30th June 2024

I have been reading Rebecca Solnit this morning, and I realise that Biden has to be given his chance.  Still not sure about Starmer though.

"and refuse to challenge blatantly false statements, is not a debate.  It's a chaos where lies are given equal footing with the truth"

I am happily caught up in my spinning at the moment, my family are all out working on this Sunday and I have just commented  to an argument or a discussion on a car park decision and also a cycle path that is proposed in this town. Everyone argues fiercely for the right to park in the centre of town but in the end the number of cars on the road and the small space that is allowed for parking has everyone moaning, it has become impossible.  Yet we have several large supermarket car parks, never completely full and free of course surely there is a compromise there.

The latest proposal of a cycle path to be created between the park and the market has also met with disgruntled groans.  What it boils down to is how the old hang on to things and the new youngsters want change.

In this household, my two children and four grandchildren, not one can drive a car but get around quite easily on foot, bus or train and not forgetting the Uber drivers.  Yet we all know that a car is essential for those out of town.  Some towns create car parks outside the town and bus people in, Whitby does it and it works.  Also the Sainsbury there which is out of town, has a bus to take people  back and forth.

Down to Earth

 Just a quick quote that made me smile this morning. It was made during the televised meeting between Sunak and Starmer and was made by a man in the audience. "Are you two really the best we have?"  I can hear the echo in America from afar ;)

So concentrating on positive things, I have on my list of positive people, the late Carl Sagan, a quote came through this morning.....

"Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we are made of trillions of cells.  Within us, is a little universe. Carl Sagan"

See 'Pillars of Creations'below and realise how little we know. On Earth I have to go out in the rain to Lidl to get some chestnut mushrooms and new potatoes.  The new cook book was open on the kitchen table at a recipe my daughter fancied I suppose.

Wild Justice, an organisation I have only recently become aware of are featuring manifestos they would like to see implemented.  Caroline Lucas and Chris Packham.  Packham is getting quite agitated.  What interests me though is that more and more people are coming out and giving their views.  Cannot it be that decisions made by the powerful and greedy will become things of the past?

Why Joe Biden must step down (youtube.com)

25th June 2024

 Manchester airport yesterday, a local power problem left everyone in the dark.  In reality a minor incidence but enough for people to get flustered and upset.

Some things I have been thinking about.  Firstly I ordered two journals yesterday along with ink refills for my fountain pen.  I have decided to record in a different mode, there is so much news we float through and it anchors the years into sensible sentences.  I am forever jotting down words that appeal to me but they get lost in a scrum of jottings and knitting terms.

For instance Julian Assange seems to have gained his freedom after all these years of rotting in a cell for telling his own kind of truth in Wikileaks.  Has the American government released him from a very long prison sentence in an American jail, it seems so.  Yesterday he was seen boarding a private plane to the Northern Mariana islands for the final end in this drama. Sky News

Sunday saw another protest march through London, it was a gathering together of environmental groups to plead for our nature in this country.  We have apparently the worst record of the European countries for looking after the flora and fauna of this country.  Individuals try but it is the small groups of people who stand up for the rights of animals that make the difference.  Governments just waffle. 

Our rivers are in an appalling mess, the River Wye, a very beautiful river polluted by the chicken farms that produce the eggs we eat.  Sewage over flows in the rivers is becoming a serious problem, money that needed to be spent has more often than not landed in the pockets of investors and CEOs.

As we spiral nearer to the next government changeover,, it will be interesting to see if anything will happen for the good, all those houses that need building, a tighter hold on food manufacturers who with their junky food are causing the NHS such terrible financial problems, perhaps what is needed in this country is the ability to pull together (and not moan too much).

Polluted Rivers

Reminiscing

 Sweet Williams, one of my favourite flowers.  Glorious colouring, and a scent which reminds me of my childhood.

Most people have conventional upbringings within a normal family, I did not but that is not to say I didn't enjoy being a child.  Holidays, my brother and I were sent away, a couple of summer holidays to Bournemouth Chines, where we swam on our own and I almost drowned, luckily someone rescued me and I am here to tell the tale.  But we wandered everywhere. 

There is one memory from Bournemouth, not as frightening as the one where my brother and I skidded over the rocks trying to beat an incoming tide but the two square scotty dogs that joined us on our wandering.

A holiday on a Welsh farm near Pumpsaint, where we fished for trout with a rather large pig in tow and then there was Cannock Chase with my friend and our horses. 

And then my brother had gone to live with his mother and I think that was when I broke my heart losing not only my brother but the house and garden we had lived in. We all ended up in boarding school, my cousin included, and though the convent was a good place, though freezing cold, the break from one life to another and a very bad illness at the convent needing several months convalescence coincided with teenage years.

The house was  in the centre of Willenhall, which had a triangular area of Victorian houses called the Manor I think, many large and ugly, this was our playground.  We could cut through the industrial waste land to the park and we had freedom.  I still have the scars of gravel in my knees from falling off my bike, and a silver plate connecting my elbow bones, when I crashed into the tennis hut on a sledge, tobogganing down a slippery slope.

My grandfather was chief engineer at a big firm called Villiers, he worked long hours and we had Louisa, who was Italian to look after us, because he was always busy and marital affairs between him and his son were always difficult.

But it was the garden that I loved, a good acre of large old fruit trees fitted into a neat pattern of path ways and lawns.  The house itself fronted onto the street, with a lawn beside it and a row of poplar trees, in which an owl resided, but my grandfather said that he would shoot it for hooting all night - I am not sure that he did though.  There was a small formal rose garden to the left of it and a rockery enclosing this area.

Another lawn went horizontal across in front of the path but it was always dark from the trees that had become overgrown but to the side amongst the lillies of the valley and our small graveyard of birds etc,* was an octagonal wooden hut which was our den.  It had a great hole in the middle of the floor but we could just about have meetings inside.

Tiger Lilly or Turks Cap

There was a vegetable patch and then you came upon the large central flower bed, neatly ringed by lawn.  I have forgotten our gardener, Gerry for it was he that actually looked after the garden and planted this vivid array of summer plants in a wild colour scheme.  Nemesis plants edged the border along with the blue and white of alyssums.  Yellow marigolds, dahlias in their season, and  exotic Tiger lillys bounced their turk caps in the massed ranks.  At the end of this flower bed was our sand pit, a square area built with bricks, at one end great orange gladiolas would greet you. Across on the bed by the wall that surrounded the whole garden would be irises.  

It wasn't quite the end of the garden, for there was a shrubbery and the last path would lead you past small apple trees, when I grew older I  realized they must have been quinces.  Remnants perhaps of Victorian planting.  It was here that Gerry in a corner of the walls meeting that he put all the cut grass.  It was an enormous heap and very soft to walk on.

 *I always loved animals, so the greenhouse often lodged frogs, toads, sick birds and my tortoise in winter, not forgetting the sticklebacks we would bring back from the park.

I am not sure what brought these thoughts on, a realisation that there are thing left uncharted, people long gone but also a surge of happiness that flowers have accompanied me all through life.

24th June also to remember.  My daughter went to Switzerland and is now stuck there because of the Manchester airport power outage.  Her aunt unfortunately fell yesterday and has a fractured hip which is not good news. 

23rd June 2024

Well the meeting was not as I expected.  I expected there more to be had on Pantheism but it revolved round Nick Drake and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd fame.  Interestingly about the books they had read in their childhoods.  Our speaker anchored sentences in the lyrics to such books as 'Wind in the Willows - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn'. He mentioned Sabine Baring-Gould also, 19th century hymn writer, antiquarian and many other skills.  Hilaire Belloc, and the Golden Goose poems (not too sure of that title) also the Aesop Fables.

The two boys had similar backgrounds, middle class, artistic, coming of age in the 60s and of course the whole movement that flowed through these times, they also took acid or LSD, which seems to have effected them in a similar way.  Not being able to focus on the world around them, looking through their friends with a dead eyed stare and not recognising them.  Of course they both ended up depressed, and Drake of course dying young through an overdose.

Drake's music was not popular, he only ever sold a few thousand of his albums through his lifetime.  No, his fame came later as a romantic figure who had died young and a cult was established.

One worrying moment in the talk when the speaker suddenly asked if he could stop for a moment because of a pain in his chest.  He mentioned symptoms similar to angina.  But tablets were found and he continued a few minutes later.  

Do you remember all those long haired young men of the 60s? Budding Oscar Wilde or Byrons, romantically inclined we all fell in love with.  Now? balding into old age, it is a bit of a shock ;)  Our speaker had  what for him was a meeting with Drake, though he is still unsure if it was Drake.  But hitchhiking home to Sandy a car stopped.  He got in and turned and recognised the profile, through all the journey Drake did not speak, so our speaker was left with a question in his mind which seems to haunt him until this day.

Two videos of Nick Drake, the first Mayfair, and to use a favourite word of mine mellifluous................

Drake was too folksy amongst the lively music at the time, I have yet to experience Syd Barrett, for during the 70s I was widowed and trying to survive and had little time for pop music!

The only thing I found against the talk was that he did not really mention Pantheism as a subject matter.

A Happy Solstice

 

The photo I have taken from Paul's blog 'The Heritage Trust', when I talk of Avebury it is with the memory of how we got together.  This photo shows what I think is one of Paul's grouses, the sheep leaving a lanolin line on the stones, where they had rubbed their fleeces, scratching their sides. Avebury is the heart of the new paganism, the one where true worshippers of stones go to meet.

Yes. Stonehenge has been attacked by orange powder a couple of days ago, but as the Chief Druid said on the radio today, it will easily wash off with the rain.  Viva - the Earth ;)

But I came across an article I had written about Avebury/Awbury and one of its 17th century inhabitant and his family moving over to America.  He was a dissenter, and the Quakers were moving out of this country.  In the Victorian age, a young American girl came to visit Awbury, as it was called and wrote a poem about this little village.

So here is the article. And the last two verses of Mary  S. Cope poem  'Awbury'.

The hamlets seem to lie at rest
Upon the common’s ample breast,
Secure in loneliness of space
From aught that could the charm efface
Of innocence and old-world grace
Worn by ancestral right.

Home of sweet days and thankful nights,
Fair fall on thee the morning light,
Soft fall the evening dews.
Wild winds perchance may sweep the wold
But age, untouched by storm or cold,
In memory’s sight thou standest there,
Encircled by serenest air,
In changeless summer hue.

Mary S Cope, 1886

 And perhaps some music from a temple in South Korea, though we need hardly be reminded of rain. But tomorrow I am going to a talk on Pantheism - the all encompassing!

Guest election blog - Conservatives by Stephen Moss - Wild Justice

Taken from Wild Justice

Gardens

Derek Jarman's garden

Yesterday I picked up his book, and the page fell open at something he said. He did not like the bright yellow of daffodils in his garden in this windswept corner of the East coast in Dungeness.  He likes the paler types of daffodils, yet I wondered what he thought of the bright yellow of the honey smelling flower of the gorse that surrounds that small black house by the sea, the windows and doors brightly painted in yellow.

But I do agree about the daffodil, from the time when as a child we drew it on homemade Easter cards, the daffodil had a somewhat ugly appeal with its trumpet in the centre and the harsh of the yellow.

His garden was made on shingle, no soil, you were not allowed to import it either, because the area was of scientific interest.  Grey leafed plants did best in this environment, the wild plants of the beach, crambe, sea holly and horned poppies flourished.  The photo above captures the starkness of the bits of woods scavenged off the beach.  They remind you of megalithic stones.  Jarman's artistic flair and of course his role as an Aid activist was built round an exuberant filming career.  Over the top would be my first thought.  Yet he is a gentle soul born to die early of that crippling affliction Aids.

Gardens are flourishing, slightly late of course because of the cold and rain which has plagued this country, since Xmas I think and is still with us in June. 

The following short video, will bring back vivid memories of the sound of the sea and wind and most nostalgic of all the call of the seagulls. 

 

Things that surprise me.

 

Salvador Dali - Flowers 1948

I would never have associated Dali with painting flowers. A painter I am not much inclined to, Surrealism is surely there for an effect.

Gustave Klimt - Forest of Firs

No gold, no sparkly lady in a golden dress.  Just a straight forest of upright trunks.  But there are traces of my favourite colour in there -turquoise.   But then that could just be the way it is portrayed by the image on the web.

Today I saw an A1 photo of a bird, think it was a razorbill and someone had cleverly on top of its beak superimposed a whale into the photo - scary.

A1 is of course the new and up and coming money making turn of the century, that is until the next new invention comes along.

Which reminds me, and going completely off topic.  I used to go to school on a petrol engine double decker bus which was called 'New Invention'.  I have just read the story of the New Invention in Walsall and it goes back to the very first person who built a house there.  He claimed he had made a new invention to tackle a smoky chimney, which turned out to be - a Hazel branch which you pushed up the chimney to clear it. Slightly simpler than altering things in A1 in fits of fancy, and as we know causing terrible trouble when you alter the faces of the people around you.

Funny thing is I always thought the bus was the new invention replacing the old hissing and spitting electric trolley buses.

I can't find that photo of a the whale so snugly fitted into the pattern of the bird's beak, but it did raise the thought, so if people go round creating digitally false pictures, does helping ourselves to them really mean we are stealing illegal photos?

14th June 2024

 

It is all about Lillie this week.  She turned 18 years old on Thursday, had a party with her friends on Wednesday evening and today is going to the Taylor Swift concert (with 60,000 others) in Liverpool.  The  problem of transport has been solved, she will go with her friend on the train, and coming back Andrew has rented a car and they will meet up somewhere in a car park. How does a transport system cope with 60 thousand young people wanting to go home I wonder.

Being adult she now has access to one of the governments saving accounts, which she went off to Halifax to claim.  She was convinced she could do it online but had to produce correspondence.  Her face was a picture when she opened a card with a cheque in it, how quickly they have fallen out of fashion.  What do I do with it she asks?  Apparently you can take a photo of it  and your bank will accept the photo as proof.

How quickly the banks have 'disappeared' from our streets, causing confusion and worry.  Money is still used of course, in fact it is a good idea to keep some as a backup just in case the internet system is hacked. 

Now I am terrified of losing my debit card, the one thing between me and the world and buying essentials.  On the surface life is simple but beneath the surface we are riding a very bumpy sea.

Still Lillie is an adult now, she is all set up to go to London to study, she has her first year accommodation and her two siblings to keep an eye on her.  Life will bring its own confusions and complications but as we all do she will probably sail through them.

Unfinished

Another Place - Antony Gormley

The other day I went a bit off track.  I trailed after Gormley and then hit the scandal at Ampleforth College.  Well this latest diversion was well worth it.  I traced a path through Gormley's work, questioning why did his statues have to be of his own bodily form.  I understood his motive about the relationship of the space we occupy in regards to our bodies.  But all I could think about was those statues, quite a few of them on the Crosby Beach, staring out to sea.  It was on the whole a tranquil scene, the mind could fall into that state of peace.  His four horses and men down in the muddy waters of the Thames again had that feeling of eeriness and maybe loneliness but I began to see in his art work repetition of a singular idea.

The Angel of the North is a large undertaking, apparently when it was moved to the spot it now lives in, the convey was huge, the pavements lined with people.  It has of course an industrial message.  The death of industry, the great shipyards of the North-East became bankrupt and business moved to other countries.

------------------------------

Space as a concept, and as something that we fill, is seen by Christopher Alexander  an American architect as something that is alive, his death seems to have cut short his latest book on latent centers but he has written several other books exploring ideas.

I was first introduced to him by my son who had on his reading list for university (computer course) Alexander's books 'A Pattern Language and the four volumes of 'The Nature of Order'.  

These four books were filled with photographs of many things, to do with the house, household and the very fabric of creating everything, I suppose.  And indeed I looked at the books  more for the photographs than the words.  But of course there are many patterns in life from physics and the make-up of all those quarks and things from outer space.  And who hasn't been surprised at the mathematical Fibonacci numbers, a sunflower will explain it to you because I can't.

But the reason I turned to Alexander was because of his thinking on space which developed from his career as an architect.  How do you fill space in your life? what makes you happy? 

Those cast iron statues looking out to sea from eyes that cannot see.  Our minds are whisked to eternity as we contemplate them, the endless movement of the tides, the life that flows through the water - the world is a living breathing being.  Our ability to destroy it is obvious but then simple logic tells us, humans in their greedy grasping way will destroy it anyway and in so doing will eventually destroy themselves and the Earth will recover albeit in a different form maybe but then for now it has shucked off those annoying ant like creatures that have been tickling its surface.

Will technology save us, or a quick lift up to the moon? I doubt it.  So I will leave it there, and see if Alexander has anything to offer.

"For Alexander, feeling alive is tied to being in spaces or environment that have an inherent quality of life. Space that resonates with humans, that are harmonious and evoke a sense of well being, make the occupants feel more alive.  The feeling of aliveness is the core benchmark with which Alexander measured the quality of human made artifacts."

To be continued:

Notes

 In the middle of the night.  When Mollie wakes me and I listen to a podcast.  This time it was Antony Gormley talking,  I have only ever seen his 'Angel of the North' from a great distance.  I think from a McDonald's window if I remember rightly but he has style.  So my ears cropped up when they mentioned he had been at Ampleforth College, the Benedictine Catholic school of North Yorkshire.  I wondered if he had been taught by Madeline Bunting's father John Bunting at the school but no it was someone called  James Tower a brilliant ceramicist, you can find him on the link. James Tower (1919 - 1988)

I had never made it to the college on its open days, though a neighbour would often go and visit some ponies who kept the vegetation down at some sort of heritage site.  Also I had read of the sexual misconduct that had gone on in the college over a long period of time and how an Ofsted Report had (hopefully) nipped it in the bud, you will find relevant newspaper article links below.

There is a photo in the Telegraph article of the boys gathering in the hall in 1952, and I think the picture says it all, single sex schools and religion is not a good mix.  All that is now water under the bridge.

Gormley came from a rich middle class family, his name, Sir Antony Mark David Gormley makes up the initials AMDG - Ad maiorem Dei gloriam = To the greater glory of God, his parent's choice.

As you will note if you read my blog, religion intrigues me, especially the strong Catholic faith which takes such a hold on people.  I often wonder if it is a sign of weakness when someone cannot become a free spirit in the world and needs an anchor to lean on.

But I turned up a couple of blogs written a few years back, about this part of the world in North Yorkshire, so I shall record them here.

John Bunting an interesting man. North Stoke: John Bunting

North Stoke: Sutton Bank - the area itself, which is rather beautiful and where once William and Dorothy Wordsworth on a walking holiday came through Sutton Bank.

And the two newspaper articles

The man who saved ‘Catholic Eton’ after its devastating sex abuse scandal (telegraph.co.uk)

New pupils barred from top UK Catholic school after abuse scandal | Private schools | The Guardian

Positivity

 Today, up to now. Well I had to adjust my spinning wheel, it started jamming up, it seems I have now cleared it.  Then there was the vacuum cleaner.  I cleaned the brush head and emptied the cylinder, and have got rid of the funny noise it developed.  Answered my emails, and my phone, I have decided to call Andrew my 'guardian angel' as he has dealt with a very thorny issue for me.  Lillie is having a takeaway tonight in celebration, the end of 'A' level exams, and another phase of her life opening up.  

There is a thing called Positive News perhaps I should consult each day and give a flavour of the day, or perhaps hitch my large, rather unwieldy external hard drive to this computer for the photographs on it.  But I am scared of messing this computer up, which provides music, knowledge, friends and drama.  I am watching 'New Tricks' at the moment as I spin, my daughter calls it pension porn. It has struck me that we always compartmentalise everyone into their little cubbyholes, labelling them down till we only have to speak a word and a picture arises in the mind.

Well here is some news, how about making a mountain presidential, it would have a council of experts to rule for it.

"Its origins lie in the global Rights of Nature movement, which aims to give rivers, oceans and mountains the same legal rights as humans."

The mountain is in Iceland and the mountain is called Snaefellsjokull. You will just have to imagine the two dots over the 'o'.

There was a lovely set of photos on F/B this morning, it was of the Marlborough Downs.  A hare sits, long ears alert, and then there were a set of birds this photographer had managed to capture.  Also recorded were three types of wagtails spied up there.   The grey wagtail favourite bird of mine, often to be found on the pavement, little tail wagging up and down. 

Now here is a positive photo of my daughter with  our old neighbour from Calne, many  years ago and we are at Rievaulax Abbey..........................................................

One other thing I have on F/B is historic roses.  Nothing is more beautiful than a rose, and this one must have been in the Bath garden.

Then there are flower gardens - Hyland House, Chelmsford

And then there are weird old trees, again at Hyland House.

6th June 2024

 I started to write yesterday, a rather chaotic day, the cat was sick on my bed, messages about parcels coming through that day.  One to care for because it was 'living' = sour dough, but it doesn't have to be fed till the 10th June.  I showed the new Parcel Force lady the back door and that she could just pop things in, I took full responsibility on that.

Cursed various members of the family for relying on the post to bring them things that were frivolous.  Also as I was talking to the PF lady left the front door open and Mollie (cat) luckily did not venture into the big outside world but miaowed furiously at me when I got back in.

Matilda went back to London yesterday, she is free of university now and must look for a job, but yesterday was more concerned with finding a decent wine bar to entertain her friends.  She will look for a job of course but she looked a little lost. I do not envy the young in this day of high rents, over-priced housing market and a government that really needs a good shakeout.

And what about the weather?  7 C at the moment, not quite down to freezing, but cold and windy, and of course those of us who live in the lower reaches (and not on top of a Scottish mountain where there is snow to be found) will experience cold rain.

But one good parcel yesterday (promise I don't have many) was some spinning tops from John Arbon, four pretty colourways to spin and calm my mind and not get vexed about everything.

1st June 2024

Just for my record:

Well I have actually had an email from my present conservative MP.  Struck dumb for a second, normally you get a very different reply.  Like many people I have signed for a ceasefire in Gaza.  Each day I see the terrible consequences of war and such organisations such as Amnesty, War on Want, Oxfam all pleading for the lives of others.

"Unfortunately, now the General Election has been called, Parliament is now prorogued and there are no longer any MP’s until after the General Election.

 I can tell you however that despite this, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, has (and continues to) been working tirelessly with colleagues from the Foreign Office to achieve the majority of the goals and aims you request. As a Country, we have absolutely no power to demand anything from either Hamas nor Israel but we continue to negotiate along with the USA and other major players to bring about a sustainable ceasefire and release of the hostages – two of which are British. This is often done through third party countries in region to bring pressure on both sides."

I know there are others who would put the blame squarely on one side or the other but it isn't that anymore, it is about hunger and death, and this has to stop. Quoting Nicholas Kristof on this in the New York Times. 

2. All lives have equal value, and all children must be presumed innocent. So while there is no moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel, there is a moral equivalence between Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians. If you champion the human rights of only Israelis or only Palestinians, you don’t actually care about human rights. 

How to Think through the Moral tangle in Gaza

-------------------------------------

I suspect that many conservatives will be glad to leave the present government, and that the above email reflects the handwashing relief of a difficult  problem not faced. 

Someone said, that the one thing that hasn't come up now in the jockeying for position in a new government is the word 'Brexit', the catastrophe that hit us and which is now beginning to take shape.  Neither Starmer or Sunak have even approached the subject and they play us off with National Service, or the lessening of promises made earlier. Nothing unusual there of course.

So I shall go back to listening to my two favourite men at the moment - Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart  in The Rest is Politics.  Either side of the argument does not have to mean nastiness and they as friends argue beautifully and discuss politics with humour.

The other thing that made me cross this morning was what I deem as the lazy use of the word troll, to wrong side someone who had put up an fairly innocuous defense.  It is wretched to think that should we disagree with someone we are knocked back by being called a troll, it is a lazy habit of not actually working out what is being said.