The Sea and the Hills

WHO hath desired the Sea? - the sight of salt water unbounded - The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded? The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing - His Sea in no showing the same - his Sea and the same 'neath each showing: His Sea as she slackens or thrills? So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise - hillmen desire their Hills!  Who hath desired the Sea ? - the immense and contemptuous surges? The shudder, the stumble, the swerve, as the star-stabbing bowsprit emerges? The orderly clouds of the Trades, the ridged, roaring sapphire thereunder - Unheralded cliff-haunting flaws and the headsail's low-volleying thunder - His Sea in no wonder the same - his Sea and the same through each wonder: His Sea as she rages or stills? So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise - hillmen desire their Hills. Who hath desired the Sea? Her menaces swift as her mercies? The in-rolling walls of the fog and the silver-winged breeze that disperses? The unstable mined berg going South and the calvings and groans that declare it - White water half-guessed overside and the moon breaking timely to bare it - His Sea as his fathers have dared - his Sea as his children shall dare it: His Sea as she serves him or kills? So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise - hillmen desire their Hills. Who hath desired the Sea? Her excellent loneliness rather Than forecourts of kings, and her outermost pits than the streets where men gather Inland, among dust, under trees - inland where the slayer may slay him - Inland, out of reach of her arms, and the bosom whereon he must lay him - His Sea from the first that betrayed - at the last that shall never betray him: His Sea that his being fulfils? So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise - hillmen desire their Hills. Rudyard Kipling

Mrs Leonard of Storm Bay

Argonauta Argo 

Mrs Leonard, of Storm Bay Road, Flinders Bay. Beehived widow of a long deceased naval officer & clearance diver, reliable purveyor of weak tea and slightly stale Sao crackers. 

Mrs Leonard, so small that when she drove past our shack, her Valiant would appear a drifting ghost ship until you caught sight of her beehive. Who one morning, right in the middle of summer swimming lessons, ran aground on a low hummock of grass in front of the boat ramp. When an unexpected frenzy of boat launching fisherman, shoaling children & uncharted shouting parents appeared out of thick glaucomal fog, Mrs Leonard hauled hard to port and she beached the low slung Valiant in thick kikuyu as if it were a whale. For a short while she continued to drive on in a stately manner, peering intently over the vast bonnet through the familiar porthole formed by the steering wheel, once or twice waving royally to the gathering crowd, who had heard the Valiant's rising engine note and stopped to gawk at the rear wheels uselessly spinning ever faster up in the air. It was not until someone finally  gently tapped on her driver's side window and informed her over the din, that yes, she was indeed, stuck fast, that she consented to be relieved of command and let herself be towed unceremoniously off the hummock, and out of the way of the now backed up boat ramp, by tractor. 

Mrs Leonard's formal sitting room, which spoke of mothballs and rose petals, overlooked Storm Bay to the SW. A telescope extended her view all the way to St Alourn's, and the myriad of breakers beyond. Her tall honey hued glass cabinets contained not only Captain Leonard; who steadily stared out of several hand coloured photographic portraits, eyes coolly fixed on a point just off the starboard bow, as if a ship had just appeared unannounced on the horizon, but also his collection of conchs, cowries, sponges, corals, & sea snakes in jars of formaldehyde.   

... & on the highest shelf, of the tallest cabinet, there were paper nautilus shells that I was not to touch, ever, all in a row. 

They were exactly like the one I found in the gloaming the other day after the last big storm. 

my mob

"In tymes past the Pictes, habitans of one part of great Bretainne, which is nowe nammed England, wear sauuages, and did paint all their bodye after the maner followinge . . . And when they hath ouercomme some of their ennemis, they did neuer felle to carye a we their heads with them." 

John White circa 1585-93 

"The males of the tribe were all warriors but, when not called upon to defend their clan or land, were farmers and fishermen and the females also farmed, fished, and raised the children. Aside from the occasional raids by one tribe against another for cattle, the Picts seem to have lived fairly peacefully until threatened by outside forces."

"The Picts practiced a tribal paganism which seems to have involved goddess worship and a devotion to nature which involved great respect for specific sites of supernatural power across the land where the goddess lived, walked, or had performed some kind of miracle. Women in Pictish society were regarded as the equal of men and succession in leadership (later kingship) was matrilineal (through the mother's side), with the reigning chief succeeded by either his brother or perhaps a nephew but not through patrilineal succession of father to son. There seems to be no record of the concept of "sin" in Pictish belief (the same as in other forms of paganism) and, as the goddess lived among the people, the land was to be venerated as one would the home of a deity."  http://www.ancient.eu/picts/

"the Picts did not 'arrive' - in a sense they had always been there, for they were the descendants of the first people to inhabit what eventually became Scotland"