Observations from a Hill

  “Time passes. Listen. Time passes. Come closer now. Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night.”   I was talking earlier on, of a reference made in an old episode of the TV series "Lovejoy", to the famous 15th Century Prague Astronomical clock, and the prevailing superstition - and fear - of that period, that clocks actually create time itself. The thing is that up until the era of mechanical timekeeping - and you could go a good bit further back in history to pseudo-mechanical methods, I guess - we simply regulated our daily activities in a purely analogue and instinctual sense: daylight and the season's turn being the only means by which one was aware of 'time'; all tied to itself and our being, and not abstracted to the 'measured' time of the clock. Intuitively, on a human scale, the only correct interpretation of time, if such exists, is the human, existential one: the fact that human i...

  Diary post tonight, as I'm getting sleepy with the heat of the woodstove this evening. Spent some time today finishing the wooden brackets for the sound treatment panels to be installed at Bethania for vocal overdubbing purposes. These little things will support the four acoustic panels needed to kill as much of the room reverb as possible: combined with a fine Sennheiser shotgun microphone and good EQ, this lot should make a very difficult post-production job a little easier. I'd give more detail, but I know nothing, and would probably be shot at dawn if I did and dared to tell...

Been listening, on and off, to the BBC radio dramatization of H.G Well's "War of the Worlds" on Sounds this last week or so. I read the original in school over fifty years ago, and have seen and listened to just about every adaptation of the story since. The stand-out for me, though, revisiting the original text again, is not the tale of Martian invasion itself, or it's prescience in presaging so much of the World War that was soon to actually occur; but rather the realization that the plot essentially centres around London and its immediate environs of the Home Counties, with the Thames at the centre of it all. Not a lot has changed, has it? We - well, those in England at least - still cleave to a metro-centric bubble here in the UK, where wealth, privilege and success are gravitationally attracted to the capital, at the expense of the least well off - the non-rich majority - of its inhabitants. Almost no-one can afford to rent, let alone own, property in many parts...

  No politics tonight. Just eaten more of my curry from two nights ago, having just watched the movie "21" and now listening to Frank Zappa's album 'Chunga's Revenge' and enjoying a glass of Argentinian Malbec (Trivento, from the local Tesco's Express). This album will always remind me of the front room of 16, Winson Street [blog posts passim], my home from the age of about two days until I left at the age of twenty-three. I remember borrowing the album at the time it came out, but I can't remember who lent it to me; I suspect it was my mate Clive, or maybe Jeff. Anyway, many decades later, I revisited the record by buying the CD; and in very recent times found an original copy of the vinyl in decent nick on eBay. Not a bad album at all, and I still estimate Zappa as one of the most important musicians of his era. Having said that, as I've said to so many people over the years; given the Desert Island Discs rescue choice, I'd always take Beefhe...

  How lowest common denominator of the Tories to attempt to deflect from their many current woes by resorting to their native default positions: law 'n' order and the war on 'drugs'. Not only are they content with demonizing desperate people attempting to find sanctuary in this archipelago - planning all manner of inhuman incarceration and deportation schemes for the poor sods - they are now going to 'crack down' on anti-social behaviour. Yes, that tired old catch-all that saw much service in the Thatcher years of the 1980s: basically, just find some minor irritant to amplify into a demon of society-threatening proportions, with the cynical aid of the gutter press on the right. Just what 'demon' are they now focussing on - given a gut-shot economy, education, health and social services in total disarray and in danger of imminent collapse: their own government so riven with corruption and grift as to resemble the Cosa Nostra or Yakuza, rather than any kin...

  Tonight, an improvised sort of Saag Murghi kind of thing: a chicken curry with spinach, mopped up with the excellent naan bread that M&S are now selling, randomly , from their snacks rack, alongside - well - crisps and stuff; having seemingly run out of stock of their usual fare on the curry shelves. However, not a bad repast at all, and a pot which I'll inevitably tweak for better effect tomorrow, no doubt, as it will be just me eating it, so I can up the green chilli ratio a bit! Being at the stove-front today brought to mind all those thousands of shared meals from the last forty-plus years that we've cooked and enjoyed, and drove home just how few we are now. Our number has dwindled, for reasons both geographical and mortal, essentially to a handful. Sad, but inevitable, methinks. Still, onward and upward...

  Yesterday, I posted my 1200th, ahem, post, almost exactly three years ago to the day that I started this blog, which coincided with the first Covid lockdown in March 2020; hence the - now kind of redundant - subtitle, "The Lockdown Tapes". I didn't have any expectations as to how this would develop, if indeed develop is what it's done, which is not exactly: more mutated into the diary I think it currently is, and rightly should be. A space to vent, opinionate about and comment in; but moreover, a daily discipline to focus on for a few minutes to an hour each evening. The resolution I set myself at the outset, though, was to write at least one post a day, come what may, and no matter how I felt. So far, I've kept to this regime and intend so to continue for as far into the future as I'm around to do the thing, and which my tech will allow. I've covered all manner of ground thus far, from the trivia and minutiae of daily life, to the diverse and more abst...

Something that popped up on a North Wales newsfeed today: Y Ffynnon Y Wrach, the well of the witch: a natural spring on Holy Island, Ynys Môn, beneath Holyhead Mountain. Mentioned in George Borrow's Wild Wales, Its People, Language and Scenery , it made me dig out the copy of his book from the shelves. To be frank, I've only dipped into this record of one man's autobiographical travels throughout our country, infrequently and peremptorily, and confess I've never attempted to read it from start to finish. I suppose his rather outdated, florid use of language has somewhat put me off in the past, but I think I might give the whole thing a go, some forty-some years after I bought the book, on arriving here in 1980. I will also get hold of a copy of his "Lavengro", as a part of arriving at some understanding of my own, complex, heritage: a mongrel Brummie, born of Welsh, English and probably Roma antecedents; the latter needing some considerable research, but what ...

It appears that what the government imagined would be a good day to delay difficult legislation, under the smokescreen of the Johnson-lying/Partygate enquiry, has backfired somewhat spectacularly; with the standards committee refusing to release BoJo's submission to the press in advance of their interrogation of the man ('... Boris Johnson, was incandescent ...' - New Statesman, today) live on TV. It would seem that he - backed by whom, one wonders? - had sought to undermine the credibility of the committee and its principals, before the public, via the usual sympathetic media channels, with his carefully-crafted diatribe. His subsequent squirming and backtracking betrayed his original intent to bludgeon his way past the committee and its allotted remit of enquiry into his conduct. Having lost the tactical advantage of priming his 'public' in advance, he then sought desperately to avoid the obvious offence to the committee and its chair that they were biassed and in...

  Pictured, Boris Johnson at the standards committee this afternoon. Note the suitably fried appearance of his fleshy face, after facing some of his former allies and Harriet Harman in a vain attempt to bluster his way out of trouble, by utilizing the Old Etonian tactic of assuming everyone else subscribes to your innate sense of superiority over them. A pretty sight it weren't, but at least he'd had the foresight to tame his coiffeur in advance of the meeting. If, however, he were facing the death penalty on a charge of murder, his performance this afternoon would have seen him dangling from the gibbet within days. If his former housemaster is still alive, I would guess that he would have witnessed this kind of thing from his young charge many a time, and administered the appropriate punishment, accordingly. A more transparent and squirming exhibition of 'It wasn't me, guv; it was the rest of 'em did it', is difficult to imagine. A schoolboy caught smoking in t...

  Like Custer's Last Stand or The Alamo or some such probably ill-advised allusion; pictured are indeed the last combatants in the Winson Street saga, back in 1978. Left to right: Jane, Sheila, Pete, Johnny Kyte [blog posts passim], my mom, your humble narrator, my uncle Edgar, and my sister, Karen, leaning on the family ride, dad's (he's obviously behind the camera) Austin 1300. This jovial gathering turned into a monumental piss-up, fuelled by the then current favourite: malt liquor: Colt 45 and Breaker, resulting in some very sore heads on the morrow. But it was an appropriate sign-off for the old place...

  I was just checking on the temperature in the dining room, where I normally camp out during the evenings in autumn and winter - I spend spring and summer evenings in the conservatory/veranda/wintergarten thing - and the thermometer that resides in here shows a comfortable sixty-two Fahrenheit. It doesn't do Celsius as is it's a British thermometer that's ninety-four years old, made by Southall Brothers & Barclay, Ltd., of Birmingham. It came from Bournville School of Art in Birmingham, of which I am an alumnus, having started there fifty years ago later this year. The thermometer ended up in my possession after the traditional end of year shenanigans on the last day: don't ask. The thing has stayed with me ever since, however, and I've managed to maintain the original keepers' tradition of noting exceptional seasonal temperatures on the back, as pictured; starting in 1929, when my dad was but six months old ; where the pencilled entry reads: '48°[F] 29...

  Towards the end of May 2020, I wrote a short piece about my finding a couple of rolls-worth of 35mm negs I shot in 1978, whilst still at college, taken at a chain and anchor manufacturers in Cradley Heath. Well, a while back, I bought a cheap slide/neg scanner from Lidl - as you do - and today for some random reason, decided to give it a go. I duly dug out my negative files to find out exactly what was in them. First off, starting at the back with the most recent, I discovered some photos I just don't remember taking, from the early years of the long-gone AADW chapel [blog posts passim] in Bethesda, which was a nice find in itself. I then turned my attention to some street and pub photography I did at around the same time: some of which I will return to at some point: I also intend to start doing some pukka silver halide and chemical prints of these in due course. Encouraged by what I found, I decided to scan up the foundry pics from Cradley - one such featured above - and was pl...

It's always nice when you can find a wallet-friendly eating-house with good food within an easy drive from home. One such was discovered by our son James and his husband Leo about ten minutes from their place in the north of Anglesey. It's a small family-run brasserie in the town of Valley, near Holyhead: Catch 22. The dining is over two floors; the upstairs being our boys' now favourite haunt, and which is where we ate this lunchtime: the four of us and Irene, our friend of forty-some-odd years; her husband, Alan, sadly, no longer with us [blog posts passim]. The stand-out for me was my starter of deep-fried breaded calamari with Szechuan salt, spring onion, chilli, red pepper, sweet soy reduction and lime. Squid is always a good test of a kitchen, because it is so easy to screw up. This, however, was cooked just right and the spicing and accompaniments were balanced nicely. Jane's crispy chicken wings in garlic and Parmesan butter were pretty scrummy too. I literally ...

  I have to report zero progress on the wrench, disc-cutter, self-manufactured, front; due to several other things needing attention today. However, some post-budget analysis in today's i caught Jane's attention, which she duly flagged to me, when we got back home this afternoon: this regarding the only true positive(?) to come from the budget, at least for a small but significant portion of society. The private pension lifetime tax limit removal. This would appear to be a Grand Canyon-sized loophole for the current generation of the wealthy to avoid their inheritors having to pay death duties on whatever wealth they leave by tying it up instead in their pension pots. Nice one, Jeremy: who prompted that line of thinking whilst you were being advised to raise taxation on the rest of us, directly or indirectly? As I said the other day, higher taxation is an inevitable concomitant of needing to provide public services and a civilized health and welfare system; but this has to be ...

OK - diary post for tonight, as the budget has left me speechless. I've bedded the 6" quarries in front of the hearth in mortar, leaving just a cutter to fill the centre: when I came round to cutting the tile, I found that I'd lost the wrench for my disc cutter, so I couldn't change the metal-cutting disc out for the masonry one. So tomorrow, I'll be making a new wrench to suit, from scratch: a nice mini-project in itself. Anyway, the tiles are pretty solid now, and I'll be able to grout the whole thing in a day or two. Also in the picture is the rather nice brass fender we found on eBay, which is a rather splendid thing in its own way. Next: the wooden floor! Keep you posted...

    Another day, another twist, or rather twists, in the tale of woe in which we, wearyingly, find ourselves. Interesting to listen to Professor Tim Wilson on his YouTube feed, outlining just why the Braverman bill is essentially illicit, and another channel, Novara Media also discussing the same thread of thought: under international refugee and asylum law, you cannot enter a country illegally . You seek to gain legal asylum  status on arrival in the country. As both point out, the onus of responsibility is on the government of that particular country to assess and process whatever claims are made in a timely and even-handed manner: something presently sorely lacking in our case as a nation. As for the government's attempt to deflect from their culpability by accusing Lineker et al. of overstating the severity of Tory rhetoric regarding the whole issue; if you listen to them debating said issue - available on YouTube, folks - the other evening, I think that the phrase ...

  So , Paul Johnson, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, estimates that a higher tax burden will be with us for at least thirty years, if the economy is to square itself up without cutting public services or pensions. Whoop-de-doo, no shit, Sherlock! I have no idea how we arrived at a point in history - actually I do - such as we are at present, with government, banks and sundry other vested interests blithely thinking they can carry on taking a wrecking ball to our economy and civil society, both. They - and we, to the extent that a significant number of us agree - seem to have taken on board and normalized the absurd notion that you can have society without collective responsibility. We all depend on one another, at some small or greater level. Higher taxes should not be seen as a burden, but as a natural concomitant of engaging with the rest of humanity in a common cause of mutual support and succour. The history of taxation is obviously vexed: feudal lords, vassals and peasant...

  Today, a day whose activities have been firmly trammelled by the appalling weather and a perfectly understandable personal inertia to engage with the physical world of outside today. So, apart from a brief sojourn to the shops for a paper and something to drink this evening, I've mostly been engaging with a random and rather eclectic sample of YouTube channels. From an eighteen-minute analysis of a grandmaster-level speed chess game between the world champion and the strongest computer chess engine - in German: I was pleasantly surprised just how much of the commentary I could follow; however, given the constrained nature of the topic, plenty of waymarkers were in there - via climbing videos highlighting the prowess of the finest exponents of the sport, past and present, to an excellent and pleasantly accessible exposition of Russell's Paradox. A day of inactivity somehow stuffed with activity, which is, in itself, an apparent paradox. All a bit Zen, really, much like everyt...

Yep - another U-turn: Attenborough's programme is on as I write, and a softening of attitude towards Lineker appears to be taking place. Amazing what a bit of real public opinion can achieve in such a short space of time, innit? It just goes to show how shallow the thinking of the establishment really is... However, as you might gather from the image at the head of tonight's scribble, that's not the point of - well - tonight's scribble. This singular little painting - it measures about 7"x5" is a treasured little artefact - again thought lost - and despite its obviously strange qualities, having found it again means a lot to me. It is untitled and signed Pasco Dog, 1987. Pasco Dog was Al Moore's alter ego, who produced artwork in a parallel stream to his other stuff. The rationale behind this bifurcation was never explained, but I understood it anyway. The employment of multiple identities has a rich history in the arts. This particular image, when I first...

  The BBC at the moment seems to be heading in a direction that the founders of the institution would frankly be horrified by. Not content with the ridiculous suspension of Gary Lineker and its subsequent fallout over the small boats bill, we now hear that Sir David Attenborough's new - and probably last - offering: "Saving Our Wild Isles", is to be effectively sidelined, not to be shown on mainstream TV, but to be aired on BBC iPlayer only. The reason proffered by the Beeb management, is that it fears that aligning itself to the evidently non-political organizations linked to the programme - the RSPB, National Trust and the WWF - would somehow attract flak from the Conservative Party and the farming & hunting lobbies [read the wealthy land-owners and investment bankers of this benighted realm]. It would seem that nothing changes, as the world continues to turn just as its ecosphere turns against the species that seems hell-bent on its own self-destruction: the great...

  OK - never mind the economy, the environment, the war in Ukraine or the UK's shoddy bloody government - I jest, but hear me out - there is a potential disaster in the making, lurking in the heart of The Black Country. On the tenth of last month, I wrote about the pub where Jane & I had our first date, over fifty years ago: The Crooked House at Himley, Staffordshire. A unique institution and social gathering place, still beloved of a local crowd of patrons. It would seem that its current owners, Marston's, are putting it up for sale. It's worth noting that Marston's, once a proud independent brewer of fine ales, is now part of a large conglomerate, initiated by the Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries Company: itself once a good and honest collection of Midlands brewers, long since morphed into a corporatized brewco, and no longer brewing its own beers properly, let alone anyone else's. The upshot is that one of the jewels of our fast dying pub industry, and a...

It's amazing how the media can tie themselves in knots over presumed breaches of codes and principles, where no such breaches have in fact have occurred, and no actual offence has been committed. Viz the smoke & mirrors Sue Gray nonsense and the confected outrage over Gary Lineker's tweets about the Tory asylum and immigration bill, which continues to smoulder on, even in the left-leaning press, let alone in the more rabid organs of the hang-'em and flog-'em brigade. If Lineker was a reporting journalist for the BBC, then some modicum of neutrality and even-handedness in such matters would be expected of him. But he's not: he's a football reporter and pundit: the only neutrality one might reasonably expect of him is simply not to favour one football team's fortune over another, on air. Tweeting about his personal views on the current government in no way impacts on his day job, his ability to do it, or his credibility as a commentator. End of. Although,...

  Pictured, our log store, now replete with a ton of wood, provided by a friend & neighbour who has woodland locally, the only bit that wouldn't fit, in the barrow. The woodstove project has been completed just in time for the projected cold-snap, which kicked in this morning. This evening, we are warm and snug in our mountain fastness, rather than freezing our nuts off and spending a small fortune on electricity: the consumption of which we are whittling away on as we speak. Oh, the second business card I mentioned yesterday? A superb fish-only restaurant, several miles outside Florence, that I was treated to a meal in, around twenty years ago, whilst attending another European project meeting. I had the most astonishing frutti di mare I'd ever attempted to eat: the plate, or rather, soup dish, was fifteen inches or more across, and two inches in depth: containing just about all the sea-food species that I was aware of, plus many that I'd never seen or eaten before, st...

A very quick post tonight as the charger for this laptop has died, and the battery is crap at holding charge (replacement on its way courtesy of Prime, tomorrow). Over the years, I've met many interesting people, either on home turf, or on my travels. I've written previously about the peach woman [blog posts passim], among others, but one chance meeting still stands out for me. I was overnighting in a hotel in Berlin - I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but there certainly would have been no detail, if I had - and after going for a meal locally, I fetched up at the bar of my hotel for a nightcap. I'd been sat at the bar for twenty minutes or so, when a very imposing African gentleman, in a bespoke suit, took the next bar stool to me. We engaged in conversational pleasantries, exchanging details and offering the reasons for our visits to Germany: I was to attend a European project meeting at Gut Gremmelin, a couple of hours by train away, the following d...

  Well, what are we to make of 'Graygate'? We watched the urgent question debate tabled by the government today, and to be perfectly frank, it was like witnessing the death-throes of a wounded animal, trying to claw its way back into the fight. It really is desperation on desolation row for the Tories now: what they seem to imagine is a chink in the opposition's armour appears to be as fanciful as the notion that they actually have any policies, direction or scruples. It really was an unsavoury spectacle, that kicked off with the Speaker admonishing the government for attempting to 'crowd-lobby' - if you will - the question, to get it before the House. The oily legalize of the Cabinet Minister was offset by an angry rant by Angela Rayner, which, though understandable given the circumstances of this politically-motivated farrago of a debate, was wide of the mark and of little use in the context. The interesting thing about it all, apart from the absence of the princi...

  Pictured: a curious graffito spotted this morning on one of the minor lodge gates to the old Penrhyn estate. Who chalked it up and for what reason, I have no idea. Linguistically, it could be interpreted in all manner of ways: Pura, latinate for pure - as in the Costa Rican 'pura vida', a catch-all term which pretty much equates to the Welsh 'iawn'. Wallia could refer to the fifth century King of the Visigoths. It could also be that the graffitist intended Walliae: Wales from the Latin, which I guess has more currency in Gwynedd. I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in this department to arrive at an informed opinion, but all I do know is that the Penrhyn Estate, whilst partly owned by The National Trust, is still largely in the possession of the Pennant family, of whom I have written previously [blog posts passim]. Whoever decided on this statement, I can't disagree with what I interpret as its possible intended meaning.

  I just wish that Johnson, Rees-Mogg and Dorries et al. would just shut the fuck up, once and for all. Johnson has proved himself, time and time again, to be a useless windbag with a very tenuous grasp on morality and probity in both public and his personal life, to say the very least. Rees-Mogg has the idée fixe of a quite absurd obsession with a pre-Victorian era, where his cl aa -ass could ride roughshod over the hoi polloi with impunity, whilst the poor sods tugged their forelocks at their lordships in due deference. As for Dorries, well, what on earth can you say? Her demeanour, views and allegiances are quite truly strange, I can say no more. The current bollocks issuing from their collective maw about Sue Gray, her new appointment in the Labour Party, and the Partygate farrago, is just plain embarrassing: talk about desperation! These idiots are so self-unaware that they imagine no-one actually noticed any of the shit that transpired during the pandemic's first few months....

  First test-firing of our new woodstove this evening, after an initial smoke test, and just in time for when, what the weather forecasters, or at least the tabloids, would term 'an Arctic blast' hits, next week. This project has been a good few months in the making, due to the dearth of available installers: everyone round here is installing stoves to try and future-proof against further energy price rises, and all the firms are snowed under with work. We decided that if no one else had the time to help, we'd plough our own furrow and purchase and install our own stove. With the help of a builder friend of ours and about a day-and-a-half's work, we've got the thing up and running. There's still cosmetic stuff to deal with and a couple of minor structural issues to pin down, but we're pretty much there. Just need a good quantity of fuel, now, and get used to running one of these things after a break of some twenty-odd years...

  Keir Starmer's policy statement for a future Labour government, in this week's New Statesman, outlines the five 'missions', which I won't go into detail over; go read 'em yourself. Briefly, the bullet-point headers are: 1) Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7; 2) Make Britain a clean energy superpower; 3) Build an NHS fit for the future; 4) Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage; 5) Make Britain's streets safe. I think missions two, three, four and five rather go without saying and need little comment. But Mission One is the biggie, from which the other four flow. And here lies the rub: by which economic theory are we to define growth? And what are the mechanisms through which are we to achieve growth? Thus far, in the last forty-five years of my life, we have seen economic 'growth' ebb and flow from one crisis to the next, at the behest of the masters of the economic universe: the investment brokers and bankers, whose shena...

  Just a reflection on a lost intellectual sparring partner - viz one Johnny G. Kyte [blog posts passim], and music. Johnny and I, as I've mentioned before, had a musical history going back to the day we first met: the first day of term in the third year at Lordswood school, in Birmingham. One topic that we never resolved regarding our mutual love of jazz - amongst the panoply of other genres we subscribed to and enjoyed - was exactly where it was actually going. John loved bands like Snarky Puppy - a great and creative collective, without doubt - but I always felt that the bulk of jazz in recent decades had fallen into a kind of post-bop normalcy, not really aiming for anything further than its own orthodoxy. Fine in and of itself as music, but not pushing any boundaries, which is what jazz has always done by definition, since its inception. In hindsight, one particular artist should have entered our discussions, but for some reason - despite our mutual knowledge and appreciation ...