Still Waters Run Deep

I walked the River Hodder earlier today; not the whole length you understand, just about two miles of narrow, twisting pebble-banked stream and deep, slow, murky pools hiding their secrets from the damp world above. The Hodder has run its course through villages such as Slaidburn, Tosside, Newton, Dunsop Bridge and Lane Ends for centuries, bringing fresh water from the North Lancashire Moors down to the Trough or Forest of Bowland, one of those well-kept, remote, attractive but hardly unspoilt areas of our green and pleasant land. Unspoilt is a misnomer! Of course it is spoilt, by the higgledy-piggledy stone-built houses locked together over time in each village, by the long and low farmhouses which litter the valley, by the stark and unwelcoming halls owned by the nouveau-riche who bought them from the families of deceased cotton and wool barons of the 19th century, and by the chain-link fenced sewage plant, all but astride the Hodder in the centre of the valley; this brick built monstrosity, ageing, rusting and weedy leaking its residue of filtrate into these ice-cold waters. 

We describe the valley as unspoilt because it is so well maintained, manicured by locals who take pride in their trusteeship. The natural Trough would be forested and unfarmed, a home for small mammals and birds as well as the ghosts of history, those travellers spirited away by accident and evil and buried in the rich and fertile soil. Unspoilt, no, but beautiful and impressive, with sober and unpretentious colours which welcome rather than challenge both residents and visitors. This is why I sat, stood and leaned alongside the Hodder, peering into the deep and slowly circling pools, searching for trout first but failing that, wondering what secrets these eddies hid. 

Time does not fly here; change is slow. No reminders of the speed of modern culture, just the bleat of sheep, the chirp of birds, the rustle of wind in the trees and the ripple of water over rock and pebble. Humans may well have changed the look of the Trough with their ploughs and cows, but no motorways or planes, few roads and cars left me to think, dream, ponder and reflect. Still waters do run deep, as deep as my thoughts, as hidden as my soul, as profound as the blood running through my veins.

A Society at Peace!

The story of Freddie is sad indeed, the son of a dysfunctional family with father in prison, mother on the game, sisters in poverty caring for themselves, getting themselves to school most days, but always in trouble! Trouble with parents, with neighbours, with teachers, with just anybody. Freddie is one of those who might well have rioted last week, little sense of responsibility, little understanding of community, little to excite him but much to frustrate, to limit, to depress. Who got it wrong, who caused this division, disaffection and distress? 

Does it matter anyway? Some say that society is broken; others that social unrest is the consequence of a disaffected generation of young people; others that policing needs to be stronger, more assertive with punishments that deter. Fewer believe that policing is by consent of the community and that justice and jail must be restorative. 

Does it matter what we say, think or believe? Not for Freddie. He fell or was pushed from a third floor window and was impaled on the railings below a long time before these riots. Unlike our community today, Freddie is at peace!

I can't converse!

I've tried to write conversation, dialogue and discussion but without success. I cannot get it right! My characters seem unconvincing, their speech fatuous despite scenarios which should be arresting and make for compulsive listening. But no! I cannot write conversation.

The first day in the rest of my life?

The inspection had ended at 1300 on Friday and I had spent the weekend in the garden and with the family. Monday morning now, and where am I? On a train to the big smoke for two days of assessment and report writing ..... and thought I had retired .... again!! The train carriage is half empty, but also half full of slightly overweight middle-aged businessmen and smart young women making their way in the world. It looks and sounds like a two-way ladder with seriously boring guys pompously and pretentiously working with laptops and piles of paper, while aspiring and assertive (largely) women, clearly better organised, listen to their ipods and read the financial pages. Quite a contrast! 

And in this melee, where am I? With a foot on both sides of the ladder? Who can tell? Certainly not me! I tried to think this through but we are in Rugby already, more than halfway to London in just over the hour; the speed of life today! And here I am musing yet again! What would my favourite poet Donne make of this dilemma? Or tycoon, Alan Sugar? Or Paul of Tarsus? I sometimes think that I am thoughtful like Paul, but he was never confused; maybe he was like me? Reading him, I do believe that he was trapped with a personal issue he never describes; his theology may be sound, but his life seems to indicate a tension he never details. Alan Sugar would not be where I am; no tensions for him, no train either! he is the exemplification of clarity, direction and judgement, underpinned with confidence in his own abilities. He really is the consummate professional, having faults but being wrong not being one of them.

So I am left with Jonne Donne, that sensitive and jesuitical poet with a resolution to every quandary, even if he does not share it, an answer to every tension, a solution to every problem! Whether his poem is compromise or conclusion, the outcome is always final, secure and unquestioned. At the "mingling of bloods" nothing stays the same, nor can the old world return; it changes everything ... for ever! 

Marke but this flea, and marke in this, 

 How little that which thou deny'st me is; 

 Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee, 

 And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee; 

 Confesse it, this cannot be said 

 A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead, 

 Yet this enjoyes before it wooe, 

 And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two, 

 And this, alas, is more than wee would doe. 

 Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, 

 When we almost, nay more than maryed are. 

 This flea is you and I, and this 

 Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is; 

 Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met, 

 And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet. 

 Though use make thee apt to kill me, 

 Let not to this, selfe murder added bee, 

 And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three. 

 Cruell and sodaine, has thou since 

 Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence? 

 In what could this flea guilty bee, 

 Except in that drop which it suckt from thee? 

 Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou 

 Find'st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now; 

 'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee; 

 Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee, 

 Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee. 

John Donne

Conversation, compliance or mask?

"Who is she?" she asked. "Who?" he replied. "Stop kidding; you know what I mean. Who is she?" These opening words of a radio play that I heard today made me think ..... made me think that this conversation (soon to be an argument) must have been repeated in so many homes, and made me think too that at home we sometimes pretend to be the people we are not! A mask can be a wonderful gift, enabling me, or you, or us, to be both the person we are and the person we are not. What we think and feel and believe may be there, just under the surface, the real me, warts and all. The mask is there for all to see, a shell or peel which can be so attractive, warm, inclusive or loving, a comfortable skin, acceptable to family and to friends, and believed by all except our intimates to be REAL!! 

Meanwhile, underneath the mask, a personality inhibited by events is just wasted or wasting, festering, infected with the germs of hurt, anger or isolation. Just as flesh softens, hardens and heats up, hiding the puss just under the skin until the boil bursts in a thick, grey, putrid flow, so our hurts fester behind the mask until it is torn away in a realisation for one partner that truth is health, and for the other a realisation that the truth is (or is not) welcome; living with a mask is tolerable. Living with truth is heaven or hell! 

Schizophrenia, that frightening term for those with split personality is often misused by amateurs like me. So few of us suffer from this maladie, but we seek comfort in the divisions we hide. Having two sides may provide comfort and security, and with practice may even become almost perfect. How many partnerships follow this model? At work or at home, so many crave an audience, needing appreciation, gaining satisfaction to sustain a mask. So many others see themselves as misunderstood. For others, the mask slowly becomes reality and one side of the split personality disengages as the other comes to dominate. 

What does all this mean? Which is our true self? If the cap fits, wear it! If not, be grateful for peace of mind and heart!

The Green Agenda

Fukushima may yet be a name we all learn to speak, not because it is the surname of a Japanese politician, the current chair of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, but because of its impact on the green agenda here in the UK! 

Fukushima, an atomic power electricity generating station on the east coast of Japan, is built on bedrock, just as such complexes are in the UK. There the similarity ends as the UK does not have the range of active tectonic plates off and around Japan but this will not be relevant in the debate on government proposals to expand the UK's nuclear generating capacity. Bedrock, intended to be the factor which makes the nuclear facility "safe", has proved a liability in an earthquake zone just as other factors, maybe remoteness of location or sophisticated technology will prove ultimately to be the failings of the UK model. Everything man-made is fallible; everything natural has its day. Harmony between the two is possible, even likely, but never eternal. 

As we say, every dog has its day, and nature has a way of proving its omnipotence …… it always bites back .... in the end!

Nature strikes back?

I guess Aborigine, Maori or other indigenous peoples of "under-developed" regions would make the connection between natural disaster and dramatic changes in the equilibrium of the world's resources? I have to ask if there is a connection between today's earthquake and tsunami and the speed of the North's consumption and abuse of our finite world. Maybe this question is conceived in my belief that blame for the world's failings can be mostly laid at the feet of capitalism (there are instances of the combination of nationalism and socialism having similar failings!) However the unity of nature, the Earth at peace with itself, the sort of allegory which the film Avatar portrayed, these are long-held traditions of animist belief ... that the gods must be assuaged if pestilence and disaster are to be minimised. 

So where do BP and the supranational companies stand? What of the increasing influence of the political right? How about the domination of the media by Murdoch and his friends? Will these groups question our trusteeship of this world? Or will they continue to spout ideological platitudes about trickle down, ending poverty, the development cycle and the morality of the market? 

Meanwhile nature confirms its ambivalence about when and where it challenges humankind; and the West has been asked the question more in the last year or so than for some time ...... from New Orleans to New Zealand, from Queensland to Japan. Like the gentle breeze, my words are lost in the ether, but we have to answer the question, not simply ask it!

An Empty Tube?

Vauxhall to Waterloo takes just eleven minutes on a good day but to look at my fellow travellers during the rush hour this evening, few had had a good day! From their silence, the lack of conversation, the total absence of eye contact, the unhelpfulness of those with no regard for fellow travellers looking for a space to stand not sit, or somewhere to place a bag, it's clear that Cameron's "big society" has little chance in the south-east where the prevailing isolation and apparent self-reliance of my colleagues on the Tube is a foundation of quicksand for his brave new world! 

I'm told that the human race is gregarious; not much evidence of this on the London tube. In fact, the very opposite may be true, a race of isolates, maybe the consequence of generations of inbreeding influenced by the political bigotry of the right wing media? Yes, I do that see that link as logical, that years of living on a diet of the abuse of society, selfishness, and intolerance of the less fortunate leaves communities bereft of spirit, afraid of teamwork and prisoners of intolerance. We reap what we sow said the prophet.

Well, it will take more than eleven years of reflection to begin to challenge my eleven minute judgement on those who travel by tube. By then I will be seventy-nine years young and I Hope still taking an alternative view!

The Graveyard of Ambition

Ambition is a young person's game; it fills their minds, hearts and days with dreams of what might be and how to change the world. For the middle-aged, ambition is reality, success or failure! Where am I? In what job? At what level? Living with whom? And the kids!! Wow! What have I done ..... or should it be what I have done? And what did I not do, what omissions, what pain inflicted, how many hurtful words uttered on the plank of ambition? Such questions become increasingly pointless with advancing age. And so it was that .......... today I bought a grave, mine, my home to be! 

A grave is a refuge, a hiding place in which a body resides, slowly and securely decomposing and returning to whence it came, a painless process requiring no energy, no activity and no ambition. A grave is also a retreat for and from those who love you, somewhere where they can keep you safely while their emotions cool. My grave was sunny and warm today with the noise of a motorway just a short distance away. Just 900mm wide and 2500mm deep, there will be no escape, just the certainty, not of eternal rest, but just seventy-five years before anyone is allowed to disturb me. 

So what ambition is this, to lie comfortably in my grave? Ah, think on reader; this is the ambition of someone who cares, who dares to have a view about life at and after death. I want to be buried; it is a safe departure, a comforting transition from death to memory. I want family and friends to enjoy the cartharsis of burial rather than the avoidance of reality in the escapism of cremation. Not only should I be lowered gently into my grave but those who mourn me and even the inquisitive must each must take a spade and backfill that grave, enjoying the resonance of clay on coffin, the echo of an empty box. 

And those who are there to check that I really am dead, they too can turn a sod or two and get their satisfaction. I do not care! So my ambition on this Ash Wednesday is not to penance and wish misery on those around me; my ambition is to live life to the full so that when my day comes and the grim reaper grips me by the shoulder, I will simply say, "Peace friend, I'm ready to say hello to my future."

I write therefore I am!

Nearly two years since I published on my blog and so much wasted time! My thoughts on so many issues lost forever into that empty abyss which swallows creativity, ambition, reflection and analysis. What shame! Lost opportunities are the stuff of life for so many, me especially! Here I am, sixty-eight years old and with so little time left compared with my life to date. I feel about thirty-five but one day soon, my body will begin to fail even if my mind continues; vice-versa would be even worse ..... an empty brain rattling around in a declining body .... ugh! I keep meeting people from my past .... how much have I lost .... or remembering events from long ago .... a bit like my life passing before my eyes ..... a warning that the grim reaper is waiting in the wings. Let's hope he (or is it a she?) stays in the green room rather than coming on stage! 

Watching The King's Speech this evening, I thought back to that day (02/02/52?) when the headteacher came into class, made us stand and announced "The King is dead!" First we prayed, and then we had to say "Long live the Queen!" The world continues and so do we .... most of the time, while one by one we fall off the edge of this flat earth and into an abyss, forever lost in a dark and spiritless void. Shall I write each day? Will my thoughts continue to litter this failing world, yet another environmental disaster .... words wasted, useless words, pointless words, hurtful words which cause offence, kind and loving words which miss their target, words lost on the wind, words misunderstood and words not heard. 

The world does not listen to me. Having no audience should tell me that I have nothing to say!

The first day in the rest of my life?

The inspection had ended at 1300 on Friday and I had spent the weekend in the garden and with the family. Monday morning now, and where am I? On a train to the big smoke for two days of assessment and report writing ..... and thought I had retired .... again!!

The train carriage is half empty, but also half full of slightly overweight middle-aged businessmen and smart young women making their way in the world. It looks and sounds like a two-way ladder with seriously boring guys pompously and pretentiously working with laptops and piles of paper, while aspiring and assertive (largely) women, clearly better organised, listen to their ipods and read the financial pages. Quite a contrast!

And in this melee, where am I? With a foot on both sides of the ladder? Who can tell? Certainly not me!

I tried to think this through but we are in Rugby already, more than halfway to London in just over the hour; the speed of life today! And here I am musing yet again! What would my favourite poet Donne make of this dilemma? Or tycoon, Alan Sugar? Or Paul of Tarsus? I sometimes think that I am thoughtful like Paul, but he was never confused; maybe he was like me? Reading him, I do believe that he was trapped with a personal issue he never describes; his theology may be sound, but his life seems to indicate a tension he never details.

Alan Sugar would not be where I am; no tensions for him, no train either! he is the exemplification of clarity, direction and judgement, underpinned with confidence in his own abilities. He really is the consummate professional, having faults but being wrong not being one of them.

So I am left with Jonne Donne, that sensitive and jesuitical poet with a resolution to every quandary, even if he does not share it, an answer to every tension, a solution to every problem! Whether his poem is compromise or conclusion, the outcome is always final, secure and unquestioned. At the "mingling of bloods" nothing stays the same, nor can the old world return; it changes everything ... for ever!


Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee;
Confesse it, this cannot be said
A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.


Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
When we almost, nay more than maryed are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet.

Though use make thee apt to kill me,
Let not to this, selfe murder added bee,
And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.


Cruell and sodaine, has thou since
Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?
In what could this flea guilty bee,
Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou
Find'st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now;

'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee;
Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee,
Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee.

John Donne

Of Posties, Politics and the letter P

I should look in the dictionary at words beginning with the letter P. How many there are I don’t know, nor whether P words are more numerous than those with different initial letters. What I do know is that it’s possible to reflect on the world in which we live by using definitions of P words as indicators of the state of our planet. The Postie was completing his walk the other day, an introspective man committed to his job of delivering letters parcels and junk mail with relentless efficiency but not at great speed; the sort of man who clearly avoids conversation and is happy with his lot. No great pretensions, just the bustle of a job needing to be done. The Postie oozes confidence and determination; he is focused, never raising his eyes nor looking left or right, he will not catch your eye and hates responding to those who greet him, but a man with a mission. Would that more were like him! 

So what of this Postie (“le facteur” for my French readers)? He made me think about the Press and Politics, of Pride and Poverty, of Paranoia, of Protest. An odd world in which we live, where the life-blood of the Press is the destruction of Politicians and the reduction of the Public to consumers of cynicism. An odd world in which we live where Politicians are and are seen as the Purveyors of greed. An odd world in which we live, where Pride in personal achievement is so often ridiculed while celebrities are made famous only for their fame. An odd world too where the Poverty of the South and East is largely ignored by the West. A world in which Paranoia is a defence for crime, where Protest is a cover for brutality by police officer and anarchist alike. 

I may be doing my postie a disservice, but I half envy him his abstraction from the world, his introspection. Content with his own thoughts, he has no need for or interest in the Vox Populi; independent and autonomous, he seems unaffected by the burdens of the economy, debt and the need to be nihilistic. Or maybe I have misread my postie; maybe it is these very burdens which make him the man he is. I will never know as intrude into his private hell I never will!

British Summer Time

The clocks go forward tomorrow night, as we move from Greenwich Mean Time to British Summer Time, but is this really a sign of summer, warmer times with happier smiling people? I think not! The world is in crisis, not necessarily the crisis of war, but of changes to the human condition, the climate, the economy, all of which may already have tipped over the edge with few realising that this is indeed the case. Trauma and tragedy? Time will tell but when the fish of the sea are increasingly hermaphrodite, man's sperm count is less than half what it was fifty years ago, the seasons are more and more unpredictable with one polar cap soon to unfreeze each year, the world economy brought to its capitalist knees by the greed of bankers and money men, when will we see sense? 

No longer are we masters of our destiny! No longer do the winners write the history books; no, history is the province of a future we can only guess at, hardly predict. Out of our hands, man has committed the gravest of sins in recent decades, maybe longer. Industry has poisoned not only rivers and soils, but our minds as well. Our right to choice, that oft proclaimed plank of the right, but also now of the left, denies the trust for our world, a trust recognised by those we scoff at as animist or primitive, by those communities which are self-supporting and whose lifestyle does not threaten the future of the planet. And what of the "civilised" world with its consumption of resources far beyond nature's ability to produce? East mimics West and the impoverished South jumps on this bandwagon to a world desert.

But nature will always keep its own counsel and payback will be in its own time, not when humans decide. So what of our future? Our best hope may be to stop, to think, to reduce the demands we make on ourselves, family, neighbours, communities, governments and nations ...... and ...... and what? Live as vegetarians or vegans? Probably not! Become pacifist? No! Go Green? Maybe! No, the answer must be to work together, black and white, rich and poor, Christian and Muslim, believer and agnostic, woman and man, and review the minimalist lifestyle needed to bring nature and nations into harmony. So my hope for British Summer Time is that the Sun will shine, warm our hearts and minds, open our eyes and ears to the realities of this world, to aspiration not desperation, and that hand in hand, Afghan and American, Briton and Brazilian, Serbian and Sri Lankan will rebuild the future of mankind. 

After all, things can and do change; who would have guessed in 1991 that the next American president would be called Hussein?

Henry Ford was wrong

Henry Ford was wrong! History may not have much relevance for industry or commerce which he saw as being about production and profit, but history teaches us lessons which we ignore at our peril.

I have been beside the River Thames this week, just above the great lock at Teddington. This relentless flow of dark water only half-hiding the secrets it keeps, and half reminding us of the past! Old Father Thames it is sometimes called, and like the ancients respected for their wisdom, it has seen so much, forgotten more than we can ever know, there like an icon to cherish and respect.

As I ambled along the towpath with my grandson in the early winter sun, what did I see reflected in the still, slow waters? Bridges, clouds and overhanging trees, each with their meaning or is it interpretation, vision, fantasy or truth? Bridges, symbols of contrasting cultures; clouds and trees of changing times? Or later in the week with the increasingly fast waters of winter as the rains hit the counties around Berkshire, fleeting glimpses of these same shadows but impossible to identify as they were spoilt by wind and wave. Life is like that, sometimes slow and easy to read, at other times a rushing bedlam of incident and accident thrown relentlessly and unforgivingly into the chaos of life.

There are those who pretend to unravel these mysteries, finding patterns of repetition, fate and behaviour in their or our lives; others who finding no pattern to explain the tragedies of life, blame it all on God or man. And others still who see our successes and failures as the natural or inevitable outcome of the life-chances we each inherit. Marx would have some sympathy with this last option … little choice, just the oppressive and given domination of the masses by an elite. It matters not which group we are born to, the elite to rule in largely robust health, the masses to survive for a while at least the vagaries of poverty and oppression, ill-health, unsafe employment, idleness and frequent childbirth.

How did they survive, those who mastered the oppression of the market, slaves of a political creed that was largely British and white and mostly protestant? And where did Adam Smith figure in this history of ours? There are many who writing their observations of 19th or 20th century urbanisation, Marx or Dickens, Descartes or Churchill, who did little more than describe what they saw, their analysis failing to challenge the established mores of society, simply to set them in the stone of eternity, the way that the world was established for ever and a day!

Now Lenin and Mao may have been different for they challenged established but unequal order. They tore down the century old bastions of privilege and power, and in ways which terrorised commitment to the new order, allowing other pillars of the establishment such as Christianity and the Catholic Church to adopt the Marxist theory of social disorder to sanctify its dominance of government and people. The established church was everywhere, different in each country, but everywhere. The French even built the Basilica of Sacre Coeur in penitence for their failures in the Franco-Prussian war, a fine example of the integration of church and state in the common perspectives of an allegedly secular state.

Where have I strayed on this mentally, meandering journey which began with the purchase of a Ford Focus some weeks ago. Ford’s surname, passing into our automobile history, set me thinking about the relative degrees of freedom ….. that I enjoy? … that I appreciate? ….. that I value? ….. that I understand? ….. that are worth fighting for? ….. or whether nothing has changed in one hundred years? Still trapped in the sociological quagmire that is a conurbation of several millions of people, I may dream of liberty, of equality, fraternity, even sisterhood in these politically correct days, but nothing has changed; we are all trapped in the crowds between riches and poverty, in the dreams of improvement and the fears of losing the talents we have.

Christ was right! If we accept the coin of Caesar, we also pay homage to the ethos and edicts of the Czar. Henry Ford was wrong; it’s not history which is bunk but our literal and uncritical reading of the past.

Cry Hungary

Fifty years ago tonight I lay in bed aged 13 listening to the reports of the uprising in Budapest. It is ironic that there is trouble in Budapest tonight! In 1956 the people were taking on the Russians; today there is division at home over the dishonesty of the government.

The Hungarian uprising was my political baptism. I knew nothing of politics, or democracy and oppression. I just listened all day and all night to the reports coming from Hungary of ordinary and often unarmed people facing up to the power of the soviets. This bravery was very impressive to me, a teenager. I wanted to be Hungarian, not British! I wanted to be there with the excitement and emotion of the fight. I knew nothing of the pain of living under the Soviet yoke, or the pain of death in this uprising. It was David and Goliath, and I wanted to be David.

The uprising (or was it a revolution?) changed my life, leaving me with a revulsion for "the Russians" as we called them, but not so strong that within a few years I saw capitalism as a greater threat. So today, after a lifetime of support for a political party and ideology which some might call socialism (not many I think) what is left? It is not for me to comment on Hungary and its people; their past is past, their future is theirs! But I have to say thank you ..... for my commitment to the poor against the rich, the weak against the strong, can be traced to the events in 1956 in the streets around Hősök Tere and Andrassy Avenue. so.... thank you for that. Without your struggle and the example of the Hungarian people, I would not be the person I am today.

Hero and Orator

Neil Kinnock, the man who rescued the Labour Party from impending oblivion, spoke at events in Manchester at the party Conference in late September. Great man, great orator, great photos!

Neil Kinnock was born eight months before and just a few miles from me. Always my hero both for his great oratory laced with Welsh fervour, and for the way he made Labour electable during the late 80s.

Lori Decter sings Mimi's Act I Aria from La boheme (Puccini)

My first attempt to add video to my blog. Let's hope the technology works.

As for a comment on La Boheme, just listen and enjoy!

Whose fence is this?

Sitting in my garden, I am surrounded by fencing two metres high but invisible to my eyes. It is covered from the ground upwards with ivy! Ivy? Yes that five-pointed leaf that repeats day after day, year on year and inch by inch, but never in the same shape or colour.

What do I see? Greens of every hue from dark and tough and ageing to small, new, fragile and light. And in between, every shade and misshapen size possible. There’s not a flower in sight, just millions of leaves each one covering the layers and leaves underneath, changing with the seasons and with the years but never changing the totality of cover over my lost and hidden fence.

If the fence was the ovum, the ivy was sperm! Millions of leaves which impregnated and in time turned into its own eco-system. Sustained by sun and rain, a shelter to frogs and birds, threatened by hedge-cutter and creosote, renewed by spring each year, but always home to a secret and silent community.

I closed my hand, pushed it between the leaves. More leaves? Yes, for a while, but they had lost their smoothness, and like the skin of an ancient naturist, were wrinkled, hard and crisp to the touch. They crumbled in my squeeze and fell to the ground. “Dust to dust,” says the good book?

Like motorways, railways, roads and paths, the ivy stems tangled and twisted to all points in this hedge. “Where I will,” they seemed to say. No architect, planner or bureaucracy here; just more and more growth and in amongst it, evidence of a huge range of creatures, spiders, ants, flies, beetles, centipedes, insects of every description, and all unwittingly approaching death by bird, hedgehog or other prey.

Where is the parliament to regulate this ivy? Where is the protest or the support? Where is the management and organisation? There is nothing I can find, save an eternal community, in balance but without committee. And underneath the ivy, long since lost to light, the fence lives on, save in its protective coat.

What lessons are there here for us? What can we learn from this peaceful idyll? Maybe to let nature take its course, to leave our world alone, to wrap ourselves in nature and not the reverse; but like each ivy leaf, we have no future and will not be missed. We make our input, just a little, we have our day, but in eternity, we barely figure, counting as even less than zero. A depressing thought? No, we are human, trustees of this universe, and destiny is ours, or is it mine alone?

(dedicated to Sylvie Garreau who gave me an empty book ..... in which to write!)

The Thoughtful Sea!

I sat on age-old rocks in the warm of the sun and the cool of the wind at Calella de Palafrugell, wondering what these rocks would say if they were to give voice to their memories. Would they tell of a history of waves and weed, of fishermen and boats, of traditions which changed little over the centuries? Or would they speak with the forked tongues of men? Conscious of the differencees between Spaniard and Catalan, or facist and republican, or the modern invasion of tourists from accoss Europe. Is Calella Catalan any more? Is this the Costa Brava, or is it now Costa Turistica?

What has Calella lost since the BBC proclaimed it to be the least spoilt destination in Spain? To sit on those rocks in winter or spring; to dream with the gulls, to ferret around with the sparrows, to look into a swirling cremat, to sip on cafe solo, to enjoy the saltiness of Vichy water, solsos at lunchtime, the rocky crust of crema catalana, simply to be alone with history, culture, language, music and oneself .... these are forever lost. Tourists bring money and with money change ... eternal revolution of homes and bars, of tracks which become roads, and roads which grow into motorways.

So I sat and thought of these rocks and the stories they cannot tell ... how the sounds of the sea reassures those who doubt the realities of our world, how cormorants return each year to this remote pasture, how multitudes of fish are able to hide beneath these clear waters. The world goes on, mi amigo. It does not deny the superficial nor the beneficial, but human activity is on the edge, one facet only and the spirit of the earth and sea lives on. Garcia Marquez is right, the spirits walk our world, unseen by most, and only the spirits understand the force, the power, the omnipotence of nature. Our world is safe, if only we knew it!

April in Madrid!

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower—
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

A poem by Robert Browning ..... but .... 12 April 2006 .....


Oh to be in England now that April´s here!
On this occasion, no contest .... the Copa del Rei with son-in-law Mario, and Español´s somewhat unexpected 4 - 1 victory over Zaragoza was an event to savour... a moment of history, a moment to enjoy being out of England!

Forza Español!