Bluebell season : When the colours start to fade

Bluebell season : When the colours start to fade

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 May

Bluebell season : When the colours start to fade

Nothing is for ever ~ Gösta Kraken

There are still sporadic bluebells to be seen

Occasionally, they are yet in full flower - and, in some places, can even be seen en masse

They are, however, last flowerings – the dying embers of their lively showing

For another season, the time to be with them in bright profusion has passed

In woodlands, the mantle or torch of colour has, nonetheless, been handed on

These flowers, now in blooms, have their own eerie luminescence

More individual, they seem less dependent on available shade and the direction of light

Nothing is for ever ~ Gösta Kraken

The song 'Candlemas Eve' - on one of Kate Rusby's Christmas albums, Sweet Bells - catches this feeling well

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (2)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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20 May

Continuing the sketchy piece that was What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (1), it can now be revealed that:

* We have learnt, from the recently discovered Garden-Centre Scrolls, that in the early days - perhaps misconstruing something that Jesus once said or did - followers of his teaching each started carrying around a pot of earth in which had been planted a clump of bluebells

* Since bluebells, in common with many plants, not only have (as The Book of Ecclesiastes¹ advises²) a season for flowering, but also tend to prefer shade, the meaning of the gesture - whatever could have been intended - was not, let us say, always apparent from the display in the pot

* Rationalizing it all, the pots were done away with, and emblems - or badges - depicting a flowering bluebell (or three) took their place

* Some say that, with the version with three bluebells, The Trinity was represented (although any theology of Three in One³ was not formulated until centuries later)

* It could just as easily have been any one of The Holy Family, a prefiguring of Peter's denials, or the women, numbering at least three, who were called Mary

* No more than this is known (until I trouble to make something else up, of course)



End-notes

¹ Parts of many works, in imitation of The Bible, have been called books, but do we know why they are so called? (Greek biblios)

² However, those who do not know it, should not construe this reference to imply that it is a pre-Christian gardening manual.

³ Which has also, curiously, long been a motto for a type of oil for use on bicycles. (Whatever oil one uses, and however one seeks to avoid getting it on one's clothes, the former's contact with the latter is almost always inimical to any attractiveness or cleanliness that they might have, besides which the odour of the oil is both unmistakable and largely ineradicable.)


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What did the bluebells tell Jesus?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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29 April

Dmitri Shostakovich concurred that Pushkin was right in stating that bluebells are very WYSIWYG*, pretty Zen.

DS demonstrated as much by transliterating the utterance - as only he knew how - to give the theme of the second movement of his Strinq Guartet [sic] No. 10 (sometimes seen as a printer's error, but actually a subtle slight on Stalin).

That apart, bluebells resemble snowdrops (and Märzenbecher) in being close to the ground, largely odourless, and, although not invariant, quite subtle in their varieties**.


As to whether they blabbed about the true nature of the Messiah and that he would suffer, opinions differ:

* Some say that the manna left in the desert areas was responsible

* Others blame Zionist / Marxist mechanisms of Tidal Flux

* It is, in any case, clear that Mendelssohn only accidentally gave the true name of God in one of the modulations of The Hebrides Overture, and paid a levy to the authorities governing Staffa for his mistake (but it was disguised, in the books, as late settlement of unpaid bills left by Boswell and Johnson)

* Botanists, who get shut out of many such a debate, say that bluebells were not in season at the relevant time - but what do they know about the conditions that prevailed two millennia ago?

* Sceptics suggest that, if the bluebells had been in a position to speak, they would not have been audible for the noise of the thyme and lemongrass


From which we can conclude that maybe the teaching of the bluebells, perhaps not as showy, resembled that of the lilies of the field, in being more like a PowerPoint® presentation in technicolor than a dry, formal lecture, given in a crumbling, drafty hall...


End-notes

* Which, actually, stands for What You Saved Is With Yuri Gagarian, the official motto of Moscow State Bank (we could not publish the unofficial one, for tax reasons).

** They are not well known in Galilee, it has to be said, but maybe the success that has built on their debut album might lead to a World Tour that takes in the region...


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What did Jesus teach about bluebells? (1)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 April

It needs saying: he does not, in the surviving written record, mention them at all.

However, we can infer that he was not indifferent to them (and their social aspirations), because he did talk about or engage with:

1. Lilies in all their finery

2. King Solomon in that connection (famous for his mine)

3. Wheat

4. Other crops*

5. Pigs (and a casting-out of devils involved swine)

6. Vines and 'the fruit of the vine'

7. Fig-trees

8. Sheep and lambs

9. Lamb as meat (in German, Osterlamm for the Passover meal)

10. Bread

11. Wine-vinegar

12. Wine

13. Vines


To be continued



End-notes

* Which would have chimed with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Love and Death (1975)


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