27th August 2025

 Marriage: Tomorrow we are off down to Shropshire to celebrate the wedding of Eleanor Daisy Riddy and Thomas Nicholas Opper Cunnane.  Tom of course carrying his grandfather's name forward, along with the Opper family in Switzerland and his father's name, who has slipped out of the picture over the years. We have rooms at Iscoyde Park (Sounds posh) and Andrew will pick up the three from London from the railway station at Whitchurch there. 

An engagement photo of Nick and myself

The couple are totally in love, Tom is so sweet around Ellie and of course it stirs memories from me when I remember his grandfather and how much we were in love as well.

Nick was taken so abruptly in a car accident when my daughter was about 3 years old.  The blackest of griefs the night my father-in-law came to my hotel bedroom and said that Nick had died at the hospital.  He went back to comfort Lotta and I faced the night wondering how would I go on living.  But I made the decision to go on because I had a young daughter to support. 

Nick had been educated in England, a Canterbury school I believe and then Oxford, he had hardly started out on life when it was cut down abruptly by a silly woman turning out of a driveway without checking that a car was coming.  

Nick had been to see his best friend David in Oxford.  David was an expert on concrete and Nick was selling some sort of early type computing machines.  I was just trying to remember where we lived at the time.  It was Frimley, near Woking.  My father-in-law had found us living in a wretched bungalow which dripped with condensation and was icily cold and he had given us a deposit for the Frimley house.

Nick and David

As my family was so at odds with each other, I more or less got adopted by the Opper family, we shared the tragedy of Nick's death, Lotta's youngest son.  And so in the holiday weeks Karen and I would go over to Blonay and stay there. 

Nick and I had happy times of course, we were going to buy one of those self assembly houses we had seen at an exhibition and build a home.  We went up to Oxford for parties and meeting David.

This was the time when British families working overseas sent their children to England to be educated, Nick had scars on his back where he had been beaten at school, he was dyslexic which obviously did not help.  The youngest of four children he was the baby of the family.  His sister Annabel, a Montessori teacher would come over to England and take him out to tea whilst he boarded at school. His other sister Sylvia, taught in Hong Kong and wrote, with someone else a book on Piaget and his teachings.  Whilst Mike the eldest had emigrated to Canada, to become a boxer, than  a lumberjack.

All this I write down for my family and for myself of course.  And maybe even for Taylor Swift, who announced her engagement to someone yesterday;)

Marriage and love is still not dead!

Ellie and Tom

Rebecca Solnit - Meditations in an emergency.  As always there is an edit ;)

25th August 2025

 

Sunday's Trip: After an early lunch we took off for the Bridestones.  It was an immensely long drive up to the moors, but  apparently Andrew had walked it! The Bridestones is a popular visiting place for locals and there was already a family using a camping stove for their picnic.  A short trek up to the stones and we admired that enormous landscape of moor and sky, only broken by this outcrop of stones, though further away there was a much smaller outcrop.  In the far distance Stoodley Pike and turning you could see the wind turbines turning gently.

I find the stones ugly, their rounded shapes rather frightening.  There is no evidence of them being special in the Neolithic age, but then how do we know.  They remind you of the Cornish tors.  The stones are a mill stone grit, named for their use as milling stones, you could see tiny flecks of silver in the stone.  Reading Taylor (I will give the reference at the end)

Taylor draws the same conclusion as I do about the ugliness of the weaver's cottages which have been built from this stone, he calls it a carboniferous sandstone, which helps towards the grimy blackness of them.  But as he says they are interesting because of the rows of mullioned windows that provide the light for weaving in the cottages.  Also it is impossible to clean the soot from the stone.  These cottages are a stark reminder of when the industrialised looms and great mills came into force and the independent weavers were forced down from their homes in the valleys into the mills to work for a wage.

We drove back down to Hebden Bridge as the next place to visit was Salts Mill, and all roads lead out of this town. They had changed the Hockney exhibition around also at Salt Mill.  A display of flowers in different vases and of course his French House.  Here I must say I do not like acrylics, their brightness is too childlike but I am pleased that Hockney is making a living out of his painting and will not die in penurious circumstances as so many artists do.

One funny incident.  We had parked the car, it was backed into the shrubbery, so I went round to the boot door, which is one of those that automatically open but unfortunately as it opened it tipped me into the shrubs much to the amusement of the family.  New fangled stuff for goodness sake!!
Andrew is marvellous for keeping an eye on me.  So I don't fall over or get stuck sitting on the ground.  We are indeed lucky as a family to have him.  The photo above in the car park must have been taken by Lillie.  We tend to fight over my camera, as she just takes anything she fancies clicking away, filling up the card with loads of useless views but she caught the moment we were still giggling over (once again) an embarrassing moment for me. 

Tea and cakes in the restaurant, my daughter wouldn't go out if there wasn't cake at the end of the outing.

The book by Alex Clifton Taylor on The Pattern of English Building, is a genuinely intelligent book of how building materials were used in this country. Years of work has gone into compiling this information.  And so co-pilot on my right hand side, please, please go away and take AI with you.  The human brain works brilliantly without you!

23rd August 2025 - Bradford's Odeon cinema

Bradford's restoration of the Odeon Cinema.

They like it big down North. No I am not being smutty, I am talking about the revitalisation of the Odeon Cinema in Bradford.  Which as you should know is this year's City of Culture.  Probably this is of only interest to Yorkshire people but it is a history worth documenting.

Our Andrew's close friend is an architect and Adam was instrumental with his London firm of architects restoring this over the top but magnificent building started in the 1930s.  They are a conservationist firm and restore old buildings in as far as one is able to.  

The day of the cinema seemed over after the introduction of television and then Netflix, but they have struggled on, changing their format to suit the smaller audience. Still they stand like forlorn ghosts in towns but stripped of their usefulness till someone comes along and alters them.

This video shows how bad it was to start with, the enormous amount of work cost a great deal, but it was only through the dedication of Bradford people wanting the old building to remain that made it possible for the money to be found.

Bradford Live: how Tim Ronalds Architects helped residents save their historic cinema and turn it into a 3,800-capacity music venue | Building Study | Building Design  This article gives a full history of the work done, I have the pdf but cannot upload the link, but if you want to subscribe free for the article you can.

In my heart I think there is a quiet revival going on in this part of the land as the people migrate from  London, or indeed return to their roots.

Edit:  Adam Goodfellow, a very good name for an architect.  It reminds me of a name in a William Morris book on medieval England.  He was the project architect on the above work, which cost £50 million approximately.  He even designed the ladders to get to the lights amongst the work of contracting out all the various designs needing to be done.  I am slightly humbled by the fact that he has made plans for this house and I could not believe that the basement can be made waterproof - should have more faith.  Last weekend the three of us were in a zoom meeting with him to discuss any changes to the plans for this house.  Though I shall be well out of this world when it is finished......

Note the blank facade on the right hand side of the building.  At the time it was built it was facing onto a nearby building and it was thought this part did not need any decoration.  But I suppose now it will be used as an advertising board.

22nd August 2025 - Mills I have known

 

Coggeshall Abbey's mill in Essex

Chelmer Mill by the Chelmer and navigation river in Essex

John Constable's Flatford Mill

Olga Wisinger-Florian (1844–1926), Mill at Goisern (1880),

At one stage I fell in love with mills, not so much the windmill but the wheel mill, over or undershot, which just means how the water turned it.  I think the painting above is a fine example of how complicated it is.

The garden in Bath was situated in a valley and had had a stream running through to the mill below in Weston Lane.  The stream had disappeared but there was remains of a little bridge in the garden.  Interestingly, when they dug a pipeline through the valley, walling appeared in the garden, a leat for controlling the water.

There is a tidal mill by Carew Castle in Pembrokeshire, which is rather unusual, it is situated by  the Castle but the mill is fairly modern.

Carew Tidal Mill

Carew Castle

And not forgetting "The Mill on the Floss" by George Elliot

21st August 2025

We went out last night for a birthday meal, it was Karen's birthday and we went to 'Ginger Nut' an Asian restaurant.  Good food, good company, though the restaurant was quiet. The restaurant is situated in Water Street, a sort of 'genuine' touristy interesting part of Tod.  The road is paved with cobbles, recently taken up and then re-laid. Why Water Street? Could be the river on the right side, notice the interesting little white add-on, could it be an old 'flush loo' into the river.  You can still see some of these old Georgian makeshift boxes outside the Georgian houses of Bath at the back of the houses.  But here I am only guessing.

Water Street - @ David Dixon Geograph

Cooking in the household is shared equally but it gets changed along the way due to unforeseen circumstances.  The rental car is to be picked up tomorrow at 6 pm, so our usual fare of pizzas is not available for Friday.  So we get them tonight, I cook tomorrow and it is all for yourselves on Saturday.  The car's first journey will be down to the tip to get rid of the pile of cardboard in the basement.  Amazon you have done us proud but really I wish you hadn't but life is a-changin and now nearly everything comes as parcels.

Sunday we are off to Saltaire with a quick visit on the way to the Bride stones and then the wedding feast on Thursday.

I don't know what you make of this but the sadness of starvation in Gaza is underlined by  the Plasticine Man who had written on his T-shirt Plasticine Action instead of Palestine Action, which is an illegal use of words and pertains to being a terrorist. 

Clumsy law making, and the added fact that telling people not to do something, immediately makes them do it.  In this case a just cause. The police arrested the man and only realised their mistake later and he was of course released.  To ask the question what is a terrorist and then arrest hundreds of people who are definitely not terrorists is absurd, as is the law, clear definition is required.

But the man had a little Morfe tucked into the letter 'O' which was rather sweet.  Morfe was of course a very original plasticine (who obviously 'morphed' around), so lets end on his gentle humour! Actually it seems he was made out of clay.

And then there was Kneecap, the Irish band

ater-Street-Todmorden-and-the-Census.pdf

Notes and thoughts

 Two thoughts spring to mind this morning.  The first is the history of those two fish items that Leni Heaton gave me. She died in Switzerland a few years back at over a hundred years of age.  She lived in a sweet little chalet at the end of an unmade road but at the top the little train that went up the Les Pleiade mountain would trundle past as you sat on the seat at the little stop.  Blonay's large old chalet was also there.  Leni will sink away from memories and yet she must had so many.  She was Jewish and German for a start and I once came across a paper on the internet of her family, I think the silver slices come from Iran but maybe they came from the time she had too flee the war and were part of her family treasures.  I know she was a dancer, and a modern one at that, her name seems to come up in the Laban School of Dancing.  There  is a dramatic moment in her life in Iran. Which was when her  husband tried to kill her by taking her out into the desert and leaving her there.

1) the story of being left in the desert to die.  Apparently her husband had a brain tumour which made him act strangely and he died soon after.

2) Leni was a translator in the 1940s and working in Iran at the time of The Tehran Conference in 1941

MovementDanceDramaAutumn2020Online.pdf

Young people performing a rhythmic dance at Laban's Choreographic Institute in Berlin-Grunewald (1929)

Maybe she is in this crowd of dancers

Rudolf von Laban - Wikipedi

In Teleki's Footsteps - Tom Heaton

Goethe - First edition

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The Blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul

What is the second thought, it is to do with music and the apocalypse and probably was sparked by this blog written in 2007.  Firstly the music, Leonard Cohen's 'The Future' you can listen here......

Bleak and miserable the song goes on, just like Bob Dylan's

it's a 'Hard Rain A-gonna Fall'.

  Doom and gloom, apocalyptic.  Are they the interpreters of our society in song and of course poetry, or do they bring feelings of despair so that in the end we do not have the will to fight.  

Well plucky, and I have to say it, little Zelensky, with his bold band of EU supporters behind him standing up to the forces of Trump and Putin tells a different tale, as does Rebecca Solnit in her book of 'Hope in the Dark' - The Untold History of People Power'.  And are we not seeing people power expressed all over the world, whether in Israel calling out Netanyahu and his wicked starvation of the people of Palestine, or in America, and the rest of the world, calling out the fascist right appearing on the stage of their USA government.

So let us take this ying and yang, the duality of everything, and watch as it passes by.  Painful it maybe but doesn't history always change?  Maybe not in our lifetimes but it does eventually.

 

18th October 2025 - recording today

Cleaning the silver;  For probably the last time.  Did I say I disliked housework?  Well when it comes to ornaments - no way.  Apart from the fish slices they are miniatures.  I think the table and chairs and little sledge are 18th century and live in the box you can see in the photo.  I was given them by my first MIL.  I enjoyed this time cleaning them, it reminded me of when Lotta would bring out her silver for me to clean.  Newspapers of course laid on the table, didn't have any newspaper today so cardboard would have to do.  In the Swiss bungalow at Blonay there was an intricate Chinese altar, I think  in the sitting room which housed the ivory (how does one judge the past and the taking of ivory, still done today) and jade miniature paraphernalia, the silver must have been kept somewhere else.  But it was a long time ago.  I had enjoyed make miniatures a few years back so that was why I acquired the small silver, but the table and chairs were I think 24 rather than the 12 scale I worked in, so they were most often left in the dolls house nursery for the children to play with!  All gone now, given away.

The two silver pots must have been pepper and salt condiments from Iran I think, I am not sure how the intricate pattern was applied, would it be 'chased'?

The little sledge below is a gem of tiny work, at one stage in his life he was pushing a man, but somehow that figure got lost in time.

The fish slices have polished up well, they are to go to Tom and Ellie, who are legalizing their marriage together today at the registry office and then the big celebrations will take place at a hotel somewhere in Chester in a few days time.  At which of course all the family will be there.

 

17th August 2025

 

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel The Elder 1563

I went to another meeting at the Folklore Centre yesterday, it was given by Holly Elsdon.  'Red Threads and Rabbit holes ' . A very complete dive into feminism and theories.  The sort of stuff you pick-up on all the social media.  The young being influencers and spouting their latest beliefs in a whole set of phenomena that attracts them.  The people who see great world forces taking over and becoming dominant and the various organisations set up to moderate world affairs such as the UN and Unesco, as some sort of evil overlords.  And not forgetting feminism either which runs as a thread through out.

The advent of the internet has spawned this horror of everyone having a say in whatever matter that happens to be in the news.  We are all guilty (myself included).  I suppose it comes from curious minds, but then, some minds are pretty weird ;)  Free speech and democracy has a lot to answer for.  We need more philosopher's out there but not necessarily algorithm's sorting out our muddled minds.

It is as if storytelling has to be told not in the fables and myths of old history but in the current world happenings.  For me such things drift through like the computer cloud that doesn't exist in reality but is functioning up there in the sky.

I went off the concept of feminism years ago, perhaps I should not have.   But it was Germaine Greer and her exposure of parts of her anatomy, that should not really be on public display.  I obviously believe in the equality of women and the need to battle such horror as the misogynist Tate, who appears to be colouring the minds of young teenage boys, wrapped up in their bedrooms in the dark of the night taking in his poisonous words.  It is definitely not a battle between the sexes for dominance only equality and understanding.

My two feminist authors I do read for their intellectual views are Naomi Klein and Rebecca Solnit.  But they do not write under the heading of feminism but only after causes.  That to me is the difference.  By not setting up a battlefield we achieve understanding at a slower pace.  All the horrors that exist in the world, have and will exist sadly, we are Homo Sapiens after all.

16th August 2025

 

The Bride Stones

Strange aren't they? They lie above our valley on the moors, geologically shaped, wind-swept over millions of years, they accrue folklore.  Though the folklore of Bride stones in England is quite common.

It was Andrew this morning coming back from a long walk, he had walked up to the stones and remembered that I wanted to visit them.  Well we are renting a car for a week soon and he suggests we all go there.  Facing you, the long skinny necked rock is the bride and the smaller stone next to her the groom.  You can read a much larger description here.  If I had to pick and choose a legend for the stones it would be the Brigid legend, yes I know she is an Irish goddess but 'up North' the Iron Age tribe was called Brigantia, which has a closeness of wording.

Isn't it strange we now use You Tube so much more than actual (what do you call it? terrestrial television maybe) to watch ordinary people taking us on visits to different places.  Explaining the history of their localities, explaining craft work.  Showing us their gardens and animals, that we have quite forgotten to sit down and watch the box.

So yesterday two old friends from the Darkside of the Moor  appeared in my subscription list.  No I have never met them but they make me chuckle.  Are they camp? will I be shot down for even asking that question? Life has become a tricky negotiation path through The Mores of today.

My other favourite video is The Mindful Narrowboat Vanessa and Zephyr her dog give a delightful view of the canals up North, and she illustrates her day so brilliantly in her notebook at the end, that for a moment in time you are making a pot of tea, sorting the biscuits with her and giving Zephyr his treat.

The third I will mention is of course The Last Homely House, though the less frequent The Last Homely Garden is just as calming.  Perhaps that is the secret, in this fraught period of time we are living through a sense of calmness is needed.  I was even thinking about a retreat at the Kagyu Sammye Ling Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, think that was the last holiday Paul and I had in Eskdalemuir just over the border in Scotland.  But sadly my religious zeal is nil, so presumably I would be a hypocrite in my untruthfulness.

Rebecca Solnit hits out (once more) at Trump.  All news leads to him unfortunately.

Now to check the red light highlights to see you get to the right places!

Protest in the Cotswold

 Well when the middle-class of The Cotswold community take to the village green too protest, then Vance, and of course our Labour government better take heed!  True, there are not many people, but then there have been enormous marches all over the world against the fascist regime that seems to be developing in America's government.

13th August 2025

Things that tickled my fancy yesterday

That's it!  Lidl is out of favour.  We now have self-service tills with all their silly bits and pieces.  I shall get the 'baggage department' wrong every time.  AND need to take my other glasses, perhaps I can claim stupidity and going blind as an excuse.

That was the bad bit, the good bit was the man bicycling past as I crossed the crossing, he wished me good morning, and further said 'and a happy one to'.

Arrived back with the shopping, to see a rather bedraggled butterfly trapped between the curtain and the window. But Andrew rescued it and it flew away into the heat of the day.  It has just turned 9.0. clock I wonder what else the day holds.

This morning I though bloggers were like the sailing yachts you see skimming into harbour, sometimes racing other times sitting hold the ropes for the sail as they pull the boat around to catch the wind.

Exploring films and this one came up.  Anyone who knows the magical children's Green Knowe books, well this film is based on one of them.

11th August 2025 - films

L.S. Lowry - Going to Work

Two films I have recently watched.  Both from BFI and both so British it just oozed off the film.  What do I mean by this, perhaps 'clogs on cobbles' will give you a better explanation of the deep sense of atmosphere of old England.

The first featured Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave - Mrs. Lowry and her Son, 2019,  brilliant performance from the two actors.  I will presume you know Lowry's work of the working North.  His work always struck a note with me coming from the Black Country as I did.  I saw the people come tumbling through the gates at home time.  Some on bikes, others walking out of the big factories of the time.  A fast moving crowd eager to get home.  No fancy cars, except ours maybe, my stepmother with her red hair in the sports car as she waited for my father Maurice.  Who was the chief engineer of the factory at that moment in time. I suspect she was showing off but that is another story.

Mrs Lowry detested her son's work, burn the lot she told him and he so loved her  that he almost did it but luckily he continued with his matchstick figures conveying the starkness of working life.

London became interested in his work, and Mrs Lowry's friend's husband bought a painting and then she acknowledged his work but with that small minded attitude that hopefully was being left behind as we galloped towards the 60s.

The other film, again with a much younger Timothy Spall in it and this time Brenda Blethyn, the actress of course who plays 'Vera'.  This film was called 'Mysterious Creatures'  It was an independent film, original and rather stark in its story, which sadly was true.  Told the tale of a couple with a daughter that displayed Asperger illness.  It was made in 2006 when such things as Asperger and Autism was coming to the fore.

It was such a sad story, the girl miserably behaved towards her parents with her temper tantrums when she could not have her own way.  She drove them towards bankruptcy and suicide.  Suicide was achieved by the father but the mother after three tries goes on to accept her fate.  It seems from the Wiki though that both women went on to live separate lives.

Both films can be seen on You Tube.

The Lowry Trailer for a taster.  Can the North get any bleaker? ;)

Edit: And behind the song there was a another childhood song The Ally, Ally Song.

10th August 2025

 Well I am going to write about something very sad.  Apparently in Whitby last week four suicides may have  taken place within the week, though equally one of them could have been a cliff fall. They went over the cliffs, somehow it seems a strange occurrence but the police will investigate and for some background the Daily Mail and all its tat gives some idea of where the deaths took place.

Whitby is a strange place, holidaymakers flock to its hilly streets.  Fish and chip shops abound along with many restaurants and of course every other cottage is a holiday home.

Yet the town is overlaid with a scary story of Dracula and the black dog racing down the 199 steps from the abbey.  Goth weekends and also second WW2 weekends when everyone dresses up and parades around the town.

I have many photos of the place, it is where my daughter and family lived for awhile.  It is where I bought a small cottage for a time and wished that I had kept it......  So here are a few photos, I shall continue the theme of Whitby for a few more days.

Acanthus at Pannett Gallery

Back of the Pavilion

The Pavilion

Pannett Art Gallery

The funeral horses on a very windy day

They didn't pull  the carriage up the hill but arrived by horsebox!

The ruins of Whitby Abbey

From St. Mary's churchyard and haunt of Dracula looking over the town

A little cat who used to visit the cottage

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