The Butlers Pack Their Bags Again: A name by any other legend would smell as sweet

My name, Jennifer, derives from Guinevere, which means 'white wave' or 'white shadow', and that was all I needed to know to advance a childhood obsession with the Arthurian legend.

It was timely that my most impressionable teenage years coincided with Mary Stewart's trilogy of books based on Merlin's supposed perspective, which I devoured as I did most books, but which gave me more satisfaction than many others. Although Gawain and the Green Knights came close.

At 20, my romantic worst, I backpacked through Great Britian and of course included a visit to Tintagel (where Arthur was born) and to Glastonbury (where both Arthur and Guinevere are buried or at least they were before 1539 when King Henry VIII’s rant against the church meant dozens of Abbeys and Cathedrals were razed to the ground, their abbots and bishops tortured and hanged.

While there I mooned and wafted around in an ecstatic, romantic haze to see the Rose of Glastonbury still growing (I took a thorn from it, long since gone, guilty as charged), and A and G’s gravesite noted.

I bought a small silver cross in a celtic design and always thought of it as my personal talisman – my Glastonbury cross - completely separate from any Christian association crosses are meant to invoke.

Romantic ruins

So when our house was broken into and my cross was stolen along with other items a few years ago, the loss was more than a small silver charm on a chain.

And here I am, back in Glastonbury more than 30 years later. Is there any question that I would try to replace my talisman? I bought one that is slightly larger, in a similar pattern and in bronze. It's not an exact replacement, but was the closest one I could find. And besides, when revisiting your past, you can never really go back.