The Yew Tree of St. Nicholas

The Yew Tree of St. Nicholas

ANZAC Day is 25^th April and as a tribute to the fallen and those who were impacted by World War One and Two this is my contribution.

Saint Nicholas (c. 270–343 AD) was a 4th-century Christian Bishop of Myra (in modern-day Turkey) renowned for his secret gift-giving generosity to the poor, protection of children, sailors and a number of others including thieves. There’s nothing more generous that giving up one’s life for country and the Yew tree of St. Nicolas Church stands guard near the graves of ninety three New Zealand Expeditionary Force soldiers of World War One. Yew trees symbolised immortality and rebirth, to the Druids and the belief has endured over millennia. This particular tree is reputed to be over 1000 years old, which means it goes back to before 1026, during the medieval warm period and it survived the ravages of the little ice age of 1330 – 1850, showing it’s hardiness.

The church was built in the fourth century on land that may have been consecrated much earlier; some say, built around the time of St. Nicholas’s death. Other accounts put it at somewhere in the eight century, but it is mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086; it matters not because the Yew tree was there... but let’s be curious how it got there. The church was on a hilltop, so it could be seen from a distance. Being consecrated ground, animals, both wild and domestic would not have been allowed to trample the earth, so a stone wall was erected. Yew trees were grown in churchyards, because all parts of the tree are toxic to browsing animals, so it either dissuaded them... or killed them.

However, birds can eat the shiny berry and disperse the seed... but a seed dropped in a churchyard, where cocksfoot grass grows, has limited chance of germination because the grass robs all the moisture from the soil. On the other hand, Yew tolerates dry conditions, so if a seed falls on the dry side of a stone wall, it would have a chance because only barley grass would grow there. Or could someone have dug up a seedling and planted it in the churchyard? That’s a possibility... a seedling a foot high could be dozen or so years old, and the planter could have had a reason. Although Yew trees were used as longbows, it’s unlikely that seed was collected and planted at that time. So hopefully it was a person who valued trees transplanted it... which is perhaps the romantic version.

Trees don’t have eyes, ears or feelings... well there is something about feelings because there are detectable responses to pest attack and browsing, which is interesting but irrelevant. Trees can be called sentinels, an apt title for the Yew tree of St. Nicholas and it’s cemetery, because it ‘looks’ over the area... in a way, stoic. So how did the ninety three Kiwi soldiers become interred in an English countryside cemetery?

The Number One, New Zealand General Hospital was transferred from Cairo to Brockenhurst in June of 1916, the main site being the Tile Barn. The Balmer Lawn Hotel was conscripted for the New Zealand General Hospital No.1 and closed after the war, being returned to a hotel under the same name. The location was chosen because there was good train access from the port of Southampton to Brockenhurst. The station was close to the hospital.

War always has a propaganda element, and post WWII, at secondary school, we were put through a cadet military programme where some were recruited into the army. I enjoyed the discipline, rifle drills and marching and was amazed how the company parades formed from the Regimental Sergeant Major marching out alone. In English class we had to recite The Soldier by Rupert Brooke, sometimes replacing England with ‘New Zealand’ for the sake of patriotism. Before movies were shown we stood up to a clip of the Queen and the British national anthem... in a way I suppose it was engineered patriotism... but what’s a country without patriotism?

 

 If I should die, think only this of me: 

That there's some corner of a foreign field 

That is for ever England. There shall be

 In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 

A body of England's, breathing English air, 

Washed by the rivers, blessed by suns of home. 

 

Most of the ninety three came from the Western Front and there were a number among them who were seriously ill from the various diseased associated with nutrition, mud and rats. All were heroes! How soldiers could be encouraged to run into machine gun fire... and the not so often mentioned, shrapnel fire. These were artillery shells were loaded with lead pellets and had timers that caused the shell to burst open above on-coming soldiers... lead pellets about half an inch in diameter travelling at 200mph when the soldiers had only tin hats for protection. We found these shells in the forest as a result of WWI training exercises... terrible things! This is why it isn’t a difficult task to say a few words on ANZAC Day, and Armistice Day. 

 

But thinking about those ninety three. There were other heroes, those who supported and didn’t fight. The stretcher bearers, they had to make a call on the battlefield of the likelihood of survival, before carrying, sometimes under fire, the wounded to the Aid Post, and there another decision had to be made before the field ambulance took them to the port. The hospital ships faced danger in Channel channel because of mines and some submarines. Every patient had to be carried from the ship to the train and likewise to the hospital and of course the medical staff had an onerous task... some 20 000 soldiers were treated at NZGH No.!. To sustain the war effort Ancillaries played a massive part, not front-line, but theirs was a vital role.

 

 I remember watching Sputnik-dot pass across the sky while I was waiting for the man who was the movie projectionist for Sunnyside Mental Hospital. I went with him each week for two years to watch free movies. Sunnyside was a dismal place, a bit like Colditz, where a large proportion of the inmates were WWII war veterans who found life to be difficult. My viewing place was a balcony high above the dining room where the inmates sat., sometimes they reacted to what was shown. Those dormitories looked like unwelcome places... but I suppose the military-like discipline is what those veterans remembered.  

 

During my forestry training days, I was stationed at Hanmer Forest, and in the township was the Queen Mary Hospital, an alcoholic rehabilitation hospital. Some, when ‘cured’, were sent to work with us, to introduce them back into the workforce, and they lived in the forest single men’s camp with us. All were WWII veterans, and none that I knew were ‘cured’, most usually they would get drunk during the weekend and sit on the side of the hill with their head between their knees all day Monday and most of Tuesday. Most were chain smokers so we had to be vigilant about fires. After a couple of months, they returned to Christchurch. Hopefully there were some good outcomes.None of those men’s names appear on a honours board, yet they did their bit and paid a price... some were even shunned by their families. 

 

They deserve to be remembered. 

 

We shall remember them!

Fairies in My Garden

 

Fairies in my Garden

There were once two girls who managed to capture photographs of fairies in their garden. They used old fashioned, unsophisticated technology yet their black and white photographs ‘fooled’ the experts for many years. Unfortunately, when the girls became elderly women, they admitted the hoax to the world... it is sad that with the onset of age, they had lost their childhood spirit. But we only have their word that they doctored those photos, so at the end of the day, theirs isn’t proof that fairies don’t exist. Could those old women have succumbed to the conspiracies of the elderly?

Each tooth that came out of my head when I was young, was replaced under my pillow with a piece of silver; a three-penny piece! My mother told me it was the work of fairies, they made the exchange... and my Mum would never tell fibs to me! So at least twenty times during my young life, some fairy or fairies must have worked under my pillow, in a confined and dangerous place to make those exchanges. Why, their wings could have been damaged or tiny limbs broken! And they were quiet so as not to wake me.

Then there’s Tinker Bell to think about, y’know, from Peter Pan? The pair have been childhood heroes for so many people over the years. And then there’s the fairy dust that we hear so much about these days... the stuff politicians use to cover their lies. So who among us don’t believe in fairies... only skeptics? I can assuredly tell you, that there are fairies in my garden! I have never actually seen one, but you can’t see the wind either, yet you know its there. Isn’t that so?

The fairies in my garden must have to be so careful, because it can be a dangerous place, what with the lawnmower and the hoe and rake... perhaps they can turn invisible? Fairies could be prey for birds too, and there are lots of birds in my garden, quail, thrush and blackbirds could make a tasty meal out of them. But fairies in the way of nature have evolved to protect themselves, with camouflage, invisibility and perhaps even magic... I wouldn’t be surprised. And that’s the reason I have never spotted them.

You may then wonder why I’m so sure about their existence. Well it’s because I’ve seen their toilet! They are little red, star-shaped things... and to put it bluntly, they really stink! I have no idea what their diet is, but the left-behind isn’t at all nice and it attract flies, lots of flies.

We forestry people see them up in the forest too but we were a little more coarse with our language, so as polite as I can be, they are fairy sh** houses. Forestry people are curious folk and when we come upon them, we check them out and sometime we see little tollies in bowl but still, even we have never seen a fairy... but logically, if their are fairy toilets, there must be fairies. Isn’t that so?

****

The small, red, star-shaped forest fungi, Aserow rubra takes advantage of moist forest and garden conditions, it is commonly known as Anemone fungi – never used by us because we have our own name for it. The fungi has an attractant smell for flies, the method they use to disperse their spores.

The Barabbas Effect

 

The Barabbas Effect

I watched the rising moon last evening, it was the first full moon after March 21 a portent to the Christian festival of Easter... which is, at least for some, an important event. For others it’s but another holiday, made a legal right by their government. Some contest the validity of the Bible as a historical record while others believe implicitly in it’s literal accuracy... I’m not about to debate that; it’s the author(s) of the story of the Crucifixion of Jesus and their enlightenment that’s of intrigue... they perceived one of the foibles of humanity.

The clergy, priests, elites or whatever they were, had become nervous about their loss of status and power over the population because of the growing popularity of the Jewish preacher, Jesus. Some followers had promulgated the idea that He was the king of the Jews... though He didn’t say so. The elites petitioned the Roman governor to arrest, or perhaps even terminate Him, and governor Pilate’s acquiescence was because his role was to keep the peace in the land. He was looking after his own position.

Standing before Pilate, Jesus’ interrogation went something like this.

Pilate asks, ‘Are you King of the Jews?’

Jesus replied, ‘You have said so.’ Although John’s version was. ‘Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it about me?’ and added, ‘My Kingdom is not of this world.’

Pilate asks, ‘So, you are a King?’ To which there was no rely.

Pilate asks again, ‘So you are a king?’

Jesus replies: ‘You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth’.

We don’t know what Pilate thought of those answers, but said,’ I find no fault in this man.’

The religious leaders, among themselves, had accused Jesus of blasphemy, but they knew Pilate would only take action on a political matter such as an insurrection. When Pilate was about to release Jesus, in their eagerness to have Jesus executed, the chief priests and others declared, ‘We have no king but Caesar.’And cunningly, they previously had loaded the crowd with stirrers who cheered their support and the crowed joined them.

It was the time of the festival of Passover; the tradition was that the governor would release one condemned (to die) prisoner to honour it, so Pilate put it to the crowd to choose between Barabbas and Jesus... and the crowd chose Barabbas! Even though Barabbas was a hardened criminal and a murderer. This was the first Barabbas effect.

These events happened nearly two thousand years ago, yet human nature, in light of the living present, hasn’t changed. People can be easily manipulated into supporting causes that don’t stack up legally... or even morally. Take for example the illegal migrants who have ‘invaded’ western nations... they have strong support among large sections of the local populations; without consideration of the legality or likely impacts that logic would normally carry.

There indulgence show of a teenage girl, who claimed the planet would collapse because of climate change... without following logic or listening scientist with an alternate view. It has to be asked why whole economies should change because of her rants, yet that’s what happened. Her flawed understanding of the issue aligned with those of the United Nations and World Economic Forum’s, which is why governments acquiesced. The financial and energy fallout has impacted many countries in an ongoing way.

The so-called Covid pandemic was inflated by the World Health Organisation and governments fell for their rhetoric by introducing draconian rules that in the fullness of time have been found to be unnecessary, and against common law. Other vaccines prevent the contraction of the disease but the Covid ones didn’t; masks were ineffective... mandated while it has been known since the 1950’s that breathing one’s own carbon dioxide inside masks is a long-term risk. But the rules-must-be-adhered-to crowd who like to throw their weight around, threw it; and the unvaccinated became Typhoid Marys... or the unclean, and were booted out of their workplace. Those who had done their research and had knowledge were shut down. Even though it was known that second shots risked myocarditis to young males, it was still mandated by some governments.

Today (time of writing) is the anniversary of an event that remains shocking in this country. A large group of women were and remain against the idea that biological men dressed in skirts being allowed to enter traditionally women’s spaces. They brought in a woman from overseas who had been outspoken on the issue, agreeing with the women’s group. The media and some politicians painted the woman as being radical, anti-trans and far-right. But the woman had always said she has no issue of people going about their own business as long as it hurts nobody; but the fact is, biological men in women’s spaces is a problem for many women... which is why she speaks about it.

The women were going to hold a rally, but it didn’t go ahead because there was a counter-protest by vociferous trans-activists and their supporters, empowered by the mainstream media. They had the clear intent of roughing up the women, their guest included. The trans-activist had a perfect right to put their case under the law, but instead chose violence. The police for their part allowed the roughing up to continue... some of it quite dangerous and after wounds were inflicted, they put a cordon around the guest. In the aftermath, the media gave tacit support to the trans-activists for the roughing up and the justice system didn’t serve justice to the women. Even though there was violence, there was widespread support for the trans-activists actions. At no time did the trans people state their case or show a preparedness to debate the issue.

The Barabbas effect remains alive and well, even if it’s been so for two thousand years. Easter will always remind us of it. After all, life is simpler by dismissing logic and allowing others to think for us... isn’t it?