, it narrows to a patchwork of marshland and estuaries where the rivers Esk and Eden flow into the sea, and which can be forded at low tide...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Apr 29, 2015
You’d have thought that freedom of choice and expression along with access to information, were not just a right, but a basic necessity. Like eating and breathing they are the things that allow us to think and function within society. We take it...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Feb 1, 2014
Seathwaite Tuff is a silica rich white volcanic rock that formed in a crater lake over a hundred million years ago. It appears as a two metre wide seam fifteen hundred feet above ground level in the Langdale and Borrowdale ranges in south Cumbria. It has similar...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Sep 27, 2013
I met Michael Webster at Dove Cottage around twelve years ago. He and poet Paul Farley recorded the nocturnal noises within the house and using a computer program, transcribed the sounds into individual words for their exhibition and installation called...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Sep 20, 2013
“The common people ther do pray for shippes which they sie in danger. They al sit downe upon their knees and hold up their handes and say very devotedly. Lord, send her to us, God send her to us. Seeing them upon their knees, and their hands joined, you do think that...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Sep 4, 2013
High Tides and Shifting Sands The tidal bore that emerges from the Lune Deeps at the mouth of Morecambe Bay is said to run faster than a galloping horse, flooding the channels that cut through the sand silently and rapidly in minutes. It’s deceptive and...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Aug 27, 2013
Of Sorcery… It was on a Lammas night, When corn rigs are bonie, Beneath the moon’s unclouded light, I held away to Annie: The time flew by, wi tentless heed, Till ‘tween the late and early; Wi’ sma’ persuasion she agreed To see me thro’...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Aug 20, 2013
Pareidolia is a Greek word for the psychological condition that causes us to see faces in objects. The phenomena originates from an inbuilt survival instinct, activated at birth that allows us to recognise the human face in a fraction of a second and determine that...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Aug 14, 2013
The twisted road that snakes itself over the pass isn’t for the faint hearted. Impassable for much of the winter it’s a gravity-defying ascent that tests your engine and your nerve as you make your way up and over the summit. From there the valley of Eskdale with its...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Aug 6, 2013
He said he’d show me dinosaurs, but with visibility down to just a few feet, there could’ve been brontosaurus having a garden party and we wouldn’t have known anything about it… Leo Walmsley lives at the Old Dungeon Ghyll: a climbers’ bar and hotel in Great Langdale....
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Aug 1, 2013
‘You can’t sit there.’ I’d just got a pint at the Corporation and was about to sit down in the corner chair. ‘Why not?’ I said a bit perplexed. ‘That’s Albert’s seat’ ‘There’s no-one here’ I said pointing to the empty bar. ‘Never mind about that, and less of...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jul 23, 2013
If from the public way you turn your steps Uip the tumultuous brook of Greenhead Gill. No habitation there is seen but such As journey thither find themselves alone With a few sheep, with rocks and stones, and kites That overhead are sailing in...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jul 16, 2013
Our taste for exotic and alternative food isn’t new. Curry was a popular dish in this country in the late eighteenth / early nineteenth century: the first vegetarian restaurants also opened around that time, but it didn’t last; going out of fashion in the Victorian...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jul 10, 2013
Michael Mitchell studied history at Southampton University, before moving to Grasmere in 1993, where he helps manage the Wordsworth gift shop and works in finance. His interests are vernacular architecture, classic rail journeys and social...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jul 4, 2013
http://markwardpoet.co.uk/backyard/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/TEMPUS_F_AMENDED-Converted.mov.m4v Over 40% of the houses in Grasmere are holiday homes, most of which sit empty through the Winter, In Elterwater it’s around 85%: no longer a living village, just obstacles...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jun 27, 2013
Each generation makes the landscape its own. We are all of us simply temporary managers of the places we inherit or buy – It’s all ephemeral. For years now, farmers have been having a hard time. Victims of supermarket price wars and government...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jun 16, 2013
The searchlight followed her, and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship. No other form could be seen on deck at all. A great awe came on all as...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jun 16, 2013
Sally Hall plays the clarinet: she’s also my boss who works as the Senior Guide at Dove Cottage where she deals with the day to day running of the house and gardens – where we often find ourselves working alongside each other.. I tend to the grass, trees, paths and...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Jun 4, 2013
Traditionally the Lake District’s economy was sustained by farming and heavy industry. Wool, heavy metals, slate, coal and graphite were processed here and exported around the country and beyond, but these days, for the most part, tourism has replaced these...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on May 29, 2013
John Dixon was a publisher, author and historian who, in the spirit of notable Blackburn writers Alfred Wainwright and Jessica Lofthouse created a series of historic walks through the Lancashire countryside that have engaged and delighted countless people...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on May 15, 2013
I’ve just returned from Blackburn: my hometown and a place we’ll revisit a number of times over the course of this blog. My parents, grandparents and generations of my family lie in its cemeteries. Tim and Jules, my eldest and younger brothers live there along with a...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on May 10, 2013
Catherine Kay is the Education Officer at the Wordsworth Trust. She read Romantic literature at St Andrews and has an extensive knowledge along with a love and passion for her subject. Away from the museum she immerses herself in popular culture; reads...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on May 8, 2013
Pamela Woof is a scholar and author, President of the Wordsworth Trust and widow of Dr Robert Woof whose energy and vision helped create one of the world’s great literary museums here in Grasmere. She’s also one of the brightest people I know; and...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on May 2, 2013
For me one of the things quintessentially British is the parish church: as communal hubs for millennia they, even in our secular age, link us to the past in a way that few other things can, and while I’m not particularly religious I appreciate their importance and...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Apr 23, 2013
Rick Martin is a Romany gypsy who blends his own fine teas and hires out rowing boats from his lakeside kiosk Faeryland, which is set in a sheltered inlet beyond the village. It is the most picturesque of places and I’ve wiled away many an idle moment there. The bay...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Apr 17, 2013
Annalie Talent studied literature, writes poetry and works on the education programmes at the Ashmolean and Jane Austen’s house at Chawton. Her interests are eighteenth/early nineteenth century paintings and ceramics and photographing wildlife (mainly sheep). We’ve...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Apr 4, 2013
[video_lightbox_vimeo5 video_id=63175995 width=640 height=480 anchor=http://markwardpoet.co.uk/backyard/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/poster.jpg] “In Search of the Golden Eagle” with Mountain Man Stewart Reekie, (mountain man) is a dry stone waller, a climber...
Learn More
Posted by Michael Webster on Apr 3, 2013
Donald Woodburn is a local builder who built the Wordsworth museum here in Grasmere and completed major restoration work on Dove Cottage in the 70s. My job of maintaining Dove Cottage and the grounds has required me to consult with him regularly over the years and his...
Learn More
