Alphabetti Poetti

I'm a day late with this, but here's a little piece of nonsense that in no way reflects the greatness of the lady involved.  In fact, as tributes go it's seriously shabby.  Nevertheless, it's the best I've got.

C IS FOR CLERIHEW

In Rosa Parks case
being asked to make space
caused an almighty fuss
over a seat on a bus.

Bonfire Night Of The Vanities

Well it’s all very exciting!  I’ve known for a little while that two online poetry journals have each accepted a poem of mine for publication.  I’ve had notification today that both are going to publish in the week of 4^th November. Quite appropriately, I shall be as giddy as a Catherine Wheel!

What joy is joy if Sylvia be not by?

My mentor has sent me off to read, and more importantly listen to, Sylvia Plath.

I've bought ‘Ariel’ and today listened to her reading Lady Lazarus and The Birthday Present and one other from Ariel (which evidently made a huge impression as I can’t remember the name of it). So what do I think of her?

She's sharp, clipped, controlled, brittle and about as empathic as obsidian.  I have no sense, from listening to her read, of there being any softness or compassion about her: for others or for herself.  It's a very carefully constructed and presented persona that I don't think we are supposed to like. But then that would just feed into her negative feelings of self-worth, so it figures.  Leaving aside the fact that she’s clearly developed in a cultured and educated environment, there’s a sense of superciliousness about her; a sense of superiority and coldness, particularly in Lady Lazarus.  Maybe it’s the quality of the recording, but I think not.  I accept that it may well be deliberate.  I hear also a rather self-centred core: one that craves love and admiration and yet despised both those that offer that and the self for wanting it. 

And yet, when she took her life, I believe she was quite careful to ensure that her children would be as safe from the immediate physical effects of her actions as she could make them.  So not all bad, then. 

How much of her writing was a simple expression of the mental anguish and pain she lived with, and how much shock tactics designed to elicit sympathy in the reader is very hard to determine.  It’s almost impossible to separate one from the other in someone suffering severe, long-term mental illness. 

Should I be concerned that there’s little ‘emotion’ in her reading, especially in the case of something like Lady Lazarus?  I’m not particularly.  Mental illness can give people an interesting perspective on their own behaviours, often being deeply and overly analytical or distancing themselves emotionally (others, of course, are wracked with overbearing guilt, but she doesn’t strike me as falling into that camp).  Actually, that’s not true.  There is emotion in her reading, just not a kind that I find particularly appealing.  Affective, yes.  Attractive, no.

A...aa..and SHE'S BACK!!

Greetings, one and all.  Well, mostly one really widely read blog that this is.  *Waves at Steven*

Yes, I’ve been away far too long.  Busy getting a life and a job and some money and stuff.  Ok, so not that busy really.  But I can’t post from work, so …

Anyway …

… was at the Garden Centre yesterday (see what an exciting life I’m now leading?) and for a brief moment thought Ann Summers had finally infiltrated our sleepy corner of the Cotswolds when I saw a large banner advertising ‘SHAG WEAR’*…

*It’s a Canadian company that make purses and stuff.  If you’re interested.

Fantastic Ekphrastic ...

Oh, how I wish it had been!

Already you know my two day Ekphrastic workshop experience was somewhat underwhelming.  Maybe I didn’t read the publicity properly.  Or perhaps I didn’t do enough research into the person leading the workshop.  Either way, it was all a bit bollocks, to be honest. 

I should maybe have been alerted when I received the programme for the two days and read the phrase: “Psychological Induction for exploring the museum with a poet’s eye”.  Hypnotic Induction is really not my cup of tea and whilst it was not compulsory to take part (and I didn’t) I do rather think people should be told, clearly, what’s going on.  Not have it dressed up in Jungian psychobabble.  But then there was a lot of that!

I also have to take issue with anyone opening a workshop on poetry by denouncing most modern poetry as being largely rubbish and dismissing the use of Free Verse in favour of Iambic Pentameter.  That’s to rather exclude a huge number of work(s) before we’ve even got started, and it’s personal opinion.  And whilst anyone is entitled to their opinion, it’s not especially helpful to express such a proscriptive opinion to a group whose members you don’t know and who were, largely, new to writing poetry or Ekphrasis.  

If this had come from someone whose own work stood head and shoulders above the majority, I might be prepared to give a little more credence to the views expressed.  But I don’t think anyone is going to be offered the post of Poet Laureate by including the phrase ‘satanic mills’ in a poem on Jerusalem, even when referencing William Blake.  And don’t even get me started on the levels of courage and skill required to produce a phrase as original as: “So far and yet so near”.   

So, the first day was a bit of a write off for me, largely due to my own reaction to the psychological induction shenanigans.  It put me in a bad mood.  And I chose to stay there.  Day two, however, was an improvement.  Nothing to do with any real improvement in the quality of the workshop, more my own attitude.  Still, I finally got the poem down about the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A that’s been swilling round my brain since January, so that was good.  And I met some nice people, including a member of the poetry society I belong to (but who hasn’t come to any meetings since the beginning of the year).  That was nice.  And *may* give rise to a mixed media collaboration at some point, which would be fantastically good fun.  If nothing else, I shall go on one of her workshops to learn how to make myself a book!

There’s something about silver linings and clouds there.

Post (Without) Haste

I've been neglectful of posting recently.  (And I'm going on 'Mastermind' next week: specialist subject will be stating the bleedin' obvious!) Thing is, after two and a half years of not working, I went and got a job which has taken up most of my energies whilst I get used to getting out of my bed at some ungodly hour of the morning again, and having a routine!  Still, I'll (eventually) have a salary coming in again, so it's all good.

Anyway, on to the business of poetic ramblings.  Despite the stresses and strains of being a wage-slave again, last week in particular was a high productive week, poem wise.  I knocked out four completely new pieces; finished two poems I've been struggling with for a while; re-jigged two that some nice people at the writing group I go to kindly critiqued for me; and produced something from notes made at a recent workshop on using the second person.  Some of them are even good.  Go me!  With knobs on!!!

More importantly, several of them are not of the 'prancing around the countryside with a flower behind my ear' variety.  My mentor is encouraging me to move outside my safe zone (writing about how lovely the countryside is that I prance about in) and explore one of the other 'voices' that have percolated up: a political voice.

It's an interesting change.  When I'm in my safe zone, I know when I've got something 'good' or at least something that has potential.  Writing in another vein is slightly disturbing in that I don't feel I have any anchors to cling on to, or reference points by which to plot my course.  Still, it's a challenge and one that I'm rather enjoying.

I'm off to a two day workshop on ekphrastics at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, later this week - writing poetry about some of the exhibits.  Obviously, it's something I've done before at Swindon Art Gallery, but the Ashmolean is going to offer a whole bewildering range of lovely things to choose from.  More another day.  Probably.

Tanked Up

Went shopping on Saturday.  Wow!  I know!  Hold the front page!!

Perhaps I should clarify it a bit and say I went to a large shopping mall on the outskirts of Bristol where I mooched through the Ladies Wear department of a large chain store beloved of the middle classes.  And me.  Except I may have stumbled upon a small spot of blight in the heart of the rose (ooo, look at me gettin' all poetic!)

There was a jumper.  Quite a nice jumper.  A deep coral pink verging on the red type of jumper.  It was £150.  Yes, that's right.  Somebody somewhere thought that it was acceptable to charge £150 for a jumper.  ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY QUID.  FOR A JUMPER!  And it didn't even have sleeves!!!

Voicing My Opinions

I don't usually watch talent shows but I make an exception for 'The Voice' - well it's singing! Watching the live final tonight, if Leah McFall doesn't win ... I think questions should be asked in the House (of Commons) - they ask less contentious, crappier questions on a daily basis.

However, for Matt Henry to be first of the finalist out is a complete travesty. His staging, performance, emotional engagement with his song, vocals - just everything - was brilliant.  I'm struggling to find an explanation as to why he didn't apparently garner enough votes to keep him in the final three.  Other than the explanation given by someone on twitter: that the British public wouldn't know talent if it set fire to its arse.

Honest to God, however good Andrea and Mike are (and they ARE good), would the majority of people really prefer to pay good money to go see a Country and Western singer (albeit probably the first British one) or an Irish Eva Cassidy-alike, both of whose performance styles are predictable and non-physical, or a soul man who lives every note with passion and physicality or one of the most unique voices you're likely to hear?

Up Pompeii

I've just been to see 'Pompeii Live', the British Museum's live broadcast event from their current exhibition 'Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum'.  Excellent.  Several of my favourite people gathered together in one place at one time and being fascinating.  Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Mary Beard, Bettany Hughes ... even Georgio Locatelli, who had baked a loaf of bread based on a carbonised one found at Pompeii.  Not only did he explain the 'name stamp' on the Pompeiian one as being similar to the identifying marks found on loaves baked even today in public ovens in Sicily, but he also came up with an explanation for the shape of the Pompeii loaf.  It was like a very large 'cottage loaf'': round, and seemingly made in two parts with the lower half larger than the upper and a kind of groove around the middle.  His interpretation?  The groove was there to tie a piece of string around the loaf once cooked in order to carry it home more easily.  Genius!

It's a strange thing that the everyday lives of these people who lived almost two thousand years ago seem so similar to our own, and yet so very different.  The commonplace ownership of other human beings as slaves, and their background omnipresence in every aspect of the life and activity of the family and household.  And yet, unlike other slave owning cultures, Roman slavery was surprisingly fluid and mobile, with former slaves rising to high ranking positions in society once freed.

It was also, at times, a very moving experience.  Having examined in great detail the wall paintings, from the garden room in The House of the Gold Bracelet at Pompeii, we then met the family who had lived there: parents and two children who died together hiding under the stairs as the pyroclastic flow of superheated gases hit the town.  Finally, we were shown the gold bracelet found with the remains of the woman and after which the house is named.  Whilst I'm sure that the connection between all three will be clear in the exhibition, somehow I doubt that it will be as evocative and emotive as live transmission managed to convey.  Really very touching.  And a poignant reminder, if  we still need it after two major tsunami events in the last few years, that a rich (on many levels) society can still be wiped out in a matter of a few hours.

Anyway, loved the live event and the way the experts, including the exhibition's curator, fleshed out the bones (quite literally, in the case of the skeletons and body casts) of so many of the items on display.  Looking forward even more than ever now to seeing it all in person in a couple of weeks!

Target Practice

There's a woman on the television using air quotation marks.

I want to shoot her.

Advertising Standards

Here's one of those annoying 'targeted' adverts that sully the right-hand margin of your FaceBook page.

Is 60 the new 30?

   What is she on? You will never guess the crazy trick that makes her look half her age.





Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that a picture of Geri Halliwell, formerly Gobshite Spice or something?  She's only about 40, surely?  Perhaps it's someone's idea of quasi vigilante justice for having given her daughter a name like Bluebell.

The utter bollockness of those adverts, though, never ceases to amaze me.  One memorable one was claiming to have a 'cure' for belly fat, and advertised using a picture of a young woman in a leotard and leggings with a very big belly.  It was a lady doing yoga and she was clearly  heavily pregnant lady, and not fat at all!  How do they get away with it?

They also seem to think for some reason that I live in Milton Keynes.  I don't, dear reader.  I don't. Heaven only knows how they came up with that notion.

But, more important that any of that ... how to I get my left-hand margin back to where it aught to be???

News From The Hen House. Again.

Time, I feel, for a bit of an update.

Sadly, Anthony Quail is no longer with us.  She (as it turned out) was playing in the garden at his fosterers.  And then she wasn't.  All anyone could find were a few feathers ... pointing in the direction (if feathers can point) of a passing Sparrowhawk.  Oh well.

Chicken Dinner, my gorgeous, lovely cockerel has now left us and gone to live in Winchcombe where a mixed flock of chickens and bantams were in need of a fine fellow to look after them.  Step up, Chicken Dinner.  He's been declared "Soooooooo gorgeous" by his new owner and incredibly tame.  This is because he was too much of a twat to dance out of range like the girls did when it looked like I was threatening to try and pick them up.  No, instead he got all defensive and cocky and danced into range ... and got scooped up for undignified cuddling. Ha!  Anyway, it's good to hear he's settled in well and is much admired.  But then there's much to admire about a boy who looks like this:

In a happier vein, Amelia Nugget's foster chick continues to do well and is growning up to be a very big girl (yes, she too has turned out to be a she.  Hurrah!).  She's gone from this:

At a day old.  To this at three weeks old:

Four weeks old and able to reach the dizzy heights of the back of the seat in the arbour:

At five weeks, and still looking like an as cute as a button fluff ball of a chick:

To being nine weeks old and almost fully into her adult plumage:

Amelia Nugget has been a splendid mother and finally got herself back into laying condition a couple of weeks back, so we've had a good supply of bantam eggs. Until today, when she's holed up in the nest box refusing to move.  She and I are going to have to have words tomorrow.  I can't cope with another eight weeks of broody chicken-ness again.  One things for certain though, there'll be no more hatchings going on!

Mad Scientists

So ... some scientists somewhere have decided that women may evolve out of going through menopause as it's no longer of any use to them.

This is rooted in the 'grandmother hypothesis' that suggests women evolved the menopause and stopped having babies right through to the end of life, as other mammals do, as a survival strategy.  By not competing with their own children for resources for their respective babies, it gave the grandchildren, and thus the shared genes, a greater chance of surviving and continuing through subsequent generations.  So far, so reasonable. In which case, I'm really not sure where the advantage to women in back-tracking down this particular evolutionary road might be.

I can see why a small number (overall) of privileged women might see it as a benefit to extend their reproductive years beyond the current biological limits.  Some, of course, already do, and that's another soapbox for another day.  But I can only view the possibility of having babies velcro-ing themselves to ones support stockings or having to use ones zimmer and emergency help cord like a lion tamer's chair and whip during 'the terrible twos' as some kind of dystopian horror.  The idea of mother and child bonding over the shared use of incontinence knickers is just not right!

Besides, most women I know relish the all too brief space available in their handbag between Tampax* and Tenalady*.  I can't see us voluntarily giving that up for anything.



*Other brands of ladies unmentionables are also available.

Poncing Around The Countryside With A Daisy Behind My Ear ...

Today's post is all poetical.  Hence the title.

Last night, I went along to BlueGate Poets open mic at Lower Shaw Farm in Swindon.  Lovely setting, lovely people, lovely evening.  And I was brave.  I actually read some of my work.  And people were nice about it.  So it was all good.

Today, in celebration of that fact, I have written a small piece of nonsense for my lovely chum Miss Lucy Loquette. I've done it in fuschia because I think it suits her.  Hold on to yer hats.  This is it:

Miss Lucy Loquette

A gorgeous coquette

And one time soubrette

Played a mean clarinet

In a small kitchenette

Whilst I made vinaigrette.

It was, surely, Kismet!

Well, it amuses me.  Hopefully, it amuses her, too.  

Google-eyed In Disbelief

Margaret Hodge, chairperson of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has called Google's defence of its current tax avoidance arrangements "brazen".  An interesting choice of word.

'Brazen' - an adjective meaning bold and without shame.

Hmm.  Who else do we know whose defence of familial tax avoidance arrangements could equally be considered "brazen": hypocritical even? No!  Surely not?!

To Quote Bugs Bunny ...

"I dream of Genie, she's a light brown hare".

Well, I don't actually dream of genies.  Or hares.  In fact, it's only in the last couple of years that I've consciously recollected any of my dreams other than ones that were disturbing enough for me to wake myself up from them (I think that's a facet of 'lucid dreaming' - something some people pay good money to learn how to do, and I can do it for free.  Go me!) Anyway ...

Last night, after consciously stopping a weird dream about strange people outside my house, which wasn't my house but was - if you see what I mean - and my mother weilding a large piece of garden trellis in defensive preparation, I dreamt several lines of utterly compelling poetry then woke up.  And promptly forgot it.

The way my mind runs things, you'd think I'd know something about it ...

A Book At Bedtime (3)

This time, it's: "Letter To A Christian Nation" by Sam Harris.

It's billed as a hard-hitting rebuttal of religious fundamentalism and 'blind faith'. So basically we can sum it up as Atheist points out to American fundamentalist Christians where they're going wrong, and it's as dull and boring as every other ‘atheist points out the flaws in, largely, Judaeo-Christian belief’ book.  In this apparently interminable argument, it all seems to boil down to: “What I believe is right and what you believe is wrong”.  Which reduces it all down to playground level and, by association, then devalues the reasoned points in either argument (and, yes, there are many).

I do wonder whether any of these impassioned - some might even say uncompromising - anti-religion authors have actually managed to ‘turn’ any but a small number of individuals away from their faith(s).  I can quite see that they have been very successfully preaching to the already converted; and have probably managed to crystallize, or simply verbalise, the arguments that many more have been having with themselves. But have they ever really hit home amongst the audience they are apparently addressing?  I see no evidence that great swathes of Christians have had a neo-Damascene revelation as a result of their arguments, so I have to conclude not.  Perhaps they need to try a different tack.

Polemical atheism is as wearisome, to me, as its religious counterpart.  The totalitarian slant of “all religion, and everything in it, is bad” is the crude approach of the mindless crusader.  Who amongst us has the right to condemn something that brings comfort to those whose lives are rooted in poverty, hardship, misery and pain: for whom daily survival, rather than, say, being published, is a major triumph?  Certainly not those who live in relative ease as part of the intelligentsia,

and whose argument against religion and for non-belief/science is too academic for the vast majority to engage with.

To be fair, Harris manages largely to steer away from the rabid invective of the more zealous of his brethren in non-belief.  And he does have the grace to concede that some religious belief is benign or, at least, less malignant in his view than Christianity (Jainism seems to rate well for its doctrine of non-violence at least).  He puts forward well-structured arguments against the basic tenets of Christian belief and the fallacious claims of conservative and fundamental Christianity to be holding the moral high ground in terms of compassion, goodness and doing good in the name of God: to wit, his dismantling of the Christian anti-abortion argument in America.  I do think he rather veers into unhelpful mudslinging against the Catholic Church when it comes to the discussion on limbo, though.  And I find the tone in sentences such as: “The cure for obstetric fistula is, as it turns out, a simple surgical procedure - not prayer” snide and condescending, which strikes me as rather self-defeating when it’s aimed at the very people he’s trying to reason with.

Let me make it clear, I have no religious belief and have no drum to bang on behalf of religion(s).  But neither can I find it in myself to support the dogma spouted by Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins and the like.  And deny it as much as they will, Atheism has its dogma just as much as any religion.  Similarly, it has its fundamentalists: Richard Dawkins being the first amongst them (and anyone who can propose the Huxleyesque notion of removing children from their parents at birth and raising them in an environment that is hermetically sealed against religious belief or any other intellectually corrupting influence must, frankly, be several pegs short of a full clothes line).  Still, leaving aside one or two flaws in his own argument, Harris' book just leaves me, once more, shaking my head in despair because it always seems to me that the hard-core of atheism overlooks some of the most basic facts about human nature. 

Despite millennia of growth and progress in human understanding, the vast majority of us alive at any given point in our history believe in some esoteric force greater than ourselves.  Mankind has a desperate, deep-rooted need to understand the world around us; to create some form of belief system to explain it.  There seems to be an innate need in the human species to seek patterns and order where none, in reality, exist.  Which might explain why, with the decline in religious attendance (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Christian religious attendance) in this country, and others, came a rise in ‘Alternative belief systems’: Scientology; Kabbalah; paganism; even the belief in Faeries.  There should be a strong message for the atheistic die-hards there: when conventional religions fail to provide them with answers, rather than turn en-masse to non-belief or to science large numbers choose, instead, to turn to some other equally non-scientific, requiring-the-willing-suspension-of-disbelief, faith system.

I’ve touched on this already but when a person’s life is little more than a daily struggle for survival; when hideous, irrational events are visited on people without, seemingly, rhyme or reason, the vast majority of us are simply not hardwired in a way that will allow us to take a dispassionate view of the horrors we are having to deal with.  Many, many people simply cannot rationalise what they have lived through, or live with on a daily basis, sufficiently to recognise that nothing more than pure change had any part to play.  And maybe, just maybe, clinging to the belief that there is a better life to come is what makes it possible for some people to live through the one they have without going mad. 

I also feel that many of those who advocate scientific over religious belief forget that religion, for many, is about more than simply faith.  It’s about the ‘warm fuzzy’ feeling of having a sense of belonging; about being part of a wider community.  Aside from at a rather cold intellectual and academic level, science doesn’t have that to offer – and people need it.  More so now, I think, than ever before.   For many, the network of support, security, advice, assistance, and the sharing of values and culture that the traditional extended family unit provided has virtually disappeared. It’s been replaced instead with more individualistic and consumerist values. These, in turn, seem to have fuelled increased feelings of dissatisfaction, alienation and general unhappiness, coupled with a greater striving for more material possessions to somehow fill a perceived void in our emotional wellbeing.  A cold alembic does about as much to make us truly deep-down happy as a brand new pair of expensive designer shoes.  We are a social species and religions taps into our most basic cravings for group inclusion in a way science and shopping can never do.

More than that, I can’t help but feel that were all religions to be swept away overnight, we would find something else around which to draw our tribal lines.  It seems innate.   All the wars and peacetime atrocities that have been perpetrated in the name of religion really have all been about one thing: power.  Religion has been appropriated as the moral justification to support aggression and rapaciousness.  The fact that science is rooted in logic and not faith does not insulate it from being just as easily expropriated to sustain the worst of human desires and ambitions.  The evidence that this is happening daily is all around us.

It does seem incredible and even scary that the majority of people living in the most powerful nation on earth believe Noah carried dinosaurs on the Ark; that  the Bible is the word of God wholly unadulterated by personal or socio-political bias on the part of those who recorded said ‘word’, and should be the sole determining factor in how we conduct our affairs (including suitable punishment for those conducting extra-marital ones); and that in the game of religious Top Trumps, the God of the Christians outranks all others.  But, in many respects, it was ever thus. 

Those who led the charge for the Protestant Reformation can’t have viewed enormous power in the hands of people who believed in Purgatory, or who supported the sale of Indulgences, with equanimity.  And let’s not forget that even in the Late Middle Ages, significant numbers still clung to the belief that the earth was flat.  We make progress in understanding and belief in some areas, only to find new arenas for debate.  Whatever faith system prevails, mankind will find ways to subvert it to its own malign causes.  It comes back to our seemingly inextinguishable need to affiliate along clan fault lines.

Personally, if I have a ‘clan’ in this sense – and I’m not sure that I do – then it is that which has room for the likes of Alain De Botton.  Although I’ve yet to read it, I bought his book ‘Religion for Atheists’ when it was first published on the grounds that he recognises that some religious faiths, at least, have a great deal to offer in terms of their understanding of the importance of community to our mental wellbeing.   And he seems to manage to do so in a good-natured fashion, without being deprecating or demeaning, to boot.  I’ll let you know when I’ve read it!

A Book At Bedtime (2)

Do You Think What You Think You Think? by Julain Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom

Self-billed as  "The Ultimate Philosophical Quiz Book".  I'm not sure about that, but it is fun and it does make you review the ways in which you think, and shows you where your thought processes may be contradictory.

I surprised myself in that I am, seemingly, consistent in the majority of my opinions.  Likewise, in the logic test I am too clever for my own good.  In building my own God, I failed miserably in the area of calculating my own score, and it is not possible to determine the extent to which I see moral wrongdoing in universal terms, so I am neither fully universalizing nor fully relativizing.  I am fully permissive though.  I'm not sure what this means for my moral compass though.  Sitting on a magnet under a pile of iron filings, probably.

Pictures At An Exhibition ...

I've barely written a thing since the end of NaPoWriMo, just a bit of tinkering at the edges of work I'd produced during the NaPo challenge.  Whether it was a form of exhaustion at having been so unusually disciplined for a sustained period, I'm not sure.  I went through something similar once I'd finished my Open University degree: I hardly read a book for more than two years in some kind of reaction against the pace at which I had been reading - both for academic purposes and for pleasure - for the previous eight.

Anyway, as part of the Swindon Festival of Literature I attended a poetry workshop on Sunday at Swindon Art Gallery and Museum.  The workshop was led by Tamar Yoseloff, a poet and creative writing tutor with a particular interest in the relationship between poetry and modern visual arts.  Swindon Art Gallery is home to an impressive collection of modern art, purportedly the third largest outside of London. Most of it I probably wouldn't give house room to, to be honest: I'm not particularly into abstract art and even a lot of the figurative did nothing for me.  However, as an exercise in shared creativity and in finding inspiration in places I might not otherwise have considered, it was a very useful day.

There were a handful of paintings that I did connect with.  The moment I walked through the door, I was gripped by 'Descent of a bull's head' by Maggie Hamblin: such a stark image.

I was certain that this was the picture I would choose to write about when the time came.  From where I was sitting, I was able to look at this throughout the morning, hung alongside an absolutely massive canvass that, at first, I couldn't make any sense of ... and then it eventually resolved itself for me as Pegasus and some kind of turbine.  Actually, it was 'Hyperion' by Christopher le Brun, and the more I looked at it the more I fell in love with it, although I'd probably have to move house in order to be able to give it the space it commands - it's about eight foot by seven.  This is it:

I was also drawn to a rather un-Lowry-like Lowry: 'A Procession':

I'm not a fan of Lowry particularly, but I found this rather striking.  Possibly the contrast in the washed-out colours of the titular subject and the definite colours of the onlookers in the foreground.  It certainly sparked a very strong and forceful piece of poetry from one of the people present.

Anyway, once we'd been given free reign to wander the gallery and find our inspiration, I settled on a picture that I'd not actually noticed before, which was surprising given that it is quite striking and was in my eyeline all morning.  'The Tower Bridge, London: A Wartime Nocturne' by Claude Francis Barry.

Pleasingly, I produced a first draft in the time allotted and got some useful critiques and suggestions for ways to take it forward in the feedback session during the afternoon.  This is one that definitely has 'legs'.

I also bashed out something sparked from 'Descent', although it was nothing approaching the initial thoughts I had on the painting - those, I think, still need to mature a bit before they become what I first intended (if, indeed, they ever do: the creative process having a habit of doing it's own thing irrespective of what the artist/writer intended).  No, I produced something - a not very good something - referencing the Ancient Greek myth (this seems to be a default mode for me) of Ariadne and the Minotaur.  Interestingly, three others in the group had chosen this same painting as their inspiration.  As they were all sitting next to one another and very close to me, I have to conclude that the power of the painting permeated their conciousness' during the morning to the exclusion of all else.  It was, though, fascinating to hear three very different interpretations of their shared experience ... and to know that I had a fourth in hand.  What I produced on that theme was rushed and a quite weak, but I think will bear working on.

Overall, it was a hugely useful exercise: attending the workshop.  It's re-kindled the desire to write again; taught me the value of looking for inspiration in places I might otherwise not have; encouraged me to attend more workshops; and taught me the meaning of the word 'Ekphrastic'.  

Oh, and as Swindon Museum and Art Gallery will be closing down in 2014 and only a very few items from its' collection will be on display after that point, I'd just like it noted that I will be happy to give a home to all of the above works, along with C R W Nevison's 'Welsh Hills': rays of light as sharp knife blades or creases in a well-pressed pair of trousers:

More News From The Hen House ...

Well.  Things have been happening down in the old hen house of late.  I'm proud to announce that Amelia, Chicken Nugget has become a mother twice over!

Firstly, last Thursday, on a routine visit by the Chicken Guru to check over the four quail eggs that had not hatched and were about to be ditched, we discovered one had in fact hatched after all.  However, the chick had strayed into the adjoining nest box and been left there and we found it cold, still and seemingly dead.  But, whilst the Guru took the other three eggs away to check why they hadn't hatched I noticed the tiniest of twitches.  So, just like an episode of Casualty or ER, it was emergency action stations as the little scrap was scooped up by the Guru and held in cupped hands for warm whilst he gently blew on it to try and get its body temperature back up.  And it worked!  After about half an hour of us resuscitating it between us, we had a little survivor on our hands!  It's now been fostered with the Chicken Guru because he has a) a hot lamp and b) a young daughter who wanted the quail if they hatched.  Sadly, none of the other eggs made it: two were bad and one had a fully-developed chick but it hadn't been strong enough to make it out of the egg.  I've called our solitary quail  Anthony.

Whilst the Guru was here, we 'candled' the two hen's eggs with a torch and discovered one of them had partially developed but was now dead, but the other seemed to contain a live chick.  So it was just a matter of waiting to see what happened.

Sure enough, Saturday morning, the good egg had a couple of small pieces of shell flaked off it and 'peeping' sounds coming from inside it.  By the end of the day, Amelia (seemingly) had pecked shell off in a circle all the way around the egg and a tiny beak was showing through.  Sunday morning dawned on a gorgeous fluffy little chick in the nest box with Amelia.

Despite some concerns as to whether Olga Kiev and the cockerel, Dinner, would accept the chick, all seems to be going well.  The two of them have been hanging round the nest box/roosting chamber and coop since the quail was born and I wasn't sure whether their intentions towards to chick(s) were entirely honourable, but Amelia brought the chick out  into the coop yesterday  afternoon, and again today without disaster, so all looks to be well.  The other two are still hanging around close to the coop and haven't been into the main garden at all.  The cockerel is really quite protective of Amelia and the chick and doesn't approve of me getting too close - he's torn between guarding Amelia and chick and guarding Olga, which is quite funny to watch.  Amelia has been showing the chick how to find food in the feeder and how to grub around in the dirt for interesting things today and it's been lovely to watch. I'm going soft in my old age!

Here are Anthony Quail (top) and Amelia with her new chick - as yet unnamed - bottom.

A Book At Bedtime. Or Any Other Time ...

I've been reading 'The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone.' by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, and highly recommend it.

This book investigates the apparent modern conundrum of affluent nations whose citizens seemingly ‘have it all’ and yet record higher than ever levels of anxiety, stress and dissatisfaction – across all age and social groups – and are increasingly classified as being ‘fractured societies’; in our own case, we are “broken Britain”.  And yet there are similarly affluent countries where people are much happier and content with life.  What is the difference between the two groups; where does the disparity lie?  The theory put forward by Wilkinson and Pickett, supported by a wealth of evidence gathered from over thirty years of research, is that it lies in the gap between rich and poor.  In those affluent, developed nations with the largest gap between their wealthiest and their poorest citizens.  Those are the countries which have the highest rates of: teenage pregnancy; youth violence; violent crime; imprisonment; mental health issues; drug and alcohol abuse; obesity; end of life illnesses; single parenthood; suicide; etc. etc.  They are, virtually without exception, those societies where the income inequality gap is greatest: the USA, Australia, New Zealand (yes, that one really surprised me, too!), the UK, Portugal, Ireland, and much of the rest of Europe.

Conversely, those wealthy, developed countries with the flattest ‘wealth hierarchies’, where the economic equality gap is smallest, routinely record much higher levels of individuals’ happiness and satisfaction, and concomitantly lower levels of the social ills mentioned above: Sweden, Denmark, Japan.

It seems economists could have learned a thing or two from social and evolutionary psychologists about group behaviour, and also from women’s studies, as regards the alienation and sense of powerlessness amongst those at the lower levels in a hierarchy, and what the associated stress and anxiety does for physical and mental health and welfare.  But, and here perhaps is the most important point that the authors make, it is not just those at the lower economic levels in a society who benefit when the inequality gap is reduced: all levels of society benefit in many different ways. 

The root of all these evils is competitive consumption; economic aspiration at the cost of everything else; conspicuous and shallow status display in every area of life.  Ever increasing wealth and consumption does not make us happy or healthy as individuals, nor does it make for a happy and healthy society.

Whilst the modern-day Neros fiddle their expenses, avoid taxes and build their golden ‘iceberg’ houses with the profits from their gargantuan multi-nationals, we have consentingly allowed ourselves to be led down the path to our own destruction.  The cult of the individual and the growth of conspicuous status-based consumption, that have been so fervently promoted and adopted, are nothing more than the equivalent of the bread and circuses that kept the Roman masses acquiescent.  They are the smokescreen behind which the ultra-wealthy have operated, and we, the modern masses, have gladly used them as the means to fill the voids left by the fracturing of our traditional extended family groups and the increasing dearth of community relationships. We’ve lost sight of the fact that society is collaborative, not individualistic, and that operating collaboratively brings far more benefits, both individually and socially, than would be achieved otherwise.  We no longer operate for the ‘common wealth’ but rather for our own.

Wilkinson and Pickett contest that we’ve reached the point where further improvements in the quality of our lives are no longer dependent on greater economic growth, but on the growth of community: how we relate to one another.  I can’t see this as being a position that any right-thinking person could argue with: society is not made up of un-related and un-connected individuals, it is all of us.  Our survival strategy, as a species, was to choose to live in groups that enabled their members to benefit in ways that would not have been possible on an individual basis, and thus delivering both individual and social benefits.  We seem, in many cases, to have lost sight of that very basic fact, choosing to concentrate on merely that which benefits us as individuals.  This book makes the price we are paying for that very clear and plainly lays out the case as to why we need to change.

There is a level of criticism over the way the authors have chosen to display their data, though.  A great number of people seem to be exercised over the way they have simplified and displayed the data, labelling graph axes with 'low' and 'high', for example.  I'm not sure that they could have used absolute values given the number of countries in their study. It would have been very unweildly, surely?  And there could very well be wide-ranging differences between affluent countries in the absolute values for their top and bottom percentiles ofaverage income levels.  In fact, a very rough comparison of the data for tax levels in New Zealand and the UK for 2010: in New Zealand, the average earnings for the lowest ten percent of tax payers was (equivalent to) £11k pa, whilst in the UK, the same group had an average income of £8k.  Likewise, the top ten percent of tax payers had average incomes of £750k and £100k pa respectively.  Very rough figures but, hopefully, they illustrate the point.  

To be honest, I can’t help but feel that in nit-picking over Wilkinson and Pickett’s graphic representation of the data some people are being almost deliberately obtuse.  It seems to me to be more of a cop out than a genuine argument against the premise of the book:  It's saying: “It’s a good book and I like the idea behind it but I really can’t buy into it as a way forward because they haven’t used absolute values on their graph axes”.  The point is that it is the size of the gap between those in the richest ten per cent and poorest ten per cent in any of the given societies that is the issue, not what the absolute wealth values of those percentiles might be.

It's so simples even a Meerkat could understand it!  (< And I don't actually believe I have just typed that sentence!)

This is an excellent book that I wish I had discovered sooner (it was first published in 2009) and which I wish all politicians and would-be politicians could be compelled to read.

((and Itand a

 a(n excellent book that, admittedly a little belatedly, I would wish all politicians and would-be politicians could be compelled to read. 

I can’t help but feel that in nit-picking over Wilkinson and Pickett’s graphic representation of the data people are being almost deliberately obtuse.  I really don’t understand the issue.  It seems to me to be more of a cop out than a genuine argument against the premise of the book: “It’s a good book and I like the idea behind it but I really can’t buy into it as a way forward because they haven’t used absolute values on their graph axes”.  The point is that it is the size of the gap between those in the richest ten per cent and poorest ten per cent in any of the given societies that is the issue, not what the absolute wealth values of those percentiles might be. 

It’s so simples even a Meerkat could understand it!

George Osbourn Remains A Cunt ...

Speaking from a lecturn labelled "For the hardworking" he claims 9 out of 10 families will be better off as a result of the raft of new changes to the benefit system.  That may, indeed, be the case overall, but once again those least able to roll with the punches are going to be hit the hardest.  And once again the implication is that those in receipt of benefit are not hardworking: that the poor are shiftless and lazy.

Despicable, devisive and damaging.

News From The Hen House III

I've been more than a bit remiss as regards keeping my blog up-to-date over the past couple of months.   Quite a bit has been going on, not least in the hen house where Amelia, Chicken Nugget has been busy sitting on an egg.  Initially, I took the first few eggs away from her but she kept stealing her sister's so I took pity on her and let her keep one to brood.  Bless her, she's been sitting on it for almost four weeks now, so I think it's fair to say that she's sitting on a unfertilized egg (Artichoke, Chicken Dinner is a cock firing blanks, it seems).

This evening, however, I got a phone call from a friend needing an emergency chicken: her son had been to see his dad today and come home with two chicken and four quail's eggs that "were not for eating".  Amelia to the rescue!

It's Enough To Drive You Up The Pole

This is the continuation of a post I made on FaceBook.  It's taken quite a long time to write because trying to put my initial thoughts down on the page, so many tangental thoughts crowded in it got difficult to keep my focus.  Anyway, here it is ...

February 9th is National Libraries Day, apparently.  It's the culmination of a week of celebrations in schools, colleges, workplaces and, of course, public libraries across the UK.  In support of this campaign, to highlight the importance of libraries Midlothian Council are  staging a range of events in an attempt to encourage more people to use the library services.  So far, so good.  Until you delve into the detail a bit and find that amongst the very laudable events they are staging, such as Author Events, Local Studies and, even, Love Your iPad sessions are 'booky table tennis' and 'Pole Fitness taster sessions'.

'Booky table tennis' involves using books as bats.  Using books as table tennis bats?????  Whoever came up with that idea should, at the very least, be horse whipped.  In fact, tarring and feathering is probably too good for them.  Books should be treated with the kind of reverence usually reserved for the dessicated and rotting remains of the beatified and the saintly!  And if treating books in such a cavalier fashion wasn't a heinous enough act ... Pole Fitness?  POLE FITNESS??!!

Pole dancing fitness sessions are "a fun and interesting way of encouraging more people into our libraries" according to Midlothian council's cabinet member for public services and leisure. 

Midlothian council's cabinet member for public services and leisure needs to educate himself (yes, it is a man.  I'd say predictably, but that would be sexist and, besides, enough women fall into the same trap as to make me want to weep blood!)

As a sport, or fitness regime, pole dancing is controversial.  It's supporters will say that it is difficult: that you need to have coordination and really good core and upper body strength to be able to do it.  This is undeniably true.  What is also undeniable is that Pole Dancing has an association with the erotic that equally challenging fitness regimes, such as Pilates, do not.  And therein lies the problem.

Watching someone pole dancing is almost inevitably an exercise in the erotic for the viewer, probably more so than it is erotic exercise for the participant.  It is whether we like it or not, widely seen as sexual in its context, if not in its content, and for most people has very close associations with stripping and lap dancing, both of which, rightly or wrongly, are seen by many as being just a whisper away from prostitution.  Actually, taking the strict definition of the word, if money changes hands then they're all pretty much of a one.   

Many people, I think, consider stripping and lap dancing to be demeaning to women.  It objectifies women; reduces them to commodities to be used, and even abused, for money.  So in those terms, pole dancing can be no different.  

There is, of course, the counter-argument that, rather than being demeaning, activities of this nature are actually empowering to women.  For some, maybe.  For the minority who actively choose to take that route to empowerment of their own volition; for the very few who are actually completely in charge of their own productivity, so to speak; those who are not forced or otherwise coerced into it through circumstances and lack of choice then, yes, I can quite see that it might be.  Most of us, I imagine, will have read an interview with a (inevitably, it seems, young) woman with First Class degrees from Oxbridge who has actively chosen to work in the sex industry: who is taking advantage of male sexuality by being 'the exploiters, rather than the exploited'.  But there's at least part of the problem. Whichever way you shake the snowglobe, and however much glitter you dress it up in, the fall out is simply exploitation.

Really, is this what the feminist movement and the drive for equal opportunities was all about: giving women the freedom to pretend to be sex workers in the name of 'fun'?  Perhaps I've missed something, but how is that in any way liberating?  How is it emancipating?  How does it strengthen or support the notion of women having broken free from the age-old stereotypical view of the best places for them being on their backs, their knees or in the kitchen?  How appropriate is it that this take place in a library, a place, supposedly, linked to erudition and learning?  And how appropriate is it that this is supported and even staged on the authority of civic leaders: people supposed to rule, inspire and guide the citizens who have elected them?

Snow Joke ...

According to a piece in the paper yesterday, nearly one third of parents feel it is "too dangerous" to let their children play in the snow in case they slip or are hit by a snowball.  One in five parents actually ban their children from building snowmen or taking part in snowball fights "in case they catch a cold" and keep them wrapped up warm indoors.

Makes me wonder how we ever managed to win a war ...

-o-

In a similar vein, just to put their ridiculousness into some sort of context, fifty years ago this country suffered the 'Big Freeze' one of the coldest winters on record.  It started on Boxing Day 1962 with a blizzard that was whipped up by bitingly cold East winds a couple of days later leaving drifts up to twenty foot high in many places and even the centres of big cities had up to six inches of snow.  This was followed in the January by temperatures well below freezing - I believe as low as almost -20c in some places.  The upper reaches of the Thames here in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire froze solid, and even as far down as Windsor people were able to skate on it.  In some places even the sea froze for almost a mile off shore.  Without the benefit of modern 4x4 vehicles etc., farmers struggled to feed, or even rescue, livestock and many, many thousands died of exposure and/or starvation.  Added to the problems underfoot, all the lying snow gave rise to almost daily fog.
A thaw came towards the end of January but, within a couple of days, the snow was back again with a huge blizzard that lasted for almost two days, again leaving drifts of up to twenty foot.  This time, the winds remained, so it was a constant battle against swirling snow in sub-zero temperatures.  And all this during a time when few houses had decent central heating (if they had any at all, and most didn't!), road gritting wasn't commonplace, communications links were reliant on overhead telephone wires - many of which were brought down - and besides, many households didn't even have a telephone, electricity lines were also mostly overhead and, again, many were brought down leaving entire communities without power and lighting for considerable periods of time.   And people coped.  They also coped with the huge floods that followed in early March when the temperatures did a quick reversal and soared to the mid-teens!

From the top: Wales, Kent, the Thames at Windsor, and Somerset.  Now THAT is bad winter.  And an entire generation of children came through it largely unscathed.  FFS.

News From The Hen House II

Amelia, Chicken Nugget has done it!

This morning she also produced her first egg. Much rejoicing was there in the nest box (well, just outside it, on the floor of the roosting chamber actually, but then she's a bit slower to catch on than her sister).

"Get Your Twinkle Back!"

Turned out they were talking about a new eye cream and not, as I initially thought, using some hideous euphemism ...

News From The Hen House

Have I mentioned that I keep chickens?  I keep chickens.  Bantams, Partridge Pekin Bantams to be precise.

This is them when they arrived at eight weeks old last August.  Scrawny little devils.

This is them grown a bit.

From left to right we have Olga, Chicken Kiev; Amelia, Chicken Nugget; and Artichoke, Chicken Dinner.  Dinner is a Frizzle, which means the majority of his feathers curl backwards towards his head rather than lie flat as the girls' do.  He's a really rather fine chap, with a fabulous ginger ruff and green/black wing tips.


Anyway, they're even more grown up now than they were when the picture above was taken and we reached a milestone on Thursday when Olga produced her very first egg!!

It was delicious!

She's produced a second one today equally as tasty.  And Amelia, Chicken Nugget is showing signs of being ready to lay now too!

Some Things Are Just Worth Repeating ...

I've posted this on my FaceBook page, but feel it deserves an airing here, too.

Brothers - and Sisters, too!

Saw the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at The Tate yesterday afternoon.  Fabulous.  Although I've seen a lot of the items on display many times in the past, they remain breathtakingly beautiful: the talent and the work is just exquisite.  An added bonus was having the chance to see some items I'd never seen, including a range of sketches by Lizzie Siddal and quite a number of paintings by Millais I've not seen outside of books before - or at all - many of which were quite breath-takingly lovely.  Surprisingly (for me) the one that seems to have stuck in my memory the most was a landscape of his: Chill October.  I suppose, really, I'm a greater fan of the Aesthetic Movement than I am of the works of the Brotherhood themselves.  Much of what has been seen as being Millais more commercial work - Bubbles, The Childhood of Raleigh - leaves me cold.  I know he was acclaimed for his paintings of children but I find them too cloyingly sweet, too 'of their era' for my tastes.  However, there were a great number of his works in this exhibition, some that quite definitely prefigure The Aesthetic Movement.  And there are still a great many of his works I've yet to see.  I'd love to see his 'Twins', two young women (twins) but I think it's probably in a private collection (lucky owner!).  Still, several of the greatest Pre Raphaelite works are owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber and he's very generous in lending them to exhibitions so maybe there's hope yet.

But back to this exhibition at Tate Britain: I liked the fact that it wasn't limited to simply paintings and drawings, but included photographs, sculpture, furniture, textiles, pottery, tiles and stained glass (Burne-Jones of course!).  Did the exhibition achieve its stated aim to show that the Brotherhood was a wildly avant garde movement that influenced art at home and abroad more profoundly than most people have hitherto realised?  I'm probably not the best judge, given that I've recognised for a long time, albeit unconsciously, how very different they were, in terms of British art, from that which had gone before.  I hope the exhibition managed to show that to at least some people.  It certainly made the case for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood having influenced many of the 20th century's greatest artists and taught me something I hadn't appreciated: that Picasso owed a debt to the PRB!