‘Rooted in the Land’…

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This is something which was very dear to Sue’s heart.

The ‘logo’ is still in sketch form because Sue, as well as re-editing our books for their second editions, was working on this project just before she passed…

The ‘concepts’ involved had emerged from our work together over the previous nine years of, as Sue so succinctly put it, ‘traipsing the land in search of adventure.’

As those of you who are familiar with our books will be aware, adventures aplenty were found and duly committed, in writing, to paper.

In magical parlance this process is known as ‘grounding’ and no lasting human development can be achieved without it.

In one famous soliloquy Sue compared us both to ‘little grubs’ who were burrowing themselves deep into the land of our birth.

This analogy too proved prescient, for ‘little grubs’ invariably transform into butterflies…

“…The easiest way to approach spirituality is through stories, they are common to every tradition and rather than demand belief all they ask is a willing suspension of disbelief…” – Twinkle Twinkle, the Initiate

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Celebrating the publication of the Initiate on Sue’s birthday in 2013

Photograph – Nick Verron

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‘The Initiate – an everyday tale of Barge-Folk’…

Course, it’s not like this back on the ‘Naall’. On the ‘Naall’ things move at a nice, steady pace. One might even say stately. And when I say ‘things’ I mean life. Back on the ‘Naall’ life is a slow drift, a slow drift through the foliage and fauna of this sacred space now and forever known as Albion. And that is really all there is. We move from one sacred space to another and back again. What else could there be? If you can imagine and I know it’s difficult for Busy-Folk. The optimum speed for a human body to move under its own volition is three miles an hour, and if it were possible, which it is not of course, but if it were possible to shift out of the body in some way and move still attached to it, then the optimum speed the ‘spirit body’ would find itself travelling at is between six and nine miles an hour. That’s the speed that a barge travels along the ‘Naall’. Neat huh?

Now, Wen, she knows this but being a speed freak the concept of six to nine miles an hour as a travelling speed is alien to her, utterly, completely, incontrovertibly alien. Life in the fast-lane she calls it. I mean she even changed the title of my book when I presented her with the honour of being the very first of the Busy-Folk to read it

‘This will never do’ she said, or some such…

‘What, you don’t like it?’

‘It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just…’

‘You don’t like it do you?’

‘I do like it. I like it a lot but what you have to realise Don, is that us Busy-Folk, we like things spruced up a bit.’

‘Spruce away,’ I said, all desperate for publication, like. And well, that was a mistake, I mean, I ask you…

‘Sacred Chromatography’!

What’s all that about? Anyway, she dispensed with that for the second edition, and she liked the bird bits and said those could stay, so I suppose I’m reasonably happy with the results…

Give it ‘the whirl’, I think that’s one of Wen’s expressions. Give it the whirl and let me know what you think, especially the bird bits, if you can find me…

– ‘Slow-Drift’ Manchester to Liverpool Ship Canal.

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