August. Torrents of rain as usual. But what to do with these school holidays?
There’s an exhibition currently being shown in Kendal that I’m looking forward to. It aptly focuses not just on the work of two significant artists, but the wider issues of man and his natural environment.
However, my review of Abbot Hall’s ‘Ruskin, Turner and the Storm Cloud’ will have to remain conspicuous by its absence for now. You see, my children have reached the teen stage, so I decided to follow a different recipe for their entertainment…
preparation and cooking time: 36 hours
Take the following ingredients
1 – ‘The Vampyre’ by John Stagg, Cumbrian poet, written around 1804. Here’s a taste:
“By night, when, wrapt in soundest sleep,
All mortals share a soft repose,
My soul doth dreadful vigils keep,
More keen than which hell scarcely knows.
“From the drear mansion of the tomb,
From the low regions of the dead,
The ghost of Sigismund doth roam,
And dreadful haunts me in my bed!
“There, vested in infernal guise,
(By means to me not understood,)
Close to my side the goblin lies,
And drinks away my vital blood!”…
2 – A
3 – An entire night of thunder and lightning
4 – Whinlatter forest mountain bike blue route in the mizzle.
Method
Marinate your brain in ingredient 1 for a few hours.
Following this, spend the night combining ingredients 2 and 3. You’ll begin to notice your teenagers giggling with glee, probably producing macabre shadow displays on the cave walls. If you have an overactive imagination, simply dilute with alcohol.
Leave everybody to soak overnight. In the morning, cover your house with sodden sleeping bags and boots.
Then, as a final topping, let your teenage son/daughter familiarise you with ingredient 4. You’ll know you’ve got it just right, when they casually stop, to suggest you (the grown up!) admire the beautiful view.
Finally, cover the remaining parts of your home with more muddy clothing and boots.
The results: everyone happy and excited, with memories of adventure in nature.
Another contemporary take on the nature of survival in the wild, a shade more post-apocalyptic style, is the recent novel by Cumbria’s rising star, Katie Hale, entitled My Name is Monster. An eerie tale, set in the north of Britain, written from a female perspective. Certainly a drier alternative to our camping capers, but truly exciting nonetheless.
Celia Burbush is a Cumbrian based artist, Cumbrian Artist of the Year 2017, a competitor in the new BBC show Where the Art Is (episode 7) and new cumbria24 contributor. For more information about Celia’s work or commissioning a piece visit Celia’s website.
View previous blogs from Celia:
