Clees Lane, Pant-teg

2011 retrospect

2011-12-09T05:55:00.000-08:00

Mostly this year has been life just going on - slow on-going progress on buildings, local and family history, food and drink, convenience and feast, me still pecking away trying to get my ear and fingers round jazz piano. The building work has been mostly at the other end of the terrace, and that principally stonework, both demolition and rebuilding. So I have become, to misquote Flora Thompson, a ‘ca-arpenter calls himself a sto-an-mason’. I have actually come to love using stone and lime. It’s a very forgiving technology, and lime, treated with respect, is much less corrosive than its reputation. Our local stone doesn’t come in regular cuboids – it’s a matter of a presentable outside face, and some approximation to constant height, and the 3D tessellation of assembling such wildly non-standard pieces into a sound and more-or-less presentable wall is very satisfying.

One of the things that will mark this year out, however, is that we acquired a small and elderly campervan ( a Romahome Hylo - you'll find pictures in Google Images, if you're curious ), and hit the road late in September for an extended holiday. In the end, the time away was set by the 31 days of Royal Mail holding service. We had talked of going to Scotland, but Jenny's move (see below) prompted us to go southwest instead. We began and ended near Jenny and spent most of our time in Cornwall - the Roseland Pensinsula, the Lizard and West Penwith. In all we had eight stays at seven different sites, and slept 30 nights in the van 'off the reel' - with one camp exception, £16 a night for ourselves, Brindle, the van and a tent. We saw many interesting places and things, but I think the principal experience was the free-floating and living simply day-to-day like that. Until we got to the last week or so, it was sort of timeless. No radio or TV, occasionally a paper.

We spent a few days on the Roseland Peninsular, where one of Nina’s 2G grandmothers came from. Her family name remains in use to this day as a boy’s name in Nina's family and cousin-lines. We found a couple of the farms associated with the family, and the church where Mary Lawry was married. Very moving. (We had a few weeks before also been in the church at Lydiard Tregoze where the groom’s father - the great Thomas Usher - was baptised. It may sound trivial or nerdish, but believe me, there is a powerful emotional charge in visiting such locations.)

We saw all three great headlands, the Lizard, Land's End and Cape Cornwall. We had 4 nights at St Ives. We went to Barbara Hepworth's place, which we found very moving and evocative. I think the fact that she had picked this place, and colonised it, and the fact her workspaces were still much as she left them all spoke to our own experience here, and of course, the works themselves.......I found the garden perhaps a bit green and crowded - most of her best works you could put alone in a space of any sort, and they would command it, so having so many in sight of each other is perhaps a mixed benefit.

The Tate St Ives ? Well, the building itself is quite something, and its setting, and the way the two interact. The exhibition then on ("The Indiscipline of Painting - International abstraction from the 1960s to now") we found underwhelming - a couple of pieces we really admired, but the rest were that 'one idea on a large canvas' sort of abstraction that seems principally to be proclaiming the artist's own lack of confidence in what art can 'now' do. (And the gallery and its setting seemed to conspire to mock such timidity.)

While we were in St Ives, I read a novel set in St Ives and Zennor (Zennor in Darkness/Helen Dunmore) and much enjoyed the juxtaposition. Zennor itself, I loved. I walked along the old church path towards St Ives in search of the cottage where DH Lawrence lived. (You can't actually get to it, it turned out, although you can see it from a distance. The lane has been declared private.) Mostly the church path is not evident on the ground any more, but it is signed and at each field boundary it crosses, there is a way through consisting of an opening in the field-bank and long stones laid over a shallow pit, like a cattle grid. Very old, very atmospheric.

In a similar vein, we visited three ancient settlements - Grimspound on the moor above Widdecombe, and Chysauster and Carn Euny down in Penwith. The former Bronze Age, the latter two Iron Age, at least as now seen - they seem to have been occupied for around 700 years, which I suppose at that time means 30 generations or more. Quite substantial remains, and a very powerful sense of something.

We also spent some days walking and looking at the mining remains in West Penwith. In some ways so reminiscent of our valley landscapes and history, and yet in crucial ways so different.

We ate quite a lot of good food, and drank some excellent beers, but actually both of us lost weight, I think.

We've had Leo and Angharad here a couple of times this year, some of the time just them and us, and we had a weekend en famille at October half term. Jenny and Alex have moved to Bere Ferrers, upriver from Plymouth, a short train ride (but a much longer drive) from the University, and they have a beautiful (rented) house. It's a 1920's house, probably built as a 'Mapp and Lucia' retirement home, I would think. On the ground floor, it's a classic villa layout - four reception rooms plus a large back kitchen and spacious central hall with cloakroom, now a bathroom; upstairs there are just two large bedrooms and a bathroom. And large gardens. So we all met up there - Ben and Emily and the children 'stayed', and we were at a campsite not far away. Emily went back to work in September, part time as cover for maternity leave, teaching in a VIth College that was once the grammar school Ben's real father went to . (He went into the RAF and was killed when Ben was very little.) For the moment, she's mainly teaching C20th India, which has led her to look at some of the archives we've got from Nina's maternal grandfather - he was in Bangalore c. 1910 - 1926, and Nina's mother was born there; and that has quite awakened E's interest in the family history, which is nice. A slightly weird story here. Timothy, Nina's youngest brother, has a carriage clock which was his grandfather's. It was in fact a wedding gift from his wife, and engraved to that effect. For years, Timothy and Heather had it on their mantelpiece, and then it stopped, and was put in a cupboard. Timothy had been on at H to get it mended, and eventually on Nov. 10th, (sic) lost patience and went to get it himself. And looked at the engraving. Which recorded his grandparents were married on Nov. 10th, 1911.

Well, 2011 has seen Nina reach 65 and me well on the way to it. The Welsh have a saying, "Henaint ni ddaw ei hunan" which might be translated as "You'd don't just get the pension........" and we're beginning to see what they mean. I've actually had only two or three days' sickness in the year, but one way and another, I've seen more of doctors and hospital clinics than I have in any year since childhood, or almost all the years since childhood.

The most benign element has been that I reached the top of the list for NHS hearing help. I've now had one of 'their' aids for about six months, and was fitted with its brother (for the other ear) in mid-November. It/(they) are far superior to anything else I've used - they really do make up the deficit in most situations. I have tended not to wear the first all all the time, but there is a curve here; the more you do use it, the more the brain actually adjusts to it being there, and it seems to me that in effect the ears then 'work' less hard when you haven't got them in - you feel deafer than you remembered ! They assure me it is just an effect, and not actual deterioration. Now, having got the second, it feels as if the adjustment has been made only for the ear that's had one - I'm going to have to go through same process again with the other ear. Every time I go to audiology, I have to go first to the GP's nurse to have my ears checked for wax, and the last time that happened, she suddenly decided to take my blood pressure, and that started a new fuss. I did home monitoring for several weeks, but 'they' now seem satisfied.

And I had an episode of AUR in April - casualty, catheters etc - but fairly quickly got back on to an even keel, with daily medication, and am now very comfortable with how things are - better than before, in fact. I was finally summoned to a follow-up with a consultant in mid-November - very low key. But he then arranged another test – which sets up precisely the circumstances that brought on the AUR episode……... So it goes on.

Nina's back is much better - she's back to some kind of normality, but has to be careful. While we were away she found museums and galleries quite difficult - the standing and leaning over affected her much more than walking, of which she managed quite a lot, and from which she seemed to get some benefit. Early in the summer, she lost her footing on the lawn and sprained an ankle - not a bad sprain in itself, I would have said, as sprains go, but it has shaken her confidence - she tends to peer suspiciously at her footing, step by step, which I think can sometimes be counter-productive.

As for the rest of my family; Mum is, remarkably, in as good a place psychologically as she's been for many years. Her care has been cut right back - she goes two days to a day centre, where she can get a haircut and a bath, she has an agency woman in 4 hours on one other day - cleaning and taking her shopping - and a girl takes her to church. Other than that, she's back to to independence, and seemingly content. Lesley and David's year has been dominated by David's health. He had a heart operation early in the year, and a hip replacement in mid-November. They have chosen to take the treatment in Staffordshire, so they have spent most of the year back in their 'old' house in Linton, which has not therefore yet been sold. They do still seem to be planning to renovate and extend the cottage near here and at some stage to make it their only home.

Mr(s ) Cameron's handbag

2011-12-09T01:49:00.000-08:00

So Cameron has ‘vetoed’ the proposed new Euro-treaty.

It is the act of a man without any public principles, without any strategic grasp whatever. (So no surprise there, then). It is pantomime politics, but the ultimate price may be anything but fantasy.

He has done it for short-term party gain (as he has always played European politics). Ironically, it may in the short-term achieve some broader support – the British people, particularly the English, are in a strange state of mind now, and for the few years past.

But I sense a grand mis-step, which may not hurt Nina and me too much, but which could adversely affect Jenny and Emily, and Leo and Angharad, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

Happy Christmas, 2010

2010-12-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the annual alternative to the dreaded round-robin Christmas letter from us.

Before we get into the grisly details, let's enjoy a bit of serendipity as of this very morning. The following photos are from the hillside in Pant-teg, 3 or 4 minutes' walk away, and feature a remarkable free display of ice-sculpture where a run-off drain down the mountain has sprayed out water which has frozen in mid flight

(Above) From the road

.

(Above) the same cropped.

(Above and 3 following) Sundry detailed views

And not least, and gratifying in view of what follows, a shot down the hillside, with Nina in view by the roadside. It was she who spotted the phenomenon, and came to fetch me.

The year has undoubtedly been shaped most strongly by a mishap to Nina. In the middle of June, she fell victim to a slipped disc in the lower back. For a few days it was painful enough to require simply lying on a mattress on the decking in the sun. Within ten days it was a case of prostrate in bed, and so it remained for some weeks. She is now much improved, while still a long way short of where she was before it hit.

Earlier in the year, in April, we had the opportunity to buy at auction the remains and gardens of the two furthest cottages in our row, 8 and 9 Clees Lane. The most crucial benefit of the purchase is that we believe there is now no-one but ourselves who has any claim to right of way along the back and front of the seven cottages of the 'street' - the right of way is effectively abolished.

The gardens of 8 and 9 had been largely untouched for probably 35 years. Even the hedge between them was over 20 feet high, and sycamore and goat willow had run riot , right up the the edge of the path along the front of the houses. So May and June were woodcraft-at-home months, and we certainly have more firewood for this winter than we have ever had for any previous. As we went into summer, Ian turned his hand to stonework, demolishing one mid-row gable wall with toppling chimney stack, digging out the back right of way, and then moving on to re-use some of the stone thus released to add additional layers to the retaining wall behind the houses, which in effect holds back the hillside on which 1 and 2 Clees Lane stand. (You may remember no 2 is where Mum, Mary Graham, lives.) This masonry work has been halted by the onset of winter, but more remains to be done when temperate weather returns. In recent weeks, he has been free for indoor work, making new drawers and wall-units for the big kitchen. The next stage, probably mostly in the New Year, will be doors for all the kitchen units. Now there's posh !

Jenny has also had her health problems this year, but seems to well on the road back. This academic year she is the beneficiary of a Leverhulme Fellowship - in effect, on research Sabbatical.

Emily and Ben and Leo and Angharad moved house in July. They now live on the uphill side of Woodingdean, Brighton. It is a spacious and characterful house they have acquired, which should accommodate and occupy them for many years, other things being equal.

Brindle continues to be one third of our household.

We wish all our friends, siblings, cousins, and the chance dropper-in, a happy and satisfying mid-winter feast, each according to their own rites, and the necessities of life without undue strain throughout 2011.

The State We're In

2010-07-04T04:37:00.000-07:00

It becomes harder to maintain and trust your own sanity, when the world seems to be going mad before your eyes. If cause and effect seem to be faltering; if swivel-eyed ideology seems suddenly to be mere noon-time sense to most of your fellow-citizens; if pity and humankindness seem to have no shadow of influence in the seats of power - what then can you hold on to ?

Thus I am currently finding it hard to escape the shadow of what seems to be to come, in the form of the revolution currently being primed by the Con-Dem government. Does no-one else feel the same ? Why are we not already plotting our resistance and defiance ? And by what right are they doing it, anyway ?

And it keeps getting worse - today, July 4th 2010, The Observer reports that last Tuesday the Cabinet were briefed to prepare for cuts, not on the already horrendous scale already announced, but at the rate of 40% in some government departments.

I do not believe that until Dave and Nick said 'I will', all was well with the UK. Heaven knows change is needed. But change with heart at its heart, change by increments that do not mean that collateral damage will inevitably outweigh progress - and all of that damage, remember, the wreckage of individual lives and the lives of families.

These several blogs ( 3 others on this day), (technically 'preceding', but scroll-wise 'following') each expressing slightly different perspectives on the one central subject, are bits of my response. Probably few other people will ever read them and their effect will be nil. But at least I have struggled to articulate them, and now I cast my bread upon the waters.

Apprentice! / Tirez les doigts

2010-07-04T04:34:00.000-07:00

Increasingly it feels to me that there is a serious question about the legitimacy of this Con-Dem government, and their mandate or moral authority for proceeding as they are and as they propose.
There is a major discontinuity between (on the one hand) the prospectuses and arguments of the May election campaign, and the raw outcome of that election, and (on the other) the plans now presented by the Con-Dem government, and the justifications offered for them.
It is as if we have been subjected to a bloodless coup d'etat. The LibDem MPs served as an unlikely commando to seize the premiership for Cameron, but as a result of that operation are now effectively prisoners, (and I begin to wonder whether Cameron himself is not under some sort of open arrest. Toying further with the metaphor: when will the show-trials begin?)

The collective leadership of the Labour Party then made what at the time was urged and applauded as the 'wise' decision to go for a long leadership campaign. That decision looks less good to me with each day that passes. The political process is moving on rapidly. We can see more certainly that ideology rather than analysis and consideration is going to drive government policy, at least in the short term. We can see the scale of their ambition, and the likely social, economic and (less us not forget, for millions) personal cost of their programme. We can also, crucially, see that as to the outcome, there will be a difference of degree only, as between whether they, in their own estimation, succeed, or (as seems more likely) fail. For the rest of us, it's a lose-lose bet. We really are set for a step-back-a-generation calamity, either way.

If the government is not stopped.

I believe it could be, but another 3 months of "Could you just wait a moment ? We're electing a leader" may tip the balance, sell the pass - choose your own metaphor.

The five candidates for the Labour leadership could instead agree to suspend conventional campaigning, cancel their cosy August week off, and offer themselves as the five founder members of a New Committee of One Hundred, open to all women and men who will work peacefully but strenuously - urgently - to rebut the government case, obstruct its implementation, and develop a fully detailed and costed alternative.

The leadership election itself could still go ahead exactly as planned. But even before the result is known, we could have an actual working vehicle/forum/campaign to try and avert disaster - and in the process re-generate the centre-left in the UK.

As soon as this pub closes.....

2010-07-04T04:32:00.000-07:00

The view from the molehill
(with apologies to Alex Glasgow and Chris Mullins)

(While very obviously a layman/foot-soldier's view, this blog looks in a little more detail at issues touched on in the blog, Apprentice! / Tirez les doigts !)

What the Con-Dem government is proposing to inflict in terms of cuts, unemployment and collateral social damage is appalling. (There's a lot of loose talk from the government side about horrendous legacies to future generations in terms of a structural deficit. The legacy in terms of 'the solution' will be far worse. Where I live (Peter Hain's constituency) we still haven't recovered from the 80's and 90's. )

The present 'phoney war' (the talk before the action) is totally surreal, like a slow-motion train crash.

It's not as if the Con-Dem government had a commanding lead, either of public opinion, or of expert analysis and comment. There is in the country a solid phalanx of opinion and expertise (probably not a lot smaller than the ConDem one, in fact) that is coherently objecting to the Coalition programme - an informed, detailed, principled rejection of the programme.
And in practical political terms, Osborne and co only actually have the 'power' to implement their plans courtesy of the Lib Dem parliamentary party - most of whom are probably privately as appalled as those of us on 'this side' (but one can see that they are for the moment left without any good options).

That's for now. When the blitzkrieg actually starts, it seems inevitable the government will lose support as people are actually hurt. We know it's going to be a disaster - the purposeful employment activity of millions lost, the special measures for those already on the margins gone, the welfare costs (even with the benefit cuts) outweighing the intended financial savings, so the whole thing is self-defeating.

Now, consider more fully the issues around mandate, legitimacy and 'moral authority'.
The measures proposed are far from routine - the superlative comparisons vary, but it is clear that in terms of scale of effect and degree of change of direction (i.e. from one government to the next), you have to go back at least to Thatcher. And even that is not really adequate to the Con-Dem aspiration. It is often remarked how unsuccessful the Thatcher governments were in rolling back the state, despite the social and economic damage they did by trying, so even the Thatcher comparison is inadequate. For scale of change you probably have to go back to 1945, (but then there was an exceptional, overwhelming, mandate to 'authorise' it). For a truer comparison you may have to go back to the Geddes' axe - and anyone old enough to have voted for the first time at that preceding election would now be well over 100 years old! So it seems reasonable to claim that to underwrite the government 'morally' today, a wholly exceptional mandate is required .

Whereas, consider the actual electoral facts: in May, Labour won clear-to-overwhelming majorities of MPs from both Wales and Scotland, and the results from England were very regional - there are parts of England where the Governmment has hardly more of a localised mandate than it does in Wales and Scotland. In the present parliament, Labour is the only party with really significant representation from all three mainland elements of the Union.
Moreover, the Government proposals as they now stand include important elements which during the election campaign the Conservatives themselves denied they were considering (the VAT increase being the clearest example) and which the Liberal Democrates explicitly opposed. So within the total package there is a bundle of measures for which the Government cannot claim an electoral mandate in any terms whatever.

And as already noted re the parliamentary mechanics of power: the implementation of this multi-decade-exceptional programme is made possible by the votes of the Lib Dems who secured election by opposing significant parts of it, and many of whom (one must now in charity believe) are probably now as aghast as the rest of us. (If, as a side-outcome, 'our' opposition strategies offered at least some of them something to leap for and cling on to, we should be forbearing. We've made ministers of renegade Tories before now.)

Is this not one of those - once-in-several-generations - moments when 'business as usual' is no longer an option ? If the Labour Party, and particularly its MPs, simply settle down to 'principled opposition' until the next election, the axe will swing, millions of lives will be devastated and swathes of the country will economically marginalised.
Do not these considerations make it reasonable for those of us appalled at what we are threatened with to extend our challenge and opposition well beyond conventional Parliamentary opposition politics?

I ask in all seriousness: should we not be considering a complete social mobilisation of protest, to drive this government from power before it is too late ?

This comment is not a full manifesto - it does not examine what an alternative government would do. ( How could I ? But Apprentice! / Tirez les doigts ! already suggests the way to an answer.) Piecemeal resistance to the cuts by the Unions is predictable but likely to be ineffective and perhaps even unpopular. Whereas a co-ordinated campaign of social resistance including strikes, minimal or non-cooperation with the implementation of cuts by elected councillors and civil servants, sustained widespread demonstrations, could be very powerful. The cuts in the presently proposed Con-Dem version could be stopped.

Are we prepared to try, or is wringing our hands more comfortable ?

All in this together ?

2010-07-04T04:30:00.000-07:00

If only......

Try this thought experiment:
try to put a figure on the lowest income on which anyone (not you, of course, not you) can get by in this country.
Well, of course, 'it depends' - how old 'they' are, whether 'they' have dependants, etc.
But you can be sure of this: surviving at that level is a short-term business, week by week or even day by day. It requires fierce prioritising of spending, probably principally towards shelter, sustenance, and a dash of the vice of choice to soften the edge.
And in what 'they' do buy, 'they' will have very little choice as far as quality goes. There will be many things 'they' will seldom if ever be able to afford at all - new clothes, investment in hobbies or interests, holidays, or indeed travel, away from 'home'.
What infrastructure 'they' have will vary, according to how long 'they' have been at this level, but any failure in the infrastructure will be a major crisis, because there simply is not the financial slack to cope - the pair of shoes no longer wearable, the old washing machine throwing a fault, whatever, is a disaster.

OK. Now double that 'get by' basic figure.
You will still be contemplating an income that most people will consider modest - probably less than the average income, whatever that abused term means.
But obviously the desperate edge is already much abated. Many people at this level will have 'a proper home'. The scope for budgetting is significantly greater. It's at least beginning to be the case that 'they' do not absolutely have to go without anything they regard as essential, although the range of quality they can afford is still restricted.

Double the figure again. And you're now well into basic comfort. You may now be able to afford a property of your own; and your fate, and that of your family, is fairly securely in your own hands provided you stay in work. You have a lot of choice about most things.

But note that at this third level, four times the 'get by' basic, you are still well in the middle of whatever range covers 90% of the whole population. In a typical local authority, for instance, the chief executive may well have a gross salary of ten times the 'get by' basic. And we have probably yet to consider anyone who really regards themselves as 'rich'.

Now let's consider 'cuts'.

For someone on the 'get by' basic, there is virtually no room for manoeuvre. Each £1 they lose is likely to mean there is one more thing that they can't afford at all, and the more pounds they lose, the more certain that is to be the case.

But as you again move in imagination through the income levels, contemplating reduced incomes at every level, choices appear - options to economise, trade down rather than go without, at worst postpone rather than abandon hope of. At quite modest income levels, the sharp absolute of 'we can't have it at all' is no longer there, at least in relation to what 'we' are used to having. And well within the total (i.e. ten times 'get by' basic) range, the difference which reducing a person/household's income by, say, the amount of the 'get by' basic will make becomes a matter of detail and inflection, no more - fewer 'designer' items but no actual material deprivation.

If we were really 'all in this together', the austerity measures would require a very sharp reverse taper, from taking nothing at all from those at the bottom, to whatever is necessary from those at the top.
Perversely, what is actually proposed cuts most directly and specifically at the very bottom - restrictions to Housing Benefit, real-terms cuts to benefits and tax credits, junking thousands of low-skill jobs in the public sector (no one's idea of the good life, but the means by which many just about keep body and soul together).
If there were truly a will that we should be 'all in this together', is there any way to make it so, except by tax ? The truth is, that however much you increase the tax take from the top, they will still have enough to do what they regard as essential - which is already not the case for those at the bottom. And with the revised tax take, you would suddenly find you had bought time to make all the adjustments and re-balancings we really need in a controlled and therefore more efficient way.

I am not an economist nor in any formal sense a money man, though I do have some private experience with investments. I am just a man in his seventh decade who has always concerned himself with the life of his time, and has himself known (relatively) both poverty and plenty.
From that standpoint, I do not 'buy' the assessment of the seriousness of the deficit issue pushed by the Conservatives, and more specifically I entirely reject the facile assumption that public finances are to be run on the same lines as a private domestic budget. Even the relatively more moderate stance of the Labour Party on the issue (still typically New Labour in this) seems to me too concerned to placate the opinions of its natural opponents, not to say enemies.
This is not such a maverick position as some may think - if that includes you, please go away and read e.g. William Keegan and Will Hutton.

So I think current policy is being sold (it may not actually be conceived - that is the devil of it) on a bogus prospectus. Conversely, I believe that the conduct of public policy requires a small screwdriver and a probe, not a sledgehammer (adjustment and re-balancing as between public and private, service and production are constantly required, but sudden exaggerated actions are inherently destabilising and wasteful); and that mass un-employment and inadequate 'welfare' are a far greater danger to the stability and well-being of our society than 'the deficit'. And I certainly think to balance adjusting action in the ratio 4:1 (cuts:taxes) is calculated to make the worst of a bad job. To keep as many lives as possible safe and stable is one of the highest common goods. If we are indeed 'all in this together' ( a fine slogan currently cynically deployed) it is actually in the interests of those least affected to pay more to cushion those most disadvantaged.

Vindicated in defeat.........

2010-07-03T03:01:00.000-07:00

.............an exemplum of poignancy

So the Con Dem government (what we used to call the Tories) are going to cut the Police.
(Can you believe that ? The Tories cutting the pollice ? It must be new politics after all.)

Cut in memory to clip from, was it the second leader's debate ?
Gordon Brown insisting "We will sustain police spending " and repeatedly pressing Cameron on the point ?

A prophet without honour in his country.

Reasons to be cheerful......

2010-05-16T14:45:00.000-07:00

An unashamedly partisan assessment of the 2010 election result

They're all at it. In various phrasings, members of the shadow cabinet are telling us:
"we lost the election and it was a bad result..........this is the second worst result for us since universal suffrage".
It's a kind of PC reaction, a form of sackcloth and ashes and tearing your hair.
And I'm not, I hope, complacent or blindly optimistic. Of course there are sins to repent, mistakes to learn from, a whole strategic revaluation to be done.

But let's get some context.

When was the last time a government was elected for a fourth consecutive term?
How many examples do you have at your finger-tips ?
Can you give me a single example of a consecutive fourth term that was both deserved and successful ?

Reflect on 1992 for a moment in silence........Was the victory good for the Conservatives, or for the country ? (And on the other hand, do you wish Labour had won, as we prematurely convinced ourselves we had ? ) There are elections like that.

So, OK, this year the contingent case for Labour's re-election was actually quite strong, in terms of how the deficit should be handled, and the most vulnerable protected. But really we had long destroyed any wider claim to re-election. And in that process, I would identify the three key factors as Iraq (still); the loss of nerve in 2007; and the sheer political incompetence of the Cabinet and Parliamentary party re the leadership. These were not simply actual decisions with practical consequences. They were also markers of a mind-set, they were graphics of a moral deficit.

The in and out of office is conventionally imaged by the swing of the pendulum. I would suggest there is about it also something of the seasons and the annual cycle. I am aware in myself, post-election, of a new spring in my step, a renewed commitment. And it seems I am not the only one. 13,000 people are reported to have joined or rejoined Labour since May 6th. I have joined the Fabians (something I probably should have done long ago!) and they also report a surge. I think these are straws in the wind which speak to the fact that this was not a catastrophic defeat which leaves us licking our wounds and wondering whether to quit the field and hang up our weapons. For so long, many of us have been clinging on by sheer loyalty, with gritted teeth. Now we can move forward again with hope. It is our opponents who will be accumulating enemies in this new phase.

I think there are (you guessed it) a good many reasons to be cheerful, to go energetically and hopefully into the post-mortems and leadership election and systemic re-building.

To come out of office after three terms with 258 MPs seems to me a very solid base from which to go forward.
We are now the only party with a significant presence in all the three principal parts of the Union. (It does annoy me when the media, in their 'treat politics as sport' way, describe it as 'a good night for the Tories in Wales', when they have, gosh, 8 seats out of 40).
We have seen off Respect, retaken Blaenau Gwent and given the BNP a bloody nose.
We hold Rochdale!
And we still have a young but seasoned front bench. If David Cameron were hit by a bus, who else might lead the Tories? Whereas we have a really quite appetising election in prospect.
And not least, the English council results suggest that we are already past the bottom in that arena. I'm inclined to take that as a metaphor for the whole result - we stared a meltdown in the face, and fought back with some success.
There may even be a potential long-term dividend in that when we get back into office, we shall probably take over a higher tax regime than we left.

The new Government is overwhelmingly several things that may ultimately turn out to be to its disadvantage - rich, white, male, privileged. And English - even southern English. The Midlothian Question is suddenly upside down. There have already been some interesting comments online on the implications of this. Is it possible that this actually opens up an opportunity for Labour ? If we could develop, in a very measured way (i.e. as just one policy in our portfolio, and probably one that would require two Parliaments to see it to fruition) a model for English devolution, it would provide a way of giving England Tory government in devolved matters, if that's what they want, without shackling the rest of us. This is a sort of Disraeli-ish possibility, in that in one sense it ought to be a Tory option, but we could steal their clothes and help our heartlands, and possibly win English votes into the bargain.

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation ?

2010-01-30T08:13:00.000-08:00

This is a cautionary tale - one of those sequences of events that veer off the expected track, and produce a trail of further nasty surprises on down the line.

In August 2009, I received an e-mail flier from a company called Warehouse Direct with some special offers on powertools. One was an electric saw with two interchangeable positions for different cuts, and I ordered one of these as a gift for my brother-in-law. It arrived about a week later, and I gave it to him.

Early in October, he told me that the catch which controlled the two settings had broken. I emailed Warehouse Direct, and passed the invoice to my brother-in-law.
He phoned the company, and got absolutely 'no change' out of them. 'Matter of wear and tear,' they said. But as it happened they did have the replacement part in stock and would sell him one for £27. Plus £8 carriage. This for a small plastic gubbins. We surmised that ours was not the first to fail, and that the company were organised to profit from a fault in the tool's basic specification.

OK, I said, I'll write to them, and involve my credit card.
This was where I began to get premonitions that all was not going to turn out well. The price of the tool had been £99.95, with 'free carriage'. In other words, just 5 pence below the threshold at which the credit card company would have shared liability for the goods.
But I wrote to the company. I formally requested them to arrange for the collection of the saw for inspection, and repair or replacement. It was at this stage that I realised for the first time exactly where they were - in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Putting all the facts together, the picture that had emerged was of a company who were very deliberately sailing very close to the wind. So I wrote to their local Trading Standards department.

I heard nothing from the company. Someone from Trading Standards rang me, however. He said the company weren't obliged to recover or inspect the goods. And he advised me to contact my own local Trading Standards.

In all, I contacted the company five times over a period of seven weeks, variously by letter, by email and by feedback from their website. I got an automatic acknowledgement from the last, promising a further reply, which never came, and no other response whatever.

On the face of it, under UK consumer law, the company had not a leg to stand on. The saw was unfit for purpose in the full legal sense. (See the end of this article for an indication of the line I was taking with them).
I considered court action. But the distance and the different legal dispensations bothered me. And so did the facts that the company was so resolutely brazen in ignoring me, and that I sensed an unspoken something, a lack of full endorsement, in the conversation with Trading Standards. Furthermore, legal action would not fix or replace the saw on any quick timetable.

My b-i-l and I talked it over, and decided we could probably fettle the saw between us, which would, obviously, kill any claim we had. But we were beginning to smart. Why should 'they' get away with it ?

The company was behaving like caricature grasping Scots. Surely some Scots would be interested and appalled, even if they could do nothing to alter the facts of the deal?

I went online again, and looked up who was the MSP for the relevant postcode. And at last, I thought I had a result. For it was none other than Alex Salmond, First Minister and Leader of the SNP. His brave new Scotland, Scotland in Europe, surely would not like the face Scotland was showing us ? He might at least drop some acerbic words in the right ear ( Richard Harries' ear ?) at some civic bun-fight ?

So in mid-December I wrote to Alex Salmond and again to Aberdeenshire Trading Standards, in both cases setting out the facts while making it absolutely clear that I was not seeking actual "advice or assistance re order #5162 from Warehouse Direct. I regard that matter as closed – not satisfactorily, but closed nonetheless. "

I wrote to Alex Salmond at his constituency office. Almost by return, my letter came back to me. Since I am not actually a constituent, Mr Salmond was proscribed from responding to me. But if I wished, I could contact him in his other role as First Minister of Scotland. So I did.

Trading Standards replied to me on January 12th and Alex Salmond's office again on January 14th.

Trading Standards expressed themselves as disappointed that I had had no response to my multiple representations to Warehouse Direct, but
"Unfortunately, customer service is not an area that we could have any influence over, but I have noted your comments and details of your complaint ad will keep them on file for future reference"

Which leaves me somewhat bemused as to exactly what Trading Standards are for ? They do not give consumer advice. Nor do they police the conduct of business on their patch. So what do they do ?

Mr Salmond did not reply (not even pretending over an automated signature). The letter was from his office manager. (And I note that though the second time I had written to the Office of the First Minister, the second reply again came from his constituency office, who had said that they couldn't deal with the matter, and advised that I should write to him as First Minister. )
The letter was, frankly, slightly incoherent. It was not clear whether it was actually responding to the facts I had presented, or asking if I would like them to be put before Mr. Salmond. There was an email address on the letterhead, and I emailed for clarification.

Still the gyre continued - this was the reply:

"Dear Mr Graham,
I refer to your email below and apologise if the letter was not clear.
The point I was making was that I was happy to bring this to Mr Salmond's attention, as the company to which you refer is in his constituency. However from what I understood in your letter you were only looking for this to be passed to Mr Salmond for information, which has now been done.
Should you have wanted him to represent your views, or take up a case on your behalf that should have been stated in your letter. However even if you did want Mr Salmond to do this parliamentary protocol prevents him from representing anyone outwith his constituency. Should you want individual representation that would be a matter for your own MP.
Even if Mr Salmond were to take the issue up if you were a constituent he would be taking the matter up with the same person you already appear to have written to.
Certainly if the response you receive from Trading Standards is dissatisfying and you feel there is further recourse for Mr Salmond in general terms, I would be happy to see the response you receive and assess what, if anything, he could do.
I hope this clarifies matters.
Kind regards,
Hannah Bardell"

Which again, is less than sparklingly coherent, but amounts, I think, to "Please go away. Mr. Salmond is not interested ." Certainly, I have neard nothing more.

It was Virgil, long ago, who first penned the comment about being wary of Greeks bearing gifts. A current version might be: "Scots traders offering a bargain ? Caveat emptor !" But no-one in 'the Athens of the north' seems to care.

Finally, the following are extracted from my several letters/emails to the company:

“I contend that the breakage in the saw demonstrates that the saw was not "of ‘Satisfactory quality’" in that it did not "reach the standard a reasonable person would expect taking into account the price and any description," and specifically that it was not "durable, safe and fit for all the purposes for which such goods are commonly supplied."

(Quotations from http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/after_you_buy/know-your- rights/SGAknowyourrights/)

I also draw to your attention the following, from your own Terms and Conditions:

"If goods sent are defective , not as advertised , or not fit for purpose - Warehouse Direct will arrange uplift or replacement of these items at no cost to the customer. "

You have been requested to do this, and you have neither done so, nor responded to the request in any other way.

Accordingly, I now request a full refund of the original purchase price. You are, of course, entirely at liberty to recover the goods at your own expense. “

December again

2008-12-07T06:30:00.000-08:00

Time for an end-of-year update, for all of you hurrying here, having seen the URL in your Christmas card.....

The sad truth is that the second half of 2008 has been in some ways a rather testing and frustrating period.

We had set ourselves the objective of getting a roof on no 6 by the onset of this winter (which implied also some masonry work on the shell, and a working first floor). But once I got back into working harness after Bruges, we probably, literally, never had more than 2 consecutive fine days right through into September.

The disappointment of our hopes in this respect was also in part contributed to by an extraordinary series of events involving our (and Mum's) neighbour who lives immediately above no. 6. At the end of July ( it was pretty much datable) there was a marked change in his behaviour, yes, towards us, but also towards the whole locality. Things were at their most difficult in late August and early September ( I felt I needed to sleep in Mum's house each night for a period of around three weeks ) until he was eventually taken off to hospital, where he remains.

Just as that was all passing astern, Nina's 1st-cousin-once-removed Barbara (sister of Nina's godfather, who since his death describes herself as Nina's godmother) had a minor stroke, and has spent most of the autumn in a residential home. Nina has been much up and down to Gosport, putting together an infrastructure of care and modifications to Barbara's house which last week enabled Barbara to go home.

However, there have been some bright spots, too.

Emily, Ben. Leo and Angharad (and Bonzo) came home from Australia early in October. They are now back in their old home in Guildford, and Ben is working for Microsoft. We've both spent time down there, me 'building' and Nina 'being Granny', and we're looking forward to seeing a lot more of them, and of Jenny and Alex, at some stage over the year-end holiday.

At half-term, Lesley and David were down here in Wales, and viewed a house in Godre 'r' graig, just about within walking distance of Clees Lane, and finally came out best in a fairly extended 'auction'. The transition from Linton seems likely to be a matter of years rather than months, but hopefully will start soon.

So, are we down-hearted ? Well, not for long. My reaction to such pressures is often to find a way of striking off in a new direction, and this time it has taken the form of finding myself a music teacher to help me develop aspects of my keyboard playing - improve memory- and by-ear- work, and improvisation, both in terms of baroque figured bass, and jazz. Early days yet, but very exciting so far. Nina is fairly forbearing.......

I close by repeating our urgings / invitation of a year ago - see Cymru am bydd (below) ! A few of you have been..........We must surely be due for a good summer next year ? (!) But you don't have to wait that long - just phone or email us any time.

P.S. The snooker table has become a crucial element of our domesticity. There has been barely a day all year ( when we have both been here ) when we haven't had at least one frame. We have improved quite markedly - we even have 'breaks' now !

Bruges - then and now

2008-07-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Jenny and I had five nights in Bruges, 30th June - 4th July. The main reason for our visit, of course, was Jenny's interest in Jan Van Eyck and 'early Netherlandish' painting. But there was a second 'research' element of a more private kind.

My (maternal grandmother) Gran's brother, Leslie Haydn Reeve (1891 - 1919) was, like his sister and his parents, a teacher. Family tradition has it that he worked in Belgium before the First World War, and that Gran (not yet married) had a holiday with him in Belgium, in the course of which they visited Bruges. More concretely, we have, pasted in to Auntie Tot's Friendship book, a small water-colour sketch apparently signed by Uncle Leslie, that we have long suspected was of somewhere in Bruges.
We, now we know - it is.

The bridge is De Sleutelbrug, at the north end of Speelmansrei. The church is St Jacobskerk. The little chapel at the left of the painting was once the guild chapel of the Bruges Speelmansrei - the professional musicians who in medieval times had the monopoly of playing for weddings etc. in the city. And I would like to acknowledge the kindness of the staff in the Regional Development office on JanVanEyck Plein who put us on the right track.

Finding the place - inevitably - raised new questions. In reality, the church is more distant than the sketch shows it, and in fact, is only visible from the Speelmansrei / Artoisstraat are at certain angles. We couldn't pin down an actual viewpoint corresponding to that implied in Uncle Leslie's sketch. We came away, in fact, uncertain whether there was such a viewpoint, or whether the view as painted might not be a conceived view, a theoretical answer to the questions of view and perspective.

Anyone who's been to Bruges will know that there is a popular 'template' for views of the city - "canal, bridge, distant tower" - which you can find exemplified in postcard after postcard, as well as in paintings old and new. However, we found only one painting which related to this locality and view - De Speelmansrei in Brugge by Albert Baertsoen, (1895), which we were fortunate to catch in the 'Brugge in de verf' exhibition at the Gruuthuse - a big, splendid, vigorous in pasto oil from a viewpoint much farther back along Speelmansrei (and, I suspect, a slightly 'tweaked' perspective). We also found two old photos, probably postcards, in a Tempus 'old photos of Bruge' book - but no modern ones.

The two photos below are: a straight shot of me on de Sleutelbrug; and a pano/stitch based on four radiating shots from the middle of the bridge. (Pano made with Autostitch).

First quarter, 2008 !

2008-04-03T13:45:00.000-07:00

Today is a beautiful day - the sun has real strength, both in temperature and light. But more cold and wintry weather is forecast for the week-end. The season is on the cusp.

Time, at least, for a quick evocation of the first quarter of 2008 here in Clees Lane.

For the first weeks of the year, we virtually hibernated. The weather was predominantly wet, and we've inclined this way in recent years, and now we can give way to it without guilt. We got the fires lit, and played lots of snooker on the 6' table I gave Nina for Christmas. She did quite a lot of family history online. I got stuck into extending my understanding of Midi control, particularly in the context of playing live. Talking of the snooker, Brindle has evolved her own routine ! She's always been 'big' on balls, especially tennis balls. Now, when we 'set up the balls' , she appears (from sleep, quite often) with a ball in her mouth, and if we make sure she has a second one, she has her own game under the table while we play - a sort of football with her front paws, but there must be a ball in her mouth for it to start. What I find interesting is the social dimension of it - there is such an undoubted sense of 'this is what I do while Nina and Ian are playing on that table.'

As we got into February, it became easier to find work to do. I began the process of rescuing the pine-end of no 5, adjoining our house (partly visible in the background of some of the photos published here in August). Work with lime mortar is very satisfying - it is a markedly more 'organic' material than cement mortar, despite being caustic. Inside no. 4, Nina stripped back the original lime 'plaster' (and some later cement patchings) of the stone wall beside the stairs, and re-clad it in lime, and she is now following on onto some of our adjoining plasterboard surfaces.

Jenny and Alex came down for a night so we could all go to Y Polyn again (Alex's first visit) for St David's Day lunch - it was deemed well worth the trip - and we touched base at Allt Y Capel (Alex's first sight of that, too) . Later, Nina and Brindle and I went down to Guildford, where we and Jenny went to see an excellent (Peter Hall) production of Uncle Vanya, with Neil Pearson as Astrov. Brindle and I came home next day, leaving Nina and Jenny to jet off for a week at Sharm El Sheikh.

I've 'had a skip' and emptied the garage of number 2 (untouched for 20 years, I should guess), and am making some basic fittings and repairs before we repatriate our stored possessions to this new space. We've also snatched several of the best days for trips to the wood. A new 'big beast' chain saw has been inaugurated (demonstrating again, that in the case of tools, bigger and sharper can, properly handled, also mean safer). And Nina has at last mastered the starting of the smaller saw. Anyway, several good days (going to the woods always feels like touching base - it puts everything else into perspective) and several goodly loads of fire wood.

Yesterday Nina had a small operation as a day-patient in Singleton Hospital to tackle a cyst near the opening of her Eustacian tube. She is for the moment recuperating quietly. I can hear 'Lorna Doone' quietly behind me.

These months are 'the' time for evening classes and similar activities. I'm taking a Photoshop course on restoring photos, and at the Ystalyfera Heritage Society we are finally in full process of archiving old photos and other paper artefacts from the locality. So some weeks I've been out three evenings.

When we judge spring has really come, there is work to do in the garden (the potatoes are chitting quietly in waiting), and then no 6 awaits - we'd like to get a floor and roof done before next winter.

Sir Francis Drake as aesthetician ?

2007-12-30T22:45:00.000-08:00

Seduced, moi ?

( This blog is a departure, though not of a very novel kind - a minimalist journalistic publication (search-engines willing) of the kind that blogs have made possible. Its content is the result of my mulling over the experiences of ten days ago - the visit to the Seduced exhibition at The Barbican, and conversations with Jenny and her students.

The title is a bit of serendipity. The core phrase of what turns out to be 'Sir Francis Drake's prayer' of May 1587 has been in my mind during said mulling (I assumed at first it was Cramner ) :

"O Lord God, when Thou givest to Thy servants to endeavour any great matter,

grant us also to know

that it is not the beginning, but the continuing of the same unto the end,
until it be thoroughly finished,
which yieldeth the true glory."

Drake as patron to the piece seems particularly fitting, given that Jenny is a member of the staff of Plymouth University. )

I was underwhelmed by the Seduced exhibition. Its limitations (despite its considerable scale) seemed to me marked by the absence of even a single item that was at once clearly central to the exhibition, and unambiguously a great piece in its own right. By contrast, Jenny and I went earlier in the year to the Royal Academy's "Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830", where there was not only Ingres' great 'God the Father' Napoleon, but a number of other works - including, for me, several domestically-scaled and little-known portraits - which had both that initial punch, and the capacity to sustain continuing attention, which seems to me to epitomise true excellence in art.

I thought Seduced too little concerned with what is, or is not, art. At one extreme, the photos from the Kinsey Institute are surely not art in any significant sense at all, which is not to say that they are not a valuable resource of human knowledge. Much else in the exhibition displayed the craft skills of fine art, but in their origins many pieces on show surely had no pretension to be 'art' in any very full or high sense. A lot of the exhibits both old and modern were unabashedly pornography. If the exhibition wished to challenge our preconceptions about such material, it seems a pity that it concentrated so on representations that essentially objectified sexual activity. Surely the real interest and ambiguity lies in the inwardness of the sexual experience, (and the simultaneity of two 'inwardnesses'), rather than its outward appearance or representation ? Such inwardness art in all its forms (though literature and music may have means beyond the visual arts) is uniquely able to capture, but a lot of what was on show here seemed to lack depth and complexity in this respect.

My thoughts after the exhibition have centred on the concepts of two pieces in particular - the Tracey Emin light piece which was in the vestibule, and k r buxey's Requiem. Each of them raise questions in my mind on this basic issue of 'what is art?'.

The Emin piece is surely no more than a graffitto on stilts - an adolescent 'epigram', which, if Joe Bloggs had thought it, might have been chalked on a pavement or sprayed on a concrete wall, or simply vanished for ever without publication. It commands attention principally because it originates from a notorious figure, and because, ex her status, she has the means to enshrine it in the light show we see, and to get this exhibited. Ironically, it is in the designing and creating of the light show itself - font, line, colour, electronics - rather than the specific verbal content that I see the nearest approach the piece makes to art.

Doesn't art require more than just a bright idea ? Doesn't an initial 'inspiration' need to be worked out in detail on two planes - the emotional/philosophical one of its content / meaning / 'truth', and the physical / craft one of its embodiment in the medium selected for it ?

k r buxey 's Requiem I have more time for. I can understand the sense of (need for) dialogue with / riposte to Warhol and to the hinterland that lies beyond 'Blowjob'. But isn't there a fundamental misunderstanding in the notion that art can be created simply by hacking off a bit of 'world' or experience, and sticking a frame round it ? k r buxey , having made her video, could (? 'should') have then viewed and reviewed it, and selected as many or as few frames as she wished - those that were to her the most eloquent of what she wanted to 'say'. And even then, many artists might have edited the actual selections, and determined a specific way of assembling and presenting them. You may quibble " 'as many or as few frames as she wished' - she wished them all ", but I think that is simply a cop-out. Focus works by selection.

I hope the relevance of Sir Francis' words is by now apparent. As an accompanying paradigm of what I think constitutes the true artistic process, I appeal also, in the wider context of last week, to Van Eyck's successive versions of Arnolfini's hands, whose 'existence' shows so clearly the artistic process of 'working out on two planes'.

Cymru am bydd!

2007-12-28T05:39:00.000-08:00

The insert that I sent out with Christmas cards this year concluded with the following rousing

reminder that the Tawe Valley, where we now are, is, despite its industrial past, very different from 'the Valleys' as the English usually think of them. It's a beautiful and intriguing place, and, what's more, very convenient, for the Gower, the Brecon Beacons, and the southern reaches of mid-Wales - the Towy Valley and Brechfa Forest. A whole wide area which anyone with a taste for British landscape and regions should know. Come and see it / us!

If you come by train, it's better to head for Neath, than Swansea. We can meet you at the station.

This is how to find us by car.

From the M4
Take the A4067 Brecon from Junction 45 (it's signed A4067 N on the junction roundabout. The lane markings on the roundabout are a bit of a pain, but basically, coming from east or from Swansea itself, you need to end up in the middle lane.) Follow A4067 Brecon signs throughout these instructions as far as the Church Road turn-off, where you leave the main road. The signing will take you over several small roundabouts (getting into the right lane can be important at at busy times). When you pass a large Tesco, you're getting closer. When you then come to a set of traffic lights, go straight over, but now look out for the Ystalyfera name sign on the left-hand verge, and then immediately for a blue bus-shelter and a left turn into Church Road. Take the turn. Go up the hill and round the bends. At the top (virtually a right-handed hairpin) you'll get a 'Pant-teg' sign. Look out for a large chapel on the right, and then two blue bus-shelters. Turn down the steep little lane before the shelter on the right. There's a small lay-by a little way down. Park there, and come in at the gate a little way back up the lane.
From the A40 (Brecon / Hereford direction)
The A4067 branches off the A40 just before you get into Sennybridge, signed to Ystradgynlais and Swansea. Enjoy a very pleasant ride! Eventually, the A4067 threads between Ystradgynlais and Ystalyfera (it actually comes through Ystalyfera in a cutting, and Ystalyfera is 'bracketed' by roundabouts where the 'new' A4067 intersects with the 'old' A4067). After the second roundabout, look out for the Godre'r Graig name sign on the left-hand verge, and then immediately Pant-teg is signed to your right. You turn right into Church Road just in front of a bus shelter. Thereafter route as above. If you come to traffic lights, you've gone too far. See route from the M4.
There is a curiosity here : the Church Road turn is in both Ystalyfera and Godre'r Graig, according to the roadside name signs ! It's not altogether without meaning - there are many small touching communities in this part of the valley, and it's evident in several locations that the exact boundaries have shifted over time.

Christmas comes early

2007-12-23T18:05:00.000-08:00

JENNY AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY

Back yesterday from our trip to England, nay, London even !

On Wednesday (19/12/07), Jenny gave an evening lecture in the theatre of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery to mark the publication of her book (see link top right). Afterwards there was a reception and book-signing. Not an easy assignment, given the (presumably) very mixed audience, but the girl carried it off with some aplomb, I think. Difficult for us to judge, given that she is our girl, and we knew many of the best lines already, but the audience seemed warm and receptive, and not anxious to rush off. We were told some 200 tickets had been sold in advance. I would guess the theatre was about 3/4 full, which probably implies rather more than 200 present on the night. Such is the wide appeal of Van Eyck.
A notable bonus of the setting was the gorgeous theatre-screen-size display of the pictures - not only the actual Van Eycks, but also some of the analytic/comparative detail (e.g. so many versions of what were probably just two or three original representations of the two brothers), and also the many 'popular' images Jenny has dug up, like a set of German 'chocolate cards', dating from 1904, or an engraving of the Arnolfini portrait from the Illustrated London News. To say nothing of the Habitat advert from last year !

I had hoped to lead this with a suitable photo, but all of ours (yes, every one!) have caught Jenny at the worst micro-second. We could have done with Ben's motorised super shooter.

On the Thursday, Jenny and I went into 'the Smoke' again, to meet a small group of her students and then, together at the Barbican, the curator of the current exhibition at the Barbican (of which no more at this point !). And then on Friday, the three of us had lunch at The Barn before walking on the downs with Brindle, returning to a take-away and sharing of gifts with Alex.
Altogether, a very happy three days.

Review of the Year

2007-12-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

The year has been shaped by family concerns, to the extent that we have made less progress on 'the Street' (as local usage sometimes calls a row like 3 - 9 Clees Lane) than we would have hoped at the beginning of the year.

Nina's godfather Martin, one of her late mother's cousins, died suddenly in February, and we have been drawn into much closer contact with his surviving sister Barbara, with whom we now find ourselves somewhat in loco filio filiaeque. Nina took a lot of the responsibility for clearing Martin's cottage, and Barbara has not always been in the best of health. So there have been regular trips down to the New Forest and Gosport.

Emily gave birth to a daughter, Angharad, our second grandchild, in May, and Nina spent a month with them in Melbourne around June. And the autumn has been taken up by the renovation of no. 2 for my Mum (see previous blog.)

Nonetheless, the demolition of the old back extension of no. 4 and the clearing of no 6 (see two blogs back) has at least set the stage for positive progress next year, and our work in no. 2 has also reminded us what we are capable of , whetting our appetitite for our own spaces.

2007 has also been the year when I finally got into exploiting the computer for music purposes, allied to a strong burst of new interest in jazz. Again, at the moment it's a highly hole and corner business, setting up where I can, but the development of new spaces will give me the chance to set up a dedicated space.

We are currently looking forward to Jenny's book launch at the National Gallery, which we will combine with a pre-Christmas festivity with Jenny and Alex in Guildford. More of that when it's happened!

One of the curiosities of the year has arisen from 'the family' giving me a DNA (y chromosome) test for my 60th. It turns out that I am (haplogroup) I1a U-N in which the U-N stands for Ultra Norse. In other words, my n times great-grandfather (and thereon back) came from Scandinavia, probably Sweden or Norway. Or to put it crudely, I am (distantly) a Viking ! This may ('non-paternal events' - i.e. an unfaithful grandmother (not you, Dora !) - permitting) link with my surname i.e. Graham. Graham is generally derived from 'de Grantham' or 'de Graeg Ham', the name borne by a Norman lord who went north to Scotland in the 1120's. His father or grandfather was one of William the Conqueror's closer associates, so is quite likely to have been of Viking derivation. The finer details of this, which I won't go into, also mean that Tankervilles and Chamberlain(e)s may be very distant cousins. There was a Chamberlain(e) in my Methsoc group at Cambridge.................Hello, John !

Mum comes to Pant-teg

2007-12-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

Our principal activity since sometime in September has been working on No. 2 Clees Lane to prepare it for Mum to move in, and yesterday (30/11/07) was The Day.

Rewind briefly to 18th May 2007. Nina had set off to Oz the previous day, leaving a library book for me to return. As I went up the Lane, I noticed a For Sale board at the gate of Nos. 1 and 2 - a pair of houses above (behind) us, about halfway up to the 'main' road. I made enquiries, viewed the next day, (Saturday), emails flew hither and yon, and I made an offer on the Monday. It was accepted, but it was not until September we actually got possession. Mum had first refusal, and did not refuse.

We have substantially refurbished the ground floor, so that Mum now has a ground-floor cloak-room, bedroom, and 2 reception rooms, plus basic kitchen facilities. We have recruited a care team, and here she is. There are also two bedrooms and a decent bathroom on the first floor, but Mum will go upstairs only accompanied, to bath. One of the bedrooms is still a tool store / mini-workshop for me, for the purposes of the renovation (inevitably, although all services are available, there are still some cosmetic details to complete). This room will soon become a spare bedroom in which e.g. Lesley and David could stay. The other bedroom is rather eccentrically 'ensuite' with the bathroom - i.e. you get to the bathroom through it - so of limited use as a bedroom at present, but I shall probably have a desk and some admin storage in there.

The first picture (above) is looking roughly south from the sloping green at the top of the Lane. No. 2 is the further of the two houses, and all the ground to the right of the main path goes with it. You can see the Volvo parked in a small pull-off space and the building to the right of the Volvo is the top of 'our' new ground, and actually a garage, althought the double door needs re-opening.

The second picture (below) is from the same spot but turned 90 degrees left, which brings our house and garage into view, and the view across the valley:

Next phase, August 2007

2007-08-10T12:16:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long break since the last posting. The whole Ogmore Vale project went belly-up in the spring, due to unfathomable actions by the supposed vendors. The name remains in the title as a memorial, a bit like the 'Fisher' in Graham and Fisher.

Grand-daughter Angharad was born at the beginning of May, and Nina spent a month in Oz shortly thereafter. That's all been chronicled on Emily and Ben's blog, q.v.

We then had the wettest July for 200+ years......

This week, we finally got back into development gear.

(Captions usually relate to the picture below them.)

The old back kitchen - probably pre.1900 in its basics:

The team that were to demolish the lean-to were also contracted to clear No. 6 - but the contractor was (understandably) reluctant to send employees on to the roof. He would have simply pulled it down.
So I set myself to clear the remaining slates first - not as foolish as it sounds.

Progress at the back. You can see the internal divisions. The room under the window was a living kitchen to several generations - we stripped 6 layers of wallpaper off, including false dado strips. There was also a baxi-type stove with what must have been a very short chimney, providing hot water. But the back wall was slowly tilting into the path, the floor was erupting, and damp getting in everywhere. No conceivable option but to demolish.

The double section nearest the camera was a kind of scullery passage and a bathroom, added in the mid 1950's. The owner of no. 4 bought a 6' run of yard from the owner of no.3 on which to build the bathroom - and took 8' ! He paid £2 for it, with a full legal conveyance.

Here you can see the furthest internal wall has gone. The furthest section was a tiny scullery kitchen to no. 5 (through the door ), a 'flying freehold' from no. 4. There was a sheep skeleton in here when we first came, and I don't think the bones had been picked after being in the oven !

All gone, though not all clear. There was a back right of way along the right of the picture to all the further houses in the terrace, with a heavy stone retaining wall set against the slope.

Herself surveying the scene. Now what shall we do ? Cricket net ? Real tennis court ?

The sinews of war - keeping 4 or 5 men working on a hot day.

Back to no. 6. Front face stripped.

The view from the scaffold. The scar down the opposite hillside is a watercourse fed by a peat bog. After rain it quickly becomes a cascade or water-fall. After much rain, an absolute curtain of water. We can lie in bed and watch it. ( Well, we are both pensioners now.)

Two roof ladders save moving the tower - in any case, there's hardly room for it at the back.
But it's a bit of a stretcher straddling over the ridge.

Back face almost stripped.

Now the boys have moved on to No. 6. This is the tumbled mass of fallen rafters, beams and staircase after they moved it out.

And here is the underlying rubble still inside:

Looking up into what was once a bedroom. I've since rescued the door.

At the other end, there were actually saplings growing in the spare bedroom.........

A day and a half of hard graft later, we have the bare shell:

Reverse angle:

(In 1891 this was actually two houses. The three Jones children from the end you're looking at were playing in the other end when the Census enumerator called. He'd got their names in his book as part of the Rees family before he realised he'd got something wrong......You can still see his asterisk and little annotation on the scans of the Census. )

Nice little Victorian fireplace.........

And so full circle for this Blog - the view from the bottom of the garden again, with the roof open to the sky.

Now we have to talk to draughtsman and authorities to see what we can and can't do......

A taste of what's to come

2006-12-23T17:35:00.000-08:00

This picture is taken from pretty much the same spot as the 7th picture in The story so far / Spring 2006
It shows 'the big room' as set up for Christmas 2006, (with Mum just arrived from Ridgeway). Obviously, we're still a long way from the finished article, and there are some very contingent temporary arrangements on view, but it's really our first sight of what might be to come!
(The floor's got to come up next!)

Compliments of the season..........

2006-12-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

Whatever you call it!

Welcome especially to new readers who may be browsing for the first time .

Please keep coming back - there will be more new stuff in the course of the holiday - no, not photos of people in paper hats, just stuff I hope to catch up on from recent weeks and days.

Those are Tots' lights - for those to whom that means anything!

Heat Machines

2006-12-13T17:35:00.000-08:00

At 9.45 this morning, we lit the Broseley for the first time.

It will need two or three more 'running-in' lightings before we can really let it rip, but now we have wood-burners at each end of the house, each feeding some radiators and a hot cylinder.

First, an outside view, with the run of the house marked by the two stainless steel flues.

Then, the Charnwood - our old friend from Nash View - burning bright in the sitting room.

Next, more welcome to us than the election of a pope, the first smoke from the Broseley.

And finally, a view of the Broseley itself.

"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow........."

Good morning, hello and welcome

2006-12-12T00:30:00.000-08:00

Which dates us pretty much from the outset.

We are belated converts to full-blown bloggery, but having failed to live up to our own expectations of maintaining a blog-like website (link, top right)
and pondering the practicalities of the annual Xmas-mailathon,
it suddenly struck the webmaster as a coup de foudre that the sensible thing was to follow Leo into bloggery.

There is nothing else to see or read here at the moment - though you can visit the old site for the story so far - but we will progressively get this post facto up to date and then maintain it. 'The story so far' link will take you to an archive of material from the last twelve months.

Coming shortly: pix of the two new heat machines at 4 Clees Lane