One Thing Leading To Another…..
by Bernie Bell - 09:00 on 23 October 2025
One Thing Leading To Another…..
We went into Kirkwall to see an exhibition at the Orkney Museum …
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=17542
…..and had a wander round town. I took some pics of the Halloween windows presented by some of the shops, and posted them on my Facebook page. They included this image, taken in the ‘Mind On’ charity shop…
Friend Michael made the following observation….
“This is definitely my favourite, love it, it kind of carries many existential questions I’ve had for years, and weaves them into the dialectical relationship between Egyptian Mummies and middle ages capital punishment. “
To which I replied….
“Blimey….I hadn’t thought of the link with that horrible practice of hanging up dead folk to ‘warn’ the living - to make them behave themselves. So many ideas follow on from that, including thinking of ‘witches’ and punishing witches, who often were ‘cheust folk’…..but who weren’t ‘toeing the line’…..
Blimey Michael – you really do THINK!”
And now I’m thinking of the connections between people who don’t do what The Powers That Be demand that they do…..and the Powers That Be feel that they must be punished - not only punished - but punished publicly.
‘Witches’ didn’t fit in and, under the rules of the ‘Bloody Code’…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code
….people could be executed for stealing a loaf of bread – the under-class had to be kept down by the upper-class.
In today’s world they don’t kill someone and hang the body in a cage as a warning, or publicly hang or burn people, but they do arrest and imprison people for peacefully protesting against the wrong-doings of The Powers That Be.
As the item in my pic. was hanging in the ‘Mind On’ shop, I’m thinking of how those with psychological/emotional troubles were viewed in the (not too distant) past. Often shut away in asylums because the ‘normal‘ world didn’t want to be aware of them or of what might had produced their malaise. Sometimes shut away because they were an inconvenience to their family.
I remember reading Jane Eyre and thinking there was something wrong with the story. I wondered what might have been amiss with Mrs Rochester and why it was all fine when the madwoman was conveniently out of the way and the ’hero’ and ‘heroine’ could get married. ‘Reader, I married him’. Pass the sick-bag.
Some years later I came across an alternative telling of the tale by Jean Rhys……
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Sargasso_Sea
There are all kinds of cages – physical and emotional.
I’m beginning to digress. There’s so much there – I’m throwing this at my readers and inviting them to continue the lines of thought.
Thank you, Michael!
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