What is so special about the human race? Put a dog anywhere in the world and he can communicate fluently with his own species; and other species too I shouldn't be surprised. Move me 25 miles across the channel and they are all talking gobbledy gook.
No other species kills fifteen million of its kind in a Holocaust, a million in Rwanda, two million in splitting its habitat in two as in India at Partition. Other species respect territories. They don't destroy the nests of strangers out of evil intent as we did in Guernica and Dresden. I have never felt more ashamed of my kind than I did touring Germany immediately after World War 2.
No other species has set out deliberately to destroy its neighbours as we did the American Indian, the Maori and the Australian aborigine. For two hundred years we have been trekking the wilder shores of the world teaching simple natives fraud on a massive scale, greed and sophisticated means of killing; and forcing on them a new dubious religion peopled with fairytale characters.
How much better if the jungle tribes had invaded and converted us.
I long for an invasion by the Munduruku, an indigenous group of about 7,000 people in the Brazilian Amazon whose language has no tenses, no plurals and no words for numbers beyond five. A Parisian explorer/scientist Pivare Pica who visited them admitted:
"When I come back from Amazonia, I find I have lost all sense of time and sense of number, and perhaps sense of space." He had spent so long with people who can barely count that he had lost the ability to describe the world in terms of numbers.
No one knows for certain, but numbers are probably no more than about 10,000 years old. They probably emerged as a tool for making sure you were not ripped off.
Pica easily slipped into a numberless existence. He slept in a hammock. He went hunting and ate tapir, armadillo and wild boar. He told the time from the position of the sun. If it rained, he stayed in; if it was sunny, he went out. There was never any need to count.
The Munduruku did not count a first child, a second, third, fourth and fifth, and then scratch the head because they could go no further. Why would a Munduruku adult want to count his children? They are looked after by all the adults in the community. No one counts who belongs to whom.
Evelyn Waugh was in favour of the neutron bomb which destroyed people but left the artefacts of their civilisations. Alas, I have always thought of civilisation as an oxymoron.
In his breathtaking TV series on the stars around us, Tele Don Professor Brian Cox explained that below the ice that covers Europa, Jupiter's moon, is an ocean a hundred miles deep which teems with the microbes that are our ultimate ancestors. The thought that they may be packing for the long journey to becoming us is Gothic in its horror.
A number of respectable religions share the Taoist belief that all sentient beings are part of one mind, whose life is never ending. Hermes, the Attic philosopher, said that God was a circle the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
When the Moravian missionaries sought to convert the Indians to their Grimms' Fairy Tale, the Indians told them: “We Indians shall not forever die. Even the grains of corn we put under the earth grow up and become living things.”
The Missionary added: “They conceive that when the soul has been alive with God it can, if it chooses, return to earth and be born again.”
That explains child prodigies like Mozart, which is comforting. Less comforting is the evidence that we never learn, no matter how many times we come back and slip into something corporeal. We may remember how to write music and poetry and paint pictures. But somewhere in the luggage is hate and greed and treachery.
EVEN OUR PETS ARE FAMOUS.................
The bloodhound Druid, and the cats Marmaduke and Scarper, in my wife's books are all based on our pets. The recurring heroine in the books was Miss Kip, a lurcher.
When she came to us we called her Miss Kip because that is all she ever did. If we had waited a week we would have called her Miss Slash because she was forever soaking carpets. As happens with pets, the void she left when she died was wider and deeper than the space she took up in life.
She was never much success as a lurcher. She was probably the only greyhound in Wales who was afraid of rabbits. When she was young she killed one by accident and I will never forget the look of shame and remorse she gave me.
She was good at looking at you with huge, luminous, speaking eyes. When she was a pup she was trapped by the tricky tide in the Menai Strait. As the water round her rose at lightning speed she sat calmly on a sand island and looked at me confidently across the swirling waters, waiting for me to remove them. By the time I got her back the water was up to my neck but the biggest risk of drowning was from the wet licks she gave me.
When she was young she walked as though suspended by invisible wire. Her feet barely touched the ground. When she was old and stiff she walked like John Wayne.
There is a poem by Melanie Elliot which describes her perfectly:
"Gracefully coursing the level ground,
"She stretches her limbs to the final bound.
"Effortless movement, perfection in speed,
"And elegant power are the greyhound's creed.
"She is Ariel's hound, a gift from the Gods."
This morning, remembering her, I have been reminded that what the gods give, they also take away.
NUFF SAID
I think it no coincidence that we now have TV talent contests for the job of prime minister with Nick Clegg in the John Sargent role. For weeks commentators have been pointing out how more readily the lumpen proletariat vote in talent contests than general elections. The “Britain's Got Talkers” slavishly followed its sires. Pastel walls, desk of the performer judge. We even have electronic vote counters and weekly winners. The three contestants have back up teams of coaches whose advice they follow slavishly. I have no doubt the election will be affected with Nick Clegg as a winsome Susan Boyle.
Had he moved before the volcano dust settled Brown could have won the election at a hand canter. One word would have done it:
DUNKIRK.
Didn't need armies of PR experts, complicated negotiations, dithering over weather conditions. But it wasn't until Sunday that cabinet members began to murmur about getting the navy involved. For me, this final proof that politicians do not care was the final straw.
I am tired of the sound of snake-oil salesmen yelping hysterically as they squabble over places in the trough. No more news bulletins, newsnights, and I will open my newspaper at page 7 to avoid the epilepsy of elections.
Fending off the door canvassers is not as easy. When I had Picton Hall there was a tradesmen's entrance and Mrs Higgs, the housekeeper, used to reroute canvassers. At Aberbraint the long drive and a couple of bloodhounds deterred. Now we have downsized we are open to assault. I think to pin to the front door Lady Raleigh's denunciation in a letter to Sir Robert Cecil who sought the head of her husband:
“Every month has its flower and every season his contentment, but you great counsellors are so full of new counsels as are steady in nothing.”
FOR THIS RELIEF MUCH THANKS
I am inbebted to Revel Barker for some saisfying therapy.
Cut, paste and click on the link below:
http://ow.ly/1vxjX
EARNEST, THE POLICEMEN (with apologies to Toytown)
Our policemen in the Fens are amiable on the whole and interfere as little as possible with the people around them, even those citizens who are crying out for interference. It is perhaps as well.
Armed policemen (a phrase which always chills me to the bone) surrounded a pensioner's bungalow here in March and ordered the occupants to come out with their hands up. The occupants came out with all the alacrity of which they were capable. They couldn't put their hands up. If they had taken them off their zimmer frames they would have fallen over.
A carer had reported that the very elderly man who lived in the bungalow with his wife had told the carer he had a gun. A response would have been to send a community policeman round to make a few enquiries. A pal of mine, Bob Talbot, disguised himself as a milkman and arrested the Moors Murderers on his own. But our brave boys in blue and body armour were not to be balked. In what sounds like a fit of pique, they have confiscated an air gun which the old man was legally entitled to own. Indeed with scrupulous fairness they admitted he could go out and buy another. But so far they have not given him his old gun back.
Friday, 23 April 2010
Saturday, 17 April 2010
A HEARSE,A HEARSE, MY KINGDOM FOR A HEARSE...................
My wife celebrated the Grand National by backing the first three fallers. The only cause for surprise is that her betting slip has not so far won a literary prize.
Everything else she writes seems to attract them like flies.
The Arts Council of Wales awarded her the Irma Chilton prize and four thousand crisp oncers for her contribution to children's literature. Her first book, Steel Town Cats, won the Tir na n-Og, the premier award for children's fiction in
Wales. For “The Terrible Tale of Tiggy Two” I fully expected her to get a Life Peerage in the Birthday Honours List.
If you think I am boasting, forget it. I am complaining. I have written eighteen books on topics ranging from Welsh history and outstanding Welshmen to Japanese prisoner of war camps. I have written comic novels, after which I was described as the heir to Tom Sharpe, historic novels, an "hilarious autobiography" - according to the Daily Post - topographical books, and I've edited an anthology of prose and poetry. Not even a Mention in Despatches.
I wouldn't care but it's so embarrassing at Census time when they send round that form and you have to list qualifications and awards. Hers kicks off with Master of Arts (Oxon), then lists her glittering prizes. Me? Certificate 'A', Part One, for proficiency in assembling a bren gun.
Would you like to go through life as a mock-Denis Thatcher?
Even he was better off. At least he had a famous name.
Celia writes under her maiden name, Lucas.
.........................
ENTITLED
No one has as many titles as my old chum Gwyn L Williams, Head Honcho of Olympic Cultural Events in Wales: Chief executive of Llangollen International Eisteddfod, a Lt Governor (Hon) of Oklahoma, choir conductor, visiting professor at seven universities, senior BBC Music producer, composer, Director of Theatr Harlech.
Gwyn L was Musical Director of the 150-voice, century-old Liverpool Welsh Choral Union. He also directed Cantorion Menai, a 40-voice chamber choir, and the Montgomeryshire Festival Chorus, an amalgam of four choirs. He was in addition guest conductor of the five choirs which amalgamate annually as the Dee and Clwyd Festival Chorus.
He has blown his own trumpet too. There was a time when he blew a mean horn with the London and Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras, the London and Festival Ballet orchestras and the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra.
Power mad?
“Oh no,” he told me when I once taxed him with it. “If you want a sense of power in music, blow a trumpet. You can bring an orchestra to its knees any time you like. You just play loud.
“The disadvantage is that a trumpet cannot have dialogues with other instruments. It is a primary colour, primeval even. A conductor can have these dialogues. By gesture and eye contact you suggest to your oboeist a particular way of doing things. Sometimes he will do exactly as you wanted, others he will start going off along a route of his own. It’s very difficult to explain because it all happens in a microcosm of time. You may think ‘Oh, that is good’ and allow him to travel. Or you bring him back because you control the orchestra and you don’t allow him space.
“Physically, conducting is very demanding. We rehearse for about ten weeks. Final rehearsal is about three hours, followed by a three-hour concert. The morning after I feel as though I have been run over by an elephant.”
And so many choirs?
“My job was to make ordinary people sing. It has taken me a long time to learn it and I am just beginning to get over being frightened. You know what you want but you wonder, until the concert begins, whether you can deliver.
“A conductor must know every single note in the score. You cannot stand in front of two hundred people without knowing more about the music than they do. For The Dream of Gerontius I took two weeks off. I spent six or seven hours a day reading the score.
“You don’t have to mouth the words when you read a book. In the same way you hear the music in your mind. It is communicating to me in the sounds that are coming off the page. It is also communicating spiritually.
“What I have to do in rehearsal is to listen to what I am getting in my head and try to change the physical presence of the music from the choir until it gets as close as humanly possible to my concept of it.
“In performance you use the bricks you have made in rehearsal and build a house with them. Nothing is perfect but sometimes you know you have got it right. You cannot will it to happen. Indeed, it has only happened to me half a dozen times in ten years. Suddenly you feel connected to the composer, to the musicians and to the audience. Everything you are suggesting to the players and the singers comes back and is funnelled through you to the audience.
“You cease to be an individual. Something takes you over. It happened when the Liverpool Welsh Choir, the Welsh Chamber Orchestra and Cantorion Menai did Faure’s Requiem y in Bangor Cathedral. Again in Porgy and Bess in Montgomery. It has happened in The Messiah with the Liverpool Welsh a couple of times.
“Music never leaves you alone. I have no life outside it. Music is what I am. My favourite piece of music? The one I am conducting at the time. You fall in love with a piece of music. It is like a relationship. It consumes you completely. You can be talking to somebody and it is like having music on in the background of your mind.
“Musical ambition? To get better at what I am doing. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than working at a single piece with a group of people for a couple of months, then putting it together on the day with another group of musicians who have come in specially, and delivering it. If I can do all that and make sure everyone has a happy day I have achieved my ambition.
“We are living in a musical golden age. British musicians have a worldwide reputation for their ability to read a piece and perform it straight away. Choral societies are the great enablers. They enable orchestras to exist. But I wonder what the future is.
“We have wonderful choirs and musicians because of the policy of the sixties and the seventies when peripatetic teachers taught music in schools. That system has been dismantled, so, give it another twenty years, and I don’t know where we will be.”
I will take short odds on one Olympic event. It is just a case of which Welsh choir it will be.
BLAIR-FACED
Sarah Palin's demands included: first or business-class travel, or a private jet no smaller than a Lear 60; two bottles of water at the lectern with bendable straws; and pre-screened questions.
There are plenty of people, apparently, willing to give in to Palin's demands: she's made at least $12 million since resigning as governor of Alaska. -- ABC News
Everything else she writes seems to attract them like flies.
The Arts Council of Wales awarded her the Irma Chilton prize and four thousand crisp oncers for her contribution to children's literature. Her first book, Steel Town Cats, won the Tir na n-Og, the premier award for children's fiction in
Wales. For “The Terrible Tale of Tiggy Two” I fully expected her to get a Life Peerage in the Birthday Honours List.
If you think I am boasting, forget it. I am complaining. I have written eighteen books on topics ranging from Welsh history and outstanding Welshmen to Japanese prisoner of war camps. I have written comic novels, after which I was described as the heir to Tom Sharpe, historic novels, an "hilarious autobiography" - according to the Daily Post - topographical books, and I've edited an anthology of prose and poetry. Not even a Mention in Despatches.
I wouldn't care but it's so embarrassing at Census time when they send round that form and you have to list qualifications and awards. Hers kicks off with Master of Arts (Oxon), then lists her glittering prizes. Me? Certificate 'A', Part One, for proficiency in assembling a bren gun.
Would you like to go through life as a mock-Denis Thatcher?
Even he was better off. At least he had a famous name.
Celia writes under her maiden name, Lucas.
.........................
ENTITLED
No one has as many titles as my old chum Gwyn L Williams, Head Honcho of Olympic Cultural Events in Wales: Chief executive of Llangollen International Eisteddfod, a Lt Governor (Hon) of Oklahoma, choir conductor, visiting professor at seven universities, senior BBC Music producer, composer, Director of Theatr Harlech.
Gwyn L was Musical Director of the 150-voice, century-old Liverpool Welsh Choral Union. He also directed Cantorion Menai, a 40-voice chamber choir, and the Montgomeryshire Festival Chorus, an amalgam of four choirs. He was in addition guest conductor of the five choirs which amalgamate annually as the Dee and Clwyd Festival Chorus.
He has blown his own trumpet too. There was a time when he blew a mean horn with the London and Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras, the London and Festival Ballet orchestras and the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra.
Power mad?
“Oh no,” he told me when I once taxed him with it. “If you want a sense of power in music, blow a trumpet. You can bring an orchestra to its knees any time you like. You just play loud.
“The disadvantage is that a trumpet cannot have dialogues with other instruments. It is a primary colour, primeval even. A conductor can have these dialogues. By gesture and eye contact you suggest to your oboeist a particular way of doing things. Sometimes he will do exactly as you wanted, others he will start going off along a route of his own. It’s very difficult to explain because it all happens in a microcosm of time. You may think ‘Oh, that is good’ and allow him to travel. Or you bring him back because you control the orchestra and you don’t allow him space.
“Physically, conducting is very demanding. We rehearse for about ten weeks. Final rehearsal is about three hours, followed by a three-hour concert. The morning after I feel as though I have been run over by an elephant.”
And so many choirs?
“My job was to make ordinary people sing. It has taken me a long time to learn it and I am just beginning to get over being frightened. You know what you want but you wonder, until the concert begins, whether you can deliver.
“A conductor must know every single note in the score. You cannot stand in front of two hundred people without knowing more about the music than they do. For The Dream of Gerontius I took two weeks off. I spent six or seven hours a day reading the score.
“You don’t have to mouth the words when you read a book. In the same way you hear the music in your mind. It is communicating to me in the sounds that are coming off the page. It is also communicating spiritually.
“What I have to do in rehearsal is to listen to what I am getting in my head and try to change the physical presence of the music from the choir until it gets as close as humanly possible to my concept of it.
“In performance you use the bricks you have made in rehearsal and build a house with them. Nothing is perfect but sometimes you know you have got it right. You cannot will it to happen. Indeed, it has only happened to me half a dozen times in ten years. Suddenly you feel connected to the composer, to the musicians and to the audience. Everything you are suggesting to the players and the singers comes back and is funnelled through you to the audience.
“You cease to be an individual. Something takes you over. It happened when the Liverpool Welsh Choir, the Welsh Chamber Orchestra and Cantorion Menai did Faure’s Requiem y in Bangor Cathedral. Again in Porgy and Bess in Montgomery. It has happened in The Messiah with the Liverpool Welsh a couple of times.
“Music never leaves you alone. I have no life outside it. Music is what I am. My favourite piece of music? The one I am conducting at the time. You fall in love with a piece of music. It is like a relationship. It consumes you completely. You can be talking to somebody and it is like having music on in the background of your mind.
“Musical ambition? To get better at what I am doing. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than working at a single piece with a group of people for a couple of months, then putting it together on the day with another group of musicians who have come in specially, and delivering it. If I can do all that and make sure everyone has a happy day I have achieved my ambition.
“We are living in a musical golden age. British musicians have a worldwide reputation for their ability to read a piece and perform it straight away. Choral societies are the great enablers. They enable orchestras to exist. But I wonder what the future is.
“We have wonderful choirs and musicians because of the policy of the sixties and the seventies when peripatetic teachers taught music in schools. That system has been dismantled, so, give it another twenty years, and I don’t know where we will be.”
I will take short odds on one Olympic event. It is just a case of which Welsh choir it will be.
BLAIR-FACED
Sarah Palin's demands included: first or business-class travel, or a private jet no smaller than a Lear 60; two bottles of water at the lectern with bendable straws; and pre-screened questions.
There are plenty of people, apparently, willing to give in to Palin's demands: she's made at least $12 million since resigning as governor of Alaska. -- ABC News
Saturday, 10 April 2010
NOT THAT OLD SWEET SONG.............
Whatever the American Songbook may say it is not Georgia I have on MY mind. It is Bethesda. What Mandalay was to Kipling, the rose red city Petra to the Rev John William Burgon, Xanadu to Coleridge, Samarkand to Flecker...
So to me is Bethesda, Gwynedd.
If I were a stranger on my way to Snowdon I doubt if I would get past the Brittania Inn on the far frontier of that magic town, where, long after decimalization, you paid for your beer in pounds, shilling and pence.
It was an inn whose landlord and lady produced one of the truly great child organ playing prodigies of our day. Where shopkeepers met weekly to discuss philosophy, under the chairmanship of a cobbler. The only cobbler I have ever come across, I may say, who had a classical bookshop in the rooms above his last.
A town with one main street and two secondhand bookshops is unusual, even in this land of scholars. Bethesda had two. The Morrises, who ran the other one, are probably the only antiquarian book dealers who also ran a top West End drinking club for gangsters. They were certainly the only council tax payers in Bethesda who retired there from a Mediterranean villa.
What other small town has had a scholar of international repute and an Oxbridge Emeritus professor of Celtic Studies (Idris Foster and Rachel Bromwich) living in the same terrace of houses?
Where else are all the pubs on the same side of the street because the man who owned the other side was a teetotaller?
Bethesda is not beautiful. It is the colour of slate, living proof of the notion that in Wales beauty is received through the ear and not the eye. A sad symphony in stucco, the Welsh teracotta. Yet it is the home of that great painter of mountains David Woodford, the only artist to sell more than a hundred paintings in an exhibition. One of the few men to scale the Snowdon peaks in a Robin Reliant.
Readers of a literary bent will recall that in David Copperfield there is a character Uncle Dick. Whatever he starts to write about he always ends up writing about the head of King Charles the Martyr.
My King Charles's head is Bethesda. It is another example of a national topography inspired by fundamental Christianity and its child, Christian Zionism. Many towns and villages are named from the Old Testament.
The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who is partly responsible for the mess the world is in today, was a fervent Zionist.
Journalist Christopher Sykes (son of Mark Sykes, co-author of the disastrous Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916), noted in his “Studies in Virtue” that Lloyd George’s political advisers were unable to train his mind on the map of Palestine during negotiations prior to the Treaty of Versailles. He was schooled by fundamentalist Christian parents in churches named by the geography of ancient Israel. Lloyd George admitted that he was far more familiar with the cities and regions of Biblical Israel than with the geography of his native Wales. His family's firm of solicitors had among their farmer clients the Christian Zionists.
Imperial designs were the primary political motivation in drawing influential British politicians to support the Zionist project. Yet they were predisposed to Zionism.
Balfour’s famous speech of 1919 makes the point: “For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country…The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
MY KINGDOM FOR A STAGE........................................................
I am puzzled that the newly formed National Theatre of Wales should complain it has no theatre building and produces a running repertory in miners' institutes. In North Wales alone in my day there were six civic theatres and I would have thought either the expensive theatre complex in Mold or the other one in Llandudno would have been perfect.
In Llandudno especially the auditorium acoustics are fine. You can see one of the biggest stages in Europe from every seat in the house. The décor, admittedly, is brutalist. Battleship grey with state of the art lighting, it so vividly resembles a warship one is irrestibly drawn on entering to salute the quarter deck. But that is fine too.The only thing wrong with it is the name. It should be called the David Sandbach Theatre.
It is over two decades since I stood in his shop amongst his delicious handmade sweets and shared David's dream of a theatre fit for the Welsh National Opera. He worked incessantly to make that dream come true. He conceived an Arts Festival which enjoyed great success. Writing to tell me about theatre weekends he and his wife had organised, he added a cheerful postcript that he was going into hospital but would see me at the first opera production. He saw the theatre, thank God. But I looked for him in vain at the first opera. I only learned from a review that he had died before that opera returned to the town. He never really recovered from a savage mugging outside his shop, a poor reward for his efforts for Llandudno.
It is even poorer reward that his name was not commemorated in the theatre. Happily, after I had campaigned noisily, a plaque appeared on the foyer wall.
After all, the opera house was really his.
UNREPORTED FACT
In a stark assessment of shootings of locals by US troops at checkpoints in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal said in little-noticed comments last month that during his time as commander there, "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."
The comments came during a "virtual town hall" with troops in Afghanistan after one asked McChrystal to comment on the "escalation of force" problem. The general responded that, in the nine months he had been in charge, none of the cases in which "we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it."
In many cases, he added, families were in the vehicles that were fired on.
Every two weeks, McChrystal participates in what he calls "a virtual town hall" meeting in which soldiers in Afghanistan submit questions that he answers over streaming audio.
HE IS SO SENSIBLE YOU WONDER HOW HE GOT THE JOB
“President Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.” …....New York Times
So to me is Bethesda, Gwynedd.
If I were a stranger on my way to Snowdon I doubt if I would get past the Brittania Inn on the far frontier of that magic town, where, long after decimalization, you paid for your beer in pounds, shilling and pence.
It was an inn whose landlord and lady produced one of the truly great child organ playing prodigies of our day. Where shopkeepers met weekly to discuss philosophy, under the chairmanship of a cobbler. The only cobbler I have ever come across, I may say, who had a classical bookshop in the rooms above his last.
A town with one main street and two secondhand bookshops is unusual, even in this land of scholars. Bethesda had two. The Morrises, who ran the other one, are probably the only antiquarian book dealers who also ran a top West End drinking club for gangsters. They were certainly the only council tax payers in Bethesda who retired there from a Mediterranean villa.
What other small town has had a scholar of international repute and an Oxbridge Emeritus professor of Celtic Studies (Idris Foster and Rachel Bromwich) living in the same terrace of houses?
Where else are all the pubs on the same side of the street because the man who owned the other side was a teetotaller?
Bethesda is not beautiful. It is the colour of slate, living proof of the notion that in Wales beauty is received through the ear and not the eye. A sad symphony in stucco, the Welsh teracotta. Yet it is the home of that great painter of mountains David Woodford, the only artist to sell more than a hundred paintings in an exhibition. One of the few men to scale the Snowdon peaks in a Robin Reliant.
Readers of a literary bent will recall that in David Copperfield there is a character Uncle Dick. Whatever he starts to write about he always ends up writing about the head of King Charles the Martyr.
My King Charles's head is Bethesda. It is another example of a national topography inspired by fundamental Christianity and its child, Christian Zionism. Many towns and villages are named from the Old Testament.
The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who is partly responsible for the mess the world is in today, was a fervent Zionist.
Journalist Christopher Sykes (son of Mark Sykes, co-author of the disastrous Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916), noted in his “Studies in Virtue” that Lloyd George’s political advisers were unable to train his mind on the map of Palestine during negotiations prior to the Treaty of Versailles. He was schooled by fundamentalist Christian parents in churches named by the geography of ancient Israel. Lloyd George admitted that he was far more familiar with the cities and regions of Biblical Israel than with the geography of his native Wales. His family's firm of solicitors had among their farmer clients the Christian Zionists.
Imperial designs were the primary political motivation in drawing influential British politicians to support the Zionist project. Yet they were predisposed to Zionism.
Balfour’s famous speech of 1919 makes the point: “For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country…The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
MY KINGDOM FOR A STAGE........................................................
I am puzzled that the newly formed National Theatre of Wales should complain it has no theatre building and produces a running repertory in miners' institutes. In North Wales alone in my day there were six civic theatres and I would have thought either the expensive theatre complex in Mold or the other one in Llandudno would have been perfect.
In Llandudno especially the auditorium acoustics are fine. You can see one of the biggest stages in Europe from every seat in the house. The décor, admittedly, is brutalist. Battleship grey with state of the art lighting, it so vividly resembles a warship one is irrestibly drawn on entering to salute the quarter deck. But that is fine too.The only thing wrong with it is the name. It should be called the David Sandbach Theatre.
It is over two decades since I stood in his shop amongst his delicious handmade sweets and shared David's dream of a theatre fit for the Welsh National Opera. He worked incessantly to make that dream come true. He conceived an Arts Festival which enjoyed great success. Writing to tell me about theatre weekends he and his wife had organised, he added a cheerful postcript that he was going into hospital but would see me at the first opera production. He saw the theatre, thank God. But I looked for him in vain at the first opera. I only learned from a review that he had died before that opera returned to the town. He never really recovered from a savage mugging outside his shop, a poor reward for his efforts for Llandudno.
It is even poorer reward that his name was not commemorated in the theatre. Happily, after I had campaigned noisily, a plaque appeared on the foyer wall.
After all, the opera house was really his.
UNREPORTED FACT
In a stark assessment of shootings of locals by US troops at checkpoints in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal said in little-noticed comments last month that during his time as commander there, "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."
The comments came during a "virtual town hall" with troops in Afghanistan after one asked McChrystal to comment on the "escalation of force" problem. The general responded that, in the nine months he had been in charge, none of the cases in which "we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it."
In many cases, he added, families were in the vehicles that were fired on.
Every two weeks, McChrystal participates in what he calls "a virtual town hall" meeting in which soldiers in Afghanistan submit questions that he answers over streaming audio.
HE IS SO SENSIBLE YOU WONDER HOW HE GOT THE JOB
“President Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.” …....New York Times
Friday, 2 April 2010
ODE TO THE decline and FALLEN
Henceforth The Sunday Times will be known is this kigdom of the blog as “The Decline and
Fall”. Anyone who doubts that Britain is a busted flush finds support in its pages. “Generals forced to Travel Second Class”, “The Most Corrupt Parliament in History”, “The Special Relationship is Over”, “More MPs For Hire”, “Schools and NHS Savage Cuts”. The only obvious good news is that John Prescott has been overruled and Pauline is to be made a Lady.
In that at least The Decline and Fall is in error. Nature made Pauline a Lady: the Crown is merely about to confirm her status. Mrs Prescott was a hairdresser at Quaintways when I was freelancing in Chester. Alas, I did not know her. Looking back, it is fascinating to recall exactly how ladylike the Quaintways girls were. And how glamorous.
I have a lot of time for Prescott who has achieved much from that start in steerage. He is very bright and a bruiser. However, I would keep him off TV. I believe he won the last election by thumping the Rhyl egg thrower but has helped in the loss of this one by his “Giovanni moments”, recurring attempts to shout down and interrupt his opponents in Newsnight debates. In fairness, the way politicians speak and shout over each other on radio and TV, breaking the first law of radio, shows them for the shoddy lot they are. Prescott's “hatred” of the Lords is a pose. Remember the documentary where he lunched with a foul-mouthed lord, with obvious delight? And indeed behaved better than his host.
Like Gibbon before it, our Decline and Fall is given to sensationalism. For example, generals are NOT being forced. Their expenses demand that they be conveyed from A to B by the most economical means. There is nothing to stop them paying the difference for comfort and privacy.That goes for MPs who can equally afford it. Rank should not demand privilege.
“The Most Corrupt Parliament” can only have been written by a sub-editor with no knowledge of history. Parliament has always been corrupt from at least the days of the venal Walpole. Nor can the sub-editor who wrote about the special relationship have any knowledge of politics. There has never been a special relationship. True, we fought on the same side in the war but hardly as allies. At their conferences both Truman and Roosevelt favoured Stalin above Churchill. The “special relationship” was based on the fact that Churchill was half American. His American mother was an even bigger tart than his daughter-in-law who flitted from Senatorial beds like a sex-mad moth. With such mothers is history conceived - and I use the word advisedly. I knew a doctor on Anglesey who fathered a number of aristocratic cuckoos.
The truth is that America was an empire in waiting and could only come to power over the corpse of the British Empire. Nothing shameful. That is how we did it with the Mugul and many other smaller empires. Empire building is a deadly game for dishonourable gain. Why else did Truman insist on immediate reparation of war debts which is where our present bankruptcy began?
The cuts in building new hospitals? We do not need new hospitals. There are closed wards in existing buildings and a chain of well maintained and woefully under-used cottage hospitals the length and breadth of the kingdom. The NHS bureaucracy is vastly overmanned.
We don't desperately need new schools either. We need teachers who can teach, to replace the many incompetents who are turning out feral ignoramuses. A gang in school blazers stabbing a boy on a tube station? In my day school teachers controlled classes, which were all above forty pupils in number.
Great Britain never was. It was just a better place to live in. Not a place where a grandmother would be fined £1,000, tagged and placed on curfew for selling a goldfish to boy under the age of 16 (a sting engineered by Trading Standards snoopers). In the same week, a convicted rapist who threw his victim on a rubbish dump had his deportation revoked bcause he married.
We should surrender our top seat in the UN to China, where, according to the NYT, “The Hongzhou company, at Hainan in the South China Sea, with its gleaming Times Coast condominium development by the marina, is in the vanguard of Hainan’s transformation. The yacht club already boasts more than 80 members who have each paid $92,000 for the privilege of parking their boats here for 23 years.
“'In China, Sanya will be the leader in luxury leisure,' Wang Dafu, the owner of Hongzhou, said one afternoon while cruising the bay in his 72-foot Pershing yacht.
“He puffed on a Cohiba cigar. 'The reason you earn money,' he said, 'is to spend it.'
“On the west side of the yacht marina, there is a neighborhood where more than 1,000 fishermen and family members live in cramped alleyways.
“The families have lived here for generations, but local officials and the real estate company that owns the yacht club, Hongzhou Group, are trying to persuade them to move off the land. Four women sitting outside one home said the Hongzhou Group was offering less than $20 a square foot as compensation.”...The joys of Communism.
And what of the Land of the Free?
On Wednesday these were the headlines in Tina Brown's net newspaper “The Daily Beast”:
Bill Clinton's $20 Million Breakup
by Kim Masters
A money feud has busted up first friends Bill Clinton and Ron Burkle,
sources tell The Daily Beast. Kim Masters on the alleged $20 million
"stiffing" the tycoon gave the ex-president.
The GOP's Dirty Sexy Money
by Conor Friedersdorf
Wooing donors at a strip club: It's just the latest Republican National
Committee scandal that could cost Michael Steele his job.
Stepping Out in Stripper Shoes
by Rebecca Dana
$1,600 for shoes that make you look like a high-class tramp? From Lucite
platforms to S&M detailing, this season's crop of must-have heels are
fit for a lady of the night.
FRIGHTENING
14-Year-Old Charged in D.C. Shooting
A 14-year-old has been charged with killing four people and wounding
five in what was the worst shooting in Washington, D.C. in 16 years.He drove a minivan towards a crowd and opened fire. The police then gave chase. The group had just returned from the funeral of a recent shooting victim. Among the victims were six men and three women.
IN FULL CRY FOR MY HOUNDS
I won't bore you with the tale of the death threat I received in my own drawing room; how an armed terrorist followed me down the hall; how I warned him that Druid, my bloodhound, was asleep behind a door and how my putative assassin asked anxiously, "It won't bite me, will it?"
Bite? Druid didn't even wake as we stepped over him.
In his defence, dogs are good at sleeping. My wife has a long dog which has two speeds. Fast and Fast Asleep. I minded him last weekend. No problem. He only moves to change beds, to eat and to relieve himself.
I should say that Druid was deaf, blind in one eye and had an indifferent sense of smell. In consequence, it was important when you took him for a walk to keep very close to his good eye and his single active nostril. Otherwise you ceased to exist for him and he thought he had been abandoned on a deserted planet. This led him to sit down and howl so piteously that I was twice reported to the RSPCA by passers-by.
Nevertheless, bloodhounds are an addiction with me. At my happiest I was mainlining on two.
Minnie and Amy were the only bloodhounds in Gwynedd. They joined me when they were five months old and tipping the scales at five stone. Imagine Dame Edith Evans with a tail and a face apparently carved out of Mount Rushmore.Thick with it. In an intelligence test of 76 breeds, bloodhounds came seventy-fifth because, where other dogs have brains, bloodhounds have hearts.
I prefer it that way because I thrive on being loved immoderately. But life with bloodhounds is not easy. It took two days to explain to them the relationship between the mouth and the vitamin pill.
"Sit" was easy because mostly they are doing that anyway. "Stay"? No problem. It is "Move" they have trouble with. Or did until the day I took them to the gate at the bottom of the drive to get them accustomed to traffic. Picture us, an uncertain menage a trois at each end of a T shaped lead. At either tip of the crosspiece a bloodhound, Fonteyning briskly. At the far end of the downstroke what is laughingly called the handler.
When we reached the gate they sat instantly, having exhausted themselves on the 400-yard journey from the house doing spirited Pas de Bras to the admiration of passing motorists unused to hounds who do Scottish Country dancing. I reckon if it had not been for the JCB we would have been home and dry.
What happened when this motorised pterodactyl roared by was a choreographed knitting pattern. I would never have believed there was room between my legs for two five stone bloodhounds to pass each other - and going in opposite directions at that.
The hounds didn't believe it either, which, I suppose, explains why they repeated the move several times until I was flat on my back, in fetching leather puttees cunningly fashioned from a T-shaped dog lead, with a far from hushed puppy on either foot.
A HERO WRITES.............................
From Gordon Chesters, purveyor of the funniest emails, this, his first serious call:
Hi All,
I've received the following message from Bronco Lane about a cycle ride/climbing challenge in which he's participating to raise money for the Help 4 Heroes fund. For those of you who don't know Bronco, he's a retired SAS man who reached the summit of Everest with the Army's first expedition back in 1976, losing all his toes and half his fingers through frost-bite for his trouble. He went on to complete a very active SAS career and took part in several further climbing and polar ventures. I'm also quite proud to say he is a country member of the Grumpy Old Gits of the Northumbrian Piper.
Cheers, Gordon.
Greetings Everyone!
I've been asked by Archie Scott an ex-SAS colleague and climbing friend to act as 'goffer' whilst he and another mate, Charlie Cook, cycle UK's End to End. On-route we will all ascend Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis. Our time frame is 30th July to 10 August.
I'm the van driver, spare hand and will act as reserve rider should either Archie or Charlie be injured or become ill.
It's all in aid of the UK charity "Help 4 Heroes" and I have opened a page at www.bmycharity.com/BroncoLane for anyone who can afford to donate towards our target of raising £5000.
Best wishes,
Bronco
Fall”. Anyone who doubts that Britain is a busted flush finds support in its pages. “Generals forced to Travel Second Class”, “The Most Corrupt Parliament in History”, “The Special Relationship is Over”, “More MPs For Hire”, “Schools and NHS Savage Cuts”. The only obvious good news is that John Prescott has been overruled and Pauline is to be made a Lady.
In that at least The Decline and Fall is in error. Nature made Pauline a Lady: the Crown is merely about to confirm her status. Mrs Prescott was a hairdresser at Quaintways when I was freelancing in Chester. Alas, I did not know her. Looking back, it is fascinating to recall exactly how ladylike the Quaintways girls were. And how glamorous.
I have a lot of time for Prescott who has achieved much from that start in steerage. He is very bright and a bruiser. However, I would keep him off TV. I believe he won the last election by thumping the Rhyl egg thrower but has helped in the loss of this one by his “Giovanni moments”, recurring attempts to shout down and interrupt his opponents in Newsnight debates. In fairness, the way politicians speak and shout over each other on radio and TV, breaking the first law of radio, shows them for the shoddy lot they are. Prescott's “hatred” of the Lords is a pose. Remember the documentary where he lunched with a foul-mouthed lord, with obvious delight? And indeed behaved better than his host.
Like Gibbon before it, our Decline and Fall is given to sensationalism. For example, generals are NOT being forced. Their expenses demand that they be conveyed from A to B by the most economical means. There is nothing to stop them paying the difference for comfort and privacy.That goes for MPs who can equally afford it. Rank should not demand privilege.
“The Most Corrupt Parliament” can only have been written by a sub-editor with no knowledge of history. Parliament has always been corrupt from at least the days of the venal Walpole. Nor can the sub-editor who wrote about the special relationship have any knowledge of politics. There has never been a special relationship. True, we fought on the same side in the war but hardly as allies. At their conferences both Truman and Roosevelt favoured Stalin above Churchill. The “special relationship” was based on the fact that Churchill was half American. His American mother was an even bigger tart than his daughter-in-law who flitted from Senatorial beds like a sex-mad moth. With such mothers is history conceived - and I use the word advisedly. I knew a doctor on Anglesey who fathered a number of aristocratic cuckoos.
The truth is that America was an empire in waiting and could only come to power over the corpse of the British Empire. Nothing shameful. That is how we did it with the Mugul and many other smaller empires. Empire building is a deadly game for dishonourable gain. Why else did Truman insist on immediate reparation of war debts which is where our present bankruptcy began?
The cuts in building new hospitals? We do not need new hospitals. There are closed wards in existing buildings and a chain of well maintained and woefully under-used cottage hospitals the length and breadth of the kingdom. The NHS bureaucracy is vastly overmanned.
We don't desperately need new schools either. We need teachers who can teach, to replace the many incompetents who are turning out feral ignoramuses. A gang in school blazers stabbing a boy on a tube station? In my day school teachers controlled classes, which were all above forty pupils in number.
Great Britain never was. It was just a better place to live in. Not a place where a grandmother would be fined £1,000, tagged and placed on curfew for selling a goldfish to boy under the age of 16 (a sting engineered by Trading Standards snoopers). In the same week, a convicted rapist who threw his victim on a rubbish dump had his deportation revoked bcause he married.
We should surrender our top seat in the UN to China, where, according to the NYT, “The Hongzhou company, at Hainan in the South China Sea, with its gleaming Times Coast condominium development by the marina, is in the vanguard of Hainan’s transformation. The yacht club already boasts more than 80 members who have each paid $92,000 for the privilege of parking their boats here for 23 years.
“'In China, Sanya will be the leader in luxury leisure,' Wang Dafu, the owner of Hongzhou, said one afternoon while cruising the bay in his 72-foot Pershing yacht.
“He puffed on a Cohiba cigar. 'The reason you earn money,' he said, 'is to spend it.'
“On the west side of the yacht marina, there is a neighborhood where more than 1,000 fishermen and family members live in cramped alleyways.
“The families have lived here for generations, but local officials and the real estate company that owns the yacht club, Hongzhou Group, are trying to persuade them to move off the land. Four women sitting outside one home said the Hongzhou Group was offering less than $20 a square foot as compensation.”...The joys of Communism.
And what of the Land of the Free?
On Wednesday these were the headlines in Tina Brown's net newspaper “The Daily Beast”:
Bill Clinton's $20 Million Breakup
by Kim Masters
A money feud has busted up first friends Bill Clinton and Ron Burkle,
sources tell The Daily Beast. Kim Masters on the alleged $20 million
"stiffing" the tycoon gave the ex-president.
The GOP's Dirty Sexy Money
by Conor Friedersdorf
Wooing donors at a strip club: It's just the latest Republican National
Committee scandal that could cost Michael Steele his job.
Stepping Out in Stripper Shoes
by Rebecca Dana
$1,600 for shoes that make you look like a high-class tramp? From Lucite
platforms to S&M detailing, this season's crop of must-have heels are
fit for a lady of the night.
FRIGHTENING
14-Year-Old Charged in D.C. Shooting
A 14-year-old has been charged with killing four people and wounding
five in what was the worst shooting in Washington, D.C. in 16 years.He drove a minivan towards a crowd and opened fire. The police then gave chase. The group had just returned from the funeral of a recent shooting victim. Among the victims were six men and three women.
IN FULL CRY FOR MY HOUNDS
I won't bore you with the tale of the death threat I received in my own drawing room; how an armed terrorist followed me down the hall; how I warned him that Druid, my bloodhound, was asleep behind a door and how my putative assassin asked anxiously, "It won't bite me, will it?"
Bite? Druid didn't even wake as we stepped over him.
In his defence, dogs are good at sleeping. My wife has a long dog which has two speeds. Fast and Fast Asleep. I minded him last weekend. No problem. He only moves to change beds, to eat and to relieve himself.
I should say that Druid was deaf, blind in one eye and had an indifferent sense of smell. In consequence, it was important when you took him for a walk to keep very close to his good eye and his single active nostril. Otherwise you ceased to exist for him and he thought he had been abandoned on a deserted planet. This led him to sit down and howl so piteously that I was twice reported to the RSPCA by passers-by.
Nevertheless, bloodhounds are an addiction with me. At my happiest I was mainlining on two.
Minnie and Amy were the only bloodhounds in Gwynedd. They joined me when they were five months old and tipping the scales at five stone. Imagine Dame Edith Evans with a tail and a face apparently carved out of Mount Rushmore.Thick with it. In an intelligence test of 76 breeds, bloodhounds came seventy-fifth because, where other dogs have brains, bloodhounds have hearts.
I prefer it that way because I thrive on being loved immoderately. But life with bloodhounds is not easy. It took two days to explain to them the relationship between the mouth and the vitamin pill.
"Sit" was easy because mostly they are doing that anyway. "Stay"? No problem. It is "Move" they have trouble with. Or did until the day I took them to the gate at the bottom of the drive to get them accustomed to traffic. Picture us, an uncertain menage a trois at each end of a T shaped lead. At either tip of the crosspiece a bloodhound, Fonteyning briskly. At the far end of the downstroke what is laughingly called the handler.
When we reached the gate they sat instantly, having exhausted themselves on the 400-yard journey from the house doing spirited Pas de Bras to the admiration of passing motorists unused to hounds who do Scottish Country dancing. I reckon if it had not been for the JCB we would have been home and dry.
What happened when this motorised pterodactyl roared by was a choreographed knitting pattern. I would never have believed there was room between my legs for two five stone bloodhounds to pass each other - and going in opposite directions at that.
The hounds didn't believe it either, which, I suppose, explains why they repeated the move several times until I was flat on my back, in fetching leather puttees cunningly fashioned from a T-shaped dog lead, with a far from hushed puppy on either foot.
A HERO WRITES.............................
From Gordon Chesters, purveyor of the funniest emails, this, his first serious call:
Hi All,
I've received the following message from Bronco Lane about a cycle ride/climbing challenge in which he's participating to raise money for the Help 4 Heroes fund. For those of you who don't know Bronco, he's a retired SAS man who reached the summit of Everest with the Army's first expedition back in 1976, losing all his toes and half his fingers through frost-bite for his trouble. He went on to complete a very active SAS career and took part in several further climbing and polar ventures. I'm also quite proud to say he is a country member of the Grumpy Old Gits of the Northumbrian Piper.
Cheers, Gordon.
Greetings Everyone!
I've been asked by Archie Scott an ex-SAS colleague and climbing friend to act as 'goffer' whilst he and another mate, Charlie Cook, cycle UK's End to End. On-route we will all ascend Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis. Our time frame is 30th July to 10 August.
I'm the van driver, spare hand and will act as reserve rider should either Archie or Charlie be injured or become ill.
It's all in aid of the UK charity "Help 4 Heroes" and I have opened a page at www.bmycharity.com/BroncoLane for anyone who can afford to donate towards our target of raising £5000.
Best wishes,
Bronco
Saturday, 27 March 2010
The Glorious Secret
People thought it odd that Norman Barnes, a 90-year-old ex-teacher and a brilliant painter, had never exhibited his work. Mr Barnes, in his remote cottage in the mountains above Betws-y-Coed, North Wales, surrounded by those of his 20,000 stunning paintings he had not given away, thought the oddity was thinking it odd.
“I paint for pleasure,” he explained to me with diffident courtesy. “I have never felt it necessary to exhibit. I am a quietist and I was very happy working on my own.”
Thanks to two formidable women, he was persuaded at last to have an exhibition at a tiny gallery on Anglesey. But he wasn't happy about it. He told me at the time: “I am not sure I am doing the right thing.”
His wife Kay, another teacher who would have walked away with the role of Miss Chips if anyone wrote it, was quite sure he was. I remember her telling me: “I want his work to be recognised. I think it absurd it should not be. He is a marvellous painter. He is not so pleased because he is a very retiring man.”
Mr Barnes would have continued his retiring if a remarkable lady called Joan Smith of Llangaffo, Anglesey, had not gone to his cottage to repair a grandfather clock. She should have been more famous in her own right. When they were buildng the 50-mile motorway which now links Chester with Holyhead, they ran into a snag. There is only a narow strip of land between the sea and the mountains in North Wales. The new motorway had to share the limited space at the crossing of the river Conwy with two earlier bridges, both listed architectural gems. The townspeople of Conwy to a man blocked the notion of a third. There was deadlock. Then Miss Smith wrote to the North Wales Weeekly News.
“Why not build a tunnel under the river?” she asked.
Unbelievably, the engineers had not thought of that. I always think it churlish that they did not name the fine tunnel they built after Miss Smith of Llangaffo on Anglesey.
She deserved even greater recognition for her discovery of Mr Barnes's genius. She said afterwards: “I couldn’t believe my eyes.The walls were covered with the most marvellous paintings which had never been seen by outsiders. I thought, this is nonsense, and I took an armful round the galleries. I heard a couple of young artists had opened a small gallery. They took one look and booked an exhibition on the spot.”
The young couple were Marc Heaton and Madeleine O’Brien.
Mark said: “We couldnt believe it when Miss Smith brought the paintings in. It is inconceivable that Mr Barnes has been turning out such accomplished paintings for so long and remained unknown.”
Madeleine said: “He clearly hasn’t been influenced by anyone. The quickness and the quality of the line, the freshness of his vision are simply staggering. He captures a moment and through it shows his enjoyment of the landscape.”
Veteran artist David Chambers, then exhibiting in Theatr Gwynedd, Bangor, was in the gallery when Miss Smith brought the paintingns in. “They moved me to tears,” he confessed. “I think he is a fine draughtsman. His cats rival Tunnicliffe's. Unbelievablethat a chap who has painted about 20,000 pictures should remain unrecognised.”
Until 1969 when he retired to a mountain cottage in North Wales with his wife Kay, Mr Barnes was a senior lecturer in Modern Languages at Salford Royal Technical College. Because of his teaching commitments, he could only attend Salford Art School at nights. When he was a child, money was short in his family and an art career seemed perilous. So he became a teacher. During the war he served with the Intelligence Corps all over Europe, painting all the time. He became a code breaker at Bletchley Park.
Mr Barnes served a term of evening classes at the Manchester College of Art but he wasn’t impressed by the teacher so he gave them up and learned from books, from copying the great painters and from nature.
Not even a stroke at the age of eighty fazed him. The stroke paralysed the left side of his body. Happily there were windows on three sides of his studio l, each one framing ever changing mountain views. So he just moved round the room, painting the view outside. Alas, he died four years after our meeting. But I have always remembered his house where happiness was so palpable, its inhabitants so obviously devoted and their conversation so stimulating.
We talked about the bad behaviour of pupils - in the 1920s, would you believe? About the reason there are no shadows in Renaissance paintings, why Bletchley Park, the centre of our intelligence war, had no Air Raid wardens and how a film about Mr Barnes's colleague Alan Turing, who invented the computer, was wrong because it showed windows protected against bomb blast.
A BEAUTIFUL PEA GREEN ….......PUMPKIN?
I spend a lot of time remembering those happy days in North Wales, a place populated by the most remarkable people. There used to be a column in the Reader's Digest, “The Most Remarkable People I Have Met”. I could have filled it every month.
A paragraph in the Sunday Times sent me spinning down the years. It was about my neighbour in Llanfairpwyllgwyngyll, Medwyn Williams, who was then a group engineer in Gwynedd County Council's Maintenance Department. Med is famous now for his giant vegetables - six foot parsnips, would you believe, he grew at the back of his bungalow ? He has won every conceivable prize and is chairman of the National Vegetable Society.
He is still growing giant veg. At the moment it is a 1,600lb pumpkin. When it is fully grown he will fit it with a seat and an outboard motor and - at the age of 67 - sail it to the Isle of Man. He is doing it to raise money for the Help the Heroes charity. He has already qualified for the Owl and the Pussy Cat Club because he has done test runs with smaller pumpkins.
“I am totally confident this can be done. We shall call her HMV (Her Majesty's vegetable) Cinderella.”
There has always been a fairytale quality to Med's life. My wife interviewed him when he was heading a £100,000 campaign against Japanese Knotweed, a weed whose accelerated growth rivals the beanstalk.
He told her: “It will grow through tarmacadam and it has taken over roadside verges and railway embankments, parks, gardens and farmlands. It coud rip up highways, destroy footpaths. Even bring apartment blocks crashing to the ground.”
Goodness knows what the Brothers Grimm would have made of it.
THE DRIVER'S TALE
This frail bark of blog sails in many seas. Its readers include editors, columnists, teachers, publishers, special service toughs, even a small clutch of multi-millionaires. It goes to Trinidad. To the States and to Australia - and Pentrefoelas. I am especially pleased about that. I wrote recently about Alan Hughes, a driving instructor who has opened the secrets of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Alan reads the blog and has sent me a book he has just published.
It is called “Chaucer's Signs and Circumstances”, and as well as being a fascinating piece of literary detection, it is very impressive scholarship, though Alan confesses it is meeting academic opposition.
“Many of the academic comments have been hostile to my way of reading Chaucer's work: eg., 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread'; 'How come a driving instructor from Pentrefoelas when the best minds of Oxford and Cambridge have failed to find any allegories?' Ann Dobyns, writing in the Medieval Review considers that my work 'represents the kind of over-arguing often found in undergraduate papers'.
He refuses to be put off
“I have now gathered enough material to put together three books: the one posted to you, one on Chaucer's remaining larger works and his lyrics; another on the allegories detected in works written around that time. For example, I understand the complex allegory of the Testament of Love and, without any doubt, I can prove that William Thynne was correct in presenting it to King Henry VIII as being Chaucer's work.
I believe that this same crowd will never accept my allegorical theories.”
I know how he feels. Like most people who are self taught Iwas no stranger to bitter critics so I put together a Writer's Mantra
Our friends the reviewers
Those chippers and hewers
Are judges of mortal stone,sir
But of meet and unmeet
In a fabric complete
I''ll boldly proclaim they are none,sir
Cannot remember who said that but it was the 18th century Angelesy antiquarian Rev Henry Rowlands who wrote;
“Criticism is an undefined thing under no settled rule, often governed by prejudice and passion,humour or fancy which makes it very frequently that what is agreeable to one is displeasing to another. To please all is impossible, to have faults is unavoidable”
Plini the Second wrote “ Every man's witty labour takes not-except the matter,subject, occasion and some commending favourite happen to it”
Judge for yourself. The book is available from Aslan at £9.95 plus postage from Alania, Tan y Gaer, Pentrefoelas, LL24 OLE (emaill ohughes@tiscali.co.uk
“I paint for pleasure,” he explained to me with diffident courtesy. “I have never felt it necessary to exhibit. I am a quietist and I was very happy working on my own.”
Thanks to two formidable women, he was persuaded at last to have an exhibition at a tiny gallery on Anglesey. But he wasn't happy about it. He told me at the time: “I am not sure I am doing the right thing.”
His wife Kay, another teacher who would have walked away with the role of Miss Chips if anyone wrote it, was quite sure he was. I remember her telling me: “I want his work to be recognised. I think it absurd it should not be. He is a marvellous painter. He is not so pleased because he is a very retiring man.”
Mr Barnes would have continued his retiring if a remarkable lady called Joan Smith of Llangaffo, Anglesey, had not gone to his cottage to repair a grandfather clock. She should have been more famous in her own right. When they were buildng the 50-mile motorway which now links Chester with Holyhead, they ran into a snag. There is only a narow strip of land between the sea and the mountains in North Wales. The new motorway had to share the limited space at the crossing of the river Conwy with two earlier bridges, both listed architectural gems. The townspeople of Conwy to a man blocked the notion of a third. There was deadlock. Then Miss Smith wrote to the North Wales Weeekly News.
“Why not build a tunnel under the river?” she asked.
Unbelievably, the engineers had not thought of that. I always think it churlish that they did not name the fine tunnel they built after Miss Smith of Llangaffo on Anglesey.
She deserved even greater recognition for her discovery of Mr Barnes's genius. She said afterwards: “I couldn’t believe my eyes.The walls were covered with the most marvellous paintings which had never been seen by outsiders. I thought, this is nonsense, and I took an armful round the galleries. I heard a couple of young artists had opened a small gallery. They took one look and booked an exhibition on the spot.”
The young couple were Marc Heaton and Madeleine O’Brien.
Mark said: “We couldnt believe it when Miss Smith brought the paintings in. It is inconceivable that Mr Barnes has been turning out such accomplished paintings for so long and remained unknown.”
Madeleine said: “He clearly hasn’t been influenced by anyone. The quickness and the quality of the line, the freshness of his vision are simply staggering. He captures a moment and through it shows his enjoyment of the landscape.”
Veteran artist David Chambers, then exhibiting in Theatr Gwynedd, Bangor, was in the gallery when Miss Smith brought the paintingns in. “They moved me to tears,” he confessed. “I think he is a fine draughtsman. His cats rival Tunnicliffe's. Unbelievablethat a chap who has painted about 20,000 pictures should remain unrecognised.”
Until 1969 when he retired to a mountain cottage in North Wales with his wife Kay, Mr Barnes was a senior lecturer in Modern Languages at Salford Royal Technical College. Because of his teaching commitments, he could only attend Salford Art School at nights. When he was a child, money was short in his family and an art career seemed perilous. So he became a teacher. During the war he served with the Intelligence Corps all over Europe, painting all the time. He became a code breaker at Bletchley Park.
Mr Barnes served a term of evening classes at the Manchester College of Art but he wasn’t impressed by the teacher so he gave them up and learned from books, from copying the great painters and from nature.
Not even a stroke at the age of eighty fazed him. The stroke paralysed the left side of his body. Happily there were windows on three sides of his studio l, each one framing ever changing mountain views. So he just moved round the room, painting the view outside. Alas, he died four years after our meeting. But I have always remembered his house where happiness was so palpable, its inhabitants so obviously devoted and their conversation so stimulating.
We talked about the bad behaviour of pupils - in the 1920s, would you believe? About the reason there are no shadows in Renaissance paintings, why Bletchley Park, the centre of our intelligence war, had no Air Raid wardens and how a film about Mr Barnes's colleague Alan Turing, who invented the computer, was wrong because it showed windows protected against bomb blast.
A BEAUTIFUL PEA GREEN ….......PUMPKIN?
I spend a lot of time remembering those happy days in North Wales, a place populated by the most remarkable people. There used to be a column in the Reader's Digest, “The Most Remarkable People I Have Met”. I could have filled it every month.
A paragraph in the Sunday Times sent me spinning down the years. It was about my neighbour in Llanfairpwyllgwyngyll, Medwyn Williams, who was then a group engineer in Gwynedd County Council's Maintenance Department. Med is famous now for his giant vegetables - six foot parsnips, would you believe, he grew at the back of his bungalow ? He has won every conceivable prize and is chairman of the National Vegetable Society.
He is still growing giant veg. At the moment it is a 1,600lb pumpkin. When it is fully grown he will fit it with a seat and an outboard motor and - at the age of 67 - sail it to the Isle of Man. He is doing it to raise money for the Help the Heroes charity. He has already qualified for the Owl and the Pussy Cat Club because he has done test runs with smaller pumpkins.
“I am totally confident this can be done. We shall call her HMV (Her Majesty's vegetable) Cinderella.”
There has always been a fairytale quality to Med's life. My wife interviewed him when he was heading a £100,000 campaign against Japanese Knotweed, a weed whose accelerated growth rivals the beanstalk.
He told her: “It will grow through tarmacadam and it has taken over roadside verges and railway embankments, parks, gardens and farmlands. It coud rip up highways, destroy footpaths. Even bring apartment blocks crashing to the ground.”
Goodness knows what the Brothers Grimm would have made of it.
THE DRIVER'S TALE
This frail bark of blog sails in many seas. Its readers include editors, columnists, teachers, publishers, special service toughs, even a small clutch of multi-millionaires. It goes to Trinidad. To the States and to Australia - and Pentrefoelas. I am especially pleased about that. I wrote recently about Alan Hughes, a driving instructor who has opened the secrets of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Alan reads the blog and has sent me a book he has just published.
It is called “Chaucer's Signs and Circumstances”, and as well as being a fascinating piece of literary detection, it is very impressive scholarship, though Alan confesses it is meeting academic opposition.
“Many of the academic comments have been hostile to my way of reading Chaucer's work: eg., 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread'; 'How come a driving instructor from Pentrefoelas when the best minds of Oxford and Cambridge have failed to find any allegories?' Ann Dobyns, writing in the Medieval Review considers that my work 'represents the kind of over-arguing often found in undergraduate papers'.
He refuses to be put off
“I have now gathered enough material to put together three books: the one posted to you, one on Chaucer's remaining larger works and his lyrics; another on the allegories detected in works written around that time. For example, I understand the complex allegory of the Testament of Love and, without any doubt, I can prove that William Thynne was correct in presenting it to King Henry VIII as being Chaucer's work.
I believe that this same crowd will never accept my allegorical theories.”
I know how he feels. Like most people who are self taught Iwas no stranger to bitter critics so I put together a Writer's Mantra
Our friends the reviewers
Those chippers and hewers
Are judges of mortal stone,sir
But of meet and unmeet
In a fabric complete
I''ll boldly proclaim they are none,sir
Cannot remember who said that but it was the 18th century Angelesy antiquarian Rev Henry Rowlands who wrote;
“Criticism is an undefined thing under no settled rule, often governed by prejudice and passion,humour or fancy which makes it very frequently that what is agreeable to one is displeasing to another. To please all is impossible, to have faults is unavoidable”
Plini the Second wrote “ Every man's witty labour takes not-except the matter,subject, occasion and some commending favourite happen to it”
Judge for yourself. The book is available from Aslan at £9.95 plus postage from Alania, Tan y Gaer, Pentrefoelas, LL24 OLE (emaill ohughes@tiscali.co.uk
Saturday, 20 March 2010
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND SUCKLINGS.........................
Looking through an old drawer, I came across this column I wrote on my 65th birthday.
Reading it again at 80 when I am so bored I can find nothing better to do than rootle in old files, I can only say. “Hear hear ...” to that
To: Peter Hollinson
Editor
WALES ON SUNDAY
From: Ian Skidmore
(who has no faith in fax machines. Could I be rung if it
arrives?)
Since I started work as a 14-year-old printer's devil, I have only ever had one ambition: to retire.
Over the years I have chucked in a boss's job, turned down Fleet Street and a foreign correspondency, and declined to twinkle as a minor star on Radio 4. Have written so many columns like this I am known in the trade as the Parthenon Kid.
Always with the eye fixed on the alpaca jacket, the walking stick and the rose garden.
I've got the jacket, the stick and a three-acre-garden like you wouldn't believe. And here I am still grafting.
Sixty-five. All my own hair, someone else's teeth and it is still, "Have word processor, will grovel."
If I have to work, I could hardly find better jobs. I get paid for arguing on his radio News Quiz with Vincent Kane - which most people would do free; for listening to the radio to compile a weekly programme of my favourite moments on Radio Wales; for interviewing interesting Welsh people on the same station; and for reading the newspapers so I can do weekly broadcasts to Welsh servicemen, and to Australia and sundry other parts of the globe where I am a sort of Alistair Cookaburra.
Don't get paid a lot but at least I can do it from home.
Look at it this way. I may be Wales's lowest paid broadcaster but I am the highest paid gardener.
But RETIRE to the Roses? No chance.
Why am I still at it?
It is this part-time vocational work I do as a stress counsellor to the bank. How it works is, I sign a cheque and the bank manager rings me up in a shocking state. So I have to write him long, soothing letters to calm him down. I cash so many cheques in my Anglesey local he thinks I am being blackmailed by Bass Charrington.
My good friend the Bishop of Bangor relieves stress by making chocolate gateaux the gastronomic equivalent of a choir of angels. Takes his mind off worries like the refusal of the Church in Wales to ordain women.
Time to rewrite the rule book?
I sent him this and he said it cheered him up. (He is Archbishop of Wales now and prayed for me when I had cancer.)
.......... And God spoke unto Adam and He said: "Why does it take you so long to come to the phone?"
Adam said: "Have you seen the size of this garden? From the orchard, I can't hear the bell. Also I wish you would have a word with that angel you sent with a blazing sword. I've got scorch marks on the dahlias and the heat is bringing on the chrysanths too early..."
And God spoke and He said: "Give it a rest. I am paying for this call. Put an extension bell in the orchard, dummy.
“The angel is Security and outside my remit. Obviously been a mistake. He shouldn't be there till apple picking..."
Adam said: "A blazing sword? A Theme Park we're building? A Kebab House already?"
And God spoke and he said: "I wanted Dobermans but Finance estimate an overall saving with flames that is very impressive.
It's something they picked up from the Competition.
“About the garden staffing levels. We are working on that.
Originally, Research and Development favoured stage automation. We were going to let you invent the plough, then we planned electricity which I personally am very excited about and cannot wait to create Faraday."
Adam said: " Talk is cheap. When do I get to invent the plough?”
And God spoke and He said: "That is the reason I called. R & D have come up with this new concept. I thought I would just run it up that apple tree for you and see if it flaps."
Adam said: "God, sometimes you say things which are a mystery to me..."
And God spoke and He said: " Goes with the territory. But about this R and D idea. It will do the gardening; it is an
entertainment concept and it does home nursing. Runs on the same stuff you eat, would you believe?
“R & D are working on a modem called sex which completely does away with the spare rib method I originally planned. The modem will need a User Manual. I'm thinking of calling it the Ten Commandments."
Adam said: "Does this machine have a name?"
And God spoke and He said: "What's in a name? as Shakespeare is going to say. We were going to call it a slave and then a skivvy but Marketing said names like that give off the wrong vibes, consumerwise. So what we finally came up with was Woman. What takes the Woe out of Man. Woman. Neat, eh?
“Copywriting and Graphics reckon we could achieve a 98 per cent penetration of A and AB markets."
Adam said: "I want an assurance from management that this woman machine will never be programmed to take executive decisions."
And God spoke and He said: "Thursday already? Have to go. Only two days before my day off."
And He rang off.
It was only later when Eve harvested the apples and there was this Leak from Head Office about relocation that Adam remembered he had been given no guarantees about the woman machine.
And Adam was sore afraid.
ends......................
Meanwhile back in March, Cambs in March 20/10
UNDERNEATH THE ARCHERS
I would do almost anything to avoid listening to the Archers. Even, as I did this week, watch a programme on the ”Wonders of the Star System”, a subject which misses me by wide margin. I have enough to do worrying about my own planet and little inclination towards far off stars which look to have been covered in cold porridge.
The presenter of this programme is a professor who looks about fourteen and is alive with the joy of his subject. Few things are more attractive in TV that a presenter who is more interested in his subject than himself. Professor Brian Cox joins the pantheon of presenters who enthuse rather than irritate and in an instant I was on his team.
His subject was the sun and he spoke of it in the language of the King James Bible. So strong was this impression I found myself thinking that, had our cave man ancestors used commonsense to describe nature rather than imagination, science would be our religion. Both end in Judgement Day. The Religious version is pure Walt Disney. Science, on the other hand, threatens us with a celestial vacuum cleaner which is even now hoovering up great swathes of the universe.
So Messianic was Cox's praise of the risen sun, he reminded me of the 14th century Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep 1V who banished Egypt's tribe of gods and ordered that only Aton, the religion of the Sun, could be worshipped, which, since the Sun creates, makes a lot more sense as a symbol than a petulant old man worrying about status.
Admittedly, it got the Pharoah in terrible trouble and the moment he died the old gods came flooding back.
Six hundred years later Sigmund Freud also got into terrible trouble suggesting that Moses was an Egyptian priest of the Sun God and the Monotheism he taught the Jews in the desert, in place of their old volcanic god, Jahve, was worship of the Sun.
It was an act of great bravery on Freud's part. He was trapped in Nazi Vienna. The Zionist movement was planning to get him out but it was so incensed by this blasphemy it was on the point of abandoning him to Auschwitz.
I went to a Faith school under false pretences. From an early age, I have thought the bible a collection of VERY Grimm tales. The only miracle, in my opinion, is music. All other miracles are legerdemain. Like the character in Moliere who was amazed to discover he had been talking prose all his life without realising it, I was a Buddhist for years before discovering it.
I came acrosss a quotation by Hermes the Thrice Great in Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religion of a Medical Man'”: “God is a Circle, the centre of which is nowhere and the circumference everywhere.”
The Buddhist belief, as I later discovered, is that we are all part of God. Sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind besides which nothing exists.
Thought thinks, claims The Lord Buddha, and so does Descartes. “I think, therefore I am.”
Later still, I came across Aldous Huxley's 'The Perennial Philosophy', which argues there is something in the soul that is identical with Divine Reality; not only in all primitive religions but in every one of the higher religions. No need for Bells and Smells and celestial conjuring tricks. He has been there under my shirt all the time.
There is a lot to be said for not listening to the Archers.
.
A TRIBUTE
China's Rogue Blogger
China's top blogger, a young novelist who drives race cars on the side and whose good looks have made him a sex symbol, has been clashing with the country's censorship policies. At 300 million hits to his blog, The New York Times suggests Han Han might be "the most popular living writer in the world.,” but not all of his posts stay up long—the government has been known to take down offending material overly critical of the government. A wry satirist, one recent post by Han criticizing China's eviction of residents for new developments suggested replacing housing projects with prisons so dissenters could more conveniently be locked up in their homes after they object. His latest project, a new magazine entitled "A Chorus of Solos," is being held up by the government over its content.
Read it at The New York Times
Posted at 7:28 AM, Mar 13, 2010
You couldn't (possibly) make it up...
My friend Revel Baker, sometime Head Honcho to Cap'n Bob Maxwell, sends the following cuttings from newspapers:
TO all you hunters who kill animals for food, Shame on you. You ought to go to the store and buy the meat that is made there and no animal harmed.
Dog attack- Lower Duck Pond. Lithia Park. Ashland. Police responded to a report of two dogs running loose and attacking ducks at about 11.20 am on Sunday. The officer cited a resident for the loose dogs. The ducks refused medical trearment and left the area.
Reading it again at 80 when I am so bored I can find nothing better to do than rootle in old files, I can only say. “Hear hear ...” to that
To: Peter Hollinson
Editor
WALES ON SUNDAY
From: Ian Skidmore
(who has no faith in fax machines. Could I be rung if it
arrives?)
Since I started work as a 14-year-old printer's devil, I have only ever had one ambition: to retire.
Over the years I have chucked in a boss's job, turned down Fleet Street and a foreign correspondency, and declined to twinkle as a minor star on Radio 4. Have written so many columns like this I am known in the trade as the Parthenon Kid.
Always with the eye fixed on the alpaca jacket, the walking stick and the rose garden.
I've got the jacket, the stick and a three-acre-garden like you wouldn't believe. And here I am still grafting.
Sixty-five. All my own hair, someone else's teeth and it is still, "Have word processor, will grovel."
If I have to work, I could hardly find better jobs. I get paid for arguing on his radio News Quiz with Vincent Kane - which most people would do free; for listening to the radio to compile a weekly programme of my favourite moments on Radio Wales; for interviewing interesting Welsh people on the same station; and for reading the newspapers so I can do weekly broadcasts to Welsh servicemen, and to Australia and sundry other parts of the globe where I am a sort of Alistair Cookaburra.
Don't get paid a lot but at least I can do it from home.
Look at it this way. I may be Wales's lowest paid broadcaster but I am the highest paid gardener.
But RETIRE to the Roses? No chance.
Why am I still at it?
It is this part-time vocational work I do as a stress counsellor to the bank. How it works is, I sign a cheque and the bank manager rings me up in a shocking state. So I have to write him long, soothing letters to calm him down. I cash so many cheques in my Anglesey local he thinks I am being blackmailed by Bass Charrington.
My good friend the Bishop of Bangor relieves stress by making chocolate gateaux the gastronomic equivalent of a choir of angels. Takes his mind off worries like the refusal of the Church in Wales to ordain women.
Time to rewrite the rule book?
I sent him this and he said it cheered him up. (He is Archbishop of Wales now and prayed for me when I had cancer.)
.......... And God spoke unto Adam and He said: "Why does it take you so long to come to the phone?"
Adam said: "Have you seen the size of this garden? From the orchard, I can't hear the bell. Also I wish you would have a word with that angel you sent with a blazing sword. I've got scorch marks on the dahlias and the heat is bringing on the chrysanths too early..."
And God spoke and He said: "Give it a rest. I am paying for this call. Put an extension bell in the orchard, dummy.
“The angel is Security and outside my remit. Obviously been a mistake. He shouldn't be there till apple picking..."
Adam said: "A blazing sword? A Theme Park we're building? A Kebab House already?"
And God spoke and he said: "I wanted Dobermans but Finance estimate an overall saving with flames that is very impressive.
It's something they picked up from the Competition.
“About the garden staffing levels. We are working on that.
Originally, Research and Development favoured stage automation. We were going to let you invent the plough, then we planned electricity which I personally am very excited about and cannot wait to create Faraday."
Adam said: " Talk is cheap. When do I get to invent the plough?”
And God spoke and He said: "That is the reason I called. R & D have come up with this new concept. I thought I would just run it up that apple tree for you and see if it flaps."
Adam said: "God, sometimes you say things which are a mystery to me..."
And God spoke and He said: " Goes with the territory. But about this R and D idea. It will do the gardening; it is an
entertainment concept and it does home nursing. Runs on the same stuff you eat, would you believe?
“R & D are working on a modem called sex which completely does away with the spare rib method I originally planned. The modem will need a User Manual. I'm thinking of calling it the Ten Commandments."
Adam said: "Does this machine have a name?"
And God spoke and He said: "What's in a name? as Shakespeare is going to say. We were going to call it a slave and then a skivvy but Marketing said names like that give off the wrong vibes, consumerwise. So what we finally came up with was Woman. What takes the Woe out of Man. Woman. Neat, eh?
“Copywriting and Graphics reckon we could achieve a 98 per cent penetration of A and AB markets."
Adam said: "I want an assurance from management that this woman machine will never be programmed to take executive decisions."
And God spoke and He said: "Thursday already? Have to go. Only two days before my day off."
And He rang off.
It was only later when Eve harvested the apples and there was this Leak from Head Office about relocation that Adam remembered he had been given no guarantees about the woman machine.
And Adam was sore afraid.
ends......................
Meanwhile back in March, Cambs in March 20/10
UNDERNEATH THE ARCHERS
I would do almost anything to avoid listening to the Archers. Even, as I did this week, watch a programme on the ”Wonders of the Star System”, a subject which misses me by wide margin. I have enough to do worrying about my own planet and little inclination towards far off stars which look to have been covered in cold porridge.
The presenter of this programme is a professor who looks about fourteen and is alive with the joy of his subject. Few things are more attractive in TV that a presenter who is more interested in his subject than himself. Professor Brian Cox joins the pantheon of presenters who enthuse rather than irritate and in an instant I was on his team.
His subject was the sun and he spoke of it in the language of the King James Bible. So strong was this impression I found myself thinking that, had our cave man ancestors used commonsense to describe nature rather than imagination, science would be our religion. Both end in Judgement Day. The Religious version is pure Walt Disney. Science, on the other hand, threatens us with a celestial vacuum cleaner which is even now hoovering up great swathes of the universe.
So Messianic was Cox's praise of the risen sun, he reminded me of the 14th century Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep 1V who banished Egypt's tribe of gods and ordered that only Aton, the religion of the Sun, could be worshipped, which, since the Sun creates, makes a lot more sense as a symbol than a petulant old man worrying about status.
Admittedly, it got the Pharoah in terrible trouble and the moment he died the old gods came flooding back.
Six hundred years later Sigmund Freud also got into terrible trouble suggesting that Moses was an Egyptian priest of the Sun God and the Monotheism he taught the Jews in the desert, in place of their old volcanic god, Jahve, was worship of the Sun.
It was an act of great bravery on Freud's part. He was trapped in Nazi Vienna. The Zionist movement was planning to get him out but it was so incensed by this blasphemy it was on the point of abandoning him to Auschwitz.
I went to a Faith school under false pretences. From an early age, I have thought the bible a collection of VERY Grimm tales. The only miracle, in my opinion, is music. All other miracles are legerdemain. Like the character in Moliere who was amazed to discover he had been talking prose all his life without realising it, I was a Buddhist for years before discovering it.
I came acrosss a quotation by Hermes the Thrice Great in Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religion of a Medical Man'”: “God is a Circle, the centre of which is nowhere and the circumference everywhere.”
The Buddhist belief, as I later discovered, is that we are all part of God. Sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind besides which nothing exists.
Thought thinks, claims The Lord Buddha, and so does Descartes. “I think, therefore I am.”
Later still, I came across Aldous Huxley's 'The Perennial Philosophy', which argues there is something in the soul that is identical with Divine Reality; not only in all primitive religions but in every one of the higher religions. No need for Bells and Smells and celestial conjuring tricks. He has been there under my shirt all the time.
There is a lot to be said for not listening to the Archers.
.
A TRIBUTE
China's Rogue Blogger
China's top blogger, a young novelist who drives race cars on the side and whose good looks have made him a sex symbol, has been clashing with the country's censorship policies. At 300 million hits to his blog, The New York Times suggests Han Han might be "the most popular living writer in the world.,” but not all of his posts stay up long—the government has been known to take down offending material overly critical of the government. A wry satirist, one recent post by Han criticizing China's eviction of residents for new developments suggested replacing housing projects with prisons so dissenters could more conveniently be locked up in their homes after they object. His latest project, a new magazine entitled "A Chorus of Solos," is being held up by the government over its content.
Read it at The New York Times
Posted at 7:28 AM, Mar 13, 2010
You couldn't (possibly) make it up...
My friend Revel Baker, sometime Head Honcho to Cap'n Bob Maxwell, sends the following cuttings from newspapers:
TO all you hunters who kill animals for food, Shame on you. You ought to go to the store and buy the meat that is made there and no animal harmed.
Dog attack- Lower Duck Pond. Lithia Park. Ashland. Police responded to a report of two dogs running loose and attacking ducks at about 11.20 am on Sunday. The officer cited a resident for the loose dogs. The ducks refused medical trearment and left the area.
Friday, 12 March 2010
It ONLY COSTS A LITTLE MORE TO BUY YOUR OWN FIRST CLASS TICKET
I was not surprised that Sir Ian Kennedy's s proposal that MPs should only be allowed to travel first class in "exceptional circumstances" – such as a journey of more than two and a half hours – met with particularly strong opposition from parliamentarians.
Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative MP for Maidstone and the Weald, accused him of being guided by media "spite" rather than value to the taxpayer, and pointed out she had written two books while travelling first class.
She said: "If I travel first class, I can plug in my computer, not a facility that is universally available in second class. I can therefore work throughout the journey.”
(The argument for 1st class travel is that MPs work on the train. What is Miss Widdecombe doing writing books when she should be working?)
She goes on: "The 'at seat' service means that I do not have to interrupt the work to go and queue in the train's buffet bar. Second class being more of a thoroughfare, interruption and engagement in conversation is a great deal more frequent."
Those nasty constituents should know their place.
Tom Levitt, the Labour backbencher for High Peak, said: "I invariably work on the train, something I can only do in a first class carriage for three reasons: that I have a table, space and privacy to work there; that I have a seat (as the standard class carriages between Manchester and London are often standing room only); and that (as I am over six feet tall) I have the leg room for comfort."
Three excellent reasons for BUYING a first class seat.
MPs are currently worrying over the possibility that few of us will be bothering to vote. They should look no further than their own demands.
I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE HATED
A Welsh extremist website once honoured me with the title of Traitor of the Week. I shared it rather puzzlingly with Ryan Griggs, S4C, Radio Cymru, The Welsh Language Society, The Welsh Language Board and a very nice man called Jonesy who was a Radio Cymru presenter.
Nationalism is a road which ends at the gates of Auschwitz and we have had a lot of trouble with it in our family. My Auntie Jeannie was the widow of Uncle Tommy, a Scottish Nationalist so incandescent that ten years after his death she was still afraid to visit England.
Her son-in-law, Jackie, who looked after the boats of a sheik in Kuwait, invited Auntie Jeannie to visit.
"It's no in England, is it?" she inquired fearfully.
In the event, she had a great time, including supper with the Sheik in his palace. She was not impressed.
"Does he aye get his dinner on tin plates?" she asked Jackie.
"They're no tin," whispered Jackie, "they're real gold."
"Maks nae difference," said my Auntie Jeannie. "Puir man,ye cannae keep food hot on tin plates."
The day she got home she went to an Edinburgh market and bought the Emir a six-piece china dinner service. Alas, we have lost the charming letter of thanks the Emir sent.
My Auntie Jeannie was the Great Imperturbable.
The nearest thing we had in our family to a tradition was the Hogmanay Fight. My father emigrated to Manchester but always returned home to Edinburgh on 30 December. He went a day early
to get in training for the whisky drinking marathon which was the family New Year.
By tea time on Old Year's Night, whisky had washed away any seasonal goodwill. By 9 pm, naked hostility had replaced it. My father invariably ignited things by taking out a provocative cigar.
"Bloody Englishman," growled Uncle Tommy, socialist principles inflamed at the sight of such a capitalist accessory.
"That makes bliddy two of us," my father would reply every year.
Uncle Tommy's darkest secret was that he, the most passionately Scottish of the family, had been born during a brief visit by his mother to Lancashire.
Blows were exchanged. Three step-brothers, Jimmy, Matty and Alec, who tried to join the row were rebuffed by Uncle Tommy on the grounds they weren't family. This made Jimmy, Matty and Alec madder than anyone.
Whilst five brothers fought in the middle of the room, the wives moved their chairs to the wall and continued their conversation.
Auntie Jeannie served tea.
At 11.45 pm she would say, "Tommy, have you seen the time?" The fight ended at once and quarter of an hour later the brothers had their arms round each other and were singing Auld Lang Syne.
They don't make Hogmanays like that any more. Or Auntie Jeannies.
COOKERY NOOK
The perfect Yorkshire Pudding is that made by the chefs of Simpson's in the Strand. This is their recipe.
The fat must be smoky hot when the batter is poured in. The batter is made from 1 egg, 4 oz plain flour and half a pint of milk. Once it is made, it is electrically whisked at full speed whilst a splash of hot water is added. The batter must be left in the fridge for at least an hour but no longer than 12 hours.
Beef dripping is then heated in individual moulds. When it shows a haze and sizzles, the batter is poured in and it is returned to the oven for about 30 minutes or until the puddings are well risen or golden brown. It can be eaten BEFORE the main course. Its original purpose was to diminish the appetite for the beef which followed, a Yorkshire precaution. In Lancashire it was traditionally sprinkled with sugar and served as a final course.
AND THIS FROM THE GUARDIAN:
....for the perfect British sausage experience, choose a banger with a fair proportion of fat to meat, and a few breadcrumbs too. Do not prod. Leave it intact, and fry it ever so gently in a pan for 40 minutes while you go off and do something else, like walking the bulldog, enjoying an cask-conditioned ale or visiting a red telephone box.
Oh, and roast partridge stuffed with a pear or a peach is ambrosial.
Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative MP for Maidstone and the Weald, accused him of being guided by media "spite" rather than value to the taxpayer, and pointed out she had written two books while travelling first class.
She said: "If I travel first class, I can plug in my computer, not a facility that is universally available in second class. I can therefore work throughout the journey.”
(The argument for 1st class travel is that MPs work on the train. What is Miss Widdecombe doing writing books when she should be working?)
She goes on: "The 'at seat' service means that I do not have to interrupt the work to go and queue in the train's buffet bar. Second class being more of a thoroughfare, interruption and engagement in conversation is a great deal more frequent."
Those nasty constituents should know their place.
Tom Levitt, the Labour backbencher for High Peak, said: "I invariably work on the train, something I can only do in a first class carriage for three reasons: that I have a table, space and privacy to work there; that I have a seat (as the standard class carriages between Manchester and London are often standing room only); and that (as I am over six feet tall) I have the leg room for comfort."
Three excellent reasons for BUYING a first class seat.
MPs are currently worrying over the possibility that few of us will be bothering to vote. They should look no further than their own demands.
I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE HATED
A Welsh extremist website once honoured me with the title of Traitor of the Week. I shared it rather puzzlingly with Ryan Griggs, S4C, Radio Cymru, The Welsh Language Society, The Welsh Language Board and a very nice man called Jonesy who was a Radio Cymru presenter.
Nationalism is a road which ends at the gates of Auschwitz and we have had a lot of trouble with it in our family. My Auntie Jeannie was the widow of Uncle Tommy, a Scottish Nationalist so incandescent that ten years after his death she was still afraid to visit England.
Her son-in-law, Jackie, who looked after the boats of a sheik in Kuwait, invited Auntie Jeannie to visit.
"It's no in England, is it?" she inquired fearfully.
In the event, she had a great time, including supper with the Sheik in his palace. She was not impressed.
"Does he aye get his dinner on tin plates?" she asked Jackie.
"They're no tin," whispered Jackie, "they're real gold."
"Maks nae difference," said my Auntie Jeannie. "Puir man,ye cannae keep food hot on tin plates."
The day she got home she went to an Edinburgh market and bought the Emir a six-piece china dinner service. Alas, we have lost the charming letter of thanks the Emir sent.
My Auntie Jeannie was the Great Imperturbable.
The nearest thing we had in our family to a tradition was the Hogmanay Fight. My father emigrated to Manchester but always returned home to Edinburgh on 30 December. He went a day early
to get in training for the whisky drinking marathon which was the family New Year.
By tea time on Old Year's Night, whisky had washed away any seasonal goodwill. By 9 pm, naked hostility had replaced it. My father invariably ignited things by taking out a provocative cigar.
"Bloody Englishman," growled Uncle Tommy, socialist principles inflamed at the sight of such a capitalist accessory.
"That makes bliddy two of us," my father would reply every year.
Uncle Tommy's darkest secret was that he, the most passionately Scottish of the family, had been born during a brief visit by his mother to Lancashire.
Blows were exchanged. Three step-brothers, Jimmy, Matty and Alec, who tried to join the row were rebuffed by Uncle Tommy on the grounds they weren't family. This made Jimmy, Matty and Alec madder than anyone.
Whilst five brothers fought in the middle of the room, the wives moved their chairs to the wall and continued their conversation.
Auntie Jeannie served tea.
At 11.45 pm she would say, "Tommy, have you seen the time?" The fight ended at once and quarter of an hour later the brothers had their arms round each other and were singing Auld Lang Syne.
They don't make Hogmanays like that any more. Or Auntie Jeannies.
COOKERY NOOK
The perfect Yorkshire Pudding is that made by the chefs of Simpson's in the Strand. This is their recipe.
The fat must be smoky hot when the batter is poured in. The batter is made from 1 egg, 4 oz plain flour and half a pint of milk. Once it is made, it is electrically whisked at full speed whilst a splash of hot water is added. The batter must be left in the fridge for at least an hour but no longer than 12 hours.
Beef dripping is then heated in individual moulds. When it shows a haze and sizzles, the batter is poured in and it is returned to the oven for about 30 minutes or until the puddings are well risen or golden brown. It can be eaten BEFORE the main course. Its original purpose was to diminish the appetite for the beef which followed, a Yorkshire precaution. In Lancashire it was traditionally sprinkled with sugar and served as a final course.
AND THIS FROM THE GUARDIAN:
....for the perfect British sausage experience, choose a banger with a fair proportion of fat to meat, and a few breadcrumbs too. Do not prod. Leave it intact, and fry it ever so gently in a pan for 40 minutes while you go off and do something else, like walking the bulldog, enjoying an cask-conditioned ale or visiting a red telephone box.
Oh, and roast partridge stuffed with a pear or a peach is ambrosial.
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