Ladydale Diary
St. Catherine of Siena 2022
It’s the end of the world as we know it or, in any event, the end of the world as Ladydale has known it. I refer to the death of our final rooster at the hands, or paws and jaws, of the pestilential diabolus which had taken the hen last week (see last week’s diary for further gory details). The diabolus of which I speak is of course the wily fox who took our last remaining rooster last Friday, while I was en route to Michigan (on which there will be more presently). As I look out my office window, I can still see the telltale signs of the carnage in the form of the rooster’s feathers, which are scattered in mournful memory of the moment it met its gruesome demise.
Lest I be accused of being soft and emotional, perhaps I should explain that it’s the “end of the world” not because of the death of a rooster but of the death of our last rooster, with no immediate plans to replace him with another. Every morning since 2013, Ladydale has rung to the timeless decibels of the crowing of roosters. From morning to night, Ladydale sounded like Merrie England and every other civilized corner of the world until the industrial blight replaced nature with the machine. Ladydale sang with the same voice as Chaucer’s England. Our roosters crowed in harmony with Chaucer’s Chanticleer.
Those days have passed.
The silence is deafening.
Why, one might ask, would we not simply buy another rooster? The answer, sad to say, is that Susannah and I are getting older and don’t feel that we can go back to full-blown poultry-raising. It’s a responsibility that involves manual labour, as well as time commitment and limitations on travel. We had already decided to let things die of natural causes. Having had over thirty chickens a few years ago, Bluebell and Whisky (the hen and rooster taken by the fox) were our last remaining chickens. They are no more. There are no more. All that we have left now are three ducks, which I can see below me grazing in the newly mown grass. They are free ranging because we are all home and have our windows open, enabling us to listen for signs of a fox attack.
Enough.
What else has happened this week apart from the apocalypse!
On Friday morning at an obscenely early hour, I dragged myself out of bed to catch a 6am flight to Michigan. My final destination was Petoskey on the northern reaches of Lake Michigan. It’s truly a quaint little town and, unusually, I had a few hours to play the tourist, exploring the shops and enjoying the views of the lake. The purpose of my visit was to give the keynote address at a fundraising gala at St. Michael’s School, one of the growing number of Chesterton academies around the country. It was truly a great trip, affording the opportunity to sample the local craft ales in convivial company.
I returned home on Sunday for a delayed St. George’s Day feast, a day late because of my absence on the day itself. St. Patricks’ Day and St. George’s Day are always special celebration in our family. Susannah’s mother is Irish, from the County Tyrone, and my own grandmother was from Galway. I am, however, an Englishman and St. George’s Day is celebrated not merely as a celebration of my homeland but also as a celebration of the date of Shakespeare’s birth and death (a providential coincidence!).
When I arrived home, I found that the house had been decorated with English flags (the Cross of St. George) and that statues and images of St. George and Shakespeare had been taken from their usual places and placed on the dining room table to adorn our celebration with their presence. Susannah and Evangeline had also made a traditional English dessert (sticky toffee pudding) to ensure that I felt at home in exile! The photography which illustrates this week’s diary was taken in our dining room. It’s a suit of army, which has become St. George for the day, adorned with the dead dragon (costume), draped over the knight’s sword. This was Evangeline’s inspiration!
As for the rest of the week, there have been so many interviews connected to my two new books (on Pope Benedict and on the history of England) that I have lost track of how many and when they were given.
On Monday, I recorded the lecture on “How to Cultivate a Love of Literature” for the online homeschooling conference which had to be rescheduled due to technical glitches the previous week.
An interview with my friend Eric Metaxas on Tuesday.
The FORMED Book Club, as usual, on Wednesday.
I dined with friends on Wednesday and Thursday evening.
On Tuesday, I wrote my weekly article for the Imaginative Conservative, this week focusing on Tolkien and Reality, which has already been published. I also wrote the next essay in my series putting great works of literature in a nutshell for Crisis Magazine. This week, I wrote on A Tale of Two Cities. This won’t be published until next weekend.
Yesterday (Thursday), I wrote the chapter on the eleventh century for my next book (a history of Christendom).
This morning I taught the first online class for Red Cultural in Chile based on my new book on the history of England.
And here we are! Late on Friday.
Wishing my friends in the Inner Sanctum a blessed week in the Presence of the Lord.
