The Writing Wolf

Here is an island chain Each head a stepping stone Floating in seas of blood Deep sighs the ocean Africa to America With each head counted Deep throbs the ocean Mother tongue lost to them Lost with identity Flesh without dignity Roars with the ocean Cry you across the sea Cry you across the years Deep in the hurricane Toussaint stone dead in France Hear and remember

If you drive up the  Horseshoe Pass just outside Llangollen in North Wales and know where to turn off you will find the Blue Pool.  These days it is also known as the Blue Lagoon and it is a popular swimming spot, but for experienced swimmers only! It is 40 feet deep and can be icy even in warm weather.  When I knew it first, I was a child and there was none of that!  Cars were rare and  it was considered remote and dangerous!  Therefore for me it was mysterious.  We would travel from my home in the Black Country to the bliss of the open spaces of North Wales!  If I was lucky early on Sunday morning, before church, we would drive up to see the Blue Pool.  Sometimes it was misty, making it doubly dangerous and slightly sinister!  No one swam in it then but I loved it!  Nowhere in the world, and I’ve travelled a bit, have I seen water quite so blue as it is in memory!  You can talk to me about copper sulphate levels and tell me the history of the slate mining that made it!  But for me it

The wooden cross and the cross of nails were created after the cathedral was bombed during the Coventry Blitz of World War II.  My father was there that night as a fireman and his stories of the experience lived on as sad legends in our family.  My mother could see the fire glowing on the horizon from 30 miles away!  The cathedral stonemason, Jock Forbes, saw two wooden beams lying in the shape of a cross in the ruins and tied them together. A replica of the wooden cross built in 1964, has replaced the original in the ruins of the old cathedral on an altar of rubble. The original is now kept in St. Michael's Hall below the new cathedral. Another cross was made of three nails from the roof truss of the old cathedral by Provost Richard Howard of Coventry Cathedral. It was later transferred to the new cathedral, where it rests on its altar. The cross of nails has become a symbol of peace and reconciliation across the world. There are over 160 Cross of Nails Centres all over the world

An extract from the National Gazetteer 1868 “WHITTINGTON, a parish in the upper division of Oswestry hundred, county Salop, 2½ miles N.E. of Oswestry, and 5 W. of Ellesmere. It has stations on the Cambrian and on the Shrewsbury and Chester branch of the Great Western railways. There is likewise a branch line from Gobowen, in this parish, to Oswestry. The river Perry and the Ellesmere canal traverse the parish from N. to S. It has the ruins of an ancient moated border castle, supposed to have been built in the 9th century by a British chieftain, whose descendants held it till the Norman conquest, when it was given to Peverel, the founder of the family of the Peverels of the Peak, but afterwards passed into the hands of Fulk Fitz-Guarine, or Warine, whose family kept it till 1419. The castle, before its demolition, was strongly fortified with five round towers, each 40 feet in diameter and 100 feet in height, and the walls were 12 feet in thickness. The towers of the gatehouse are still