Observations from a Hill

Pictured is my latest project, started this afternoon. Actually it's a pretty modern piece that had suffered from having been stored in a leaky corner of the studio for some years: the joints had for the most part dried out and the rush seat had rotted. So I stripped the seat off and broke the thing into its constituent parts, except for the joints that were still good. The astute among you will notice that one arm is missing from the picture: this is because its tenon had broken off and I'm glueing up a piece to it ready to be carved to size tomorrow. also, the bits in the pic being glued are just the side nearest the floor: the other side is loosely fitted to ensure everything dries at the right angles when it's time to re-assemble the thing as a whole.  When the frame's finished, that will just leave the seat to contend with. Now, the last basketry (and rush-weaving is a very close cousin) I ever did, was in Junior school at the age of ten or so, so I've been wat...

I've used the analogy of the Emperor's New Clothes before in trying to get a grip on the recent phenomenon of the apparent and absolute imperviousness of the holders of ultimate power from even the least logical scrutiny or account for their behaviours. I've also recently picked up the Savile biography 'In Plain Sight - The Life & Lies of Jimmy Savile', the subject of which committed repeated gross sexual offences against underage and vulnerable people for decades, known to his contemporaries, colleagues and sundry others in the entertainment business, for decades: doing so, without comment or action from those in observance, aside from mumblings: 'it's Savile'. Whilst I would not bracket the offences committed by our current PM and his pack of halfwits with the heinous crimes committed by Savile, there is a parallel here, in that the principal actors in both scenarios have continued to err and lie barefacedly about their so-doing in the full awarene...

  Just a note on my latest photographic acquisitions. The camera and lens pictured are part of a kit recently given to me by a friend of some forty years standing, who I think is trying to declutter, but judging from conversation, this might be some stuff out, some stuff in: I know the feeling! It is a rather beautiful Rollei SLX 6x6cm medium format camera: they first appeared in the late 1970s, around the time I was a camera salesman, although I don't recall selling them at the time. It's interesting to note that I was already intending to look for a medium (preferably square: my favourite aspect ratio for stills) format camera anyway, as I've not owned one since the early 1980s. I was considering a replacement for one of my favourites: the Mamiya C330 I owned in 1981 - the same model I'd used at Art College in the seventies; but then John came up with the offer of the Rollei, buckshee: something I couldn't possibly turn down! The only thing remaining was the lack ...

Yesterday, we headed out past Dolgellau to meet some old friends from Aberystwyth whom we've not seen for far too long, and went for lunch at the Cross Foxes. I had a lovely piece of haddock with proper chips and minted pea purée: unfortunately, before we could order pudding, they had to close the kitchens due to some unspecified emergency. John suggested that we visited a nearby church - no longer in use, like most these days - as it holds some pretty unusual features for a Welsh church. Dating to 1895-8 and to the designs of Henry Wilson, this Grade One listed building from the outside betrays little of its interior, save for details such as guttering brackets fashioned from wrought iron in elaborate barley twists. Entering the church you are faced with a relatively plain font, on the wall behind which is a repoussé-worked copper plaque which gives one a clue to the stylistic intent behind the place. Turning to your right, you are faced with a scene more reminiscent of a kind o...

Ageing is a painfully double-edged sword: I've written previously of my youthful longing for the outer signs of maturity - the old man's hands which mine now mirror, the silver streaked hair and beard - but the truth of it is that as we age, we tread an ever finer line between being and not-being: trading our gradually-acquired depth of experience and knowledge - along with long-won freedom from the world of work - for an increasingly tenuous grip on existence,  potentially mediated by the ever-present threat of ailment and illness. A Faustian pact indeed. Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water... I'll leave it to the Bard with Jaques soliloquy to sum it all up:                                         All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being sev...

Remembering good times past - John Gary Kyte (on the left) - It is with deep sadness that I write of the death of my old friend Johnny, a matter of hours ago. He suffered ill-health for much of his life, after contracting polio as a child. The physical limitations he had as result of this, and subsequent health issues over the coming decades, he bore without complaint or self-pity. His love and knowledge of music are what initially cemented our friendship at the age of fourteen or so in school, but it was our shared bizarre and surreal sense of humour that saw us laugh and giggle our way into early adulthood, until we physically parted company when I moved away from Birmingham. At school we became part of an extended group of lifelong friends - still called 'The Lads', even though we are all in our mid-sixties now: and it is as that 'family' that we sadly say "tara, our kid". Keep it fast and bulbous, wherever you find yourself, mate.

Here's a thing. The curiosity of narrative structures, both fictive and historical, one imagined, the other remembered. We just watched the final episode of Lovejoy on the Drama (+1) channel tonight, the re-run of a series that originally ran on the BBC from 1986 to its conclusion with that episode in 1994. We videotaped a large number of episodes at the time of their original showing and re-watched them many times over the following years, eventually buying into the boxed set of DVD's that came out much later. The thing is that reaching the point when the overall narrative meta-arc (if you like) reaches its conclusion is just as poignant as when first watching the original, never mind the fact we can and still will dip into the series whenever we want. It's a bit like children's stories: if the tale is well-wrought and archetypal, repeated re-telling never blunts the effect of the narrative. Strangely, the narrative of my father and my recent, revived involvement in ma...

Well, got the 'leg' sort of finished and installed on the wall end of the pew - a couple more tweaks are planned to the thing as a whole, and then it will be a bit of a clean-up and a good coat of beeswax - maybe after a bit of colour-matching the freshly worked to the older wood: but I'm not going to stress over that - it will patinate over time with use, anyway. I was going to comment on the latest revelations emerging from the foetid nethers of our inglorious government and their odious chums, but the sun's out for the first time in days, so I'm not going to spoil the mood: maybe tomorrow...

I wish I knew What's Going On, to paraphrase both Marvin Gaye and yours truly writing about Marvin Gaye the other day - meta-city! My Twitter feed this afternoon reads like a collective fit of hysteria - what is true regarding the so-called 'Indian Variant', it's transmissibility and it's resilience (or not) to the currently used vaccines? Who is telling what truth, lie or half-truth? Why are data releases being buried beneath Eurovision and a seemingly confected 'scandal' over that bloody quarter-century-old interview with the late Princess Diana? Who is pulling whose plonker and what exactly does it mean? It will be interesting to hear Classic Dom's 'revelations': I just hope they finally open up the can of worms that is our government, and expose them for the charlatans, frauds and mendacious bastards they really are. The truth is out there - the problem is finding the damned thing. One thing's for sure - this government is definitely aime...

Spent this afternoon riffing on the decoration for the wall-end of the pew: a kind of false leg, shall we say. As I don't have pieces of the chapel timber of quite the right thickness or width, I'm having to glue and sandwich pieces to around the appropriate dimensions, which can then be cut to fit the 'leg'. All the while listening to some fine jazz followed by the world music segment on Radio Three. And the sun came out at last! Now, it's cold beer and kick back time. I'll post further progress as it happens...

Funny how things cross over, seemingly at random: today, an email round from The Lads pointing out that it's fifty years since the release of Marvin Gaye's seminal album 'What's Going On', and a profile of Rod Steiger on the TV this evening. Two things strike from this unlikely confluence. The album was a landmark: dealing with unjustified war, race-hate and climate change: the early seventies was a time of greater enlightenment and awakening than the much-vaunted 'revolutionary' sixties - some of us were waking up to an awful lot of uncomfortable truths about the way the world was - and still is - being run. Steiger's part in the film 'In the Heat of the Night', starring alongside the incomparable Sidney Poitier - a tale of endemic racism and establishment corruption in the Deep South of the sixties - affected me deeply as a twelve-year-old watching the movie at the time of it's release. The great sadness is that however earnest or prescient...

How is it that at the present time and in our very particular circumstances, and all things being considered that the Establishment consider it timely to get into a hand-wringing exercise over a TV interview that took place a quarter of a century ago. The subject of the interview is dead and the interviewer is ill and off the plot. Who stands to benefit? Certainly not the reputation of the BBC or indeed the Panorama team. Who pays the ferryman? Strange times, indeed...

Interesting to note that semi-socialism appears to be alive and well in the Tory government. A partial - and denied - re-nationalisation of the railways. What idea will they steal from Labour next? Steel production? Or maybe they'll go as far as Labour never did in 1948 and nationalise land. Oops! drifted into a reverie on that one: as my old man always used to say, that's where Labour fell short when they had the golden opportunity. Of course the government's not re-nationalising the railways. Just the bits that scream "Private companies do a terrible job at this!" and the rest will be dished out to capitalism. Also interesting is yet another bit of crass sloganism from them in naming the affair Great British Railways: simultaneously aligning the BR brand with the British Empire and all things 'Great' in the establishment back catalogue. Do me a favour. As always with BoJo, it's big infrastructure gestures: never mind that most of his projects simply ...

An early evening beer in the sun - the weather has decided to at least attempt to be seasonal today - a nice warm end to the day: cold beer with a squeeze of fresh lime juice - lovely. The prospects for the next few days are not supposed to be so good, so I'm making the most of it! A lot of politics has been happening, but to be frank, today I can't be arsed: normal service will be resumed when I get sufficiently un-chilled and angry...

In attempting to finish Project Pew - the left end 'support', I ran up against the problem that my existing crosscut sled would not accommodate the workpiece, as it was too small front to back; so I decided a larger replacement was in order. I've tried to shake up the genre a bit by using a row of dowels instead of runners, which works well and is easier to implement and maintain. The problem is the one inherent to this 'traditional' kind of design, which is the accuracy of the squareness of the rear fence to the saw blade. I've got this one to as square as dammit, using an engineer's square and clamps to hold stuff in place for drilling/fixing. But it still has seconds of arc error - I could do better! Given the variables of blade geometry and condition I really shouldn't care too much about it, but I like the idea of adjustability : just like proper engineering, so I think I've got another project to work on. Given that I want to get the old man...

  sharp evening sunlight on the open door: the horizon threatens rain, and a keening breeze bears hungry gulls, wheeling over the archaeological dig in the fields below Rachub Square.

Tilting at windmills: such a convenient and dismissive phrase, as if obstacles were intended to be intransigent, ineffable and irremovable. Take the windmill of race, take the windmill of women's rights, take the windmill of LGBT+ rights, universal suffrage, free medical care and so many more that have fallen to dogged persistence, personal risk and sacrifice. Now take the windmill of workers' rights: where we had thought that one tilted once and for all , the rights of workers have largely been subsumed by the default 'right' of the neo-establishment to do with people and their lives as they will, counter to all  existing & long-established legal and moral frameworks. For inept managers to attempt to 'explain' the innumerable instances of Health & Safety breaches in public services and private companies with a trite 'It's because of Covid' when those very breaches are breaches of Covid regulations themselves, is bullshit fostered by a manag...

Capitalism - you gotta love it [or not]! Stores and fast-food chains across the US are rapidly hiking wages out of sheer desperation due a crippling shortage of labour due to the pandemic [source: Associated Press]. I think that really emphasises just what is wrong with our current [non] free-market system. For a market to be truly free, pricing flexibility has to subsist on both sides of the employment divide: wages, profit chains and retail values are inextricably linked in a finely balanced equation. The problem we have increasingly faced in the last forty years of largely unfettered markets is that the equation has been deliberately mutated into a kind of spreadsheet formula: one dimensional and omnidirectional;  under the sole control of the capitalists themselves. Throw in societal structures that have existed since the days of feudalism, with their subtle layers of control and coercion, and you have a toxic mix in which the few continue to flourish at the expense of the rest...

Yet more confusion, backtracking, partial U-turning and knee-jerk reaction from the UK Non-Government® over Covid. The variants currently causing concern have been known about for some time and the routes of transmission from outside of these islands not dealt with in a timely fashion: echoing the laggardly response of the first surge last year. A week too late in a world that moves as fast as ours is simply not acceptable: we've had vehicle safety recalls happen more expeditiously than this - and that word reaction is the key term and the nub of the issue. This administration is just too reactive and lacking overview or deeper strategic thinking, simply content to continue trying to politick their way out of the hole without upsetting the applecart of their patronage. This is a global issue obfuscated by First World politicians and businessmen. It's as plain as plain can be: we need more vaccination, not vacillation: and it needs to be applied across the world; equally, fairly...

Project Pew nearly finished, although nothing I do is ever really finished: life itself's a project that is never finished, after all - we cease incomplete, at the end of it all, if we're honest. I've got some bits of fettling to do to get it looking a bit more like. I think I'm going to just swab it down and wax it, leaving the differences in timber colour between the original bits and the added timber, which is after all exactly contemporaneous anyway, just cut and sanded to fit: it will develop it's own patina over time. The thing's a mongrel anyway, so I'm not too fussed: the enamelled number plate is 19th C French, the place name holder brand new and my little saint's niche an ex-GPO test unit battery cover, hiding a modern icon of the patron saint of Corfu -  Ἅγιος Σπυρίδων - Saint  Spyridon.  Eclectic, or just plain strange, I'll leave to you to decide...

Two more examples of the fatuous, headline and soundbite-grabbing ethos we currently have to endure: an enquiry into the handling of the Covid crisis deferred until spring 2022, and a proposed statue to the frontline workers who have actually been physically and intellectually instrumental in our getting through this thing, despite the best efforts of the PM and his government to scupper things at every step. The simple facts are that: a) Questions over the initial, laggardly response to the coming crisis, lock/un-lockdown timings, allocation of dodgy contracts, cronyism and much more need answering now - not when the heat has gone from the moment and those responsible have moved on to pastures new. Official enquiries have few legal teeth and statutes of limitation should not allow the culpable to hide behind an officially-confected history. b) Frontline workers, in particular NHS staff need a substantial hike in remuneration for their skill, dedication and frankly, bravery for their ...

  I mentioned yesterday that I had jigged up the bandsaw to lock down on the table saw top at the right angle for convenient use. The picture shows the thing in situ, including the dust extraction. The bandsaw's exhaust is a kind of a weird size and its position means that there's not a lot of  tube showing at the rear with the angle of the main body of the saw: almost like the designers tacked it on as an afterthought - it also makes it bloody difficult to use if the saw is on a table, there being practically no clearance to get any sort of tube in. So I modified an 1-1/4" (sorry for the old measures) plastic plumbing elbow, a bit of bicycle inner tube and a jubilee clip (I love these things!) to allow me to firmly fix them to the dust outlet of the bandsaw. Removing the O-ring from the open side of the elbow allowed a good friction fit for my vacuum cleaner hose nozzle without having to have it supported. Next up will be the bench planer (jointer in US parlance), which I...

  Today I've glued and pegged the pew-end up, attached the antique (French) number plaque and a repro family name card holder for good measure. I made and glued up the 'arm-rest' to the wall-end-support I made last summer: just a couple more bits of trim to add to the thing when it's dry, then we'll get the thing installed for good - or at least until we demolish the conservatory and start again - fortune pending ;0) Agios Spyridon awaits his niche - see pic. Along the way to band-sawing the radius on the 'arm-rest', I decided to construct a jig to locate the bandsaw (it's a small affair) on the table-saw top, using the mitre-slots to secure the thing. It panned out rather nicely, locating the saw firmly at the right working height/angle and allowing easy dust-extraction to the workshop vacuum. This means that the bandsaw can live on a shelf until needed, along with the bench planer, which I'll jig up in like manner: the three devices operating off o...

I can't muster much brainpower at the moment as I've been hard at it getting the final polishings and fettling done on the cottage for our first guests, who arrived this afternoon: lovely couple - Kate and Robert. I managed also to clear the last of my woodworking fallout from the main half of the studio, so I can roll out the table tennis table again: all in all, I'm done in and looking forward to my curry. So here's a little diversion for you: I've just watched a lovely YouTube of a guy making a hi-fi turntable plinth  - a piece of art really, and a testament to the value of craft skills in our current throwaway, robot-manufactured and mass-produced ethos. Some older school types might argue that his use of machine tools doesn't equal craft; to which I would say something very rude indeed, if I were that sort of chap, which I insist is bollocks. The end result of his protracted endeavours at those very machine tools is a thing of beauty: piano-finished and sle...

Just a quick update on the progress of Project Pew - the first progress since September last year, in fact. For the last few months, the old pew has been an ad hoc dumping ground for bits of wood, tools and other workshop sundries, as the cottage uplift took priority. In fact it has been the last knockings of that uplift that has forced us to get on and move the pew up to its final resting place: unserer Wintergarten - our conservatory. We needed to get the space it occupied cleared for the table tennis table to be deployed as promised. I am now officially spent for the day and my back is telling me to cease operations: moving that great lump of pitch-pine up from the studio with my boys this afternoon represents if not the last, at least the penultimate straw, and emulating camels with spinal injuries is not my idea of fun. I'll post a further, final update when I've got this religious perch in situ and polished up. I think it will match the colour of the floor-tiles nicely!

The tragedy of our current political situation here in the UK - the disaffection and disassociation of the majority: formerly known as the working classes, the hoi polloi or simply 'the common'; from any true engagement in politics and the democratic process is down to two key factors: the appallingly bad approach to teaching history that has always prevailed at school level; focussing on the history of privilege and conquest at the expense of the rôle and fate of the majority throughout the centuries; and to be truthful, the unstintingly boring nature of the political process. It takes time, a degree of education and it takes effort to get a grip on the underpinnings of democracy: a combination of needs that most people simply don't have in sufficient abundance. Coupled with a spurious and credit-fuelled 'prosperity' that feeds into a sense of entitlement and being part of 'the club', and the Right will always have a field day convincing otherwise much poor...

I was just mulling over gardens, as I noticed that our copy of Lance Hattatt's book "Gardening in a Small Space" was off the bookshelf. Whilst our garden definitely doesn't answer to that description anymore; when we bought the book, we were living down the High Street at our previous house, which most definitely did. I can't remember the exact dimensions, but it was small, even by the standard of my growing-up house in Winson Green: the entire building plot of which, from the pavement out front, to the end of the garden out back, was eleven feet wide by fifty-seven feet long, the bulk of which was backyard and garden, split by the common access across the backs of the terraces that made up our row. Lance Hattatt included in his example gardens section of his book, a garden writer's town garden, measuring seventy by thirty feet in dimension, which would have equalled the combined gardens of our entire row in Winson Street: actually, this was originally the cas...

  I have two copies of Vivaldi's Four Seasons on vinyl, pictured above, and digital versions on CD and the old iPod. The runtime of the four Concerti Grossi is on average just shy of three-quarters of an hour. Today in Rachub, we've managed to get all four seasons in the space of about eight hours - not quite as compact as Antonio's year, but frantic enough. The weather at present is pleasant and sunny: you might even venture early-summer-like; but earlier on this afternoon we were being pelted by frozen-pea sized hail and the snowline on the mountains is down to a couple of thousand feet, having all but disappeared a few days ago.

  Been hard at it today, trying to free up the left half of the studio for the promised table tennis facility. This also necessitated moving my workshop into the enclosed section of the place. This had been a general dumping ground for the last two or three years, and the space to its rear, which was originally going to be a lavatory/washroom and never quite got there, was also was floor to ceiling with junk and packing cases.  An iceberg was being excavated here: still, I've got my bench/pillar-drill/metal vice and most of my tools and shelving installed - the table saw and probably the bandsaw will have to occupy another space at that end of the studio - and then there is the question of the old man's lathe and my twelve foot bench from the shed across the garden: an entirely different question altogether. And the AirBnB bookings for the cottage keep coming in. What it is to be retired: still, I'm not climbing telegraph poles or lifting stupidly-heavy manhole covers anymo...

What a difference a day and some low pressure makes! Bank Holiday Monday morning ushered in a howler of a storm: fierce winds carrying icy rain battered us up until around three this afternoon. I was working some of the time on woodwork for the cottage, which entailed frequent trips to the studio to use the table saw and for gluing stuff up. Several times it seemed as if the roof would lift off the place - the wind was making so much noise I could hear it with ear defenders on. But I guess well over half a ton of roof - which has after all survived quite a few Atlantically-derived storms over the last few years - has enough inertia built in to keep it from flight. Pity our recently potted-up tulips didn't fare so well... And now: a gentle breeze and sunshine. Tomorrow we're tidying up the studio and moving my workshop kit to the opposite end of the building, freeing up its current location for table tennis. We have six days until our first AirBnB booking arrives and I've st...

After last night's well-deserved self-abasement, I'll move on. It was good to hear John Bercow talking on Radio Four's "Broadcasting House" this morning: he shed the kind of light on the current parliamentary situation that can only be done from an informed 'outsider's' perspective: and no-one can claim to be more informed on the subject than he. His analysis, as always, is pungent and to the point; there is a rubicon which politicians - in particular a Prime Minister - should never cross: telling porkies to the House is a sackable offence, period. This, as he so rightly pointed out has been allowed to become something of a normalised activity there: not a great place for the seat of our democracy to be in. He also allowed that the current Tory majority is so large that it effectively precludes most action against the current government: whilst not going so far as to point the finger directly and make specific accusations, his allusions were sufficient...

The old saying 'may you live in interesting times' seems to be rearing it's head at the moment: a cracked tooth, a hastily posted Air B'nB and a birthday party - result: a bit of tension... We put our cottage online, effective this morning first thing, and bam! Loads of interest/bookings - which is good - but a rising panic ensued as we realised that this lockdown release is just going to open the floodgates: a bit scary, to be honest, but we'll get on with it. The thing is, I got caught completely off-guard by the immediate and fulsome responses to our posting and to be frank, I'd not quite got the detail sorted in our haste to get the damn' thing online. One small detail - pets - I'd omitted to say we shouldn't allow them, which created a situation at dinner: mea culpa - tetchy old bugger with a grumbling dental problem and a rare panic attack over a situation - OK now, apart from the crap dental issue, which will have to wait until after the bank ...