Adapted from Notebooks
Boxgrove Man
Eartham Quarry
In a gravel pit at Boxgrove, near Chichester
a shin bone was found, dated c. 500,000 years
old, from species 'Homo Heidbergensis'. Soon
known as 'Boxgrove Man', about 20 years old
at death, he lay six feet tall, the site on the edge
of, named, the Goodwood-Slindon raised beach
rising some hundred feet above current sea level.
The beach extended from Portsdown to the Arun
River, as flowing today, and what did he know.
Their tools came as flint for butchering animals.
Diet featured rhinoceros, red deer, bear and fish
hooked to caught : they did not know agriculture.
At Selmeston pit : 6,400 worked flints lay found.
Sussex has long been the layering home of flint.
Will a Goodwood-Slindon raised beach return ?
Did Boxgrove Man ever lie dusky sunbathing ?
Pas De Calais
The modern world arrived with the Romans.
Only seven or eight thousand years ago, the Straits
of Dover were an Estuary nearly as far as Dover
until a breach from the north by a storm tide.
The Romans grew on the back of Sparta to Athens
it may be pointed out, and that, never forget Egypt.
April 25/29th
Before Time
The Mesolithic people of the Weald were cut off
after the apocalyptic storm surge, making a moat.
Then came 'Neolithic' peoples of Mediterranean
inspiring, around the fifth to third millenium B.C.
which would look fitting, and they bit organised ;
though, this too random big a picture in overview.
They built twelve hill-top settlement causewayed
camps, four of them in what evolved into Sussex.
Two of them : The Trundle, north of Chichester
as hillfort, and at Barkhale, on S Downs' Bignor
Hill, but four miles to the north west of Arundel.
The enclosure, oval, to 13 segments ditch, bank
separated by causeway, before The Bronze Age,
visionary due south toward a plain-lapping sea.
Language Plaint, Faint
Of a wind, the season and a bright moon
haunting, lightening, to pulse cavorting
beyond a signal, their grunty signing
with no lunar foreboding, as golden,
not blood red above the Down. No tabla.
Writing is marking. A smile, pleasure.
Millenia Dirge
Age after age, in heavy rain
passed, that is, you feeling the pain
interminable, went no change
until sunlit then out of range.
Your straw matting is mouldy damp
and tame fire, the only lamp.
L'apres midi d'un faun, pas la
jusqu'a tous le temps va ca va !
April 30th Ages time line soon
Neolithic (OED)
Of or relating to the later Stone Age, when
ground or polished stone weapons prevailed. Flint
Thereafter, the Bronze Age, followed by the Iron.
From sea creature, to Brontosaurus, to AI hone.
May 1st
Seaxe Unter for Saschen
In the upper chalk, the flint mine.
Iron Age, first corn drying kiln,
sky divine the enormity.
Sad, nothing whatever to read
not knowing Augustus, Ovid
yet for under the Villa tree.
You live the savage unknowing
apart her golden hair, flowing
in a sweet wind on South Down
the butterfly mid Eocene,
fifty million years ago.
Regression To Box
Ultimately, we are language
giving personae expression.
In Albion, the newly savage
who, off, lack much definition.
True, the end of the personal,
Auden, and talking to signal.
History is their story.
Or, history is his story.
May 5th/6th
In The Weald
Timber, brick, tiles, chalk, flints and sandstone
but not granite, and slate. Timber gone, then clay.
Of peasant housing, and calling it day
after smoke song and eating to the bone.
Bronze Age Epic
Homer, of The Iliad thought to be
750 B.C., 1,000 B.C.
an era after that Linear B
and when did it arrive by sea.
Priority, to learn, was The Aeneid
above the hypocaust mosaic grid.
May 3rd/6th
Thasos And Sicily
Archilochos of Paros invented
the iambus, late 8th century B.C.
We had to await Canterbury,
the Chaucer telling patented.
The hexameter had six feet,
the Alexandrine sounding neat.
Greek Lyric
May, the blazing afternoon longer than the day.
As yet, no causeway carrying stark summer hay.
April 30th
Subsisting Dark
At least Stone Age man might worship the sun,
gaze rarely any good at having much fun
and each winter, would run out of song
in a cave, stuck never hearing a gong
bare hunter-gatherer when the day is done
but for women, a sense of right and wrong.
Temporal (Wittering)
Shadows on the lawn, and they do not pay the bills
of the here and now in measured time beyond sling
in a way, lie haunting in fracturing sunlight.
To each, their own time and purity, memory
of who came before and who will survive dying
into yesterday, to a flute, for tomorrow.
We long for perpetual honeymoon in June
careering fast, crying glee over the sand dune.
May 10th finis
Planetary Time Sextet
The planet is four and a half billion years old
they pitched. Our time, but three thousand years of gold.
When the Sun is dying, it will surely all fold.
Will The Sistine Chapel begin crumbling of cold ?
For interstellar space, many a Squadron bold
of the RAF, Turner paintings in the hold.
May 12th
To The Stars
Inheritable babble, a contradiction
of application, without argument, unknown
to reason, without literacy, the tabla
with a wax coating for writing with a marker.
The junking of coherence stood pre-history
and the enemy of vital democracy.
On a Voyage, there is the point of no return
and slow, ever diminishing fuel to burn.
Starry, ordered by a Court to Australia
to know you can never return to the Harbour.
News Wittering Sextet
Rapid, hysterical, never English
many overweight from guzzling rubbish.
Aliens may think : they are choky fish !
Brown due Old Bailey, his head on a dish.
For sad many, all they can do is wish
and aim to buy whatever can nourish.
I Regarding The Ages
The interpreters had to divide a first into three
parts : the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, then Neolithic.
The Stone Age : 500,000 years ago until circa
1, 400 B.C. The Neolithic boomed to flint mines,
the first in 4,000 B.C. on South Downs. Stage I
end : 300,000 years ago, a jolly long time ago
with much forgotten foraging and little writing.
Did Seaxe become a Stone Age superpower ?
May 13th
Goodwood Festive
Ad amicam cursum equorum spectantem.
Ex Ovidii Nasonis Amorum, Liber Tertius.
Elegia II (title subject). In Liber II, XVI.
Ad amicam, ut ad rura sua venit. Ovid.
May 14th
Ascension
Where the Scala Coelestis, or starry stairway
on this Chapel Day of Obligation, in May
and nobody pagan should be on the fairway
or driving, barbaric to the radio tray.
The blue, oceanic yacht is on the slipway.
April 29th
Evolution Sextet
God needed a people who understood
Latin, went saved from using firewood
to sacrifice, from God hidden in God
awaiting fish to crawl upon the sod.
In Seaxe, south of Rackham, a plateau.
Aliens landed, by The South Downs Way.
Metallic UAP Sphere recorded
Mystery red lights seen over Worthing
May 16th/18th
Arun Context Joke
It is said human evolution began over
400 million years ago. What kind of time
was that ? The first evidence of toolmaking,
3.3 million years ago, lately found in Kenya.
The initial evidence of Homo Sapiens 315,
000 years ago. Hands evolved. Pulborough
miracle : tools found, though, from 35,000
years ago, notionally of final Neanderthals.
Excellent for water supply, protecting ridge.
The river, tidal. Recently, added a bridge.
Clouds on The Downs like millions of years.
We all hope it will never end in tears.
May 16th part I finito the last lines, mine
II Sunday Ardour Sextet
Chip, chip, chipper away to sharp flintstone
girl walks thumbing mobile telephone.
For zest fish-and-chips, try Littlehampton.
When hunting failed, aim to spear salmon.
There is the ardour of extreme hunger
for venison, and the Sunday after.
Beach Huts Contact
Telephone numbers, in an inky scrawl
about Tracy, her love ; and where to trawl.
Hear the lechy gossip, by three on a wall
about who, when, where and then who to call
to the sun setting, the unmentionable
in bedroom gatherings, beyond recall.
Sunday May 17th after Henry James
From Eclogues I, IV redacts CDL 1963
But the rest of us go from here, be dispersed -
to Scythia, bone-dry Africa, the spate of the Oxus,
even Britain - that place cut off at very world's end.
Sicilian Muse, I would now try for a grander theme.
Born of Time, a great new cycle of centuries begins.
The Bench Of Desolation
Looking to the West, we still remember
sun cast at Clymping on wood wave breaker
of storm, late sunlight, as if in Cornwall
clear to setting, at a sandy angle.
Stormy Summer
Did the Neanderthal see the majesty
of God on the whale-back South Downs, cloudy ?
Did he, exultant, manage to say : Awe !
before wondering next to eat prey raw.
Tennyson Nearly
Surf may have been breaking on the Isle of Wight
which, for The Roman, a favourite sight.
And then, the site of many a Villa.
Italian, Osborne, per Victoria.
May 18th
III II Regarding The Ages
The Bronze Age : thought to be from 1,400
B.C. to 750 B.C. Found near Lewes, a prize Middle
Bronze Age Treasure Hoard. In line with Greece,
getting civil : hear of The Beaker Folk, with flat-
bottomed vessels, livestock enclosure and round
conical huts with hearth, to smoke escape. Pottery,
weaving. No doubt more can be uttered. Barrows.
III The Iron Age : from circa 750 B.C. unto pre
43 A.D. Iron Age Hill Forts from 500 B.C. Cereal
crop storage, coinage, wheel thrown pottery. Noting
rudimentary. 500 B.C.(circa) an infiltration of Celts
from the South-east, from Graeco-Roman lands.
75 B.C. , Farage
The Belgae, indeed, the Belgae, mixed Germanic
Celtic race, or tribe, invaded Essex, Herts. and part
of Kent. The Belgic Tribe of Atrebates invaded, yes
The Manhood Peninsular, Selsey, as now named, c.
50 B.C. led by one Commius, an envoy sent to our
Britain before Caesar's first expedition in 50 B.C.
What is new ? The 'Chichester Dykes' were built up,
a line of east-west earthworks 10 km to the north...
A.D. 43 saw The Claudian invasion of Britain.
One Cogidubunus was installed as local client King.
A Palace was built, with box hedging, near a Port.
May 18th from notes taken throughout May 2026
From The Georgics Book II (Virgil redacts 29 B.C.)
Think on the ends of the earth, those who cultivate them -
Arabs away in the east, Ukrainians in their woad.
Noviomagus
Modern Chichester : to the same Roman
grid layout of street and wall, in Town Plan.
Rome gone, the savages liked to wander
eerie, street and Villa empty, and peer.
May 23rd
Fortunatus Arrival
Pre Seaxe Sussex had no Boadicea
and soon, many a collaborator.
The Romans made our first motorway
which, after they left, sad to decay.
We, deep ordered, got joined with Europa
and no longer in thick mud to blunder.
May 27th
Key 'Chi' Facts
Amphitheatre, Basilica, Forum,
a Temple dedicated to Neptune
and Minerva, order Cogidubnus
after A.D. 43 Claudian
Invasion, Fishbourne Palace, A.D. 100
mostly gone. Stane Street, A.D. 70 :
57 miles Londinium.
First Governor Province, Agricola ;
he controlled the Classis Bitannica.
At Fishbourne, Cupid rode on a Dolphin.
nb Bath House tile stamped CLBR (Fleet)
Pagan Suth Seaxe (c. 457-683 A.D.)
Around 420, it is thought, the large
Villa and Farm Estates were abandoned
maybe. First Landings : in (?) 457.
Aella arrived, in three ships, with sons
Lymen, Wlenking, Cissa, at Cymenshore.
He became 'Bretwalda', Broad-Wielder
overlord of all Saxon invaders.
Stane Street, and iron workings, abandoned.
Saxons were Forest, plain, valley dwellers
who used a heavy two-yoke plough to work
communal fields, around the Village
placed centrally. Old upland farms decayed.
Saxe ignored the extant Town, and hamlet.
681 A.D.
Seaxe, alone, of seven kingdoms still
pagan, St Wilfred landed near Selsey
to build up a Stone Church at Bosanham.
Offa of Mercia subdued Seaxe
in 771 ; not until then
did grass and weed grown streets of Chichester
become flanked by wooden Saxon houses.
No timber buildings of the period
survived. 895 A.D. : The Danes attacked.
Their raids encouraged 30 stone Churches.
Evidence found of the (dug) 'grubenhaus'.
There was weaving using warp-weighted looms.
May 28th
Southdown Sheep
They were around in Neolithic times,
found 4,000 B.C., became crucial.
Teddy bear face, a very gentle breed,
small, stocky, hornless, meat of great flavour
from eating wild thyme, aromatic herbs.
Song : The Downs are sheep, The Weald is corn.
Downs became like a bowling green, no scrub
in The Sussex Wool Trade built on grazing.
A.D. 450/ 650 weaving.
ba ! ba ! ba ! ba !
June 1st
================================
From Couplets 2020 Spa 20 + Spa 21
Anglo-Saxon Ditty
Rome ist Roma, Romana-burg
sunne aefre die Minster.
Brim-fugel (Sea-bird)
Brim-fugel, brimcald in brim-bliss
haefst bitter breostcare, cald.
Christendom
ist cristen-dom and cristen.
God is God ; palm-twig, passion, Crist.
Haerfest Sang
Somer sunne for sunn-beam and sun-
bearo, to tip and rip-tima.
Ides (Girl)
Eall-wealdend, eall gylden
die ides die gred, and die grene.
The Saxon liked the Village green and Mead Hall
active from the 5th Century onwards...no cricket
==============================
The Woolsack
The Sussex Wool Trade, per described as 'the jewel
in the realm' significant for our Mediaeval
economy. By the late thirteenth century,
to the late fifteenth century, wool an export
to Flanders, and Bruges, to alter, woven by loom
for they had the greater skill. By 1290, England
sported five million sheep, and thirty thousand
woolsacks were exported into Northern Europe
per year. Apparently, the trade funded the building
of twenty six Cathedrals, with ten the largest
of the fourteen largest Cathedrals in Europe.
Literally, thousands of stone Churches were built
on the backs of woolly sheep. Many went to Church.
Exemplary, being the shepherds of North Stoke.
June 6th
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