Ladydale Diary
Saint Withburga 2021
Today’s saint is a favourite of mine, largely due to the fact that she is local to the area of Norfolk in East Anglia, which is the Shire that I call home, though I’ve been in exile and away from its hallowed soil for these past twenty years. She inspired a poem of mine, “The Bishop and the Virgin”, published in my collection of verse, Divining Divinity, in which I compare her with Saint Patrick, with whom she shares a feast day. I know that today, July 8, is the feast day on the calendar but she died on March 17 and this is still the traditional date on which I personally reverence her, alongside Ireland’s patron. Not that I’m complaining; her placement on the calendar in July gives me an additional reason and excuse to sing her praises!
As for the past week’s events, we need to begin with the Fourth of July weekend. On the evening of Friday, July 2, Susannah and Evangeline drove to our friends, the Putmans, on Lake Greenwood to enjoy the firework display over the lake. They sat by the pool eating ice cream and enjoying the pyrotechnics, staying overnight and returning home the following morning. While they were there, Leo and I enjoyed a quiet evening, playing with his favourite yellow ball, and the bouncing marbles game, Hop-Hop-Hooray, as well as watching videos. Leo also spent some time on the swing set while I sat nearby reading On Stranger Shores, the weird and creepy novel by Tim Powers upon which one of The Pirates of the Caribbean films was based. I finished it last night. It’s not as good as his later books, Declare and Last Call, in which the Catholic undercurrent is more evident, but it’s a great yarn nonetheless, a page turner in the best sense of the word. He’s certainly a very gifted storyteller.
On Saturday afternoon I met some friends at a local craft ale bar to watch England beat the Ukraine in the quarter finals of the European Championship. Yesterday afternoon I watched England triumph over Denmark in the semifinal, though I watched this game on an exercise bike in front of one of the TV screens at my local gym. Since this game went to extra time, it meant that I was on the bike for two and a half hours straight, covering thirty stationary miles in the process. I thought that I’d be really stiff and sore this morning but I feel fine. I’m in better shape than I thought. The final of the European Championships, which is between England and Italy, is on Sunday afternoon. I’ll be watching that game in the craft ale bar with friends and emphatically not on a bike!
Returning to the Fourth of July weekend, we followed our usual annual routine on the evening of the Fourth itself, getting everyone in the car shortly after dark and driving to a local neighbourhood to watch the pyrotechnics. This year, to the great delight of the rest of us, Leo really enjoyed the fireworks, which is empirical proof of developmental progress. Good news! Deo gratias!
Due to Monday being a holiday, the FORMED Book Club was not recorded until Tuesday. We’re still in the midst of the best of Chesterton’s essays, covering three more in the half hour discussion. Since Father Fessio, Vivian and I are all great devotees of the great GKC, we’re in no hurry to finish our engagement with this particular book!
It’s been a Chestertonian week. Apart from the aforementioned discussion of his essays, I taught the final class in the course on Chesterton that I’ve been doing online for Memoria College. We focused on The Everlasting Man, a great way to conclude. And then, keeping with the Chesterton fixation, I chose to write on his essay “The Diabolist” for my weekly contribution to the Imaginative Conservative.
The other essay I wrote this week was the latest in the “Nutshell” series for Crisis Magazine. This week I endeavoured to put the Arthurian romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in the proverbial nutshell.
It’s also been a week of interviews. I gave an interview to a Polish magazine on poetry and an interview on the great but neglected novelist, Maurice Baring, for a Brazilian journal. And this morning I was a guest on Teresa Tomeo’s show on EWTN Radio, discussing an essay of mine on history published this week by the National Catholic Register.
It’s now lunchtime on Thursday and I’m about to head to the gym. I’m a sucker for punishment! When I get back, I’m planning on spending the afternoon recording and uploading the podcasts for the Inner Sanctum and then pack for a trip to Chicago tomorrow, where I’ll be giving a couple of talks at a Catholic parish.
A few final nature notes as a postscript. Yesterday I spotted a black and white warbler, a bird we’d never seen before, perched on a tree just outside the office window from which I currently write. And then this morning, after I let the chickens and ducks out, I wandered into peach blossom wood, to the east of the house, to collect wild mushrooms, chanterelles to be precise, which Susannah then fried gently in butter and served with fried eggs. Delicious. Life is good!
