Observations from a Hill

The new Polestar car with no rear window, just a camera/screen: nothing radically new, really; but mentioned in a piece on Radio Four this afternoon. However, the discussion soon turned around to the notion of eliminating windows on houses and replacing them with screens that would show us the outside world via cameras, or if the view's simply not good enough, show us a 'better', maybe virtual, world instead, to suit our taste. Why not go the whole hog and wear VR goggles all the time, with built in cameras to show us what's out there beyond our heads: apply some algorithms to filter out the undesirable bits, and there you are! Reality without the real bits getting in the way. We already live in a second-hand, mediated existence through our phones and social media anyway, so why not? Has reality got that bad that first-hand experience of it is simply intolerable? Frankly it all sounds like bollocks to me, but who am I to complain? As Laurie Anderson put it on her semina...

My brother-in-law passed this morning, having been ill for some time. I think it's fair to say that he lived life to the full: devoted husband to my kid sister, wonderful father and grandfather in turn, musician, and very much the bon viveur. In short, a thoroughly decent bloke. His wit was as dry as tinder, and could cut the most pompous and self-important down to size with very few words: his wind-ups of friends and family alike were legendary, and none were exempt, regardless of who they thought they were. He leaves a very large hole in many peoples' lives; so, I raise a glass as I write, in his memory. May the road rise up, our kid...

So, the chairman of Post Office Ltd. has been given the heave-ho, just over a year into his tenure, by Kemi Badenoch and her government, citing a need for a 'change of personnel' to assist in '[changes to] the entire business model' of the organisation. More tellingly, she says that '...I think it is important when we do need to have a change of personnel is that we don't hound the people or go after them...' Mmm... so having not yet dealt either with the extant and pressing issue of the expedient compensation of the victims of this mass fraud, or the judicial attention that should naturally have followed from the prima facie evidence of corporate criminality facing the Post Office and the government and its predecessors, it seems that the perpetrators are to be allowed to get away scot free at her behest. Astonishing. She really does take the biscuit on this one. My question is, why has the Serious Fraud Office not been involved thus far? Or has it too had ...

We've 'got a plan', or so the government keeps parroting, day in, day out, just on the off chance that someone might still be listening. Just what this plan might be, however, is a tad opaque to the man on the Clapham omnibus, or any other bugger else for that matter. Kemi Badenoch [Secretary of State for Business & Trade] said so again on Kuenssberg's talk show this morning, just to make sure we were all still on the same page; although I was doing a crossword at the time and so not particularly attentive to the content of the conversation; although I'm fairly sure she didn't actually elucidate just what this mysterious 'plan' was meant to be, or indeed meant to achieve. At every available opportunity, the Prime Minister insists that 'they' [Labour - main party in Opposition and therefore not actually in government at the moment] have no 'plan', without specifying exactly what plan it is that 'they' don't have. It's a...

Further to my post of a couple of days ago, I thought I'd just amplify my point regarding the crime(s) committed by agents of Post Office Ltd., Fujitsu and the Government, and the appropriate, commensurate action that needs to be taken at the earliest hour. Andrew Rawnsley, in his excellent piece in last week's Observer, uses the nicety 'condign' to describe the necessary punishment for those crimes, for crimes they be. Oxford Languages defines the word thus:  Condign: (of punishment or retribution) appropriate to the crime or wrongdoing; fitting and deserved. “…condign punishment was rare when the criminal was a man of high social standing…” That last rider of a quote adequately sums up the nub of the whole affair, and others like it that are currently matters of public concern, such as Hillsborough, Windrush and the infected blood scandal. The urgency to act against the "great and the good" - a term which should always be used advisedly, now more than ever b...

One of my favourite songs is 'Farewell to the Gold', written in 1969 by Paul Metsers about New Zealand gold prospectors and their almost inevitable disappointment and their dreaming and their scheming to gain fortunes always just fatefully out of reach. I became aware of the song through the fine cover version by Nic Jones, recorded on his album 'Penguin Eggs' [cover, pictured], released in 1980 on Topic Records. Its chorus goes: "Farewell to the gold that never I found,        Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound;        For it's only when dreaming that I see you gleaming              Down in the dark deep underground." These days, I often feel that the gold is that memory of a childhood, with the cocoon of a welfare state that made my generation one of the healthiest and most secure working-class generations in all of recorded history, with the prospect of a fair and equitable society stretching be...

More incompetence and wilful mendacity oozes from the foul pit that our erstwhile National Treasure, The Post Office, has become over the last thirty years; it would seem, every day. Not only have they singly, jointly, severally, and corporately lied about the accuracy of one accounting system - 'Horizon' - in doing so blighting the lives of hundreds of good, honest sub-postmasters, but they did so in the full knowledge that they were working off the back of a previous, equally shitty piece of software - 'Capture' - that had almost equally egregious effects, years previously. Even worse in the latest revelations regarding the older system, is the stark fact that the Post Office briefed sub-postmasters on the errors present in its system, via its internal staff bulletin, 'Focus', only to then proceed to either successfully prosecute large numbers of sub-postmasters/mistresses over shortfalls created by the error-prone software, or if unsuccessful in that endeavo...

Further to last night's post on the Southall side of the family tree, I've come across so much more today. All of this is subject to confirmation, admittedly, but so many of the connections fit into my existing researches that it's difficult to doubt the veracity of the prima facie evidence I've unearthed thus far this afternoon. I've got back another generation to my nine-times great grandfather, one William Southall, born in 1631, and a quaker; which by coincidence or not, ties into a link with the Southall clan by marriage, six generations later, to the Cadburys. Interesting, n'est ce pa? My head hurts. Dinner time...

OK - as I said to Joe this evening, I've been banging my head against the family tree for a few days now, as I do from time to time. I can usually do about a week of it before my brain shrieks enough! This morning, my Southall investigations were at about the same depth of search as before: to my great-great-grandparents, with the previous generation still a little cloudy and unresolved by relevant data. By late afternoon, however, I have found stuff that takes my search back to the 1600s, and my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents; courtesy of the family tree of an unknown cousin of mine. As she has so much right in my directly-known history, I have little doubt that the older generations she cites are absolutely correct. Verification is in order, but as they say, the journey continues. Keep you posted. Addendum: When first posted, I incorrectly said incorrect, when I meant correct, regarding the cited, well, citations: alcohol-fuelled typo...

Well, last night we lost a lot of felt from the roof of the old shed, and a couple of square metres from the studio/workshop roof - which was a bit of a let-off, considering - so, today I've jury-rigged a tarp, lashed across the naked section on the studio, to at least prevent too much ingress of the impending rainfall. Whether it's still there on Wednesday is another matter entirely, however. Keep you posted, I'm off to put my dinner on and settle down for the evening...

Yet another named storm - Isha - is currently about to make landfall here in the west - I guess first, as the Atlantic's where it's coming from - but we've already had a battering throughout most of the day and into the evening thus far. There's already been gusts of 100mph recorded at Capel Curig, between here and Betws-Y-Coed to the south - although it's fair to say that it is a windy and wet old place, anyway - but my estimation the worst so far here in Fairview Heights was around 80mph. Being told then that the worst is yet come, is of no great comfort at all: 100mph winds up here would have serious consequences. But as with everything to do with forces of nature, you just have to sit back and wait and see what happens. Batten down the hatches, drink some wine and eat a hearty meal, then sleep on it and wait for morning to assess the damage. That we as a species are largely responsible for these freak climate conditions is also of little comfort, and the delibe...

  Further to my Southall-side family researches, it turns out that my uncle Mike was born in Lullingstone Castle, Kent [pictured], the family home of Sir William Hart-Dyke, in 1929. I might add that his father and mother, my great-uncle and great-aunt, were in service to the family, just prior to WWII. I think I might have found my great-uncle Frank's [my grandad's brother] previous billet, in Northamptonshire, as the sole footman in a more modest(!)ly sized household in Towcester: the residence of one Major Thomas Fermor Hesketh. I'll let you know if this one's confirmable or not, but suffice to say, the plot thickens...

Dog-sitting tonight: Lady Day, the pooch with the mooch , pictured this evening, just after I lit the stove for the night. I've brought the last of the firewood in to join the holding pile in the veranda/conservatory/wintergarten and have cut some more of the garden fellings that have been lying around for a couple of years. Weather permitting, tomorrow I'll chainsaw up some of the monstrous, old, and now much dead buddleia on the site of the old Wuthering Heights stone-fall. So, nothing of  a political nature tonight, save to say that the latest Post Office revelations regarding their former IT system, 'Capture', came as no surprise. The issue now is whether or not the perpetrators of the gross corporate fraud that the Post Office and its IT suppliers committed, and the government(s) that oversaw and colluded [either by commission or omission] with them, to falsely accuse innocent people and steal their money, will be brought properly to book; or whether they will get ...

  I went for a welcome constitutional this lunchtime, on our customary circuit around Church Island, Porthaethwy [Menai Bridge] [pictured] and under the magnificent Menai Bridge [background of picture] and back. A pleasant way to spend an hour in contemplative perambulation, as always. The little church of St. Tysilio was unfortunately closed, although I hadn't expected otherwise at this time of year. This tiny place - and it is tiny - dates to medieval times, but Tysilio Sant, son of  Brochfael Ysgythrog, King of Powys, who left his father's court to pursue a religious calling in circa 630 AD [or CE, if you will], founded a hermitage on Church Island, ostensibly on the site of the current church. A lot of history for such a small island, like so many around the coast of Cymru.

  Got around to installing our new shower unit this afternoon, so it's now under observation for leaks, etc. I had to make a few changes to the plumbing and power arrangements to accommodate the much larger than previous unit, but aside from the usual swearing and cursing, not an arduous task, really. We went for this rather over-specced unit as it's properly thermostatically [electronically so] controlled, and can maintain a pretty constant temperature despite fluctuating water pressures. Tests thus far are positive: clever piece of kit, and it's set to its energy-saving mode. Up here in Fairview Heights the water pressure is risibly low at the best of times - as we're only just below the altitude of our reservoir - and filling a kettle or flushing the loo - with the old shower at least - would result in scaldingly-hot water followed rapidly by a very cold shower: less than ideal and frankly bloody annoying. I had toyed with idea of installing a header-tank and using ...

  Pictured, tonight's repast of chicken tikka and an improvised curry of some leftover roasties from Sunday, with poppadum and chapati. The spice mix for the tikka, along with the chapati, came from the estimable asian and north African food store - great halal meat from there, too - at the very bottom of Bangor High Street, near The Skerries pub. It turned out to be pretty spicy, too! The leftover spuds, thankfully, I spiced a tad less fierce, which balanced the plate out: the readymade chapatis I have to say are splendid: damned close to mine at their best, back in the 'eighties, when such off-the-shelf Indian breads were simply unavailable in this area. A decent meal, which will stretch to tomorrow night as well. That's all, folks: Nos da!

I noticed a small piece in today's i , down on page fifteen in 'News in Brief': "Virtual Hospital Care is no Silver Bullet". Just let that sink in for a moment. Virtual hospital care . What on God's earth is that supposed to even mean ? To quote the final paragraph of this little throwaway in full: "Virtual wards allow patients to receive care at home, with clinical staff using apps or monitors. I mean, are we really that far adrift from reality that this makes any sense at all? When I was a toddler, back in the mid-nineteen-fifties, I was severely scalded on my lower abdomen, groin and legs, occasioned by my dragging a freshly-made pot of tea off the kitchen counter right over me. I was run down in my pushchair to the accident & emergency department of Dudley Rd. Hospital by my mom and nan, a distance of three-quarters of a mile or so, on foot. I was treated for severe burns on the spot, with no wait; and spent the next six months in and out of the o...

The endless, first-world conundrum of the wealthy: what do I buy with my ill-gotten gains? Is our potential purchase guided by choice & desire of the object of our transaction: a genuine need to own and appreciate a fine watch, an artwork, or even a home? Or is the motivation simply to invest financially in an object purely for its monetary value? It's an age-old question, and one that irks me to this day. Simply put, I hate and abhor those with zero aesthetic sensibility who view the finest art and craftsmanship as mere bargaining chips in their ongoing cycle of transactory nonsense: a view to a financial kill, so to speak. I'm minded of the scene in the film "A Good Year", when Russell Crowe's character Max tasks his boss over the ownership of a Van Gogh painting: the one on display on the wall being a phenomenally-expensive copy, whilst the original is languishing unseen in a vault. That this is the norm for most stupidly expensive things owned by most stup...

James and Leo came over for a visit this afternoon after a protracted bout of chest infections [theirs] that have separated us all since New Year. As I've been doing some family tree work over the last week or two, the dining table is somewhat festooned with photocopies of old census documents and family photographs. James pointed out something particularly salient about one of those photographs: my mother and father's wedding day, nearly seventy-two years ago, pictured above. His observation was that the level of detail was almost hyper-real: digital, even. That digital technology - certainly imaging technology - did not exist at that time and for many decades hence, and I am old enough to remember when the only photographic images were chemically based, says a great deal about our relationship with the images produced by our cameras, of whatever form. Nowadays, the taking of a photograph is entirely trivial - there is no skill in the mechanics of producing an image, only in i...

In watching the grilling of Stephen Bradshaw, Post Office Investigator, yesterday at the Post Office Scandal enquiry, I realised that neither pity nor schadenfreude would be in any way appropriate emotional responses to the spectacle. That he was part of a business structure - unfortunately familiar to many of us who have been at the bottom of the food-chain of corporations and 'institutions' - and hence essentially a willing patsy in what will certainly be his eventual downfall, does not warrant pity, but rather the understanding that some people can be coerced into behaving inhumanely by their employers, under threat of loss to themselves, and bypassing their moral filters.  He was essentially hired psychological muscle. Employed by a company whose tiered management structure - line management is the curse of modern life: I know from personal experience as I've said before - is geared to shunt all responsibility for decision-making down to as low a level of the pecking-or...

OK, I was going to write about the Post Office Scandal enquiry, which we have watched, on and off, all day, today. In fact, I've already started in on that post; but I'll finish it up tomorrow. Tonight's repast - for your humble narrator at least - was the leftover Coriander Chicken [see last night's post], and some spuds cooked in an entirely improvised manner: jazz cookery, yet again. The recipe for the spuds, as with the Coriander Chicken, is simplicity itself. If anyone that knows me wants me to pass on the chicken recipe - it ain't mine after all - contact me, and I'll email it. As for the spuds, the recipe's mine, so I'll share it with you unmediated by copyright: For a single portion - or two for my reduce-d appetite these days; take two medium Maris Piper potatoes, peel and dice, then par-boil with a good pinch of sea salt until almost done. Drain and let them dry out. Heat a couple of tablespoonfuls of rapeseed oil  or whatever oil takes your fa...

  Pictured, tonight's repast: Chicken Dhania [Green Coriander Chicken] from a recipe included in one of Madhur Jaffrey's estimable books. This apparently hails from the Ismaili Muslims of Kenya. All I can say is that is delicious, served simply with chappati and poppadums. And not an onion in sight. More later: I'm going to sit in front of the woodstove and digest it all slowly, with a glass of a half-decent red. Nos da, a hwyl fawr i chi gyd.

From its Royal, state origins in 1635, through its dissolution into separate, still Royal, state-controlled entities some three-hundred years later in 1969, and its subsequent series of privatisations in the decades since under the Tories, the once venerable if eccentric institution of what was the General Post Office has become the sorry collection of assorted public and private companies that we see today. BT, Openreach, Royal Mail and most notoriously today, The Post Office Ltd. Leaving aside all the faults that the first three most definitely have, it's the latter that of course, finally, commands our interest today.That the horrors perpetrated on so many good people has finally got the ear of a decently sized audience and subsequently shamed a woefully indifferent body-politic into actually responding to issues that have been a matter of fact and in the public domain for so long, is to be applauded. But more, much more needs to be done to redress this 'affront to justice...

It's been a mixed bag of a day today, spent mostly down the rabbit-hole of my mother's family history - the Southall side - until my brain can cope no more until at least tomorrow: I've traced links both real and possibly fantastical [lovely, old world usage, that] to rather more diverse places than I'd imagined I would at the outset. Still it's an interesting diversion to engage with, and offers new light on some people who I actually knew personally, despite their being three generations older than me. Also, I discovered that my great-great-grandmother Harriet Taylor was the village postmistress in Bosbury, Herefordshire, back at the turn of the 19th/20th century. Aside from that, we shopped briefly and managed to secure an order for more firewood from Rob before he goes back to Cornwall to visit his ma, in about ten days time. With a bit of luck, we can then stretch it out into spring, should the season arrive in a timely fashion. At least the days are lengthenin...

Choosing which fork in the road down which to travel is - on Anglesey, at least - either a matter of native knowledge or simple guesswork [possession and use of sat-nav notwithstanding: although there's plenty of bear-traps there, too]. And I often find myself duped by the simple binary choice of switching a light on or off conditioned by my preconception of the existing state of said light: more often than not, the light is already in the - either on or off - state I intended to instigate by manual operation of the switch; and cognitively blind to the fact that the said light is already in the state intended, I inadvertently reverse my intended action in the process. It's weird, but it's a thing. My point is, though, that although binary state choices are reasonably clear in such on/off situations [preconceptions excepted], they are not always so defined in the somewhat messier world of politics, and society in general. I refer to the Post Office Scandal yet again here: t...

I got drawn back into the maelstrom of family tree stuff this afternoon by some mysterious force or other, and although I started with the intention of following up further my mother's line, I got distracted and ended up with my dad's mother's side of the family: the Rudges. Sorting through some of the family photos, I came upon this rather battered snap of my grandmother and my great-grandmother Rudge in the back yard of 41, Wills Street, Smethwick. I only latterly noticed the small boy on the left of the frame, whom I can only assume was my dad's oldest brother, Samuel [can't be sure, but judging from nan's apparent age, I can't be far out, but I'm open to correction], which would put the date of this picture to around 1918-19, as Sam was born in 1914. Our ethnicity is fairly obviously not Anglo-Saxon: as to its ultimate composition, one can only speculate, but I'd rather it thus, than otherwise. Racial purity? Kiss my arse: it don't exist...

Low tide, Penrhyn, this morning. The vessel foreground is keeled over and unseaworthy: salvage in the offing. Lovely, moody sky over the Menai Strait, with the boatyard beyond the stricken boat and the Anglesey coast on the horizon. Sea and mountains in close harmony, and the melancholy of curlew call, make this part of the world so utterly magical. Perfection in microcosm and the world writ large.

Just finished watching the final part of the ITV2 dramatisation of the Post Office Horizon scandal: "Alan Bates vs. The Post Office". I started following the story of the persecution of sub-postmasters some years ago; but this drama, I think, will open the eyes of many who missed the story at the time, because, frankly the reporting was always in niche media and effectively an echo chamber for people like me. To be fair, a story breaking in Computer Weekly and Private Eye, and thence The Guardian, is never going to reach a mass audience, which is what this utter travesty of truth and justice demands. Everyone working for a large corporate entity, at whatever level - except the bloody boardroom - will, or already have felt the clammy hands of ingrained corporate injustice and duplicity. The truth is that the creatures that these entities employ to do their bidding are either immune from censure at the highest level or subject to its most extreme strictures at the lower strata ...

I've mentioned my Herefordshire links before in posts past, with my mother's family hailing from Fromes Hill, a small hamlet on the Worcester-Hereford road. One thing about the place I was totally unaware of until the last couple of days was that it hosted a renowned international hill-climb event between 1904 and 1907, with the last meeting's fastest time being set by Algernon Guinness - yes, that dynasty - driving a twenty-five-and-a-half litre V8 Darracq 200 that was used in world land speed record attempts on the flat. It was an over-square engine with cylinders the diameter of side plates, putting out 200 horsepower. And the whole damned car only weighed in at 990Kg, so it must have motored for its time. Interestingly, this puts the then sleepy little Herefordshire village in a notional race calendar including Saltburn, Blackpool, Scheveningen in Holland, Ostend in Belgium, and Gaillon, Benoite and Arles in France! You could even chuck in Daytona as well, as it was one...

I consume a lot of chess media - mostly YouTube, and to be frank, mostly Gotham Chess, aka Levy Rozman. I have a lot of time for his content: he's informed, punchy, continually up-to-date and entertaining. I even bought his book, ferchrissakes; pre-ordering it months in advance: I have to say it's one of the best chess books I've got in my collection. Also I like his New York attitude: it reminds me of Birmingham. It's sharp, sassy and acerbic: takes no prisoners, but warm at the same time, just like Winson Green. My history of chess media consumption goes much further back in time, however: Levy, after all, is younger than my son. I remember watching a regular, late night programme on TV, back in the mid-to-late-sixties, when I managed to convince my parents that their out-going-soon-to-be-replaced TV should - well - go to me, on its replacement by a more modern alternative. It was a Stella - I think a sub-brand of Phillips - and was for its day, impressively large: pr...

  New Year's Day and the Yule log is replaced by something of slightly better utility: proper logs. We were running low until Rob - timing perfect - rolled up with seven more bags for us. Although it's not particularly cold out - just torrential rain, as seems to be the winter norm these days - it's nice to keep the house cosy. I think it probably is prudent that we overstock for next winter during the next few months, and so I aim to fill not only the woodshed and the log store to capacity, let alone the conservatory pile, but to build more storage yet, down the bottom garden. I also need to supplement my personal income for next year's cottage rental downtime, as the three months we close for the winter break really bashes my state pension. The cost of staying warm and keeping the cottage aired for the break - it would be false economy not to keep the place dry - is, at the moment, frankly horrendous; but I think a bit of judicious planning between now and next autum...