Asakiyume mita

Somewhere in the archives of the Bibliotèque nationale de France is this collection of ever-blooming sound-flowers.



(Photo by Joseph Redon, originally posted on Twitter, and sent to me by Wakanomori)

And in the tower Great St. Mary's Church, in Cambridge, England, someone has stashed a collection of hangman's nooses! Or so it seems, but actually those are the bell pulls, for ringing the church bells. Still. Who knows what nefarious things may have happened in the tower while the bells were being rung?



(This photo courtesy of Wakanomori, who was there for a conference recently and climbed the tower.)

The 2014 British series detectorists, about a pair of middle-aged men who search the countryside for ancient treasures, is idiosyncratic and wonderful. wakanomori and I finished watching it a few weeks ago (it only has about 13 episodes), and I've been thinking about it ever since. It's low-key in every aspect, but indelible.

It's cinematographically beautiful: as the credits roll, close-ups of meadow flowers and insects haloed in sunlight alternate with long views of the English countryside, while Johnny Flynn sings, "Will you search the lonely earth for me / climb through the briar and the bramble / I'll be your treasure ... I'm waiting for you" (It's a beautiful song; you can hear it in its entirety here.) That tenderness of gaze is extended to the characters, too, people who would be unremarkable extras in almost any other story, but this show is about digging for what's underneath, and when you live with the characters for 13 episodes, you become really fond of them.

In the first scene of the opening episode, the two main characters, Lance and Andy, are out detecting in a field (the instrument you use when you're detecting is called a metal detector, but the people wielding it are known--at least in their own circle--as detectorists, hence the series title), and Lance finds a ring-pull from a can. He puts it in a plastic baggie with others like it. Andy asks, "What you do with them?" and Lance replies, "Pack 'em up, stick 'em on ebay. People buy this shit." "Sad tits," Andy remarks, and Lance says, "You said it." --got that? The guys who spend their spare time digging up ring-pulls are disparaging the folks who would purchase a ring-pull. I hasten to add that despite those remarks, the two are very good-hearted. But that juxtaposition is an example of the show's humor (though there's also more obvious humor).

Andy on the left, Lance on the right


From there ... small-potatoes stuff just happens, but it ends up being entirely engrossing. They confront rival detectorists who bear an uncanny resemblance to Simon and Garfunkle ...



... They get permission to detect on the land of Mr. Bishop, an eccentric who has a collection of rambunctious dogs that no one but he can see ...



and so on.

The one character I wasn't happy about at first was Andy's girlfriend Becky, who's completely uninterested in Andy's detecting hobby and who, when we first meet her, mocks him in a way that we're supposed to read as affectionate (I think), but which put me off. But eventually she grew on me, especially when she started helping them look for the location of a Saxon ship burial, and there were scenes that persuaded me that she really did love Andy. Their relationship still isn't one **I'd** want to have, but I was able to believe in it as one that was satisfying for **them**.

As for the minor characters, they were all golden, truly.

I also liked learning some detectorist lingo: "can slaw" for cans that have been shredded by agricultural machinery, "BOAT" (bit off a tractor) and "POACH" (piece of a combine harvester)--all things you might find while detecting in a field.

So, if you want something low-key, humorous, and beautiful to look at, you might give detectorists a try. (Here's a trailer for it. It's available on streaming Netflix.)

Sometime last week, I shared with osprey_archer this image of Fergus the Forager, in his suit made of burdock leaves:



(osprey_archer, someone asked him in comments how he made it, and he said he did it by glueing the leaves to a preexisting cloth suit--so it's not like those leaves had to hold up on their own!)

His whole entry on burdock is fascinating. I knew about burdock root as a food, because I prepared it all the time in Japan. My favorite recipe is kimpira gobo, which I'll share before this entry's done. But he has many other recipes, including candied burdock.

But most interesting to me is his photo of the Burry Man of Queensferry (photo comes from Wikipedia via Fergus's blog)



The Burry Man's suit is made of burrs! He makes his suit and walks a circuit of Queensferry, Scotland, on the second Friday in August. Here's what Fergus shared from Richard Mabey's Flora Britannica

At 9am the Burry Man emerges into Queensferry High Street, carrying two staves bedecked with flowers. He walks slowly and awkwardly with his arms outstretched sideways, carrying the two staves, and two attendants, one on each side, help him to keep his balance by also holding on to the staves. Led by a boy ringing a bell, the Burry Man and his supporters begin their nine-hour perambulation of South Queensferry.
The first stop is traditionally outside the Provost’s house, where the Burry Man receives a drink of whisky through a straw.

The perambulating and the drinking go on all day long, and around 6 pm, he returns to the town hall.

Fergus links to the Wikipedia article about the Burry Man, which includes information about making the suit from one guy who served as the Burry Man for twelve years. The entry also includes speculation about the origins and purposes of the ritual. I just like that it's part of something called the Ferry Fair, which I will now think of as the Fairy Fair, since, come on: this has Fairy Folk written all over it.

Here's a picture of the Burry Man from last year's Fairy Fair:


[Edit from 2018: some of the photos have disappeared in the intervening years...]

And here he is getting his tipple:

Source: 2013 Ferry Fair

Oh! And now that recipe, so this entry isn't entirely cribbing from other sources, or at least not other online sources:


That's cut out from a magazine from which I used to order stuff for delivery from a food coop I belonged with, with my neighbors when I lived in Japan. You got approximately 300 grams of gobo (burdock root) for 298 yen--about $3.00, at the time.

( translation of the recipe )