The Winter Droving

Over the past week I’ve celebrated Samhain, the start of Christmas (it’s November, I can now watch bad films about stressed business women moving to small rural towns to run Christmas present farms) and a gorgeous full moon. The full moon happened to light up the sky above Penrith’s Winter Droving festival, bringing an extra dimension of symbolism to the flame torch processions.

The Winter Droving is relatively new in its current form, but is in fact a reimagining of an ancient tradition in Cumbria. This is the time when, as the weather worsens and the nights elongate, farmers would drive their cattle down from the highest, furthest fells to be closer to home, protecting them from storms, exposure, and wolves.

Now the wolves are gone, but with Storm Ciarán knocking on the door it felt strangely relevant to hold a street party to protect ourselves from winter’s fury. Instead of driving cattle and herds of sheep through Penrith town centre, huge paper lantern sculptures of animals were held up in a parade, followed by druid-like participants with animal masks and outfits made of fur, bark and leaves, eyes smudged coal black, some with horns, some with wings. Each section of the parade was a different party—three different local samba drum bands and a brass band crashed through, and the torchlight procession howled at us, the spectators, as they wandered through the streets.

During our time in Penrith, we kept finding our way back to Fell Bar, one of several throughout Cumbria run by Fell Brewery. In fact, we went three times. It was packed. We sat with locals and talked about dogs, wine, moving to the countryside, and working as artists. We drank Fell’s excellent Stout and Robust Porter, and admired their concrete bar top. I’m looking forward to visiting again when it’s not the busiest night of the year, it seems like the perfect place to play cards and eat crisps.

Other Stuff

• The hypnotic, trance-like music of stone age lithophones in Azerbaijan

• Honeypaw make music using harps they make out of fallen and hollow trees

• Rachel Hendry has written an incredible piece on the history of Double Diamond, a beer only a small number of beer lovers have actually tried in their lifetime. If you love marketing, branding, beer, and great writing, you need to read it.

• Snowdrops by Louise Glück. Earlier in October we lost one of our greatest poets. Here she is at her best. I always feel like her poems are cut from her physical being. She exposes herself, but retains elegance, and I always truly believe her.

• I love seeing Kafka’s diary entries pop up on social media, but I’ve not yet bought a whole book of them yet (I don’t need any more books right now.) This piece on his weird daily thoughts, his feelings of alienation and his vibrant, dark imagination and inner life satisfied my curiosity this week. He always make my brain whirr in unexpected directions. I like to think we’d get along, or we’d at least have some good, unhinged chats. We’d be horrible friends for each other, mind.

My Stuff

• I’ve just finished a piece on Bushy’s Brewery, my favourite brewery on the Isle of Man, for SIBA. Look out for it in a forthcoming issue of their magazine.

• I have written about alewives, brewsters, witchcraft and women’s work through the ages for the wonderful Hwaet! zine. It’s been illustrated by artist Matt Willis and you can pre-order the zine here.

• I’ve returned to Ferment mag with a story about snacks—what else? Look out for it in a forthcoming issue.

• I love Verdicchio—here is proof. Written for Glug magazine.

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