The heart as a symbol of love is not restricted to Valentine’s Day as can be seen from this stone at Abingdon Stone & Marble Ltd.

There are a lot of hearts to be seen in the weeks before Valentine’s Day – February 14th. Some are fabulously inventive… Fabulous Flowers have heart shaped boughs round the door, and pelicans forming a heart in the window.

The Finishing Touch have two swans in the centre of many different sized red hearts.

There are messages on paper hearts in the window of the British Heart Foundation charity shop for Valentines Day.

Sue Ryder usually have a seasonal display, and now that Valentine’s Day is over, and the happy couple are off on their honeymoon, Chinese New Year will take its place in the window.

“Shrove” is the past tense of “shrive” which the Collins Dictionary defines as “to confess one’s sins to a priest in order to obtain sacramental forgiveness”. When I searched for references to Shrove Tuesday in, and near, Abingdon I found no references to confession but did find the following…

1. Pancakes

Snick, snack, the pan’s hot,
We’re come a shroving
Strike while the iron’s hot –
Something’s better than nothing.
Flour’s cheap and lard’s dear
And that’s why we come a shroving here …
(Rhyme from Drayton near Abingdon quoted in May Day to Mummers)

2. Throwing Sticks at Cockerels

In Abingdon Museum there is the notice about Shrove Tuesday cockerel throwing – an old tradition abolished in 1805.

Samuel Pepys describes both these traditions in one short paragraph on Shrove Tuesday 1661. “Back to Mrs. Turner’s, where several friends … dined. Very merry and the best fritters that ever I eat in my life. After that looked out at window; saw the flinging at cocks.”

Pepy’s continues “I found my Valentine with my wife … Then I sat and talked with my Valentine and my wife a good while, and then saw her home.”

It is Valentine’s Day tomorrow, and Ash Wednesday.

Half term is here again, and Abingdon County Hall museum has a craft workshop on Tuesday for children to explore the world of monsters and myths; and create masks, silhouettes and clay ‘Green Man’ models.

The museum and Unicorn cinema will be good places to go if it is raining. The Unicorn is showing Coco, Early Man, and The Post.

This dinasaur was created at a previous workshop. Each of the scales is a child’s work of art.

The Friends of Abingdon Museum purchased a work of art, in 2017, for the museum showing ‘Early Spring near Abingdon’ by Davidson Knowles, a late Victorian artist. This detail from the fuller picture shows a River View and what could be Nags Head Island and Abingdon Bridge. There could have been some artistic license as I cannot see the Old Gaol.

Thanks to Ray for this Report …

Fitzharrys School played host to a packed meeting at which Brendan Cox, husband of murdered MP Jo Cox, spoke about Jo’s life, the More in Common movement, and his recently-written book of the same name.

In June 2016 Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death by a Nazi sympathiser who was angered by her support for refugees. Brendan explained how the book’s title came from Jo’s maiden speech in the Commons, in which she said ‘While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us’.

The meeting took the form of an interview, ably conducted by Mark Thornton, former owner of Mostly Books in Stert Street, followed by audience questions. Brendan firstly described the traumatic effect Jo’s death had had on everyone, particularly him and the children – and the help they had in coping with it. The book, he said, was the unintended result of advice from a grief counselling expert for him to keep a diary of events and feelings so that, in later years, he could help both himself and their children understand what had happened.

Brendan went on to tell the meeting something of his and Jo’s history of working together for Oxfam, and their work and shared interest in humanitarian projects in Bosnia, Afghanistan, the Middle East and elsewhere. Their shared interests and moral standpoint on the confrontational nature of today’s world, formed the basis for the More in Common movement. This, and coping with Jo’s death, were boosted by Brendan’s firm belief that anger and hatred is the wrong reaction to any event – even his own wife’s murder.

The audience was completely enthralled by Brendan’s candidness and readiness to answer their questions on both emotionally difficult as well as more down-to-earth topics. The evening really was an emotional roller-coaster moving between humorous memories of life with Jo and heart-breaking moments of life without her. One particularly poignant story concerned Jo’s funeral – a private affair with just a handful of guests. When his son saw the crowds along the route, there to pay their respects, he turned to his father and marvelled, ‘I knew that people loved Mummy, but I didn’t know this many people loved her.’

Aside: Abingdon has its own More in Common group which focusses on actions we can take at a local level to connect our communities. They host monthly drop-in ‘Community-Tea‘ at St Ethelwold’s and are planning a second ‘Great Get-together‘ in June.