Observations from a Hill

  Just a very brief diary post tonight: I'm back at the homestead in Fairview Heights from our briefest of sojourns down Pen Llŷn this week, and it looks like I had the best of the journeying. It now takes just an hour to drive from Porth Neigwl to Rachub, and the traffic was light - most of it heading the other way - however, the rest of our party, heading for Lancashire, had a much more arduous journey, taking several hours to get there. The weather has turned out to be crap today - we were lucky to have that window of decent conditions to walk Porth Neigwl yesterday: by the time I got back this afternoon, the temperature was struggling to make fifteen degrees Celsius and a steady drizzle was setting in. The house, having been empty for a week, was a tad chilly; so I lit the stove for the first time in a couple of months, just to cheer the place up. Anyway, hwyl fawr, a nos da; for now...

  Pictured: Porth Neigwl from above the start point of our walk, this morning; the four miles or so of strand stretching out in the distance to the point at Trwyn Cilan, below Mynydd Cilan, behind which is the much smaller Porth Ceiriad, an old stamping ground of ours, and a place of great beauty in itself. A trip into Abersoch later on for a pint after lunch this afternoon stood in stark contrast to the almost solitude we experienced on this morning's perambulations: it was heaving with people and expensive automotive product. With cruel irony, the increasing erosion that is eating away the landward edge of the bay, has served to put most people off accessing the bulk of the strand itself, as the land becomes more unstable and access to the safe paths has been cut off. Forty years in contemplation, it was a fine walk, nevertheless...

  Pictured is the novel I've just finished in this evening's welcome sunshine, after a rather Celtic day of mist and occasional drizzle: both forecast and soon to be replaced - it is hoped - by at least one day of hot and sunny weather. Hopefully, the last day of our short trip here will be blessed: we'll see. Tomorrow we are set to finally walk the length of the cove of Porth Neigwl, something we've been threatening to do for forty years, and never seemed ever to get past the intention and into action on. I'll keep you posted on that, but back to the book. I bought this from a second-hand outlet a couple of weeks ago, only to discover that it was originally owned by an acquaintance of ours from the old Gerlan Bohemia days, who was the widow of an artist friend of ours [blog posts passim], and who appears to have died herself whilst halfway through the book. Although a slow burning starter, this story turned out to be greatly affecting, deeply philosophical, and a j...

  Pictured is the early medieval font at the west end of the church of St. Maelrhys near Porth Ysgo, which we visited after leaving the site of the mine workings I mentioned last night. A small and unassuming building, featuring a mix of old-fashioned box-pews and rather primitive and even less comfortable-looking backless bench pews, a plain table as altar, with a plain glass east window to its rear. Remarkably, for such an out-of-the-way place, and in this era, the church is still regularly attended for Sunday prayer, in Welsh; and for Eucharist, in both English and Welsh, on the third Sunday of the month. The Anglo-Welsh poet RS Thomas was vicar of both this church and Aberdaron for a time, and in the small Llofft upstairs a reading room has been constructed, the place often visited by pilgrims walking The North Wales Pilgrims' Way from Holywell to Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island). Another delightful and peaceful place to spend some time...

  The 'Lost World' waterfall at Porth Ysgo this morning: we got there before anyone else and for a brief time had the entire cove to ourselves. The cove and its stony beach is reached by a staircase of one-hundred-and-fifty steps down the steep side of the hill from the Coastal Path above. The waterfall is accessible via a short stepping-stone balancing act from the bottom of the stairs. A more beautiful and tranquil spot is hard to imagine: the cool and peace of the place belying its industrial history: the hills above having been the site of a relatively short-lived manganese mining operation. The two winding-gear sheds and evidence of spoil that flank the footpath down from the road give testimony to an altogether different slant on this stunning corner of Pen Llŷn. A must-see for the mildly adventurous - the slog back up those steps is a test, even for the fit - but oh, so worth it. Go early and spend some time on your own in peaceful contemplation...

  A curious confluence of stuff: I'm sat here watching Yusuf Cat Stevens on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury - on TV - in a cottage in Pen Llŷn, Gogledd Cymru, grey skies over Worthy Farm and Med blue here: the bloke onstage older than me and with whose music I grew up in the late sixties and early seventies. Meanwhile, we've had the catastrophic failure of the Titan submersible adding to the tragic debris field surrounding the wreck of the Titanic, 13,000 feet below the North Atlantic: the [literal] nadir of capitalist hubris and disregard for human safety writ large. A curiously (and worryingly suspicious) aborted insurrection running alongside the Ukraine War; and the Bank of England further turning the screws of austerity on the populace: the Andrew Marr interview with the Brexiteer boss of discounted beer outlet Wetherspoons flagging the distinct possibility of the ten-pound pint in the no-too-distant. Life seems somewhat complicated at the minute. Interesting (in the Chin...

  Well, here we are again, in the cottage we've rented every summer for some years now, overlooking Porth Neigwl; rabbits in abundance, and this afternoon, a sudden clearance in the cloud cover gave us Mediterranean blue skies and heat for a couple of hours. Very pleasant. Tomorrow we meet the boys for lunch at The Sun at Llanengan, which has been a favourite and a (thankfully) largely unchanged pub venue for the past forty-odd years: a rare survivor of times and memories past. Long may it continue...

Tonight's culinary experiment: a take on a Punjabi mushroom curry - I apologize for the messy presentation, but Yotam Ottolenghi gets away with it in the weekend magazines, so I'm not too fussed about it. I got this recipe - as you do - off the web, just casting around for ideas to use up some just-about-to-fester mushrooms. As usual, I just had to tinker with the thing, adding extra fried, sliced mushrooms to the mix, the end result being rather fine, even if I say so myself. The basis of a future staple, methinks: although further tinkering and experimentation will inevitably be involved, of course: keep you posted...

  Sadly, it looks like the submersible Titan and its crew and passengers have come to grief. At that depth, the water pressure is over two tons per square inch: as someone commented this afternoon, the combined forces acting on the hull of the sub were like being crushed from all directions simultaneously by the weight of the Eiffel Tower. The whole episode, tragic in human terms as it is, throws up some moral dilemmas in its wake. Aside from the possible technical and regulatory issues that will inevitably be investigated in forensic detail over the next couple of years; there is the issue of why? Why are people motivated to spend enormous sums of money to do this stuff, and feed the coffers of a company offering such a trip? Much like Everest 'expeditions' and the more recent trend for trips into near space, what we see are increasing numbers of wealthy individuals prepared to stump up frankly obscene sums of cash, to achieve what? They certainly don't qualify as explorer...

Exit one ex-Prime Minister with a somewhat flexible attitude to verity, to be replaced - barring the briefest of interregnums that was the Truss administration - by our current PM, largely lauded for his business head and his fiscal and monetary probity: Captain Steady, back from being cast adrift by the mutinous Johnson, to steady the Mother Ship, and navigate her back to safe waters. A bland man in a slightly-too-small blue suit, preaching from on high about financial security and the need for public-purse parsimony. When taxed about the current mortgage crisis - about to escalate massively, according to the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Bank of England, and just about any well-established, trustworthy organ - all we were offered was that the Tories would encourage lenders and borrowers to aim for extended mortgage terms or interest-only mortgages! In the first case, many, many people these days are already borrowing well beyond their retirement dates, storing up a whole raft of...

There's so much going down at the moment - the Standards' Committee report on Boris Johnson and its subsequent vote; England's excruciatingly narrow defeat in the extraordinary first Ashes Test at Edgbaston; and the terrifying predicament of those aboard the lost submersible, thirteen thousand feet down in the North Atlantic; to mention only the most prominent current news items - that I will refrain from comment tonight, and return to each through the week. Instead, I simply offer a picture of my garden shrine in the early evening sunshine: sometimes, it is worth stepping away from the hurly-burly, mentally, for a moment or two...

  A very brief post tonight, as I have been totally preoccupied with a) The Ashes, and b) The parliamentary vote on the Boris Johnson Standards Committee Report. Pictured is the latest, rather modest, modification to my table-saw. The rather unassuming bit of grey angle-iron seen to the left, has actually increased the rigidity of the fence by a huge amount. I've also been through a couple of iterations of ideas regarding stabilizing the forward end of the fence, and discarded both ideas: but as usual, I've got another motif left to riff on. Jazz.

  Just a short diary post tonight as my curry is almost ready - the naan's in the oven - and I'm keeping my political powder dry until after tomorrow's Common's vote on the Standards Committee report; also, I'll refrain from comment on the first Ashes Test until later: a good start so far for England, but the weather, whichever way it chooses to go, will be a big factor in this game. Back tomorrow: my bread's out of the oven, so I'm off to eat, folks. Nos Da!

  Home again from our short break: we're back for a week, and then we're off down Pen Llŷn to Hell's Mouth - Porth Neigwl: which, in Welsh, of course, doesn't mean anything of the sort - so-named because of a rather fearsome maritime reputation: in the winter months, this wide bay offers little shelter from storms. Anyhow, from the blue remembered hills of Shropshire to the wide open waters surrounding the westernmost tip of North Wales with a week back in the hills of Eryri sandwiched in between: can't all be bad...

  Today is the last day of our short break here in Shropshire, and Jane & I decided to have a look at Hopton Castle, near Craven Arms. The last time any of our number visited the place, it was a fenced-off ruin in danger of imminent collapse; which, given its history, would have been an act of criminal neglect to allow. However, in the early 2000s, efforts were made to raise funds to start restoration and making the building safe, garnering over a million quid to start works which - at least the current tranche - took the project to the stage of a public opening in 2010; the following year seeing its official unveiling. It's free to visit, but the Hopton Castle Preservation Trust is still raising money for maintenance, and hopefully further restoration and research into its past. Donations can be made in cash on visiting the site, or online at www.hoptoncastle.org.uk , where you can get the lowdown on the site's history and restoration. Projects like these really are a labo...

"It's not that [Boris Johnson] is a serial liar ...it's just that the truth bores him"  - William Atkinson of Conservative Home, interviewed on BBC News this morning... Astounding. The defence of the indefensible by the execrable: essentially stating on national TV that truth and reality are as flexible as the old egotist wants it to be, in his own service, and at the expense of whomever tries to get in the way of his vaulting ambition. The tone and content of his public rebuttal statement this morning, suggests an underlying mental pathology that should set alarm bells ringing. His paranoia is now clearly manifest, and it is about time he was told there is something seriously with wrong with him, mentally; and analysis followed by treatment the only sensible course, for his and everyone-else's sake: never mind a reboot of his chaotic and disastrous parliamentary career. The Emperor's New Clothes, his reality-distortion field, his loveable roguishness; whatev...

OK - I promised you a report on today's lunch, so here it is. Pictured is my main, more of which in a bit. The weather today was pretty warm, very sunny, and there was just the right amount of coolness in the breeze that filtered into the restaurant from the riverside gardens, where hardier folk were eating al fresco in the pretty fierce sunshine. We started with a shared bowl of olives with various homemade breads, butter, and a dip of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, which was rather nice. I'd opted for a glass of generic house sauvignon blanc while the others chose water or Coke to wash things down, and I think I chose wisest, but then I would, wouldn't I? For mains, Jane and James chose the smoked cod, spring onion & lemon risotto with dill pesto and samphire; Leo the homemade 8oz beefburger with streaky bacon and mature cheddar, tomato relish and fries in a - by now ubiquitous - brioche bun. For my part, I was tempted by the Hereford fillet steak, but opted instead...

Today has been hot and sunny, with little sign of a return to the storminess of the last few days: the humidity certainly ratcheted down a notch or two during the afternoon. Tomorrow, the four of us are heading out to Leintwardine, just over the border in Herefordshire, for lunch at The Lion: a place that has a reputation for knocking out some decent nosh. Our usual watering-hole there is The Sun, which was, until the demise of its proprietress some years ago, one of the last 'domestic' pubs in the UK: that's to say a boozer in someone's own house. We visited it years ago when the landlady was quite old and infirm, and sat, swaddled, in a large, high-backed chair in the small parlour between the 'bar' and the scullery that housed a stillage holding a single barrel of ale. To purchase a pint, you paid the lady and pulled your own glass in the scullery, returning to the 'bar' to quaff. Like going back in time. Today, the place has been extended out back to...

  Currently thundery and threatening, the skies above Lower Down have given us some pretty Monsoon-like rainfall this late afternoon, after a hot and humid afternoon spent first in Clun, and then Bishop's Castle. We did the usual round of Clun - it's not a big place after all - visiting the church where playwright John Osborne is buried. We mulled over the place's Saxon origins, and the reality that the Saxons were invaders themselves, rather than as supposed by so many these days to be 'the usurped natives' on the arrival of the Normans in 1066. Never mind all the previous violent incursions that served to push Y Brython - The Britons - to the western margins of what is now Wales, over several hundred years of oppression, removing them from any prominence whatsoever, until the late twentieth century, ruled over by a succession of Norman and German - latterly completely mongrel - royal dynasties, whose familial lines are drawn from practically every part of what is...

A very quick diary post tonight: we've just arrived at Lower Down for a few days break in South Shropshire. The shaggy sward pictured is Gerry's No-Mow May contribution, that's kind of drifted into June. Back home as anyone who has seen my photos in posts previous, we operate a year-round-marginal-wilderness-garden-type-thing, that seems to do the trick with the wildlife for us.

  As much fun as it is watching the Tory Party slowly eviscerating themselves - another resignation! - I think, given that we're going down to Shropshire for a week's break, I'll leave the politics out for a bit. Pictured is the newly acquired T-track slider with the said bit of T-track, which I've decided will transform my table-saw fence into something somewhat more stable, and thence, a safer guiding device. As I've got first-hand experience of 100 MPH bits of wood spitting back from a pinched blade revolving at 10,000 RPM, I think it may well be a timely upgrade. Whatever else, it's a project: I'll keep you posted...

  End of Johnson - at least in British politics - end of his main squeeze and cheerleader, Dorries. What's not to like in the knowledge of their collective seppuku? All we need now is for the (hopefully) inevitable demise of the sad shower that is the Tory Party at the next General Election. Let's get these ineffectual, lying, self-interested toads out of government and consign them to the shit-heap they belong on; where they can at least fertilize something useful...

  OK - a complete re-engineering of my table-saw fence is in the offing. I've never been entirely satisfied with it, and I think I've arrived at a better solution for it, involving that extra bit of T-Track pictured, and a roller T-Track bar that I've ordered from Rutlands. With a bit of luck and some jazz engineering, I'll be able to make the thing more capable and a lot safer in one hit. Keep's me off the streets, don't it? I'll keep you posted on progress: this one looks like a fun challenge...

  Pictured, the only surviving bloom of our Peonies this year: apart from two, as yet unfurled heads, this one stands alone, the rest having apparently been eaten by birds(!). It's never happened before, but I guess it's probably a thing, given the lack of rainfall and availability of food for our avian friends. Anyway, it pales into insignificance compared to the continued slide into the shit-pool that the Tories are imposing on themselves. Absentee PM, swanning off to his preferred domicile, the US, to play 'big' politics with the President, just to avoid the continuing bollocks regarding the Covid enquiry; the main focus of which is the arch buffoon, Boris bloody Johnson. Despite having apparently deserted his constituents for more lucrative - five million quid - US speaking engagements, for a large part of this year; he has the temerity, nay, the audacity, to buy a sodding mansion in the Cotswolds for nearly four million quid, and then double down on relying on publ...

  What more can I say? This is a spot-and-three-quarters with spots on, and the weather is pretty much what we've always flown abroad towards in times past, to escape the rain and wind. Rachub - Yr Achub - says it all; Hwyl Fawr i chi gyd, folks...

  Pictured, the new work-in-progress, the trayless crosscut fence, about to be used to manufacture another of its own components: the saw-blade safety block. This is a wonderful aspect of the whole toolmaking process, and is as old as the hills: use a simple tool, made by hand, to create a more complex tool that in its turn makes a more complex and accurate tool in its wake, and so on. This process continues to the present day, and will ever be thus, until either the end of us or the heat-death of the Universe and the eventual evaporation of all things into the void puts a stop to it all...

  Jerk chicken on the barbie; warm evening sunshine, and Coltrane emanating from the studio stereo: a glass of red completing the picture of perfection that is home, tonight. I repeat my self-pinching comment: I couldn't have imagined I'd live one day in this idyll when I was growing up in Winson Street; but I had the need for this kind of life, and somehow, with luck, sweat and a leg-up from Jane's dad when it mattered; not to mention bloody-mindedness on our part; we got here and made it our own. Our own. Yr Achub: Refuge.

After last night's culture-fest, today's just been a pottering day at Fairview Heights: we've done an awful lot of strimming and cutting back - there's tons more to do: a garden this size is a bit Sisyphean in nature, but what the heck, it's natural - and we're getting brown in the process, as well as - at least me - being bitten by wee critters. Had a barbecue tonight, and we're settling down now in the evening sun. A bit bucolic and rather pleasant, to be honest. This lad who grew up in a tiny terraced house in Winson Green sometimes has to pinch himself that he lives where he does...

  Just a diary post, as we've just got back home, and it's after ten in the evening. A rare (for us) evening out today, to see The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic at Pontio in Bangor. We were treated to Vaughan Williams' Five Variants of Dives & Lazarus, Mozart's Concerto No. 5 in A major for Violin & Orchestra; and finishing the evening was a rousing finale of Beethoven's Seventh, the best of the night. I've not attended anything at the Pontio centre before - even though I worked on the telecoms there when it was being built - and was well impressed by the acoustics of Theatr Bryn Terfel, pictured; which strike that perfect balance between liveliness and neutrality: the projection of the orchestra as a whole was well-balanced, and the articulation of its individual sections and solo instruments clear and precise, with nothing dominating the proceedings: someone really knew their stuff when they did the acoustic design of the place. Will certainly be going ...

  As always, whatever is one day's focus becomes yesterday's focus, and today's to-do takes its place. Such is the joy of retirement: no targets, no metrics, no goals, and no idiot managers 'analysing' your every move. So, today I give you my next project, the genesis of which dates back to our purchase of this house, twenty years ago. Pictured is a very substantial wrought-iron gate we purchased for what seemed then, the princely sum of sixty-five quid, second-hand, from some local dealer in the kind of shabby-chic tat that we quite like here in Fairview Heights. In typical fashion, this gate has been languishing in the potting shed since we bought it, awaiting a solution for its eventual use. That use is now imminent: its ordained purpose now clear. We're actually going to install the thing as the gate to our modest little estate; which will entail a bit of digging and swearing, some concrete and a f**k-off piece of timber - this thing weighs in at about half ...