#16 Snow shoes and road kill: Memma the Cavewoman and planting trees by moonlight

Memma aka Sarah Day is a Bushcraft instructor, experimental archaeologist and ancient technologist. I’ve known Sarah for nearly twenty years, having met at Kentwell Hall Tudor Re-creation, a few years before her younger sister Rachel joined, who went on to meet my younger brother Nathan, and through their subsequent marriage, united our two households. 

Sarah now runs her own business, ‘Prehistoric Experiences’ which provides educational workshops in schools across the UK and for the public. Bringing the Stone Age to life in vivid detail, she travels from schools to history fairs and other public events, with an animal skin tent, within which you can join Sarah, or Memma, as she teaches you to knap flint tools or weapons, skin and tan an animal, or how to light a fire from sticks. She is a wealth of information and it was a joy to have this opportunity to pick and expansive brain.

You can follow Sarah’s adventures on Instagram and Facebook @memmathecavewoman

The music and artwork is by @moxmoxmoxiemox

Nonsense in the Chaos is available on all podcast platforms or you can listen here… https://nonsenseinthechaos.buzzsprout.com You can get in touch with me on Instagram @kriyaarts or the Nonsense in the Chaos Page on Facebook

Please like, follow, and review. Also, please consider supporting the podcast by becoming a patron on my Patreon page... patreon.com/JolieRose. And share far and wide please! The more people who hear about the podcast the better.

Huge love to you all and I hope you enjoy listening to this week's episode!

The music and artwork is by @moxmoxmoxiemox

Nonsense in the Chaos is available on all podcast platforms or you can listen here… https://nonsenseinthechaos.buzzsprout.com You can get in touch with me on Instagram @kriyaarts or the Nonsense in the Chaos Page on Facebook

Please like, follow, and review. Also, please consider supporting the podcast by becoming a patron on my Patreon page... patreon.com/JolieRose. And share far and wide please! The more people who hear about the podcast the better.

Transcript

0:03

The mountains and the caves. Wicked witches. Crusting the unknown. Transcribed by https: otter. ai Welcome to the nonsense in the chaos. I am your host Janie rose. Today I have an Extra special guest, who is an old friend of mine and feels like a family member. Her name's Sarah Day. I know her from Campbell hall and also Because her younger sister is married to my younger brother. you'll. hear from the podcast that she has an exceptional job that I'm extremely excited for you to hear all about. I won't hold. you for very long, but I also just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who sent. feedback for last week's podcast. About GMR. Muncie. It was a Beautiful thing to receive this fever I felt vulnerable and it felt like a big deal to share. All of that with you. there's plenty more to come on that subject, but I just. wanted to say huge. Thank you. And I feel like Sarah, who I'm speaking to today. Has the same mistress as me. We both are in love with mother earth. we go about things in different ways, but it's a shared love and. Understanding for nature. And for. world. And for history and learning about how we've. Dumb things in the past and not forgetting important skills that. actually we can do lots. Of things with our own hands and with our own. Expertise. And knowledge and yeah, Sarah is so excited. Citing and every time you speak to her, you learn something new. So I won't hold you any longer. And we will feast on the wisdom and expertise that comes With chatting to this beautiful lady. see you on the other side. So this is Sarah Day, otherwise known as Mema. Is that the right way to pronounce it? Mema, Mema. Mema the cave woman. And Sarah is sort of my sister in law. You're not actually my sister in law, you're my sister in law's sister, but I feel like you're a sister. You feel like you're family. We've known each other quite a long time one way or another, haven't we? Very long time. So I know Sarah through Kentwell and we've lived there as Tudors and then her sister married my brother. And so, yeah, we've kind of become family as well. And I want to know first of all, not only is Sarah a Tudor, but also actually has managed to forge a whole career and life based around living prehistorically, which is seriously cool and we're all very envious. And she's, going to around schools as member of the cave woman, but how did you know the name? Like, how do you find out prehistoric names? Well, I mean, obviously we don't know what anyone was called back then. The name Memma actually came about the first school I worked with Will Lord. He kind of christened me that on our first school. And because we go back to the same places again and again, the children remember. so I couldn't change it even if I wanted to, but the idea was originally that he thought it would be amusing if my character, my persona was like half Neanderthal. And one of the old theories of Neanderthals was that they had superior memories. I quite enjoy learning about plants. I know quite a lot about medicinal herbs and edible plants He decided that I was a good rememberer. So, that's where Memma came from. Oh, Memma. Yeah. Sort of like a memo. it is my name now. I don't want to change it and I couldn't even if I wanted to. is there any trace or way of working out language from those times? Language, yes, a little bit, in that a lot of the later European languages descend from a language which dates back to the late Neolithic, early Bronze Age, far to the east of here, on the eastern steppes. And that's known as Proto Indo European. Latin descends from that and therefore all the Latin based languages they've done some work and managed to backtrack. If you imagine language as a tree and you've got all the modern languages of the Twigs, you can, you can backtrack to what that language was 500 years ago and then you can backtrack to what it was a thousand years ago. they reckon The Proto Indo European word for mother is, I think it's matka, or something like that. And the word for two, as in the number two, is dw. But names, it's anyone's guess, really. And we've given various finds names, but we don't know what they called themselves. It's part of the mystery, I suppose. And what's the actual time period that you're mainly covering? well, we cover the whole thing from 3. 8 million years ago when we branched off from the ape family tree all the way up to the end of the Bronze Age. I'm not much interested in anything after the end of the Mesolithic, which is about 8, 000 years ago but I think the most fascinating bit of our history is the Upper Paleolithic. it's the time in our history when the cave paintings are from, and all the fabulous little carved and sculpted ivory. Figurines of mother figures or venuses, It was just an explosion of the first flush of human culture, really, and all the megafauna and, you know, mammoths wondering about it. Okay, I've got two questions about this. One is, it was once suggested to me that the Venus statues, the round mother statues Look like, it's someone's carved it from above. So it's women looking at their own bodies doing it. Have you heard that before? I have heard that, I mean, some of them more than others, some of them, I can definitely see that makes sense. they vary, you know, some of them are beautifully carved and just exaggerated proportions and, and that makes sense that maybe women carved them looking at their own bodies. Some of them are quite crude one of them literally looks like a rotisserie chicken. It's bad. The theory that makes the most sense to me is that they were a sort of expression of lots of things that people hoped for in their lives. They were an expression of, the wish for lots of healthy mothers and healthy babies because obviously she's a successful mother who has succeeded in raising many babies. She's not a young woman. She's an older matriarch who survived to a wise old age where she can help guide her. people. She's clearly never been starving hungry either. And that, I think, would have been quite a rare and marvellous thing. you don't see fat hunter gatherers. So I think for me she's sort of summing up all of those hopes and prayers that people would have had for their own lives. But who knows. Well, they're fascinating actually, yeah, that makes sense. And the other one was that someone once told me that where cave paintings have tended to be, they are. good acoustics and that there were rudimentary instruments found in these places. There certainly have been instruments found, notably, I think, bone flutes. in a few places and they are just hauntingly beautiful. We've made some, I know a guy who's very skilled at making them and, we spent a weekend with him then we went down the pits at Grimes Graves in Norfolk, which is a neolithic flint mine, and played them The sounds they made were just exquisite. there is an argument that. when people heard echoes in caves, maybe they felt they were speaking to another world, From performing and having people witness you perform, as soon as someone's watching you and you feel like you're being witnessed, which actually in science, when cells are being observed on a molecular level, they behave differently. So there's that experiment where they're shooting, I think it's like electrons or something through slits. And when they're not being observed, they go through in, direct lines. when they're being observed, they go through waves or something. They swap. They change from waves to, to direct lines. And my theory is that when you're being observed, literally your whole body freaks out from the adrenaline. your whole body feels like it's shaking, feels like all the atoms in your body are shaking. And in these safe spaces. We were able to observe someone in the middle doing something and I think, it would have been linked to fear of death because as soon as we had existential angst, that's when you had the shaman who in a way is a showman and that's where this all kind of came from. in doing that, it meant that we learned to deal with adrenaline when someone lost control of the car in front of me, everyone in the car started screaming. because I'm used to working with adrenaline, I put my hands on the person's shoulders and went, calm down, calm down, calm down. I was able to do that because I'm used to that experience. my theory is that it was a safe space for people to experiment with terrifying themselves so that when they were in terrifying experiences, they were able to be a bit more like the matrix and a bit more like ninja. that makes sense to me and a lot of the images are linked to hunting. You know, there's one or two where it's showing almost a, an action sequence of an animal moving that appears to move when you look at it under candlelight. There's some other ones which they've recently analysed where it's a sketch of an animal or an engraving of an animal with lines incised over the top And it creates a kind of, What do they call them? You know, a magic eye picture where from one angle you can't see the animal, from another you can. And there were lots of theories that maybe it was a way of introducing. youngsters to the idea of how animals can hide in camouflage and how you've got to be sneaky and wily but it could well have been about confronting the reality of hunting for a living and how dangerous that is and how frightening it can be. But I think, It makes sense for at least some of it to be about the spiritual aspect of taking a life, really, you know, going out with a spear, with a bow, and taking an animal's life, and it's a, it should be, and it can be. a really profound thing, especially the first time you do it. It should be a moment you remember. and I can imagine that they would have treated it as a milestone in somebody's life, but again, we'll never know. The way we look at all of these prehistoric finds holds up a mirror to us And that in itself is really interesting. Yes, if we look at the way these things were looked at 100 years ago or whenever they were first discovered, we've got very different theories about them now, which says a lot about our own priorities and opinions in modern times. I studied neo historicism at university, looking at the different times that we've looked at Shakespeare, and it was especially with Richard the, third. And adding the hunchback onto him, like how portraits had the hunchback added on later on. Because it fitted with the theory and the idea of who he was. To Photoshop. exactly. But that's great. I mean, absolutely, because that's all we can go on, isn't it? Is to just reflect on how that makes us feel now I absolutely love the red hands with the ochre. It's just, it's like a time machine, isn't it? It's like you can put your hand there and you're touching someone whose hand was there however many hundreds of thousands of years ago. It's actually from inside our tent, but the walls are all painted with, some cave paintings and some sort of Stone Age scenes. And I was outside the tent, it was dark and it was well lit inside, so it's like a big paper lantern. you can see the silhouette of one of my colleague's hands touching one of the hand prints on the wall. It made me think about how when we're touching these real ancient objects, you can almost have a moment of, joining minds with them, especially with things that have been made, and, flint tools particularly, you can imagine how someone felt. the moment that perfect blade came off or the moment that platform crumbles and the flake didn't come off right. imagine that. I stayed at a house once in the Cotswolds where there was a stonehenge stone in the garden that was cracked in half. Can you imagine taking all that chopping, all that huge rock and then it breaking? They must have been so annoyed. Some slaves got killed that day, I reckon. it's easy to forget that people in the past were people when we look at dusty old bones and things that have come out of the ground, you forget that they had those little moments of. comedy, somebody trips and falls and lands in a puddle and then starts laughing those things will have happened back then as well. And when you hold these things, you sometimes you can just glimpse them, which is rather lovely. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. we'll do is I'll pull the first card. you tell me where to stop? oh, this is a good one. This is the hermit Oht Yeah. So why would you say that was apt? What made you say how apt? Well, I am a bit of a hermit, really. I mean, when I'm around my people, I'm very sociable. When I'm at Kentwell, when I'm at the wilderness gathering, when I'm with colleagues and things, I'm very sociable. But the rest of the time I'm, more or less a recluse, which seems to work for me, I guess. Yeah. You've just moved somewhere really lovely, haven't you? I have now. Yeah. I've got a garden for the first time in 15 years, I just went out before I came up here and picked a load of weeds to have for dinner, which, I haven't been able to do for years. What weeds did you pick? it's lamb's quarters. Sort of a spinachy plant full of all sorts of iron and goodness, I haven't been able to plant anything, vegetable wise because of the time of year I moved in. So I'm making the most of what's there already, including some of the wild stuff. Excellent. so what star sign are you? Taurus. Taurus. it's the Virgo sign, card, so it's about being very diligent and focused on what you're doing it's got a lantern in his hand and that little spark is the spark of you. So it's actually got a sperm and an egg as well this lantern and this spark is. the essence of you it's almost like a spiritual practice he's there on his own like the hermit, in the days of old you'd have a hermit almost like a folly in your garden. focusing on what they're doing. I don't know if any of that means anything to you. What does that mean? Well, I feel like the last few years with my frustration at being stuck living where I was, I've not really been in the moment very much. I've been sort of just concentrating on putting up with the fact that I was still stuck in town. the last few weeks living here, I felt alive for the first time in a while. So I think it's time. For me to regroup and re engage with all the various threads of my life that I've been not paying much attention to. Yeah, that's brilliant. I was so happy when I saw your garden. It's such a beautiful large garden. You can do so many things in there. Can't wait to see what comes up in the spring. I'm quite excited to see. What are you going to cook your spinach? it's lamb's quarters. So, I don't know. I quite enjoy just steaming it and having it with some olive oil and garlic salt. But I've also got some, roadkill venison out of the freezer, I went up to pick up a Facebook marketplace purchase, long story, but I've got the ferrets and I need some ferreting equipment. So went to pick up something from Swatham and on the way there, I found a deer. And on the way back, I found another deer. Oh, wow. So, I spent the next day processing it all, and it's now all in bits in the freezer. As someone who's travelled all over the UK with theatre, I can say 100 percent that East Anglia has way more roadkill than anywhere else, and specifically Essex as well. why is that do you think? I don't know. it might well be we've got small but very fast A roads going through very rural environments. but I don't know. I mean, as for things like hair, we've got the UK stronghold of the, of the brown hair. And I've heard some people say that's due to the fact we don't do a lot of silage cutting here. silage cutting really does for them, because the leverets aren't in burrows so they get killed by the machines that are harvesting the silage, or cutting it at least. we've also got a lot of owls, I honestly don't know. We've got a huge amount of muntjac here, which get here all the time. We've got herds of fallow deer, several herds of fallow deer, and red deer moving around. I've noticed the same thing. But I'm not sure why. there are people who race around really fast all over the place in the countryside. maybe it was that we had more actual bigger animals wandering around we've got a very good owl population, a very rapidly recovering otter population. I've seen a few of them on the roads, which is really sad. Pole cats are doing very well here. so, it's not even that we've got particularly good soil and the whole food chain is boosted because some parts of Suffolk. Like, coastal Suffolk has pure sand, basically, it's pretty poor soil, it might be something to do with the type of farming we get here, in that it's not all arable, and it's not all livestock, there's a bit of a mix, there's certainly a lot of small woodlands here, and a lot of really good old hedgerows, which will help. and some of it could well be conservation efforts as well. I mean, there was a huge effort in the 90s and early noughties, for the owl population and that seems to have worked. Barn owls are doing really well. I don't think it can be any one factor. It's got to be a mixture of things, but yeah, we are very well off for roguelike. Yeah. Well, it's been the most unusual thing that you've found. I mean, I found a couple of cats. herons I found, found a heron. what did you do with the cats? one of them I've skinned. I couldn't find the owner, like, yeah, no So, you know, waste not one, not if I find a really good one, I can't find anyone, looking for it, then I will potentially mummify it because I want to put in Egyptians. That's what I was thinking. I would like to have tried doing it for real. But we'll see. I don't find them very often and still less often are they, on unparented cats I found a few odd things. I'm trying to think. various birds of prey. I find lots of birds of prey Polkats, which are interesting to find. With the Polkats, I skin them. They've got lovely pelts. it depends on the time of year because they fight pretty viciously amongst themselves when it's mating season. often they get hit in mating season. Because they're roaming around looking for a partner, and often they're pretty torn up by each other, never mind what happened when they were hit, so it depends what state they're in. But they've got the most incredible little skulls as well, which I always try and salvage if they're salvageable. And I always feel a bit sad when I find hares. Right. Yeah. Yes. They're just so beautiful and you know, not many other parts of the UK really have large numbers of them. they always make me think of when I was in my mid teens, I went out rabbit lamping a few times with a fabulous old countryman called Ray Davies his sort of apprentice who I later worked with when I was at Woodlaw. And. I remember, we were shining the lamp around, looking for rabbits, and is that a rabbit? That's a huge rabbit! And just having, having the opportunity to watch this hare hopping about, not really bothered by us being there, was quite magical because you don't normally see them. No, they're stunning. I saw two at Kentwell this year. One, in the field with the pond that we just discovered behind the barn. Oh yeah. we saw one there. And then there was one running across the barns forward, right in between all our tents. And then Rebecca, cause all the children were there. it was Judith's birthday and, Becca, the eldest was saying. That since they turned Kentwell organic, and lots of the neighboring farms have, that the biodiversity has noticeably increased. And as she said that, I had just been looking out over the sward at, The sea of insects that were flying around I'd never noticed that many before and I'd never noticed that many house Martins flying around the Barns turning a whole farm or series of farms organic is no minor thing, even minor things make a huge difference, like trimming the hedges at the different time of year or. In terms of the schools we visit, when you go to a school that's built a pond over lockdown, the difference that makes is enormous. one small pond and suddenly you've got a whole other food chain a whole other ecosystem You've got frogs, toads, dragonflies, it can feel a bit daunting. we all know we need to do something to help the environment and help all of the native animals, but how do you do it? but just building a pond or planting some of the right kind of shrubs actually does make a difference. I've seen hares quite a lot in the garden at Kentwell, in the asparagus patch. I mean, they're quite fond on eating the asparagus. They are majestic. They're such stunning animals. They've got such sad eyes. Big, far seeing, sad eyes. they definitely seem fairy tale like, like they don't seem like real animals somehow. Yeah. Yeah, beautiful. in Sark, we are trying to, because the hedgerows get cut in May. They keep being cut in May and obviously we're going, no, stop it. And they're just chopping down all these wildflowers. I mean, it's so abundant. It's ridiculous. Yeah. I'm trying to get it changed so that we don't do it then. the no Mo May thing that's become quite trendy now is really good. that is making a big difference. the insects were pants this year anyway, but aside from all the doom and gloom stuff about the neonicotinoid pesticides, it was just the weather. it was so wet and cold in spring that really does fall. the early wildflowers, which does for the early insects, which has a knock on effect. So a lot of people were commenting that the bees and butterflies were almost non existent this year, which is really sad. we literally can't move for them here, which is lovely, every step is like you're in Snow White, things take off and flutter around you. It's amazing. So yeah, you've got a different bunch of things going on everywhere. You have got to come here one day. I'd love to. Sounds beautiful. Thank you. So much for listening to this podcast, I really enjoy sharing all of this work with you. And I hope that is something you're benefiting from. And you're getting something out of. I would very. Much appreciate having reviews and feedback shared online. I'm on the platforms where you get your podcasts from. So if. If there's something there that allows you to follow or leave review or leave star. Or reviews or anything. If you're able to do that, then it would just be amazing. And I would so appreciate it because it, it does make a huge difference for the. Algorithms and yeah. Uh, for people to find this podcast. That don't know me already, or aren't friends of friends. That that's a great way for people. to discover this work. If that isn't obvious on the platform you're using. But you still like. To do something. Then you can also share on social media. And tell About it by mouth. Like any way that can just share far and wide. That's also hugely appreciated. 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So this is the Ace of Cups. cups is the sign of water, which is the inner world and imagination and your spiritual depths. it's the inner part of you. the other side to the thing that you put out in the world and it's flowing with water. it's full and it's the, epitome of the sign, it's a bit like the Holy Grail as well. So what does that mean to you? I don't know about the Holy Grail, but the sort of spiritual side of things. And I mean, I think I told you about my weird evening, where I ended up planting trees but. Oh that, no, talk about That sounds fun. I was driving back from school, And it was a full moon, which I always love. I always feel quite nocturnal that time of the month anyway. we'd been skinny dipping in the sea the night before because why not? It was November. It was quite cold. But anyway, I was driving back alone. I was pretty tired and I was listening to a lovely book called Raiding Sweetgrass, which is by a woman whose name escapes me, but she's part, Potawatomi, indigenous, from America and she's also a professor of plant biology. And it was just a really thought provoking book. I got back to my workshop and it was midnight or thereabouts. It was late and I was a zombie. I shouldn't really have been driving. I knew I had all these jobs I needed to do. I needed to reverse the trailer into its parking space, which was just a nightmare. I needed to change the jockey wheel because we'd broken it. I was staring up at this amazing full moon, with a full rainbow halo around it. I was hit by this sudden, unmistakable, it was like a bucket of water being tipped over me. It was like a wave not cold or heat, but just a wave of this idea that what I needed to do was go and plant trees. at one in the morning in November, while I was completely exhausted. I can well understand why, people might fast or deprive themselves of sleep in order to make themselves more open to, these kinds of things. normally I would have, been so cynical, about it, I would have just gone, don't be ridiculous, So I went and picked some bits of willow from a stash which I'd cut before. It's the kind of willow that if you stick it in the ground it should grow. Went down to the lake, and I had another moment of like, what are you doing? Go to bed. It's one in the morning. You're tired. It's cold. You're insane. and I was looking up at the moon again. I said, I don't even, this isn't my lake. This isn't my land. I shouldn't be planting stuff. and I thought in my head, I said, if I'm supposed to be doing this, make it bloody obvious because I'm not happy. I'm not playing ball. and suddenly it was like someone had flicked a switch on the moon and it looked twice as big. Oh wow. Wow. Full halo was back around and I was like, okay, that's pretty good But you're gonna have to try harder And then two owls a tawny owl and a barn owl went off within 50 meters of me and owls are my thing. I love owls. I have a little necklace I made when I was a kid that's a piece of bone carved with an owl. I thought, fine, okay, I'll play. So I went and started trying to poke these willows into the mardan and it wouldn't go. I was thinking, come on, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Looked up and the moon looked really small and dull I thought, give me a break. then I realized that, I was too close to another tree. So the roots were matting the soil and there was no space for a new tree. This I thought moved along a bit, looks up at the moon and it went straight into the mud. So I went around the whole lake doing that and got around to the far side, having planted only 20 or 30 of these things. And then there was a lump of two lumps of stone in the water and the bank at that point was quite steep. So I was doing this dodgy like balancing act with one knee on the bank holding onto a tuft of grass, one foot balancing on this stone trying to find a soft spot to stick this twig in. I thought maybe, you know, that lump of stone, it's actually a bit of sandstone about this big. I thought maybe I'd quite like to carve that. You don't get that stone around here very much. It must be a glacial maybe I'm supposed to take that, you know. So I picked it up and put it on the bank, and where it had been, there was a really soft spot, so I stuck a stick in there. then I realised the bit of rock that my foot was on was flint, and I like flint because you can nap it into implements of death and tools and all sorts. So I went to pick that out and I put it up on the bank and it immediately rolled back into the water along with the other bit of stone. I was like, okay, not supposed to take that one. the whole time the back of my mind is going, what are you doing? This is ridiculous. and so that's what happened I went home feeling slightly weird not really trying to analyze it that much, just sort of took it as what it was, which was a very odd, magical evening. But what it did, I think, was it unlocked a side of me that I'd deliberately drawn away from. we went to church as kids and when I was 12 or 13, I decided I wasn't going anymore. I didn't believe in it, it just didn't do it for me. there were lots of things about it which I didn't like. anything that vaguely felt a bit like religion, I put away, I wouldn't do anything with, I wouldn't touch, wouldn't look at, wouldn't examine in any way. that evening felt like it kind of unlocked something in me and it was okay to sort of think about these things and be drawn to, to the myth, if that's how I felt. Yeah, exactly. So the last few years, that's been a sort of thread running through the background. I love it. You haven't told me that story before. That's really cool. I was an atheist because I was born again Christian. We were brought up as born again Christians. it wasn't forced on us, but we did Sunday school and we went to church and things. I was adamantly atheist and didn't believe in horoscopes or anything at all until 2020. So it was really quite recently. like you're saying, like a thread just running through the background. people would ask me to hold ceremonies and hold things for people because I can hold space because of my theatre training. Yeah. So I'm used to doing that and public speaking and that kind of thing. but I just reached a point where I was like, do you know what, I miss two things. One, something to be grateful to. So I missed that, gratitude that was outside of myself. Which brings on to the second thing, which was something bigger. But it doesn't have to be exterior to me. I mean even a bigger version of myself. I feel like we're all part of it, so we're all God because we're all in the universe and the universe is God. So that, it's all one thing for me. But I just went, you know what, I'm going to stop with the atheism because it feels like that's just as much of a belief that I'm holding onto as the other thing, which I don't even have a name for it. I would, say it's pagan. Because I worship the earth and the earth's definitely there. that's definitely a thing. And I'm in awe of it and I worship it all of the things that I do are to do with, even with horoscopes, I wouldn't say I don't believe in them now because I feel the influences have an effect on me, like the eclipse season or Mercury retrograde, I can feel them, but also that could just be me, in my head feeling it or focusing on that and I'm fine with that. Because I think back in prehistoric times, that was our TV, our entertainment system, you had the fixed stars and then the Wanderers and we told stories about them and we've been doing it forever. And actually we've lost that connection. I'm now an astro guide at the observatory here. I couldn't have done that pre 2020 because I didn't know anything about the stars, I wasn't following them because I was an atheist. So since going, actually, do you know what, I'm going to learn about the stars and learn about the horoscopes and the stories and the archetypes of them. And now I can physically go to someone, oh, look, that's rising in Taurus, and that's why the moon is in Taurus, it's because the moon's actually coming up in Taurus. And Saturn's over there, and they're sextile, and that's because they're at this angle to each other. And I can take someone to an observatory and tell them about the stars because I've realized, it's the art department. Science is the science department. And for me, the spirituality bit for me is the art department is this is my way of being able to retain information the same with herbalism and bossony. I know so much more about that now. I know the plants as beings and I have drawn pictures of them as beings I've got to know them, Madame Whiplash, Margaret the Nettle, and Fennel's a dinner lady called Bethel I have to do things in a creative way for that information to stick with me. And so it's just a fun way. And then I think that's what we ended up doing was we anthropomorphized, the healing attributes of the spring, which actually does have lithium in it. And then it's known as, being good for mental health. And I was like, well, it actually has Lithium in it, so yes, it is. And then you have a goddess of mental health, and it's called Happy Valley, and then you have all these stories about it, and then that becomes a saint, and it becomes a Catholic church, and then it becomes a Christian, it kind of moves along like that. But I think it all began with Us coming up with stories. I've joked a few times with colleagues, you know, I've said, religions have started from less than planting trees by moonlight because the moon told you to, We've been conditioned to not pay attention to those things, to dismiss things as silly or, just hippie nonsense And why should we? You know, it's, it's part of what makes us human seeking that connection and seeking to understand things in our own way and make up stories about them and make up pictures about them and make up sculptures about them. Okay. That's something that only humans do. Why should we pretend that it's not part of our lives anymore? That we're too good for it somehow. Yeah. Yeah. No one else is doing it. We're the only ones doing that. Now we're just going to be logical and cynical. Scientific and logical. And we miss out. I think I was missing out on a whole side of experiences because I was refusing to acknowledge the spiritual side of things. And it sort of got tiring really. Into denying what I, if I care to admit it to myself is actually there. Why should I do that? it's just silly. So that evening unlocked, the ability to just go, yeah, that happened. That was interesting. you had an unusual and fun, wonderful night that you wouldn't have done if you'd just gone home and reversed a trailer. You wouldn't be telling me about that night if you'd just done that, would you? Have you been back to the lake to see if any of the trees have grown? I think one or two of them did sprout. Yeah, I did go and water them a bit. we had a very dry summer after that. So I think not many of them survived, but one or two did. And I've been sneakily planting things around there anyway. Love it. Gorilla gardening. It's wonderful. Yeah. Well it's because of the people who run it, there's all sorts of topsoil gets dumped there with weird seeds in it. So there's a random artichoke plant just on a, on a, I was just trying to remember the name artichoke, because look on the cup, it's got an artichoke. It looks like an artichoke at the bottom of it. It does. Yeah, when you said artichoke just then, I'm like, Oh yeah, that's what it was, it was an artichoke. Randomly, there's an artichoke in the cup. I love that. What I'm saying that I agree with is that. Spirituality without logic is superstitious, and science without spirituality is heartless, and I think that's really true. I have people say stuff to me that I have looked into and I know the science isn't right about it and I still like it and I'll let, you know, if I can tell that they're really attached to that belief and they really care about it, I won't, question it I don't think you ever really change people's minds, they have to be up for it or open to it and I don't think it's worth it. yeah, I've got a scientific mind in that I, if people can prove things wrong to me, even if it's really hard, I will let things go if it can be proved. But at the same time, exactly what you were saying about it being hard work to just be logical and to deny all these things. There's something there, even if it's just knowing the history and the stories and the culture. Made me want artichokes now. I haven't had an artichoke in years. I'm not sure I've ever eaten a fresh one. I'm going to try growing some. Really? Yeah. What you do is you boil them and then you get a massive lump of really good butter and loads of salt and pepper you peel the leaves off and dip them because you can only eat the end, then you get left with the heart and you can eat all of that but you have to pull the seeds off and it's like pistachios or something like that, it's just this ridiculously delicious, fiddly, messy meal that you get tiny little bits of satisfaction from, but it's like, like a lobster. Yes, pistachios, anything like that. It's a fiddly nonsense food, but it's so good. And when you get a good one. it is well worth it because in the middle you get the heart And I like artichoke hearts, you know, the pickled ones on pizza and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh my god, they're so good. let's pick another card. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Right then, I'll do my finger across the pack again. You tell me when to stop. Whoa. So this one is ruin. Ooh. So what does that word mean to you? And that's the swords. So this is, swords is the mind, whether that helps or means anything to you. Right. And, what I see in that is your mind interfering with things, overthinking things. but also ruiners in ruins. It could be that you've been doing some archaeology. I think at the moment, having moved here and trying to get the hang of the garden and, putting my mind back together from the last few years of everything that's happened. it feels like sort of recovery from ruin almost. you know, with There's been a lot, there's been a lot the last few years with COVID and some personal stuff that was going on and being here feels like a complete new beginning actually the thought of you living in a town is just Army. It was never meant to be as long a term thing as it ended up being. my parents split up. Mom was moving down to London. I wanted to go to university in Colchester, do the fashion degree at the Institute. So it just made sense. it was the lowest point of that crash. We managed to buy somewhere and the intention was always that I would be there, five, six years and that would be it. Then five years became ten years. mostly because I was self employed. I was being a dressmaker. I was making wedding dresses and it wasn't conducive to getting a mortgage and moving. And, and all of that. And then there was some, you know, entanglements with a man and I was waiting for him to grow up and cut the apron strings and be prepared to move somewhere together. That didn't happen. one thing after another meant that I didn't. I didn't get out of there and it became a rut that I got stuck in, if I hadn't rented a workshop, where the lake was, I think I would have really struggled. it was not great anyway. Being in town did not work for me, like, it really doesn't work for me at all. But I managed to sort of bend enough to put up with it, but in doing so, I had to stop being me in the way that I can be here, and that was wearing pretty thin. by the end, especially with all the stress of moving and everything. So yeah, being here, I feel like I'm rediscovering things that I'd had to put away and, it's sort of putting myself back together. It's so good. I love it. You've got a river, a huge amount of land with trees and orchard type bits and bobs and I'm drowning in apples. talk about the adventure you went On the river. You've been on so many adventures. Tell me about the river adventure first. the river adventure was, I had a friend called Teresa Camper visiting. she's got a doctorate in experimental archeology. So I know her through the kind of prim tech bushcraft crossover. And we've work together once or twice. Anyway, she. stayed with me in my previous place for a couple of nights and I said let's go and see John Lord who is a flintknapper. in the car on the way there, I got talking about how I'd paddled the River Thames with mum in a plastic canoe over lockdown and really wanted to do it in a Stone Age boat, I knew she'd built some Stone Age boats out of sticks and hides, basically a big pointy coracle or a basket covered in, drum skin, I was, Really just trying to get some tips from her on how to go about building one of these. I said, you know, you wouldn't fancy coming along, would you? And she was like, so from that weekend, we didn't actually see each other until we turned up at the start point over near Swindon, with two completed boats and all of our equipment. And the idea was to paddle as much of the River Thames as possible in the given time, which I think was nine or 10 days. the only window we could find when we were both available. and we did, we made these two hide canoes. We christened them. Hers was christened Bridgette, and mine was Coralex, which is something like the Latin name for a water boatman or something. We did nine days, 217 kilometers, and we were, the whole time wearing, basically Stone Age clothes. Theresa's were proper buckskin, mine are not entirely, because they're my school ones, which get ruined after about a year. we were eating pemmican and dried fruit and dried meat and just sleeping out under the boats. Wow. Sometimes with the fire, sometimes not. it was magical. It really was. That sounds so good. Oh my god. I want to do it by pilgrimage. That sounds well good. Seeing the river from a stream, all the way up to this huge, wide, slow, majestic river. being on it for that whole day. length was just fun. So did you go right into London? No. Oh, that would have been great. You should have gone into London. Well, we, we planned to, there are the bit of river right through the middle of London is quite dangerous because you've got the tour boats. It's very tidal. There's loads of obstructions, which if you get swept against them, you're in big trouble. So you have to have a safety boat. And we did have one. planned. My mum's partner actually bought a fast rib and rigid inflatable boat, but the timings didn't really work out. we had a headwind the whole way, which slowed us down a lot. It probably took, 10 kilometers a day off what we could have done. we just ran out of time, And Theresa had to be back'cause she was flighted. to Denmark we got as far as just upstream of Q Gardens we were just past Richmond and place called, Osterley. we stopped, we finished in the grounds of where the third Osterley Sea Scouts are based at Eisen. I mean, that's quite far into, you know, Richmond. Yeah, but we were onto the tidal bit, but we didn't do the really scary bit. I mean, I would still love to do it. I just love the image of you rowing in, I'm so good. love that HMS Belfast and just in your look. That'd be so good. Yeah, we'll do it sometime. And we're planning another trip where we're going to hopefully do one of the French rivers, like the Dordogne or the Ardèche next year, but we've just got to nail down a date. Otherwise we're both going to be booked up and we won't get to do it. That's so good. And then what about when you went to the Tundra? I wasn't quite that far north, but I did a course where we built our own. Kit. the idea was we would build our own kit and then do two weeks snowshoeing in Canada. I'd been to Canada before and always wanted to go back in the winter. the main problem was that COVID, the two years of COVID dumped squarely on the two years of the course. So although we made most of our own clothing and various other bits and bobs, we were going to make snowshoes and Bone ice chisels and stuff, but the actual trip itself was so good. I mean, it's just beautiful. Everything looks beautiful in snow, but Canada looks especially beautiful and the richness of the wildlife, you know, being out in a tent somewhere where there are wolves and you can hear them and see their tracks on a daily basis and there are ravens and there some kind of gigantic owl, I don't know, great grey owls, maybe that would make sense or barred owls, it's just stunning. I grew up reading the hatchet books by Gary Paulson and one of those is set in the winter in the Northwoods since then I'd always wanted to crunch through proper Canadian snow with wolf tracks around me. We got to do it. Amazing. I love it so much. it was just the best I will be sharing your social media handle but people need to look at your photos to see your adventures because they are inspiring and absolutely wonderful. And the kit that you made looked good as well. It works so well. I mean, for me, the interest was like, that's as close as we can get to Stone Age, Ice Age temperatures. I mean, it was only minus 25. So my big mothership, fox fur coat, I only wore it once. Too warm. Yeah, it's too warm. So I deliberately let myself get a little bit chilled. So that I could sit there like a big, big ginger Ewok, eating my hot sandwiches at lunch. Wow. I mean, unsurprisingly, because people wore that stuff for millennia, you know, buckskin and wool and fur. And of course it worked really well, but actually experiencing it is different to knowing it, unfortunately I did have some problems with a pinched nerve in my neck, which was highly unpleasant. if it hadn't been for that, I'd have seriously tried sleeping out in the snow in my coat, making a bed of pine boughs and curling up like a husky but I didn't want to risk setting it off because it was agony. it was possibly the universe looking after you. more than anything, it was the vast amount of sewing I did in the run up to it, actually making the kit caused this, and it pinched the main nerve that went over the top of my head. So it was like my head was in a vice. It was horrible. Yeah. I get that as well. but apart from that, my favourite moment was we'd been setting traps on the lake, one of the lakes for beaver. So you have to chip a hole in the ice and then set the traps underwater. and I couldn't wield the ice chisel because my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, neck was being a pest. So I was just stood back from the others, just staring around and taking it all in. And then I heard a noise, like a high pitched whine. I thought, is that engine noise? Is that a snow machine? A couple of lakes over at the other side of the bridge? And then another one joined in. I thought, No, that's wolves. And it was a, pack of wolves on the next lake had caught a beaver. Apparently one of the neighbors saw it. One of the, people who runs a trap line around there actually saw it happen. beaver for whatever reason, come up through the ice, which they don't normally do in winter. They just stay under the water and the wolves had got it and they were calling the rest of the pack to come and share it. the next day their wolf tracks were overlaid tracks around our trapline. So they'd come to see what we were up to I want to get that tattooed on me somewhere. Snowshoe track with the little tracks in it. That's a cool tattoo, especially when that's been your actual experience as well, So last but not least, have you got a chaos crusade as a suggestion for people to just put them outside of their everyday existence? Maybe go plant trees on the full moon. fascinate yourself with the small things like spend 20 minutes watching ants or watching a single flower and seeing all the things that come to visit it or watching bud unfurl or something like that. Don't, don't get so caught up in the busyness. busyness is a virtue now and it's not necessarily. spend, give yourself 20 minutes, half an hour, an hour even, to just watch something unfold slowly. and enjoy it and you'll realize just how rich and minute and complicated and wonderful, the world around you can be, even if it is just bugs, they're fascinating, they're beautiful, little things, and we miss out on that because we're too busy running around being Busy. I love that. Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you. Well, thank you so much, Sarah. I could talk to you forever. You're one of the most, I mean, I think everyone who knows you agrees that you are our apocalypse person, that we will all say, the apocalypse kicks off like, where's Sarah? I should build a moat around my new house. Or she'll eat us and skin us. But either way. In an emergency, probably just eat me, that's fine. thank you ever so much That was absolutely amazing. It was lovely. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Day. How awesome is she? And I'm afraid you can. I have to get in line if you want to try and. Find her in the apocalypse. There's a hell. Hell of a lot of us that are going to be looking for her. Tracking her down. but she would have managed to get rid of all of us because she's the one that knows how to hide tracks. An escape. She's such a beautiful person and, I'm very grateful that, that Sarah at the time, talked to me. And Just gets nature. Like. It is. mistress that just keeps on giving. And the best thing is that you'll never know everything, even though Sarah knows. Those loads. I'm sharing things with her that she's not heard before. And. We're all opening each other up to different experiences and ways of interacting. With this beautiful, amazing living. Gaya creature that we have been born on to and from, and apart. What an honor it is to be here in this lifetime, being connected to her. I met a couple of people recently. Um, flat earthers. that's actually four people And one of the things I thought when I was talking to them at the weekend is I don't. Want them to be flat. Like, I really love it being round. And I love the round sexy, yummy shape of it. I love the core being. Molten earth and I love the. Tectonic plates and I just love it all too much. I'm. Not willing to give it up. It's not about. Not being open said to them, which, uh, I felt. Out wild, wild, wild isle, which I was quite proud of is that I'm. I jumped timelines when I went around Amesbury and. And the timeline I was on before definitely had around world. So if I've. I've jumped timelines. And I'm now on a world that's flat because I've only ever met flat earthers or had this whole. Flat earth conversation since jumping timelines in Avery. Uh, in 2020 that I might have jumped onto a flat earth, but I loved. Loved my rounder. So I'm going to stick with that one. And it just felt. I felt like her. A fun way to be even more wild. Other than the war. But yeah, I, I'm not anti anyone being that's flat and your earth is flat, then knock yourself out. My earth is definitely wrong because. I am well into sexy round GC. Belly shaped. booby shaped planets. That's what I want my planets to be. So I'm keeping mine round. Thank you very much, I love. And anyone's perspective and hearing people's realities. It's just extreme. Ordinary. I love it. I absolutely love it. And I love. The audacity. And. The. Just, it just makes you realize. How much people are living in different. Parallel universes and realities. And I have absolute time for everyone and everything, and I don't care. What, how. Uh, and imagining it from that perspective. So. I loved looking at the world through Sarah's eyes. She's got an amazing mind and I wish I could just download all the knowledge she has in there. And I look forward to sharing more amazing minds with. The. Yeah, people are incredible. Whoever they are, you don't have to be doing. Anything, exceptionally different. Everyone is. Unique. And everyone is fascinating. So let's keep meeting greeting. And getting to know more and more with these parallel universes. On the nonsense and the chaos. Yeah. Cheers! Have a great day. Cheers. I don't know.