Observations from a Hill

Image © Guardian Newspapers    I picked up the Journal from last Thursdays' Guardian earlier, which reminded me I hadn't done anything about the obit for John Horton Conway posted in that edition. For those who don't know his name, he was a mathematician who was perhaps most famous for inventing The Game of Life, a cellular automaton originally realised on a Go board, but later implemented in software and which became a staple of programming exercises for those learning coding. Those of us who cut our programming teeth on BASIC in the Seventies will almost all have tried to write a version of this on some early microcomputer, as they were then universally known. Although he had a an ambivalent relationship with his creation, it still fascinates coders and quite appropriately mutates and develops new morphologies to this day: many, many versions and interpretations of it can found for all computer and mobile platforms. Example source-code for just about every programmin...

Yr Elen in Winter Sunshine January 2016     In the midst of a pandemic which we currently can do little about - outside of the precautionary measures to fragment & dilute the pool of infection within the population - another question still stands.     Climate.     It's not yet May Day and I have a depth of tan (farmers, naturally) which I wouldn't normally expect this side of June or July. Last Thursday the temperature was in the high 20's Celsius here - outstripping most of the Med - and today we have snow back on the tops of the Carneddau. 9°C.                 Go figure...

Untitled 2020 - Kel Harvey     If I can return to my post of yesterday, I referred to the idea that a single frame photographic image can somehow have 'time'. Self-evidently, a single frame of movie film or video footage is a discrete step in a passage of time: space bound to the temporal by definition. Whereas, in the isolated world of the single photographic image there is a sense of narrative that stands outwith the subject apparently depicted. Apparently, simply because without personal connection or familiarity with that depicted, without cultural or social context, without textual reference: without placement in the world from which it was originally abstracted, it exists simply as it is - semantically, it is only qualified by its' place in the wider history of image making. So without any obvious narrative underpinning to reference it to, the natural tendency of the human mind is to attempt to order and patternise the chaotic into the familiar. To make sense ...

from 'Quadrants' 1975, by Ralph Gibson     My post about the latest Leica M10 Monochrom and my current phase of taking [mostly] B&W images on the iPhone has made me think back on the artist who had more influence on me than most - Ralph Gibson. And the debate on whether photography can or cannot be considered 'Art' is long closed as far as I'm concerned .     He broke pretty much every 'rule' of photography that was current. Not only in terms of his choice of subject, but in his framing and in his technical use of the medium. He abstracted from the world an internal, tonal geometry that to this day never ceases to make me draw breath at the beauty of his forms. He carved light, shade & deepest, flattest black from silver halide in as stark and elemental a way as Anish Kapoor manipulates light and form through the sculptural medium of pure pigment.     His approach to the exposure and processing of film pretty much trashed 'good prac...

Evening - our back yard     This is a poem by a late friend of ours from the old Gerlan Bohemia days of the Eighties. A fine time, remembered well by all that can actually remember anything of that time. Those of us still surviving are much redu-ced (archaic phrasing made popular with us by John Martyn) in our social capacity - more so in our present, virally-controlled micro-societies, but we trundle on - as normally as we can - into an uncertain future. This poem is from a sequence entitled 'Penmon'. My intention nearly forty years ago was to produce an exhibition of photographs to reflect the ten pieces that form the cycle. Somehow, it never happened, and Ian [Hughes] the author, died some years ago. I feel of a mind to maybe, finally get the job done after all this is over. Anyway, this is the poem: VIII. PRAYER praying, we are together connected by words poems learnt by heart, our prayers give their meaning beyond the words: together our word...

    It really is the end of another day in Ballard-land. Peaceful, really. Apart from the tinnutus...

    Now, I haven't indulged myself in camera-envy in a very long time. Despite the fact that I have been in the past involved in various roles professionally in photography. Also, I've owned quite a few good film cameras over the decades: Canon F1, Nikon F, Olympus OM2 & OM2SP, MPP 5x4 plate camera, Bronica 6x6 SLR, Mamiya C330 TLR, Pentax Spotmatic, Olympus Pen, etc. and have used many more in employment, from Nikon F2 to Toyo 10x8 & Sinar 5x4  monorails; even wind-up Robot 35mm cameras for Schlieren photography. Anyone who knows their gear will know this places me firmly in the Seventies & Eighties, work-wise - but I've been doing a lot of other stuff since then...     Since the advent of digital photography and its now near ubiquity however, I've not experienced the desire to own a camera in the way I used to. I suppose it was the knowledge that the technology was not yet mature enough and hadn't caught up with the analogue world o...

Im Wintergarten     Non-command-and-out-of-control centre of Fairview Heights. Have decamped to sunnier climes for the duration, or as long as the warm weather holds...Note all essentials: card table and two patience packs with the Teach Yourself 'Card Games for One', laptop with mini-keyboard for random noodling, the weekend paper, beer and assorted candles for when the sun gets too low to read the paper. All good.

    I mentioned before that the aural landscape at the moment reminds me of childhood, so I thought I'd find out what was on the wireless, as it was then known, on this day 60 years ago. I was five going on six and remember a lot of this stuff to this day. Here follows that day's listing for the BBC Light Programme - 6.30 : Weather and News Summary 6.34 : MORNING MUSIC Light Orchestra 
Conductor, David Curry BBC West of England Light Orchestra Conductor, Frank Cantell Sidney Bright and his Music  At 6.45 on 1,500 m. G.T.S.; Shipping Forecast Weather and News Summary at 7.30 Contributors: Conductor: David Curry Conductor: Frank Cantell Conductor: Sidney Bright 8.15 : MELODY ON THE MOVE BBC Midland Light Orchestra (Leader. James Hutcheon ) Conducted by Jack Coles Weather and News Summary at 8.30 8.55 Your Holiday Weather by the man from the ' Met.' Office Contributors: Leader: James Hutcheon Conducted By: Jack Coles 9.00 : Derek McCulloch (Uncle Mac) presents C...

Simple tomato sauce to go with the pasta     Just having a simple one tonight, after the first day of a couple of weeks off work. Can I recommend the pasta in the picture -  from Aldi; cheap and pretty damn' good. The sauce is just streaky back bacon lardons (Aldi - good dry-cured bacon: no water!) fried down in rapeseed oil till well coloured, then a finely-chopped onion sweated down with that for about twenty minutes until lightly browned. Turn up the heat and add a good glass of dry white wine and reduce. Add a can of chopped tomatoes and a bay leaf, some thyme and oregano - season with some chilli, salt and plenty of black pepper and add a good pinch of sugar to temper the tomatoes' acidity - reduce on a low heat. Add half a carton of passata and simmer until cooked out. Stir in a handful of chopped green herbs (of choice or whatever you've got: basil or flat-leaf parsley are best,) a squeeze of lemon juice and adjust the salt to taste. Cook the pasta, drain ...

    Our lives might be, maybe, not on hold; but at least constrained, restrained and contained. Despite all that, the rest of nature is gearing up for summer without consideration of our species' travails. And the relative absence of our imposition on everything [else but ourselves] seems to be having a definite and positive effect.     We've always encouraged wildlife here - we have a garden which is large, semi-wild and which hosts all manner of insects, butterflies, birds, bats, other small mammals and the occasional amphibian (we need to work on this one,) but nature's gone nuts this season. I don't know how many birds are nesting here, but it's way more than usual.     The bees and the butterflies are early this year and there's a female wasp looking to nest already - shaving wood off the bench near the house for building material.     Tonight we were serenaded by this little beauty, perched on top of the small holly...

Eglwys Sant Rhuddlad, near Church Bay, Ynys Môn     Working at the top of the island this morning, I passed by the church of Saint Rhuddlad, overlooking the sea at Church Bay. The church is relatively unusual for Anglesey, having a steeple. It was built in 1857/8 on the site of a previous church which marked a 6th century religious cell, believed to have been established by St. Rhuddlad, the daughter of the Irish King of Leinster.     Buried here is the rector of the church from 1859 to 1874 - the Reverend Morris Williams,  poet - bardic name Nicander. There you go.     Anyway, I just think it makes a pretty picture in the early spring sunshine, although I don't suppose we'll be able to see the inside of the place anytime soon.

The Northern End of the A5 - Admiralty Arch     The old A5 ran from Marble Arch in London to Admiralty Arch in Holyhead and carried the London-Dublin traffic in it's entirety until relatively recently. While Marble Arch is well known and accessible to all, it's smaller sibling is hidden away in a corner of the Harbour complex at Holyhead, marking the now disused ferry departure point to Dun Laoghaire, Ireland.     Although the ferry terminal is as busy as ever for commercial traffic, Holyhead itself is quiet and most shops and all the pubs and clubs are closed. Working there today, I only saw people out exercising - riding bikes or jogging, postmen and delivery drivers. It was quiet and the air was clean and the sun shone - I suppose we take whatever silver linings are offered us under the circumstances.

The soundscape here in the garden is now definitely pre-industrial - no sound other than birds and insects. It is something truly exceptional. If only my head would stop singing, I could appreciate fully a unique point in the aural history of this world - a return to a time without cars, planes or machinery: noise alien to a world before us.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, apart from I've just seen a water vole on Iolo Williams' programme about the Brecons and I had a sort of 1950's, black & white TV Proustian moment - Ratty from Tales of the Riverbank. So a big shout up for the late, great Johnny Morris, whose anthropomorphisation of the animal kingdom was as much a part of our childhood as Noggin the Nog, Tintin and Zoom ice-lollies.

Clouds from Fairview     Started the day just outside Bangor. Figured I'd be kept local. No - next job: Nefyn.  But as we say, when you're marching you're not fighting, so off to Pen Lleyn, about an hour's drive in the sunshine I go.     Parked up near Cab 4 at the roundabout as you leave Nefyn towards Pwllheli, I had crackers and cheese for lunch and pondered the silence - tinnitus, as I've said elsewhere, notwithstanding.     Normally at this time of year, this stretch of road would be as busy as you can imagine, but now it's just the occasional noise of local people driving to work (those that have to) and the odd fast bike taking advantage of the empty roads that punctuates the background sound of birdsong and sea breeze.     The homemade signs warning tourists and second-home owners to turn back home are still up all over the place after that crazy first weekend when people came from all over England to 'es...

If I ventured in the slipstream Between the viaducts of your dream Where immobile steel rims crack And the ditch in the back roads stop Could you find me? Would you kiss-a my eyes? To lay me down In silence easy To be born again To be born again From the far side of the ocean If I put the wheels in motion And I stand with my arms behind me And I'm pushin' on the door Could you find me? Would you kiss-a my eyes? To lay me down In silence easy To be born again To be born again There you go Standin' with the look of avarice Talkin' to Huddie Ledbetter Showin' pictures on the wall Whisperin' in the hall And pointin' a finger at me There you go, there you go Standin' in the sun darlin' With your arms behind you And your eyes before There you go Takin' good care of your boy…

Supporting the NHS, Pride & Wales!

Ragu al 'rAchub, a cold beer with lime and reading matter du Jour...

Gallows Point, Biwmares I m übrigen ist es zuletzt die Grösste Kunst, sich zu beschränken und zu isolieren. For the rest of it, the last and greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself. Goethe, 1825 W e're afraid of everyone Afraid of the sun Isolation Lennon, 1970 A dam Had 'em. Anon (on the antiquity of microbes.)

Y Ddraig Dderwen O Fethesda Hughesy - Bethesda Legend.     For those who never knew the man, he was one of a cast of characters whose stage was the inns and hostelries of 1980's Bethesda. It was a time of plenty. The work at the Quarry and on the construction of the pumped-storage scheme at Dinorwig and Llanberis paid exceeding well: semi-skilled shuttering joiners on the power station were being paid around double the national average wage and male employment was practically full.     Entertainment in those days was largely centred around massive sessions in the pub.  Now, there are currently ten pubs in the village, including Carneddi and Rachub, and at least three from the Eighties are no longer in existence. That would make eleven pubs along the High Street (fact-check required but it can't be far wrong) alone. And they were all rammed. Every evening. Lunchtime business wasn't too shabby, either, especially Saturday and Sunday. I might add t...

The view from me bench towards Chwarel Y Penrhyn after work this afternoon. God, I love this place. So lucky...

The Book. Found. And I swear this is true, the page that it fell open at was this: There you go...

Working on a joint-remake at Valley on Anglesey today - my office pictured. The railway station signal box and level crossing is in the background. A little chilly at first, but a glorious day nonetheless. A good day to be working outside - I suppose one of the benefits of my recent elevation to key-worker is that I get more than one hour in the fresh air - the exercise comes free with the job: I've always said that this occupation is like being paid to go to the gym. I never understood why this place is called Valley. The dictionary definition of the word is: valley /ˈvali/ noun noun: valley ; plural noun: valleys 1.  a low area of land between hills or mountains, typically with a river or stream flowing through it. The problem here I think, is obvious to any one who knows this place. There's no high ground for it to be between. Odd. So, to quote the Wikipedia entry: 'Valley, Anglesey - In Welsh it is referred to as either Y Dyffryn (meaning The Va...

Blackie, the Electric Rembrandt We watch through the shop-front while Blackie draws stars - an equal concentration on his and the youngster's faces. The hand is steady and accurate; but the boy does not see it for his eyes follow the point that touches (quick, dark movement!) a virginal arm beneath his rolled sleeve: he holds his breath. ...Now that it is finished, he hands a few bills to Blackie and leaves with a bandage on his arm, under which gleam ten stars, hanging in a blue thick cluster. Now he is starlike. Thom Gunn

Illustration © New Scientist The Microbe - Hilaire Belloc The Microbe is so very small You cannot make him out at all, But many sanguine people hope To see him through a microscope. His jointed tongue that lies beneath A hundred rows of curious teeth; His seven tufted tails with lots Of lovely pink and purple spots, On each of which a pattern stands, Composed of forty separate bands; His eyebrows of a tender green; All these have never yet been seen - But Scientists, who ought to know, Assure us that they must be so . . . Oh! let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about!

S eptember 1968. New year at school and streamed into a hierarchy we didn't have before. From the familiar to a new world - again - the only continuity for me was the same form room and the same form master. I picked a desk in the middle of the room, thinking I could just shrink into the room, unnoticed. Nervous. Not confident. Frankly, scared - again. The lad to my left was from another class. I don't think I'd ever spoken to him in the first two years of school, but he spoke first and asked me (as you do at that age, because, frankly it is the most important thing to know) what music I was into. I can't recall my answer, but I do remember that he spoke about his music with passion and talked about artists that I'd only vaguely heard of. That boy was known by the nickname Otis, after his hero, the great Otis Redding. John Gary Kyte is his name and he is one of my mentors. And despite the distance in time and geography between us over the last four decades, remain...

I was a great admirer of Duane Michals' photography during my years as a student, but recently, I'd not paid him much mind (for no particular reason). I chanced on something just now while going through a book I unearthed from the boxes of stored stuff I was rifling through for something else altogether. A book called Modern Art, Impressionism to Post-Modernism, edited by David Britt, Thames & Hudson 1999 (paperback edition) yielded some of his work. A quick search on Google led me to a book of his called Empty New York, and thence to an article on ARTnews.com. Very prescient indeed given where we are now.

Mark Rothko No. 61 1953 My first contact in any form, with the Sweet Pepper, was in the art-room at school. We sliced them in two and drew their insides. I didn't know they were food. A working-class boy from Winson Green, I was unaware of their very existence until that point. As I was of Mark Rothko. Naive and unschooled, it took a visit and lecture from a student teacher to open my eyes to Abstract Expressionism and to the wider American school of (then) contemporary art. I don't remember his name, and would assume that if he's still alive today, he would be about seventy. But thank you, whoever you were/are, you changed my life.

J ust a last one from Fairview Heights: On Picnics at the going down of the sun and in the morning i try to remember them but their names are ordinary names and their causes are thighbones tugged excitedly from the soil by frenchchildren on picnics Roger McGough

Stirling Moss was motorsport, embodied - old school. Childhood hero of mine, like so many: Tommy Simpson, Banks, Pele, Eusebio, Jeff Astle - Foggo, even (Baggies fans will know who I mean,) but with no disrespect for Moss, who was a genius and a pukka legend, there is one man who I revere above all in the weird and slightly unWoke world of petrolheadism - the late and very great John Surtees. The only man ever to achieve the World Championship double on both four and two wheels - unique. He was a modest bloke, not given to blowing his own cornet, but I think he deserves to be up there in that very rarified place reserved for the true legends of well, life itself. Strange he doesn't get that much airtime. Never worked that one out. But no-one else will ever achieve that unique double...RIP Stirling Moss, all hail John Surtees.

As I wrote before, the soundscape of daily life has changed beyond all recognition. Jane & I walked down to the village Post Office/shop  this morning: no more than three people at a time - well it is smaller than the average living room in there. Strolling down the steepness that is Rachub High (how apt, for once!) Street, the thing that struck me most was exactly that I'd become aware of working in Llanberis yesterday: little pools of radio from partially-open windows - music and talk-radio in equal measure as if marking individual territorial spaces. Lockdown spaces. Defensible spaces. Refuges from the unseen. Jane Under the Arch(es) It took me back to the aural landscape of the 1950's on Sundays. The Billy Cotton Bandshow, Two-Way Family Favourites - those little pools of sound which stood starkly but gently out from the general lack of the clatter that we have grown so accustomed to. We spent the rest of the day working in the garden and by mid-afternoon, w...

Dreams Here we are all, by day; by night we're hurled By dreams, each one, into a several world. Robert Herrick (1591-1674)                         

Been working today - rostered in as usual to screw up a Bank Holiday Weekend. Tinnitus aside, I've never known such quiet, even on a normal weekend - but Easter Saturday? It's like been transported back to the 1950's. Llanberis was pretty much deserted - good from the Pandemic Point of View, but seriously odd, nevertheless. Quiet like that reminds me of Sundays as a child, when even Winson Green was so tranquil we could safely play in the middle of the Dudley Road - not something to be recommended these days, I would think. It also puts me in mind, naturally, of Fromes Hill, where as I've described, the loudest sounds were the crows in the title of this post. Here's a photo that reminds me of this time - a hot summer afternoon on the front lawn at Fairview - me, Karen & Yvonne with the (very young!) Beardsmores. I do actually remember this day clearly - it would have been around 1959 or 1960 - pre-electricity there.

Late night mini-post - Just listening to my old vinyl copy of Abbey Road - takes me right back to Mr. Edwards' flat in Harborne and Woodpecker cider and Phil's mom's awful Players No.10 ciggies - why were they so bad compared to No.6? And why would Phil nick them in the first place? Answers, please from those of us still alive from those halcyon, talk-all-day days, the invincible years of youth. And it's still a magnificent album, on the whole...

Just a little domestic post, as we've been attempting to start knocking the post-winter gardens into shape. Nearly all of the conifer detritus from last years' felling of several very large Leylandii has now been burnt and the usable offcuts put to one side for various landscaping uses. The fire pit, which is actually a good bit bigger than the pic suggests, has been going for three days now. I have to say it really is a genuine privelege to have more space than we can actually cope with at this time - getting out for exercise is literally just beyond the door, and we know how fortunate that makes us. Today I started on a long overdue project to use up the remaining large stones from the excavations of 2010(!) when we built the studio - see cheesy photo above of your author hamming it up at the table tennis table - you can see all the holes in the walls and just make out the new-ish corrugated sheeting going up to seal the weather-side wall: the poor old building is now i...

 As I'm rostered off work today, I thought I'd post something a bit earlier than usual. I did a bit of rooting around amongst the bookshelves and came across a volume from the old Penguin Modern European Poets series. Published in 1969, I picked this copy up about thirty years ago in a local bookshop - back in the days when we were well served with such places. Image ©MMXX sideways Design Anna Akhmatova, Selected Poems - translated from the Russian by Richard McKane . On The Road A land not our own and yet eternally memorable, and in the sea there is tender-iced and unsalt water On the bottom - sand whiter than chalk, and air drunk as wine, and the pink mass of the pines laid bare in the sunset hour. The sunset itself in the ethereal waves is such that I cannot tell if this is the end of the day or of the world, or the secret of secrets is within me again. Anna Akhmatova 1964 This  could well describe my favourite place in t...

"O ld Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton, Time." Wm. Shakespeare, King John. The Newtonian world of the Enlightenment. Time fixed, time immutable, time constant ruled the seasons of the earth and the ages of man, and its measure made mechanically, observationally, empirically; dividing experience into heartbeat paces. The Universe measured according to the rhythm of life. Perception of time - linear and irreversible, apparently infinite and unchanging. Cradle to grave. Lasts only as long as we do. Ashes to ashes. Outside of self, time exists only philosophically, mathematically. And it's not linear. Or infinite. Anyway. It had a beginning - and - it - will - have - an - end... maybe. 'Time - is tapping on my forehead... ' Simon & Garfunkel, Bookends.

B low Up - a transient - corner-of-the-eye evanescence. Amplified. Amplified. Amplified, copied and blown up.  Blow Up. Noise floor pulls up to ensnare and mutate. "Mankind lingers unregenerately in Plato's cave, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth." Susan Sontag from 'On Photography' - originally published in The New York Review of Books. My final-year thesis, and this is a -very- long time ago - was an attempted critique of an essay by Roland Barthes - 'The Rhetoric of the Image', which posited that photographs, by their very nature are essentially, purely denotative of reality. The essay was originally presented to us on our art history and theory course as a seminar piece. Asked what I thought about it, I instinctively said that I thought he was wrong - actually I said it was bollocks. Challenged as to why this was the case - given that my lecturer agreed with me - I couldn't give a reason. And neither could he, wh...

The Offshore Windfarm from Old Colwyn Just a reminder that this country can be as blue-skyed as the Med. A beautiful day working up the coast today - this estate was like a ghost town, though - cést la vie... You get a different perspective on the world sometimes, in this job: Puffin Island from atop a ten-metre pole in Llanfairfechan

Was there a time Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles In children's circuses could stay their troubles? There was a time they could cry over books, But time has set its maggot on their track. Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe. What's never known is safest in this life. Under the skysigns they who have no arms Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.