A cheery tale of murder for your Advent

Eldest wanted to make a Christmas decoration; I already had my eye on Monica's pin of a felt mistletoe ball.

But with the child off school and both of us overdosing on television, it seemed lax to just make a ball and leave it at that. Surely we should be learning something about mistletoe, and why we kiss under it at Christmas? A quick Google later, and we were up to our ears in Norse myths. And there's nothing I like more than a good myth.

So. Balder - son of Odin and Frigg - is loved by everyone. The god of light and beauty, his face glows; he is handsome, gentle and wise. But he's troubled by dreams of his death - so Odin sets out on his eight-legged horse (as you do) and meets with a seeress. The news is not good - there is no avoiding Balder's fate.

Balder. What's not to like?

So Frigg stomps off (there is no evidence in the books we have looked in to suggest she's a heavy-footed woman, but we went so far as to assume a degree of Purposeful Striding) and asks every harmful thing - fire, rocks, plants, birds, diseases, etc - to promise not to hurt Balder in the hope that the nightmares won't come true.

The only plant she doesn't bother asking is the mistletoe. What harm can the mistletoe do?

And now Balder is fantastic fun for everyone. The gods come up with an hilarious new game - chucking stuff at Balder and watching it bounce off! He can't be harmed!

But Loki finds out about the mistletoe. And being a proper troublemaker, he makes an arrow out of it and seeks out Balder's blind brother, Hod, to see if he wants to join in the game of Throw Stuff at The Invincible God. Loki guides Hod's arm, and Balder dies.

The only thing that can bring Balder back from death is that every living thing weeps for him. And every thing does weep - with one important exception: Loki. He's fled, and is pretending to be a giantess in a forest, but s/he Will Not Weep.

(I found suggestions on the internet that Frigga wept big fat tears which turned into the white berries of the mistletoe and thus brought Balder back, but the books say Nordic texts make no mention of a resurrection. Faced with a choice between trusting the web and the printed word, I will always come down on the side of the books.)

It doesn't end well for Loki, who ends up tied to some rocks in a cave with a snake dripping venom on his head. Balder's death, meanwhile, means the coming of the end of the world, when the Earth will sink into the sea and men will kill their own fathers and brothers.

(You're probably feeling a bit resentful now. You did, after all, join us for a blog post about felt decorations and kissing.)

You may also be complaining to yourself that none of this stuff goes any way towards answering the question of why we kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas. I seem to remember there was something about Pagans and Druids, but the thing is, we were far too interested in the Norse myths to get distracted by the small matter of the reason we were looking at them in the first place. Look, you're all pretty internet-savvy. You know where Google is.

Also, we made a felt ball.

Unsure of the meaning of lettuces

Half term took us to the in-laws, for a day of two of bingeing on wine, Mr Coffee's childhood Lego, and gorgeous food that had been cooked by someone else.

Eventually we tore ourselves from the sofa and, after one of those half-hearted mopes around Ikea that never should have happened, we ventured out to a gallery.

I don't adore David Hockney. I'll admit it. But a huge dressing up box, a spinning wheel, a roomful of stories and lots of space sent the Lattes into an imaginative frenzy which allowed us time to think. We were allowed to look at the pictures and flick through the storybooks, pausing only to read letters that the Lattes had composed to the Fairy Tale Council complaining about how boring being a princess was and requesting fresh supplies of handsome men.

For anyone who is interested, Hockney's images for Rapunzel can be found amongst these. I particularly liked the picture of Rapunzel's mother watching the witch's zen-like vegetable garden from a tower of her very own.

I love reading about fairy tales, partly because of how open they are to wild interpretations - are they sexual metaphors full of deep cauldrons and sharp objects? Or celebrations of the solar cycle? Another great thing about them is that often they make very little sense whatsoever.

I've mentioned Disney's new Tangled film before now, and though there is absolutely no love lost between me and Disney, I'm rather relieved that they gave the wicked witch a better reason to lock a child in a tower than that bonkers plot about a father-to-be stealing some lettuces. Magic hair that makes you young? You've got to give it to them, that's a good reason. Even bearing in mind my insatiable desire for lemonade whilst pregnant, I find it very hard to believe that a woman might die from being denied a salad.

(Besides, even the Grimm brothers rewrote their own stories. How many people now tell the version where the witch discovers Rapunzel has been having it away with a handsome prince because her clothes are getting tight?)

And I bought a new mug in the gallery shop. To remind me that sometimes when you're low, you shouldn't look at Swedish lamps that you don't even want. You should try to use your imagination.

It's a gift, that you didn't really ask for

So a strange thing happened, which necessitated a post about ships in bottles. On my way down to London last week, I was reading Scarlett Thomas's new book Our Tragic Universe (and very good it is too. You should read that) on the train. In it the narrator, Meg, finds a ship in a bottle washed up at her feet which is exactly the same as one she admired in childhood. It is a book where strange connections, coincidences and cosmic ordering are treated with both suspicion and intellectual curiosity.

So imagine how weird it was to walk towards Trafalgar Square and find this massive thing displayed on a plinth.

Thing is, I have always had a lingering regret which centres around ships in bottles. In my early twenties I worked for a few months in the press office for National Museums Liverpool, a group of six museums and galleries. Whilst meeting some press people in the Merseyside Maritime Museum, I watched a craftsman place a ship in a bottle to an audience of open-mouthed children. I loved his ships in bottles, and would peer at them gleefully every time I went there.

When I left, I harboured (harboured! get it?) a secret desire that my leaving present would be a ship in a bottle. Sadly, I had not communicated anything of the sort to anybody. I had limited confidence at the time, and had barely spoken to the woman who was my boss all the time I was there for fear that I would snap in two (there was nothing remotely wrong with her). Unsurprisingly, my ship-in-a-bottle wish was not granted, and my gift was a very small cup (I do not favour small cups) printed with a picture from the Walker Art Gallery which I wasn't particularly bothered about.

Especially when they had The Beguiling of Merlin by Edward Burne-Jones in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, which would have made a much better cup, in my opinion.

Last year when I was in our local Maritime Museum I saw this obituary pinned onto the noticeboard. It made me sad, even though I'd never even spoken to the man. Because, you know, of the lack of social skills.

Long-term readers of this blog (that's just Alice) may remember the story of the woman who bought herself a case of champagne for Christmas every year because she knew her presents would be disappointing. When I sat down to write this blog post, I thought it was for you. But it's actually a present to me, a gift of ships in bottles with a bit of Arthurian magic thrown in. It's making up for past regrets, for things not said, and tiny cups. I'm enjoying it, whether you are or not.

Where I try to talk seriously about myths and history, but end up turning into the Wife of Bath

Let's talk about men. I was going to talk about history, but you know me. I'm not much for the facts. (Remember the Gurkhas?)

I do like a good myth however. And there we were in Robin Hood country, having great fun listening to the Robin Hood audio trail in the car. This is a downloadable tourist trail which straddles the hitherto unstraddled divide between historical and literary research and recommendations for where to buy coffee and garden plants.

How the myth has changed over the years is fascinating, and I'd recommend the audio trail to anyone, even if they're not in Nottinghamshire looking for plants. It has left me gripped by a desire to read whatever of the original tales are available, even though their Middle English mentality may mess with my sweet childhood memories of Michael Praed. (Michael Praed was the only Robin Hood in my opinion, in the same way that Connery was the only Bond, no matter what the Americans did to poor Michael in Dynasty.)

At least the original tales get rid of that pesky Maid Marion, who was always in the way of my Praed-centred teenage dreams. Marion turned up only much later in proceedings, and was more or less invented by Morris dancers for Mayday festivities. Oh, and she was played by a man. And she was a bit of a tart.

It's possible she was reassigned from another French story of years before, where she happened to be in love with another bloke called Robin, but she sure as hell wouldn't have known what she was doing larking round an English maypole centuries later. With a beard. And an entirely new Robin, who spoke not a word of French.

There was more history on offer in Newark Castle, where I learned all about the Civil War. My previous knowledge of this period came entirely from Channel 4's The Devil's Whore (and had been slightly overshadowed by the discovery of just how attractive John Simm looks with his face all mangled).

In fact, I got so excited about my ever-expanding hoard of knowledge that I ended up getting inappropriately cross with the Eldest Latte because she refused to stay and watch an actor pretending to be an alchemist near the Sherwood Forest visitor centre. "But this is fascinating!" I told her in my best enthusiastic mother voice, as she tugged at my sleeve and whined about going for a picnic. "Don't you think? What's not to like about a handsome and charismatic man in an open necked shirt a well researched and entertainingly-presented explanation of medieval science?"

There's a serious problem with souvenir tackiness around the myth of Robin Hood. I know souvenirs tend towards the tacky, but still. It's worse than that. I'm willing to forgive some of this, because the myth has origins in medieval times, and I remember from my medieval literature lectures a good deal of chatter about testicles and bare bottoms hanging out of windows, so, you know, it wasn't a particularly classy period. But that doesn't excuse the colouring sheet given to my children at Nottingham Castle.


There were things on offer for adults that couldn't be excused either. They made Errol Flynn look like high art.

In fact, I was becoming concerned that I would have nothing to sum up my stay in the area (apart from, you know, a load of photos of old trees and some lechery). But then the day before we came home, we dropped into Strays bookshop and cafe for a drink. And there it was.

See that? A leaf drawn on the top of my latte.

It's as if Herne the Hunter personally wanted to make me happy.