Observations from a Hill

  Never has a draw seemed more like an outright win: 2-2 in an Ashes series, the like of which we've not seen for ages: nip and tuck all along; the long-form of the game has now matured: mutated, even, into something better and more exciting than the five-day format suggests to the uninitiated. Broadie, boshing a six off his last ball at bat, and taking a wicket with the last ball of the series, on his retirement from the game: what a way to sign off... Add to the mix the temporary return of Moeen Ali, who cracked open the Aussie's final innings this afternoon, the retirement of so many from Test cricket this summer, and the rise of new talent and tactics to the forefront of the glorious game, and the future of the long game looks as secure now as it seemed so very fragile only a very short while ago.

  The purchase of the two books featured above is separated by some forty-three years: the hardback underneath the paperback arrived this week, and the paperback above the hardback, I bought on publication in 1980, or shortly thereafter, at the start of the second 'flowering' of the Cold War: the Thatcher/Reagan years of the early/mid 1980s. "Attack, Warning Red", by Julie McDowall is a short history of Britain's preparations for the eventuality of nuclear war from the division of Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War until the fall of the Berlin Wall, forty-four years later, but raising the question of the possibility that the Ukraine War might herald a third phase of the nuclear threat to humanity. "The Nuclear Survival Handbook" by Barry Popkess, however, is written from what would now be called a 'prepper's' viewpoint, with the serious intention to suggest that survival of nuclear conflict is actually an option. Both books, alth...

Today would have been my Dad's 95th birthday, so Happy Birthday, old man! We sat down to an early evening repast of slow-roast shoulder of lamb cooked with the natural accompaniments of anchovy, rosemary, thyme and bay - the herbs from our garden, as was the mint for the essential mint sauce. A sauce of good chicken stock, white wine and shallots, reduced by half; and olive-oil roast potatoes, plus purple sprouting broccoli and carrots: very fine, so it was. Present and consuming said meal were the two of us, number one son and husband, and my mother-in-law Joyce, who predates my Dad by nearly a full year: there's continuity for you! I'm too full of good food and frankly rather pleasantly too tired to rail against the world at this moment, so I won't. Normal service will no doubt be resumed in the near future...

  Appearances deceive, and things are never quite what they seem; it would seem. Digging into this week's bumper Summer Edition of the New Statesman, having read about Picasso's rather less than savoury interpersonal nature, a review of a book about digital - mostly social media-driven - anger, and the letters page; I tackled Charlotte Stroud's byline about elitism and social immobility ['Out of the Ordinary']. Citing Dickens' Great Expectations, she argues that cultural capital - the kind of stuff much referenced in, I would say, times now thankfully passed; where people from the 'slightly lower orders' would fret endlessly about cutlery usage, abstruse food item consumption rules, and what the beejesus to call a piece of furniture or room, or the bog, even - is in some way potentially elevating. Fessing up to being working class and in growing up lacking in that cultural capital so liberally and easily disposed among the elites [by dint of the fact - d...

  Our Hydrangea with mountains beyond, in the fading light of the evening. I think the soil acidity has changed radically over the years since we planted this beauty - always at its best this time of year - as it started out quite pink in colour, turned blue, and now sports these mixed-colour blooms. We've got visitors today, both at home and in the cottage, so it's been a bit fraught getting stuff together for both, and I'm a bit knackered this evening, so I'll leave it at that for tonight. Nos da!

  On toe-ing my phone into life this morning - the back's still not brilliant [blog posts, passim] - I was greeted by a tweet by the ever-so-slightly-insane Laurence Fox, having a drollery aimed at the current Greek catastrophe: a climate-denier, right-wing phantactivist and generally weird bloke, as usual spouting utter guff in the face of so much actual, scientifically-proven, peer-reviewed, sodding fact . Later, buying the paper - I still do - I find even more shit on this stupid, stupid government's wobble on climate, simply to feather the already burnt-out nest of their electoral prospects. Later, Ken, sorry Lord, Clarke on Radio Four this morning, waffling on about what a success the Thatcher government and Tony Blair made of governance, and how the NHS is a 'better service' now, than it ever was! Get te fook, and go back to what you were actually very good at, Ken: presenting a rather fine jazz programme on Radio Two in the evenings: just don't try and sell...

  Just waiting for Beethoven's Ninth on The Proms tonight. The programme for the evening was opened by a piece by Helen Grimes: "Meditations on Joy". As accomplished as the piece was - and I'm no Luddite when it comes to music, as anyone who knows me will attest - I found it neither joyful nor particularly meditative, rather Walton-like in its in-your-face discordance. I've come to the opinion over the last few years that serious music - either 'classical' [a misnomer that always grates; it's simply 'orchestral': classical has a specificity of its own] or jazz; has been in the doldrums for some time, both stuck somewhere in the mid-twentieth century and neither having found a direction for the twenty-first. Don't get me wrong: I like both genres, but they ain't going nowhere fast, methinks. The beauty of Beethoven, like Beefheart, is that his music doesn't need to go anywhere: it's perfect where it is: particularly the Choral. I...

  What is it with the ever-present mantra of 'economic growth'? In the FT Weekend's Big Read this week, " The economic cost of extreme heat ", a director of the Adrienne Arscht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center at the Atlantic Council, Kathy Baughman McLeod, is quoted as saying: '... [extreme heat is] "pulling down our growth [and] dragging down our economies..."' Which is ironic, given that continued economic growth is in no small part to blame for our current climatic woes. The conclusions the article draws seem to consist of human adaptations to the new situation, rather than actually delivering on the environmentally-vital shift required in business and consumer thinking. Just looking at the bottom line is precisely the problem. We are trying to work with basically century-plus old economic theories in the twenty-first century, and the fit ain't good for the parameters that this completely different world throws up. As if to hammer...

  I've been lamenting the rain here and the rather damp squib that the Ashes tour has now amounted to: a washout draw is not what anyone, either English [include Welsh in this, as we obviously don't have a national cricket team, but you know what I mean...] or Australian, would have wished for. We were definitely on the cards to take it to a deciding fifth Test, but I'm afraid the meteorologists got it bang on. However, given the climate carnage elsewhere in the world at present, a soft, North Wales day of drizzle seems uncommonly and somewhat perversely welcome. I'm glad the fire's in the hearth, and not on the mountain behind us, for once... Nos da, 'chi gyd!

  ... at Uxbridge, eh? Thank you to whomever it was who tweeted the above yesterday - I've lost the thread - outlining the instruction given by the hapless Grant Shapps to the mayor of London regarding the Ultra Low Emission Zone in the capital: expressly with regard to expanding said zone. So it was Labour's fault that the Tories hung on by the skin of their teeth to BoJo's old constituency, all along, eh? Two things strike me: one, that as usual, the government will spin anything any which way to suit the day's expedient narrative; two, that conservative voters appear to care not a jot, either for the environment or their own health and that of others. Says a lot about where we're heading as a society, don't it?

It's pretty - sort of - impressive that Sunak is talking up yesterday's by[e-bye]-election rout as in some way positive for the Tories. Deluded or doubling-down? Or frankly, does it even matter to him personally? Whichever way the wind blows, he'll do OK, and I don't think he has the ego for it to matter too much to him: he's rich enough to sail on to the next token job that presents itself. If he and the rest of his ineffective and frankly embarrassing government are defenestrated - as is the most likely, though not inevitable scenario - at the next General Election, he'll simply dissolve back into the world of money, as if none of this had happened; while the rest of us have to carry on as normal...

...and I don't mean the stoners featured in the above still from Easy Rider: I happened - as is all too easy to do, these days - on a YouTube of Neil Oliver in full climate-change denial flow, trotting out his(?), by now standard, world conspiracy theories. He has been fully down the rabbit-hole of tin-foil hat wearers since Covid; an erstwhile decent broadcaster and historian, he seems to be heading straight into full David Eyke territory, lizard-kings and all. What seemed in 1969's Easy Rider to be a bit of light-weight stoner late-night bollocks, has apparently become a philosophy/religion/full-on-business empire. And the most disturbing aspect to it all are the thousands - millions - that give this crap even the slightest credence. All I can say is that people need to get out more: the real world is real, not virtual, people...  

  Diary post tonight as my back hurts and even typing is not that comfortable: my own stupid fault as it was doing alright this morning, compared with yesterday's lumbar torture: a legacy of a self-inflicted injury at work going back some years. I'm definitely not as bounce-back-ey as I once was, and having to perform a demi-plié or bunny-dip just to pick up a newspaper, really is annoying and frustrating in the extreme. Still, could be worse, and it will right itself over the next couple of days, and I'll be fine until the next daft error I decide to make. The weather's been a mixed bag here today, starting off misty - almost foggy - first thing, then gradually lifting, first to drizzly showers, then sunshine during the middle of the day and into the afternoon. The temperature has been weirdly temperate, quite cool now - compared to most other countries close by - but the power in the sunshine is unmistakable. At the moment, I'm glad of the respite that we're ...

Take a good look: this is the level to which our uncaring, dis-compassionate government has descended. Not content with intending to detain human beings fleeing persecution in what amounts to a prison hulk, they have doubled its potential payload from its designed - and presumably its registered capacity - from 250 to 500 souls. I'm sorry, but this is truly monstrous and leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth. What kind of message these people think they are sending the rest of the world about the British, I've no idea. If they're labouring under the misapprehension that it is showing this little archipelago to be a powerful, independent player in the world, they need to re-calibrate their political awareness: the days of Empire are long gone, as should be the mooring of 'prison' ships off our coastline. As to any possible dent it will make into the migration 'problem', do - as they say - the math...

  I fear for the future of UK politics and my own party, Labour. Our current leader, whom I voted for, appears to be aping the very same trajectory that Blair and New Labour took in the late '90s. What looked then to be a party and leader engaging in a stealthy long-game, turned out then to be anything but, and I'm afraid the same appears to be happening now. The news that Keir Starmer has refused to reverse the child benefit cap imposed by George Osborne saddens me greatly. This cynical and frankly Malthusian edict was and is aimed squarely at 'the lower orders'. "Stop the buggers breeding" would be a more honest reading of the thing. Never mind the appalling profligacy demonstrated by the masters of our tiny universe: how many offspring have Johnson and Rees-Mogg sired between them? Stop at two? Do me a favour. Yet another example of 'Do as I say, not as I do' from the bastards. What in God's name a party of the workers is doing in supporting suc...

Not exactly a new century, but as far as men's tennis goes, it might as well be: the old guard has had its card well marked, and the next generation has leapt from the wings to centre stage, and not before time. As great as the last couple of decades have been for the game; as with any sport, it's time to move on, and I hope that Carlos Alcaraz's victory in the Wimbledon final over Djokovic heralds the next great era of tennis: an era where proper, multidimensional play predominates. We've been waiting for this for ages, now: an end to the bangers, base-liners and one-trick ponies - Federer excepted, of course - and a move back to an era of power cut through with finesse, to serve and volley, to chip & charge, drop-shot and perfectly-judged lob; just with the added spice of modern athleticism and preparation. In short, a move back to complete tennis, which, after all is what we all want and love to watch...

Pictured, the lead-grey skies above Fairview Heights this afternoon, with more rainfall in the forecast for several days to come, so I gather. However, for once, I'm not complaining, and neither is the garden. We've had bugger-all rain for so long here, that the place was looking completely parched: maybe not to last year's desert-like standard, but pretty bereft of moisture, nonetheless. And given the heat that's currently frying most of Southern Europe, I'm quite glad of the respite this year; what with Athens closing down the Parthenon to tourists - to protect the tourists from sun-inflicted self-harm - to Sicily achieving North African temperatures. I just wish someone would tell the little bitey things to desist for a while: the extra moisture around sure makes 'em active...

  Just watched the second men's semi between Medvedev and Alcaraz at Wimbledon: and it looks at present like we're seeing the rise of a new superstar in Alcaraz. It's been a long time coming, but the golden era of men's tennis has seen its protagonists getting steadily older, with no obvious stellar replacements to take the mantle until now. Carlos Alcaraz is the complete package: big serve, massive forehand speed, volleying and drop-shots to die for; there isn't a shot not in his play book. The match point rally and winner were utterly top-drawer. All we can hope for is that his obvious confidence in his so evident natural ability doesn't take a dent from nerves in the final. If anyone can unpick Djokovic, this guy can: if not this time, then pretty damn' soon. A great player, a modest guy and a joy to watch: serve and volley is back, big-time, thank Christ!

  I've just read a damning article in The New Yorker about the Titan submersible tragedy of a short while back. Despite repeated warnings from accredited experts in this highly dangerous field of human endeavour - many of whom were on the payroll of the company at some point - the owner of this dubious venture simply chose to ignore the experts and roll with his own gut instincts and obviously scant knowledge of physics and materials science, and [literally] plunge ahead with what was always a catastrophe in waiting. It strikes me that there are similarities to other billionaire dickheads out there who somehow imagine that their piles of cash insulate them from the vicissitudes of normal human existence, as if the rules of nature don't apply to those with an 'entrepreneurial' spirit, and that their vast wealth elevates them to the realm of greatness by default. This attitude seems to me - and many others - to be an increasingly common mindset in this twisted version o...

So, Huw Edwards, eh? Who'da thought it? What is it about the national psyche, fostered by an ever-desperate media, though, that actively seeks to demonize a middle-aged bloke obviously not out of the closet, for something that actually appears, prima facie, not to be in any way physically consummated or indeed in any other way, actually unlawful? Makes you wonder whether we've moved very far forward these last few decades. The jury's out - unfortunate metaphor - but I feel quite sorry for the bloke thus far. If I'm proved wrong by further revelations, then I'm wrong...

...tell's a story, don't it? Pictured, clockwise from top right; my grandmother, Edith Harvey; my great-aunt Florence (Floss); my - as it turned out, Aunt Kit (Catherine); and my great-aunt Rose. Aunt Kit was always my great-aunt Kit when I was a kid: my dad's aunt, so he was led to believe. But at the death of my grandmother, the truth came out, and my dad suddenly had a second (half) sister. A pre-marriage fling had led to my grandmother becoming pregnant with Kit, and as was the thing at the time, the family concocted an elaborate ruse to hide the whole thing. Apparently, my great-grandmother packed my grandmother off to relatives for the duration of the pregnancy and proceeded to feign said pregnancy herself, until the birth; at which point the child was raised as hers within the family; my dad only discovering the truth at the age of thirty-two. The more one digs into one's family history, the more interesting it gets. BTW, the young aunt Rose is a dead ringer for...

Decided to dig into my Australian family connections this afternoon, having only really scanned the box of papers I got when Dad died. What I thought at the time eccentric: his regular habit of printing out his emails proved prescient; his AOL account is long-since electronic vapour, but the conversations with his then recently discovered cousins, remain, as if postal. Reading through them - I've not finished yet, let alone begun to collate - I'm struck by the poignancy of a much-too-late-in-the-day discovery of actual family down under, hitherto merely legend within the family; and the passage of their lives and their many vicissitudes; all of us bonded by blood and a common link to John Rudge and Sarah Parry in Ruabon [Rhiwabon], so very long ago. I'm moved to try and make contact with the surviving members of my antipodean family before it, for me, is also too late in the day. Keep you posted... Pictured, the River Yarra, Melbourne, where my great-uncle, Arthur J. Rudge...

  Well, the Third Ashes Test has gone the way of the first two: right to the line; except that the result favoured the home side this time. To be honest, the series should already have been at least a one-all tie, but there you go, that's Test Cricket. It's such a shame that I can't watch the damned matches live on BBC TV, not that I have any gripes with listening to Test Match Special on Radio Four: it's some of my favourite listening, although I do miss the passing of Johnner's and Blower's. I do understand the commercial needs of the current game, but The Ashes, for God's sake, should be available as if it were on the NHS, not behind the bloody paywall of commercial satellite TV. Much the same, at least the Silverstone Grand Prix should be on the Beeb, if not the rest of the Formula One season. For the moment we've got Wimbledon, but how long before that succumbs to mammon?

  This chasing down your family history thing is bloody hard work: simultaneously fascinating and frustrating: the main problem being that working-class families leave so few traces of their being behind; and the faint traces they do leave are often false trails, for pretty much always expedient means. I know first hand that my father's family often had to do a 'moonlight flit' if the next rent payment was outside their meagre means: a hand-cart borrowed from kindred spirits pressed into service to charge through the night to some other billet. Mixed fortunes have been the defining characteristic of my life: I guess 'as above, so below...' I've been making some progress in locking down my great-great-grandparent's to place and time: I have enough solid evidence, personal knowledge and photographs of my great-grandparents to give me some certainty about the information I've gleaned about them, and encouragingly, it all so far leads to agreeing with the fa...

Been out and about a bit today. I set out from home around eleven this morning to pick up Jane from her trip to Carnforth, meeting up about halfway at The Stretton Fox Inn off junction ten of the M56. As I had around ninety minutes slack on time, I decided to take a more scenic route than the usual, rather tedious A55 route, and headed off to Betws Y Coed, up the Conwy valley to Llanrwst and thence over the hill into the hinterland behind Abergele. From there I ventured into territory that once chilled the blood of my former, working self, collectively and colloquially known as the Llan's: Llansannan, Llangernyw, Llanfair Talhaiarn. In wintertime, an outside worker's nightmare, but today, with sun, blue sky and Mediterranean heat, a beautiful place to travel in; only the lack of aircon in my car taking the edge off it all a bit. Having been informed that our meet-up would be delayed for a further two or three hours, I decided to try and find the places whence my Welsh ancestors...

  The continuing moral descent of the Tories towards gold-standard membership of the Inferno, yesterday reached a new low. Robert Jenrick, no stranger to controversy and dodgy dealings, has now revealed himself to be a morally bankrupt and truly odious sociopath, with his ordering of murals designed to relieve the stress on terrified asylum-seeking children arriving at the Kent asylum intake centre, to be painted over; to 'make clear the centre was a "...law enforcement environment" and "not a welcome centre"' [from the i , 6th July 2023]. What a fucking hero. He should have been booted out of parliament ages ago. The Home Office really is a sinkhole, populated by the very worst of an already appalling bunch. Even though I'm a Labour Party member, and therefore disbarred by the rules from voting tactically, if the party can't field a candidate in our ward at the next election - which is doubtful - I'll be voting Plaid Cymru: anything to scupper t...

  You've got to ask yourself the question: "For the vast majority of the population of this archipelago - i.e. normal, struggling folk, does this government serve any real function whatsoever?" - and the uncomfortable answer is: "No, none...". They don't seem to know, want or care that a significant majority of their electorate are staring hardship, if not abject penury, straight down both barrels. Predictions that a six-percent base rate could be the new norm for some considerable time; an overheated housing market, and banks continuing to take the piss with savers' interest rates, all conspire to hit the very kind of demographic that the Thatcher government targetted with right-to-buy, cheap share offers on previously publicly-owned utilities, &etc., hard in the pocket. The Tories serve none but the rich, never have done: and the aspiring middle and working-class voters that have somehow managed to keep them in power for so long, are now starting ...

    Gwerful Mechain was a Medieval Welsh female poet, writing 500 years ago: her story was told on Radio Four a short while ago, and quite a story it was too. As I'm feeling particularly scurrilous tonight, I give you a short englyn by her, entitled 'I'w morwyn wrth gachu': Crwciodd lle dihangodd ei dŵr -'n grychiast          O grochan ei llawdwr';     Ei deudwll oedd yn dadwr' ,     Baw a ddaeth, a bwa o d dŵr.  Even though this is medieval Welsh, the crux and substance of the verse can be read by a modern speaker: I won't translate, but it's pretty earthy, shall we say... 

Jane and I have always espoused a jazz approach to gardening [can you see a pattern emerging in the ongoing story of my life?] - basically, a plant planted either survives or not: we don't apply too deep a thought process or follow the nostrums of gardening sages. If you don't want slugs to eat your hostas, don't plant hostas: simple. The great thing about a jazz garden is that it is infinitely repairable: if an improvisation fails going in one direction, just try another: rhythm, harmony, melody: riff on what works and don't sweat the failures. I was looking at some YouTube content this evening about the relatively recent Framework laptops - bear with me - which bring the hitherto outmoded concepts of expandability and - cough! - repairability to a market that had - particularly in Apple's case - descended into the realms of disposable white goods. The history of Apple's product and commercial development is a classic one. A story arc that traverses from geeky ...

The Aussies victorious again in the second Test today, despite the usual heroic stand by Ben Stokes for the home side. There were questions marks - had Bairstow's unfortunate stumping been reversed, things might well have swung England's way - but there you go: in the letter of the laws, but not the spirit of the game. It didn't go down at all well with the normally staid and reserved Lord's members, resulting in some decidedly un-Lords-like behaviour. Stokes must now be considered as one of the best cricketers of all time, and played, as usual, out of his socks, to drag England so tantalisingly close to pulling off yet another last ditch win from nowhere. Alas, when he finally went for a magnificent 155, the curtains were certain to, and did, close on England's chances. And it's been a very long time since a team two down in an Ashes series came back to win. But you never know...

  Dear diary, what a day it's been. Dear diary, it's been just like a dream. Woke up too late, wasn't where I should have been... sorry, that's The Moody Blues from a very, very long time ago... Still getting my head together. Australia - men & women - seem to have the upper hand in the cricket at the moment: are we headed for the complete whitewash this time around? I hope not, but it's looking a bit tight on all fronts at the moment - but wait, England have just got a wicket in the T20 match of the women's ashes, so even though they need only - another wicket! Two in two! 24 from 18 needed by the Aussies, now at 130-4, and bugger, just pipped by a run with a ball left. Tomorrow, the England men need a completely heroic knock in their second test to stand the faintest of chances of not losing; but you never know...