Observations from a Hill

Me & James Image ©Jane Harvey Jane, James and I went for a really pleasant walk today, just along from Porth Swtan at the very top of Ynys Môn and the most northerly point in Wales, along a part of the Anglesey Coastal Path not far from Wylfa Power Station and Cemaes Bay. Just out there. Above the forestry, a pair of buzzards circling and calling: fluting, thin-voiced; sheep, shorn and sturdy, grazing at the very edge of a stony strand; quizzical cattle peering at us forlornly over the drystone walls. After stopping at the headland and looking back towards the White Ladies, we made our way back, faces against the wind; past prescient farmers making hay before the inevitable break in the dry weather. All in all, a fine stroll.

lia ©2020 Kel Harvey sometimes it's best to just be: no narrative or agenda no structure or stricture; no framework: to just sit outside of it all, for a while.

We have gotten ourselves into a particularly nasty bind; we have managed, somehow to vote in a Government with such a significant majority that they would seem unassailable, indeed untouchable. Unfortunately for us, the sorry fact is that they have little idea of how to actually govern and are ill-advised by those who hold plainly psychopathic views on how society should work. The extent to which they have abnegated their responsibilities, shirked and generally avoided actually dealing with the day-to-day grind of running the country has been staggering. The Opposition has very little leverage to act given that majority, but surely, at some point in this narrative, the Government will fall foul for simply not doing the job they are so handsomely paid for. One would hope that common sense will eventually prevail, but waiting so long for the next election presages more cock-ups and self-interested stitch-ups. I firmly believe that the downfall of this ridiculous administration will c...

Two instruments I've always wanted to learn to play but have never gotten around to getting to grips with are the tabla and the double bass. As both instruments can be costly, unless I strike lucky with the Lottery, I might have to pass on them. I'm just listening to a CD I purchased which arrived today: Glow, by Dhafer Youssef & Wolfgang Muthspiel. The former I already have in my music collection and the latter I chanced on at random the other week. How I've never heard of Wolfgang Muthspiel before then is a mystery - wonderful musician and multi-instrumentalist. I mentioned him to the Jazz Oracle, Johnny K and he hadn't discovered him either, which I think is a first! The album is not recent, but I took a recommendation that is was a goodie and bought it. It was recorded 2006/7 and combines jazz and arabic modes to great effect. Youssef draws on Indian, Arabic, Jazz, Electronic and many other influences, but seems always to centre on those Arabic/North Afric...

Image ©Elsewhere Test cricket is well and truly back, with England's fine win over the Windies by 269 runs, Broad being the standout with ball, bat and in the field, too - a proper all-round performance. The depth of the England bowling was marked - we seem to have found a pace attack not seen for quite a few years. A great performance all round and a deserved victory and Wisden trophy win. Although I've been a cricket fan for all my life, I've never bought a copy of Wisden. I think I might just get one to celebrate both beating the West Indies and my retirement. My sports allegiances are on the surface quite random. England is my national team for cricket, but then there is no other UK option. Rugby - Wales always, even when I still lived in England, more than half a life ago and not having then discovered my Welsh roots. Football I'm not too arsed about, but I'm still a Baggies man and as I've said elsewhere, being from the Green, it's the Baggie...

Bicycling. Like motoring, bicycling is about journeys and exploration, the joy of just getting out in the world and finding  places and things with people you like. A good bike ride with your mates as a kid was a proper social event - the bikes just there to facilitate the coverage of distance with more ease, usually with the occasional bit of risk-taking thrown in for good measure, just to spice up the day. But mostly, bicycling was about the joy of just doing, usually in pleasant surroundings, away from the bustle of normal life. Unlike cycling or driving, which are increasingly about a lot of other stuff. Like aspiration and fashion and competition. There have always been competitive cyclists and clubs and the mode du jour in the clothing department, but a very large number were just in it for the laughs and the craic generally. You don't need four thousand quids-worth of carbon fibre, aircraft alloy and lycra to get out there and just ride. A basic, not too heavy or crappy...

Image ©Elsewhere Marina Hyde's piece in yesterday's Guardian Journal highlights perfectly the underlying strategy behind this Government's and the Tory Party's Gadarene rush for the European fire exit under cover of the chaos and distraction due not only to the direct effects of the pandemic itself but also to the chaos and distraction ensuing from the Governments seesaw approach in its handling of the situation. As she points out, we are leaving our biggest existing trading partnership in Europe and turning our backs on the largest trading nation on earth - China, a country whose just-in-time supply of goods and technology already feeds a very large portion of on-trade from this country, often into Europe. Noses, cutting and spite seem to be lexical bedfellows here; although until China gets it act together on its human rights record we are quite right to keep them at arms-length. How this pans out for the very many small internet-based businesses that use Chi...

Image - Rolling Stone News is just out that Peter Green is no longer with us. Possibly the greatest of a clutch of great 1960's blues-rock guitarists, Green has died aged 73. Although his life is now storied, he was largely unknown during the many years of mental illness that he suffered, disappearing totally from view in the early 1970's and existing as a recluse in limbo far from the limelight of his early fame as a founder member of the original Fleetwood Mac in the 1960's. To say that he was a musical hero of mine is a gross understatement, and the unfortunately too small a canon of work he produced with Fleetwood Mac featured some of the sweetest and most plangent solos ever put to record; either raising a four-note figure or a beautifully timed and pitched bend to a perfect art form, he rivalled the best of the classical world for sheer quality and beauty. His solo on the Mac's version of Little Willie John's 1956 song 'Need Your Love So Bad...

Image - Wikimedia Commons When I was quite young and still in Junior school, I was introduced to the joys of Spring Hill Library, reached by Birmingham City Transport's B82 bus for I think the child's fare of 1½d. This was a journey I was hence to make unaccompanied most Saturdays, for years to come and something I looked forward to during the school week. To understand why this should be so important to a small boy from Birmingham, you have to know something about the context of that boy. Although I was lucky enough to live in a house with books and parents who encouraged us to read, the scope of that small library was limited and books expensive: the library opened up a world of reading vast by comparison. In the early years of these Saturday trips to borrow my five volumes, I just scoured the shelves and picked up whatever stood out for me. It was some time later that I was taught how to use the card indexes to find specific books or authors; a process that fascinated...

© Getty Images It seems likely that we are to experience an imminent snow-job on the Government's woeful performance thus far in the UK's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Boris Johnson, interviewed by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, offered only that he thought things could have been done better and that there were "...lessons to be learned..." and "...open questions..." His line is still the Trumpian one of denial and diversion from the simple fact that he is actually in charge and that the buck stops with the Prime Minister in the UK. It is as simple as this: he is ultimately responsible for the collective actions of his Government; his cabinet, appointed by him. End of. That he is seeking to admit that mistakes have been made, whilst taking not even a shred of personal responsibility and pointing an implied finger of blame for those mistakes at anywhere and anyone else than himself and Number Ten, smacks more of the  martyr complex of a spoilt...

Untitled ©2020 Kel Harvey Anxiety - Kel Harvey anxiety would seem to be the default human emotion - hard-wired or herd-wired? fight, flight surrender, acquiesce, kow-tow? how to know? the world flings things randomly at us and offers nought in return but ourselves. so turn, and face that you meet with equanimity.

Wireless  © Kel Harvey Talking to someone yesterday about engineering, we discovered a common past. Some twenty years ago, in my life as a software designer/engineer, we got a contract to program a module for a unit in a production line assembling miniature circuit breakers (MCB's) for a major manufacturer of contract electrical goods and components in Holyhead. The chap I was in conversation with was at the time a manager at the works. My initial meetings about the project were held with myself, my late friend Jean-Charles Boude and a manager from the company who coincidently, was from Paris. The French Connection was further reinforced by the fact that the  production line system and its programming environment were also French. At roughly the time we were awarded the contract, Jean-Charles left Wales to return to France and start his own company, so what followed was a solo effort on my part. The company who contracted us paid for an introductory course in the s...

So - ©2020 Kel Harvey Resolution - Kel Harvey Number Nine - 9 [Number] Days, Working To Go Number Nine - A Reckoning Down, Working Towards Change Number Nine - Finding Time, Working On Life Number Nine - A Resolution, Working Itself Out

Boukaris - © Kel Harvey Bandwidth - Kel Harvey bandwidth is limited, so use it wisely, only so much is useful, so use that which is, meaningfully. choose moments wisely, because fleet and evanescent, they are just memory, after all.

Protest, London 1930 - filched from the New Statesman article referenced here This week's New Statesman carries a good piece by Paul Mason titled: 'How to imagine the death of capitalism' which pretty much encapsulates the bulk of my feelings and ideas about the future of economies; opinions that I've long held. The current crisis has put macroeconomics' shortcomings front and centre, as evidenced by a Tory government madly implementing essentially Socialist ideas to mediate the effects of having to voluntarily close down much of the free market in order to protect the health and welfare of the population from the one thing that no-one has control of: pandemic disease. It's either odd or no surprise at all, depending on your viewpoint, that macroeconomic flow diagrams seem to omit public services. These are things that essentially are, or should be, net-users of cash and borrowing, and that don't quite fit the supply and demand equation except in...

Berries & Blue Sky, Rachub Lockdown was eased a little this afternoon in our little corner of Rachub. Old friends and family gathered for a meal, semi-al-fresco, beim Wintergarten. A hallelujah moment for at least one of our number who has been locked down for several months, not having even left their house since this all kicked off. A welcome respite for all, considering we have had a long history of breaking bread with them, stretching back nearly forty years. We had Gazpacho to start, followed by Tarka Dall, Carrot salad, Naans and Lamb Biryani - the first Biryani I've ever attempted. Considering I've been cooking Indian food for all of those forty years, that in itself is pretty strange. The recipe - and I don't often use those for most of my staple go-to's - is from a book I got in some remainder bin last year. Dan Toombs' - wonderful name - "The Curry Guy", seeks to recreate restaurant-style cooking for the home, a laudable goal. We'v...

One of my most cherished memories is from the very early Seventies - "...a time of innocence, a time of consequen-ces". Our first road trip. The aim initially was to see Stonehenge, which we duly did and magnificent it was. We also took in Avebury and Silbury Hill. Druidic boxes ticked, we aimed for Cornwall. There was the three of us: Clive Hill, the owner and driver of our conveyance; a certain Roger Deeks, madman and bon viveur, recently released from hospital and major intestinal surgery (his abdomen resembled a map of the railtracks at Crewe) and myself. We didn't make Cornwall, at least not at this attempt, but we did make it to Poole in Dorset. The sun setting, summer-low, the town glowing crimson and gold; cruising into the harbour, Hendrix the soundtrack to this youthful arrival into a new world: Pali Gap from Rainbow Bridge, playing on cassette tape in glorious mono - perfection itself. That night we camped on a very high point overlooking the sea, ...

Although now long superseded, the Maritime Telegraph Distress frequency of 500 kilocycles(kHz) or 600 metres wavelength was universally used from the early years of the twentieth century for the transmission of Morse Code warnings of a vessel in distress. The original call sign, sent via this frequency and  starting on February 1st 1904, was C Q D with the three letters spaced - transmitted as individual characters. The C Q was already in use as a general call on land telegraphs and the Marconi Company added the D for distress to the maritime signal for use by their operators. Not generally adopted, this was replaced by the now familiar SOS - three letters always transmitted as one character, to ensure its distinction from any other Morse (always shorter) character against the background noise of radio transmissions. In fact, RMS Titanic's radio operator, Jack Phillips initially signalled the ship's plight using C Q D when his junior operator, Harold Bride, suggested using ...

The Establishment - Image ©Elsewhere We have arrived full-square back in the era of the Rotten Borough and the Country Squire. How this can possibly have happened in the space of just four years heaven only knows. That which is plain is that it was done with the full co-operation and voting power of those segments of the general public that stand to suffer the most. Whether through the direct effects of COVID-19 and its after-effects, which are becoming more manifest as time goes on, or through the economic damage that the devastating combination of the virus and the inevitable no-deal brexit that will ensue in the following months. Factor in the bare-faced self-interest and privileged entitlement of the central actors in this sorry drama and a period of economic disparity such that we've not seen since the Great Depression beckons. The public school system at the heart of it all is specifically structured to reinforce class divisions by ensuring that wealth and more par...

Aspect Ratio - Kel Harvey ------------------------------------------ what is the aspect ratio of reality? do we see through a glass rendered to academy, cinemascope - wider still? or better still IMAX or three-dee? what shape is the world and is it flatted as a backdrop on a stage, circumscribed by edges transcribing the whole onto a mean sheet? camera obscura: an eye translated - Plato's cave? millennia pass and still, incomplete, our perception tricks us, once more.

Llyn Ogwen, Winter 2019 © Kel Harvey We now all seem to be inhabiting a somewhat meteorologically inverted world: it is currently 11:15 AM on the fifteenth of July and my view from the Hill extends little further than the bottom of the garden. It is twelve degrees Celsius out there at the moment. This photograph was taken in the middle of winter last year, in glorious sunshine with not a hint of frost in the air. For most of May this year, also, Rachub was hotter than the Med, peaking in said bottom garden at over thirty degrees for several days running, the daytime average seldom dropping below twenty-five. And they say climate change is fake news. Just like COVID-19 I suppose...

Penmynydd 2019 © Kel Harvey Horizons - Kel Harvey the world got smaller this morning. horizons far became horizons near and the distance between the here and the not here compressed, rolling the edge of our existence close enough to feel the rind and sinew of it - difference hidden beyond its limit - what remains is common to all.

Gold. An execrable 1983 single from Spandau Ballet, taken from their album True: or more generally, the precious transition metal with the chemical symbol Au and the Food Additives classification E175, Gold dissolves readily in Aqua Regia, an invention of the Alchemists: a fuming yellow noxiousness whose recipe comprises one part Nitric to three or four parts Hydrochloric acids, seasoned well with Chlorine and Nitrosyl Chloride. The metal also amalgamates with Mercury, used in one process for extracting the metal from soils and sediments, usually in small-scale mining operations, precipitating toxic pollution, illness and slow death by poisoning to those involved. The desire to accrue even a meagre living from the promise of this shiny substance drove hundreds of thousands of people over many centuries to this enterprise. Usually and typically in vain. As always, only those with deep pockets and an exploitable or very often coerced workforce and a rigged market in which to sell mad...

The Day The Scotsman Came Through - still from a video ©2019 Joe Stoner Two engineering icons in one frame: 60103 Flying Scotsman, Gresley LNER Class A3 4472 Steam Locomotive 4-6-2 Pacific - to give it it's full nomenclature; and Robert Stephenson’s Britannia Bridge, albeit in it’s somewhat modified modern form - the original, tubular rail-only bridge having been damaged beyond repair by fire in 1970. The current bridge now supports both the North Wales railway line and the A55 London - Holyhead road. Although they were built some seventy-odd years apart, they are both of a common era: the iron & steam age of the Industrial Revolution. Both in their way represent the apogee of the period: Stephenson’s bridge a radical rethinking of bridge-building methodology, and the Pacific Class’ unrivalled reputation as the epitome of steam locomotion - a combination of power, fury and grace unmatchable even today.

The first David Lynch film I saw, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, was The Elephant Man, back at JGK's place on Betamax, many years - no decades - ago. As I said, John was the first person I ever knew with a video player. This was a Big Deal at the time and I was severely impressed. Fast forward - pun intended - to the mid-eighties, when Betamax had all but withered on the vine of commercial viability, and a crappy VHS copy of Lynch’s Eraserhead, viewed on our old B&W portable TV in Gerlan. I was so disturbed by the experience that I didn’t revisit the film for another twenty-odd years. We were talking about the film tonight over dinner - bubbled-up with Number-One-Son & husband Leo after weeks of lockdown isolation - the consensus being that the movie is possibly the closest approximation to the experience of a nightmare ever rendered to the conscious world, if such a thing actually exists - philosophy students please advise. My original reaction to the film sti...

The Great Desmond Dekker I have just flashed on a memory from the late sixties. A camping trip to Kinver -1969? Me, Phil Edwards and Johnny Jones. I seem to remember it was supposed to be a week’s adventure. We found a pitch outside of the town, not sure how far - a mile? One image, however is burned into my brain: the three of us heating up baked beans at the back of the community centre in the centre of that small town, having climbed over the fence to get into a narrow alley - why there of all places when we had plenty of space at the camp? The upshot of the whole thing was we ran out of money and food after three days and had to phone my dad to come and fetch us. We ended up back at Winson Street... The thing that fixes all that firmly and absolutely in memory for me is Desmond Dekker’s ‘Israelites’ - on the radio at the time and still in my collection of valued singles.

Flags Two Flags, Welsh - Pride and Greek - National Hang in our Wintergarten and welcome evening sun filters through: Blue and White and Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain; warming this narrow space, making a Summer at least - in part, for the while. Kel Harvey

Apple's announcement at the WWDC in June that they were finally ditching OSX and moving to macOS 11 is, on the face of it, a trivial piece of news, but it is more than just a change of version number and a cosmetic upgrade. It augers significant change in the direction the company's computing division will be taking in the foreseeable future.     Apple's intention is to both ditch it's current Intel processors in favour of ARM-made chips, bringing their laptops and desktop machines into line with the iPad and the iPhone lines and, more significantly to ultimately conflate the user experiences from both platforms. This is potentially the most radical shift in Apple's thinking since they brought the now ubiquitous desktop and pointer environment to the public with the original Macintosh in 1984.     Back in those days, Jef Raskin's design completely turned the idea of a personal computer, as they were called, on it's head and Steve Jobs' vision ...

Three Musketeers Boundless - Kel Harvey                        unbound by time,                        young and unfazed                        by the expanse                        of it all,                        seeing nothing                        but endless possibility,        ...

Back cover, Transformer, Lou Reed 1972 Having just posted about singles and bass, it's only appropriate to mention the single and the bassline that encapsulates the two so succinctly: Walk on the Wild Side, from Lou Reed's 1972 outing, Transformer. I first came across the tune on The Old Grey Whistle Test (natch) on it's release, and first heard the album at Jane's friend's place in Manor Hall. The bassline that made this track was created by the one and only Herbie Flowers. He played the main line on string-bass and double-tracked a part on electric bass a tenth above it, to create that unique (and very lucrative in terms of sales) dark and laid-back foundation to Lou Reed's song. Flower's session fee for it should have been £12.00, but because he'd double-tracked two parts, he got £24.00. Flat fee. Amazing. By the way, this iconic studio session took around twenty minutes to lay down. They really don't make 'em like that any more.

Dandy - The Operation b/w A Little More Ska     The joy of the 7" single is now pretty much the sole province of collectors and those of us old enough to have bought the things in our youth. My first ever record was The Yardbirds 'Shapes of Things' featuring Jeff Beck on guitar, bought when I was still at junior school. Many, many singles went into the old party tapes down the Green, not least the one in the picture - Dandy's The Operation and it's obverse (or reverse, I think it was a double-A-side,) A Little More Ska. Prior to our discovering Roots and Dub, Ska was the main squeeze and a feature of Birmingham, specifically Winson Green and Handsworth, life.     In todays' convoluted email conversation, the hallowed name of Dyke came up. The man in our street with a system . Dyke ran a weekly shebeen at a barber shop on the corner of Winson Street and Dudley Road and his sound system was a thing of joy - sonic bliss, courtesy of about half-a-dozen 1...

  Image ©Jim Gray / Hulton Archive, Getty Images     It seemed to herald a new era of post-war global cooperation, perhaps, even, a future with conflict minimized or eliminated completely. It was the summation of all the optimism and prosperity signalled as the world crawled out of years of austerity and the rebuilding that followed the end of World War Two.     It represented a hitherto unprecedented level of technological and artistic collaboration, pointing the way to an electronic utopia in the decades to come. The world united by a communications network that would break down state and tribal barriers, rendering difference into diversity and conflict into community.     Ten months in the making, the live-to-air global broadcast of 'Our World' on June 25th 1967, used four communications satellites to reach an audience of between 400 & 700 million in fourteen countries across the globe. Britains' contribution, of course ...

Gene Krupa     Just digging through stuff on the web, I came across this after reading a reference to him in Mike Fox and Richard James' book 'The Complete Chess Addict'. Like so many others, it seems Krupa liked a game of chess or two.     Just like in that ancient TV programme 'Pinpoint', the mention of Krupa brings to mind us listening to the Blind Faith album back around the time of it's release, half-a-century ago, and JGK relating that his brother had estimated the out roll in Ginger Baker's drum solo on 'Do What You Like' to be just like Gene Krupa but better - certainly they both swing like hell and they're both equally flamboyant; you'll have to make up your own mind but I like both in equal measure. Funny what jogs deeply-buried events out of the abyss of memory. [the Baker roll is at 12:08 if you're impatient (the track's over 15 minutes long, ) or if you're in a hurry; but do listen to all of the Benny Goo...