January 2019 – birthdays, a book and an eclipse.

A new book by Dave Bangs is always good news.  The new one is a lifetime of walking and recording nature as only a real committed enthusiast like Dave can.  Its nearly A4 in size, and 360 pages long and he calls it a field guide to the middle Sussex and South East Surrey Weald.  He started exploring as a young guy, using trains, buses and a bike.  More recently its been by car, but the train core is revealed in the area, a few miles east and west of the Brighton to London railway, north of the South Downs up to about Redhill.  And the detail is stunning.

I am planning trips to find some of his veteran trees.  He says he has logged over a thousand of them, though hes been doing it so long some may have collapsed and gone now.  Time to plan a few spring walks and see some whilst they still stand.

This is a huge pollarded beech – over 5 full arm-spans around – with Dave nestled in its folds.  He gives 8 figure grid references for the things he cites, which should help me find them.  When I heard of his latest publication I phoned him and he brought a copy round.  What service!

That was 4th January, so I call it a birthday present to me.  On the actual day a group of friends had a fine vegetarian Indian meal in a nearby church hall where Robb Johnson entertained us with his songs after we had eaten food prepared by his partner Meeta.  Below there is Jerry, me and Jackie, and over her left shoulder another friend Jim Grozier – what a sociable evening.

Jackie’s birthday is only a few days later, and to mark that she and I had lunch at BomBanes in George Street Brighton.  We would have visited in the evening, but it was a themed dinner, with cryptic crossword clues to baffle and stun.  As neither of us has any talent in that direction we waited until friends came to stay, and all 4 of us went for dinner on the 19th January.

Whilst the above Viv and Graham were staying with us an eclipse of the moon was due.  Though it was rather early in the morning (maximum eclipse at 3.34am) we agreed to have a look if any one of us woke in time.  One of us woke, so we were all at the upstairs back windows looking NW towards a moon just coming out of eclipse at 4.30am.  Below is my best effort.

At the end of the month I spotted a sad thing – two of Brighton’s taggers had finally decided its OK to spray their scent marking equivalent on a wall supporting a Blue Plaque commemorating the birthplace of a First World War Victoria Cross holder.  Ernest Beal was born on the Lewes Road, and we put up the plaque in the summer, where it has been unsullied by graffiti until January.

On the same day I attended the AGM of the Brighton and Hove Way Association, in the Cherub Room of a local private school for girls.  I volunteered to act as Secretary of the group which exists to promote a permanent way-marked 18 mile walk around the back of Brighton and Hove, connecting to the coast at both ends, and public transport links at several other points.  I have now walked all of it once, and some parts two or three times, so at least its getting me out and about.  Here is the small gathering hearing from our Chair, Cllr. Pete West.

 

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Two bits of Culture

In late December we went to see a thing which had too long a title and very little explanation, but did sound as if we would approve the politics – that’s how we culture vultures select stuff, you know.

‘The Animals and Children Took to the Streets’ had just 3 actors (though it seemed more at the time) and a vital projectionist who turned simple backdrops into many and varied scenes.  The projected images where not all still, there were animations of animals and children.  One of the main characters (a mother) was an actress, but as she walked hand in hand with her daughter you had to remember daughter was a projection.  And loads of sounds.  Its from the 1927 Theatre Company, and like the write-up said, has the feel of a dark graphic novel.

The story was one of ghetto poverty and the neighbouring elite and their park.  And it was realistic – when the poor tried to use the park in an act of rebellion they were crushed and forced back to their ghetto.  The end.

The other bit of culture was one I saw with little expectation, but it was stunning.  I caught it on the penultimate day of the Brighton showing, so if you missed it – well, tough.

‘A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling’ by Hans Holbein the Younger (about 1527) was fairly small, beautifully lit (I was unaware of the glass covering it) and delicious.  The colours, detail and textures were lovely.  You had to be there.  The image here is from the National  Gallery website, and if you go to it you can zoom up to full size, and get some sense of the detail.

Last of this year’s tomatoes!

Today we will eat the last of our considerable tomato crop of the year.

It is green, but its meant to be green.  It is ripe.  We grew a whole range of types, some in the front garden, some on the allotment and some in the greenhouse.  Here is a picture of just four of the varieties, but not the green variety of today’s lunch.

Artes Mundi 8

Below is the written part of the work by Anna Boghiguian entitled ‘A meteor fell from the sky’, shown in the previous post on Cardiff.

From the stone that fell from heaven they extracted iron, made tools

they worshipped & thanked heaven for giving them their bliss

As time went their curiosity to make everything lighter and faster

brought the creation of steel, stainless steel and aluminium

Steel made life faster

The Industrial Revolution that has transformed itself

to digital revolution and virtual reality

New ways to interact, to think & to be

the mind has become a machine that responds

to the input downloaded by the public

The public opinion becomes the police force

that decides the moral/ethical values of our being

treating people as criminals

Since steel the world has evolved so rapidly it has lost touch

with its own reality

whatever that is

The Industrial Revolution created

The Alienation of Society

A new Class System

A new Vocabulary.

Whilst I enjoyed reading it I do not believe it.  Seems to be pushing ideas together that do not have a natural link.  But there are a few phrases I like.  If you took the first 5 lines and the last 4 I would like it better.

Cardiff trip

We arrived in Cardiff early afternoon and had our usual ‘coming to Cardiff’ pint of Brains at the Cottage on the St Mary’s Street.  Checked into the Travelodge on Queens Street, right by the Castle, and met friends Sue and Ros.  We found Nine Yards, a really nice Prosecco bar opposite The Cottage, and ordered the first bottle of the day with some snacks to see us through to early dinner at The Goat Major.  By the time we returned to the hotel we’d gone through 5 bottles of wine.  I had 2 pints of beer as well.

Clearly more activity will be needed to avoid alcohol poisoning.  We spent the following morning in Cardiff Castle, taking one of their excellent guided house tours.

The 3rd Marquis of Bute, one of the richest men in the country, spent many millions on a richly ornamented home he used just 6 weeks a year.  The above salmon, in the Banqueting Hall, indicates the level of detail. Note the small lizard beside  it.  The castle and nearby Bute Park ow belong to the people of Cardiff, having been given it by the 7th Marquis when the Labour Government nationalised the railways, docks and coal mines.

A third friend (Gerry) had joined us just for the day.  He recommended a cafe in Royal Arcade, where we went for lunch.  Simple good food but a very hectic lunchtime trade. Then on to the City Art Gallery.

This Cezanne (The Francois Zola Dam) is part of the Impressionist collection put together by the Davies sisters – spending some of the half million each received from their coal/railways/Barry docks owning father in 1908.  The concentration of wealth goes into few hands, but sometimes a little of the stuff becomes accessible to the rest of us – be it a big Castle or a collection of paintings.

Elsewhere in the gallery are the five artists in the current Artes Mundi exhibition, an international contemporary arts event.  The theme is, ‘what it means to be human in a fast changing and increasingly volatile world’.

My favourite is by Egyptian/Canadian Anna Boghiguian, and it explores the impact of metal working advances on society.  She chooses to see most scientific and technological advances in a very poor light, and her drawings struck me as fairly simplistic, but I liked the written tale.  The whole work is called, ‘A meteor fell from the sky’.

Above is the biggest single part of it.  I have transcribed the words – I do not believe her message, but I like this visual, multimedia way of giving it.  I’ll put it all at the end.

We decided on a trip to Cardiff Bay for wine and dinner and whatever cultural experiences it may offer on a cold damp December evening.  The bus took us south through what little remains of the multi-ethnic Butetown where racial conflict sprang up whenever business sought the next cheap source of newcomer labour in docks, ships and warehouses.  We wondered if the current Marquis of Bute was making money from this regeneration of what may still be his land.

This was the HQ of the Bute Dock Company, now housing part of the Welsh National Assembly.  We passed it after a bottle of wine or two at a bar in the Wales Millennium Centre, as we went in search of a dinner venue.  There are many places to eat, but all part of chains.  We settled for a Sussex based franchise – Bills.  Excellent surroundings, service, food and yet more wine.

The following day we had a morning coffee with Sue and Ros before they set of for home and we sought a bus for St Fagans – the National Museum of Welsh History.  The core of the place is the collection of buildings brought from all over Wales, but there are also three galleries depicting life in Wales over time, with emphasis on lives of ordinary people.  The site was donated in 1946 (perhaps to avoid the death duties being introduced by the new Labour government) by another wealthy nobleman, the Earl of Plymouth, who had a home (‘perhaps the finest Elizabethan manor house in Wales’) on part of this land.

This red farmhouse was originally on the Gower, it was built in 1610.  The red paint (whitewash and ox blood) was supposed to deter evil spirits.  I find it attractive, so no evil in me then.  I did get a lot closer than this picture suggests, even inside, where I found a roaring log fire, a volunteer guide full of stories, a cupboard bed and (on the sloping ceilings upstairs) a knotted straw infill between rafters.  What was that about, I hear you say.

This picture, from a history of St Fagans website, shows how the knotted straw interior actually supports the straw thatch – it is (was?) a Gower speciality.

The next farmhouse we entered was single storey longhouse from 1508.  Longhouse farms held the family at one end and the animals at the other end.  This one had a fireplace when the museum collected it in 1962, but they rebuilt it as original, with an open hearth and no chimney.  The building is on the left of the picture below, and the room with open hearth is at the right hand end.

After visiting a terrace of cottages (1800) and an aluminium pre-fab (1947, made in an ex-aircraft factory) we found a church with restored wall paintings, based on what remained under subsequent centuries of whitewash.

The image here was explained for us by a volunteer who happens to be a musician.  Its about the harm you will suffer should you decide to work or play an instrument on the Sabbath.  Our guide happened to be a harpist and player of the ancient precursor of the violin seen top left, the Crwth.  They have one of the only 3 original crwths in the UK in gallery of Welsh Life here at St Fagans.  I could show you a photograph, but I prefer to finish on this one, brought back from the Riviera in 1950 by an aunt for her niece, the young woman never dared to wear it in public, but she and her friends laughed a lot when they tried it on in private (said the info board).

A Borrowed Cartoon

I don’t think I should be doing this, but it has been sitting on my desk since Spring, and still makes me smile.  It used to make me laugh out loud, and I hope it makes you laugh.

And, as the world seems to be moving from ‘seeking the fount’ to ‘settling for the puddle’, it seems so much more significant.  I hope Tom Gaunt won’t mind, especially if I suggest you visit his website and seek out a Christmas present of one of his publications.

 

Geology of the Isle of Wight

This was way back in September, and I confess little of what follows will reveal much about the geological history of the island, but it might entertain.

I had hoped for the chance to see quarries where building stone was removed, but there are no active quarries, and most have grown over, plus it was not on the agenda for our leader.  The picture here is about as good as it got regarding building material.  This thin bed of limestone, which did get thicker further south, was used as building material. In past times it was even taken by sea to Hampshire and Sussex as a building stone.  It may be Bembridge Limestone, or just a less significant, slightly older limestone.

Thin limestone beds figured large in this trip.  Over in the SW we found this one, lots of it, at the toe of a big landslip.

The pattern you might discern on the surface of the rock might be shells, or bioturbation (patterns left in the once soft limey mud left by creatures moving though it).  But turn the slab over and the story improves.

Now we see that the limey mud was deposited onto a once dry land surface of iron rich brown clay which had dried out and left distinctive shrinkage cracks.  Our limey mud flowed into these cracks.  Nice Huh?

But I hear you say, “That’s all well and good, but where are the dinosaurs?”  We didn’t find any, not even a part.  But we visited a museum on the bleak east coast, north of Sandown, where this imagining of a small feathered one was seen.

On another day I found myself picking up plastic trash.  Had a carrier bag full (Yes, I found that too) when we climbed back up to the road.  But I was lucky enough to spot a National Trust pickup and driver, and she happily took the rubbish for proper disposal.  Some of the stuff was a bit interesting, so I’ll share it with you.  You can take the man out of the Tidy Britain Group, but you can’t take the T.B.G. out of the man!

I escaped the field trips on a warm day and walked from Shanklin to Ventnor along the coastal path, then back over Boniface and Shanklin Downs.  There were some great rocks here, but not on our agenda.  The steps in the picture below pass up behind a giant natural block of sandstone, making use of an eroded natural joint in the rock.  The gap might also be due to slippage of the hard rock on a seaward sloping underlying clay.

Elsewhere much of the stone had been quarried out.  And in Bonchurch the near level quarried out platform with cliff-like back wall has become the location for some grand houses.

Above the ‘Cottage’ you can see the railings on the main Ventnor to Shanklin road.  These houses are big and mainly attractive, but I’m not sure the link to the quarrying history works as a street name.  Cliff Cottage and all its grand neighbours are on The Pits, Bonchurch.

On the way back over the chalk downs there was an abundance of heathers.  Odd on chalk, but accounted for by a tick covering of broken flint gravels.  Was this formed by solution of the chalk over millennia?  Or some other way?  Whatever, it left an acidic medium well suited to at least two of our heathers.