Hobs and ego

Bob Fischer’s “Aye, we’re flitting” tale [ FT330:58] got my metaphor detector twitching. I found numerous versions of the story online, usually concluding with the farmer returning home since there was no point in moving somewhere unfamiliar and starting again if the hob – or boggart in several retellings – was coming along too. It strikes me that this can be read as a parable warning against the widely demonstrated belief that “everything will be okay if I just move house / get that job / start a new relationship / buy that car” (delete as appropriate). Do these hob tales teach us that whatever external adjustments we make to our life, our inner self remains the same, and we must take it and all its attendant problems everywhere we go?

This notion is reinforced by Nils Erik Grande’s letter on the subject [FT332:75] and his explanation of the Norwegian expression nissen på lasset (the hob on the cartload), meaning a piece of bad luck that seems to follow one around like an inescapable curse.

But what of the idea that a helpful hob can be offended into desertion by a gift of clothes? I’m reminded of “God moves in mysterious ways” and any number of related maxims about going with the flow. Attempting to corral good fortune, to inspect and improve the gifts of the Universe (e.g. dressing your hob according to your tastes or mores) is to impose your preferences on Providence. Does this folkloric motif then serve to warn us that the ego can act in opposition to what is best for us by seeking to control that for which we should simply be grateful? Rob Bray Old Stratford, Northamptonshire Graham Rootes noticed this mossy tree stump ‘walrus’ emerging from the River Frome in Somerset. We are always glad to receive pictures of spontaneous forms and figures, or any curious images. Send them to the PO box above (with a stamped addressed envelope or international reply coupon) or to sieveking@forteantimes.com – and please tell us your address.

on what could potentially be a year-round tourist honey-pot.” I well remember many times staggering off Cradle Hill in the grey dawn, numb with cold, stiff with discomfort, and exhausted with sleeplessness, having spent the night staring at satellites (‘Amber Gamblers’), car headlights, planets, military flares and Sirius, on the fringes of a credulous and awed coterie of the favoured round ‘Arthur’. But there at 6am on Sunday morning in Warminster High Street like an oasis mirage was open the café (alas I forget its name), serving ‘Man-sized breakfasts for Watchers on The Hill’. My word, nothing has ever tasted so good! “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven”. Roger J Morgan London

“The man who calls himself my father”, that could easily be a common figure of speech, as in “He’s my father but he doesn’t live up to the title”.

Also, I was interested to read of the Moon Landing Hoax in relation to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, because the way I heard it was that he died on 7 March 1999, which was 666 days before the start of the year 2001, which is the title of his film 2001, and so the Illuminati must have been “sending a message” about him spilling the beans once too often in Eyes Wide Shut. Or it’s just a spooky coincidence. James Wright By email