MUSINGS

2009

Salaga in East Anglia on the Great Ouse

An occasional online journal, partly concerning music, plus the voyages of Narrowboat Salaga.

Site Index

Please say Hallo and sign the Guest Book:

GUEST BOOK

I'm happy to announce that from 9th August 2008 my music is exclusively published and represented by

Wild Woods Music Ltd.

You can also still visit my page of scores online for the time being at:

Sibeliusmusic.com

Or contact me at: l a h @ f r e e u k. c o m

Monday 29th June 2009

Still here on the Llangollen Canal, and rather looking forward to getting off soon - things are reaching a nightmarish climax of endless hire-boats, drunks and general mayhem, and I can't wait to head off to somewhere quieter once I've had my dental appointment on the 13th. It's a pity really, as it's a lovely canal and very scenic, but I would strongly recommend to anyone wanting a peaceful and relaxing narrowboat holiday to avoid the Llangollen like the plague from about April to September. Not only are there far too many hire-boats, but the behaviour and attitude of a lot of people on them is quite awful. I was just dropping off to sleep the other day at about five to midnight when there was suddenly a great revving of engines and then 'wham' - I had been rammed in the stern by a bunch of idiots in a 70 foot hire boat trying to navigate up the rather narrow bit near Llangollen in the middle of the night! It was really unpleasant, and also a bloody nuisance as I was planning to get up rather early to go to the seaside the next morning. I still did, but only got about 6 hours sleep in the end. Drink is partly the reason for this sort of behaviour, but I'm afraid it's also just part of the general mindless and yobby attitude which has now become the norm in this benighted country - - people bring it from whatever urban hell-holes they inhabit onto the waterways - and that doesn't only apply to hire boats, either - there's a proportion of the 'marina boaters' as I call them who are just as bad.

I finally solved the oil-leak problem, anyway, and have been up for a last visit to Llangollen before fleeing to quieter places; the weather has turned pretty warm, though with frequent heavy showers, and the countryside around Llangollen is looking delightful. It really is amazing how you only have to go along one of the lanes a little way out of the town and it's like another world - completely rural and quiet, with little cottages and farms and hardly a sound apart from the sheep and the birds. I went for a lovely if intermittently damp walk round to the north of the canal and finally made it to Eliseg's Pillar and Valle Crucis Abbey. There's a place a little further on from where I got to called World's End, which is about right I think - if only I was in a position to own a cottage somewhere like that! Still - you can't have everything, and the boat can get me to some pretty quiet places, though the Llangollen Canal at this time of year is not one of them! Eliseg's Pillar is unfortunatley right next to the very busy A592, but it has a certain forlorn grandeur about it, standing there above the valley as it has for about 1200 years; the Abbey, though ruined, still gives quite a good impression of what a beautiful and peaceful place it must have been - not altogether enhanced by the campsite next door, though. A couple of days before on a specially fine day I went to Barmouth again for the day; the bus ride was a bit tedious, specially as on the way there the bus was full of pensioners and I had to stand most of the way. But it was worth it to be on that very magnificent bit of coast, which seemed almost tropical in that weather. My vegetable patch has been enjoying the weather, anyway - I had my first broad beans at the weekend.

< Eliseg's Pillar   Valle Crucis Abbey>

< An unmodernised Welsh cottage; just right for me, really.

< Tropical Wales again   Vegetables - yum! >

I had a fit of intense rage over the whole ghastly Michael Jackson hysteria. I've recovered somewhat now, but it really depressed me and made me wonder why anyone should bother to try to do anything worthwhile at all, creatively, in a world where an appalling, sad, sick monstrosity like him should merit worship accorded formerly to emperors or gods, and occasionally, geniuses. The ocean of nauseating drivel that issued from the BBC etc, seemingly for hours on end non-stop, was unbelievable. And apparently quite sensible people got swept up in the wave of bogus emotion. It was even worse than with Princess Diana. At least her death was genuinely shocking - in the case of Jackson, given the grotesque life he has led for decades, it was surprising he lasted so long - the drugs he took to make himself white, alone, must have had all sorts of side effects; frankly it seems to me to have been a merciful relief - for him, and for us. People tell me I should think about other things and not allow myself to be upset - but I just hate the feeling of living in a society where idiotic, empty 'celebrity' is the measure of everything, and where the very institutions of supposed culture seem to have succumbed to the disease themselves.

I recently came across some more unmissable quotes from Peter Hitchens during the brief flurry of excitement over MP's expenses and the near-destruction of Gordon Brown. He really does put how I feel about things in Britain today, and the unspeakable arseholes that run everything now, so well:

'The arrogant parasites of New Labour and Blue Labour, who run this country by turns, decided it without asking you, as they decide everything else. '

'....they filched your money so that they can live, among hedges and twittering birds, at a safe distance from the results of their views. For money is about the only way to escape the insecurity, the disorder, the squalor, the jammed roads and rattling trains, the useless police, the comical courts, the pathetic schools, the pinched, frightened old age, the filth-encrusted hospitals and the last miserable days in the dying-rooms of the NHS that the rest of us now have to dread'

And the mindlessness of modern popular 'culture':

Not merely does TV suck the individuality and imagination out of those who watch it, it is in love with the fake and deeply cruel to the wholly innocent'

Sunday 14th June 2009

Having a quiet time back on the main Ellesmere Canal after all the distraction and irritation of engine and computer problems. I'm not even completely convinced that, after hours of work, and £200 spent, the problems are entirely solved, as I still seem to losing a bit of oil somewhere; and the starter battery has been playing up in a way that is very annoying, as it's supposed to be guaranteed for 5 years and I've only had it for two. These things are sent to try us!

After some days of absolutely ghastly heavy cloud and downpours, things seem to have gone back to proper summer weather for the time being. I am still debating whether to go up north soon or head towards London and the South, with the idea of going to some Proms this year - I really missed them last year. Also there is the perennial problem of earning some money some time. I can't leave the area until mid-July now, anyway, as having finally found a dentist, in Shrewsbury, and had a check-up, they couldn't give me an appointment to have a filling fixed for a month! Such is the state of NHS provision these days - but I was lucky to find an NHS dentist at all, I suppose.

I must say, apart from the engine work and problems, visiting the Montgomery was delightful, and such a blessed contrast to the mayhem on the main Ellesmere/Llangollen, which is now getting quite ridiculous - non-stop boats grinding past from dawn to dusk; it's the ones who go past at dawn that really annoy me - I thought the idea of boating and holidays was to relax? Sadly I discovered that you are not allowed to go back on the Monty for six weeks after a visit, otherwise I would have been straight back down there as soon as possible! On one of the very hot days, I cycled down the unrestored part of the canal, to a place with the unlikely name of Pant; it's remarkable that there are only about three miles now left to link up the restored bits, which will then mean about 20 miles of canal to explore 0 I can't wait! It will make a delightful cruise down to Welshpool and beyond. Quite a bit of the the tree miles was being worked on, then there was a longish section which was still derelict, but with a bit of water in it in places.

< Typical scene on the Montgomery The 'Navigation' Inn at Maesbury Marsh>

< Partly restored Still to be dug out >

< Another unknown wild flower on the canal bank My favourite upside-down medieval(?) carved dragon, in Shrewsbury >

With all the distractions I've hardly done any work on music in the last week or so, which I find distressing; I've finally managed to get sibelius working OK on the new computer, and I have promised myself I will really concentrate on composition this coming week. I need to get the proofs done of the Housman settings, and also to do a vocal score of An Oxford Cantata, which is due to be issued this year. Also I started on a little anthem which I hope might be suitable for young Mr. O'Donovan and his lower chapel choir, and I still want to keep doing a bit of the monumental Milton setting.

I'm still reading the Edward Carpenter biography, by one Sheila Rowbotham; at the same time as usual I have been going off on bizarre tangents such as an oral history of the Royal Navy in the 20th century, and a strange little children's book called The Mouse and his Child, which I've seen around for years but never read before; rather bleak and disturbing for children, I would have thought, but not without a certain fascination. Carpenter and his ideas seem to chime in with my own preoccupations more and more. One of his concerns was the reconciliation of 'body and soul', or the material and spiritual aspects of existence - both in a personal sense and also a philosophical/religious sense; like myself and so many others, he was drawn both to non-Western traditions in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, shamanism, etc, but also to esoteric Western traditions such as the Gnostics, the mystics and romanticism. His romanticised vision of socialism is less appealing to me, but I can see where that comes in too, and of course he didn't live to see the worst excesses of Marxism and state socialism. One of the things he seems to talk about a lot is the difficulty of actually realising an amalgam of various spiritual and philosophical in one's every-day life - something I struggle with myself; it's all very well holding conceptually that this material world is mostly an illusion and that there is a 'spiritual reality which is veiled from us', but actually retaining any active sense of that on a daily basis, without retreating to a monastery or up a mountain, is another matter. As a character says in Eyeless in Gaza, which I am also still reading, it is the grossness of our senses that makes us perceive things round us as material at all - but still, those senses are on the whole what we have to make do with. And given the dementia of daily life and the general environment of somewhere like 21st century Britain, holding onto any sense of some higher reality is exceedingly difficult. I suppos my retreat onto a boat is very much like Carpenter's retreat into a rural 'simple life' - but late-19th and early 20th century rural Britain was certainly an awful lot quieter and less crowded! I still find spending a few hours even in a place like Shrewsbury quiet exhausting, and the people generally very unattractive.

Tuesday 9th June 2009

Been having a rather distracted time recently, which is why I haven't updated this journal. Mostly because my old laptop was getting seriously problematic and I decided it was best to get a new one before the old one gave up altogether - something I'd been hoping not to do for a while yet, from a financial point of view. Though to be fair the old laptop has had three years of heavy daily usage, so I can't really complain. I managed to get quite a decent bargain in Oswestry, but of course there is always the problem of transferring everything across to the new computer - there are always some things that won't work properly and much computer-induced frustration ensues. In this case I couldn't get sibelius to work for about four days, which was very annoying and disrupted my work; even now it's working but the sound is distorted for some unknown reason. In addition to the computer problems I also had the chap coming to do the safety work on the boat, which went off quite well in the end, though of course it meant even more expenditure; at least I am fairly confident everything is OK now, and he fixed a couple of little problems I hadn't noticed before they got more serious. Now all I need to to is to get the inspector to come back again (for another fee!) and give me my certificate, and that will be over for another four years. Then once I have got my appointments at the dentist over in the next week or two (yet more expense!), I will be free to go off on my planned summer trip - probably to Yorkshire, though I am wondering whether to head somewhere near London so I can go to some Proms again.

Between all the irritations and distraction I have continued to enjoy being on the Montgomery Canal, which I must say is quite delightful; the weekend before last it was roasting hot, but this last weekend was absolutely abysmal, with non-stop heavy cloud and rain - and it was so cold I had to light the stove on Sunday! In June. Now things have cheered up again, and I am enjoying a last couple of days here before returning to the mayhem of the Llangollen for a while. But I definitely intend to come back here again before I depart the area.

Sunday 31st May 2009

Today is my mother's birthday - she would have been 96 today if she had survived. Happy Birthday, mummy!

I have finally got round to visiting the Montgomery Canal - the one that branches off south from the Ellesmere/Llangollen, and which is currently under restoration. And I only wish I had sooner! Only seven miles of the original 33 are navigable directly at the moment, but the contrast is amazing; very quiet, rural and serene, it makes the overcrowded Llangollen seem like the M1! They really should do something to limit the number of hire boats on the main canal - the last week or so has been absolute mayhem, and it's still not the summer season yet! They only let up to 12 boats on or off the Montgomery per day (and I would have thought even that's quite enough!), so it's pretty quiet. My trip down yesterday coincided with the beginning of some very hot weather, and after some messing about yesterday I found a delightful mooring place on the 'wrong' side of the canal, where there seems to have been some sort of quay or loading place, with room for one boat, so I've got the place to myself; it's also for once not within sound of a road, either. The 'messing about' consisted of going down to the quay at a pub called the Queen's Head so that I could go on the bus and get some supplies in Oswestry; it all ended up being rather late in the day, but I was pleased I got the last convenient bus in, and planned to take the last bus back at 6.15. Sitting in the bus station with three other people, we got more and worried as the bus didn't turn up, then it appeared nearly 20 minutes late. To our horror, however, it stopped a little way off and dropped some passengers, and then instead of picking us up, the driver quite deliberately started up at full speed and drove right past us! We all yelled and gesticulated, but he igonored us. I was flabbergasted, specially as it was the last bus - I don't think that's ever happened to me before, even in London! Luckily a lady who uses the service regularly offered to share a taxi with me, which was not too outrageously expensive, and we both agreed to complain to the bus company and demand a refund. I must admit that I was really quite shocked - it's the sort of thing you might expect to happen in some anonymous urban grot-hole, but somewhere like Oswestry in Shropshire, never. It was such an intense relief to get back to the quiet of the boat and the canal after all that.

Before I came down on to the Montgomery, I finally got round to visiting a very attractive hill near Ellesmere I've had my eye on for a while - it looks as though it ought to have a tumulus or a hill-fort on it, but as far as I can see there are no signs of any such. But it's a beautiful, atmospheric place, with lovely views, and the sort of spot I like to sit and think in.

I've been quite enjoying the Edward Carpenter book. There is a certain charm about those Victorian and Edwardian radicals that seems singularly lacking in later examples, though at times I can't decide whether all that sandal-wearing vegetarian utopianism is more silly than noble - in some ways it's the ancestor of all that is most ridiculous and cranky in 'progressive' movements of our time, too, and yet in many ways it was addressing issues that are if anything even more problematic in our times. The problem is, I think, that many of the idealistic notions about 'equality', women's rights, 'social justice', acceptance of 'alternative' lifestyles, etc. though well-meant, have actually led to new difficulties in our 'egalitarian' society of today; those early radicals never imagined that by throwing out class distinction and 'civilised' notions they would in fact be throwing out the baby with the bath water. They envisaged a beautiful, spiritual, aesthetically pleasing future society where all would live in harmony with nature and each other; they would certainly have been horrified at the ugly, materialistic, morally and aesthetically bankrupt nightmare that so many seem to accept as the norm a 100 or so years later. This is why, although I sympathise with many of the ideals of the early socialists and radicals, I take a conservative position politically and socially. We need to put back some of what has been destroyed, before we can start trying to improve things; clearly some of the traditional ways of doing and looking at things were not so very bad after all. In fact I distrust all ideas of 'social engineering', and believe that if there is any kind of 'revolution' needed, it is the kind Gandhi talked of - the revolution in one's own self, first.

The last time I went up to Llangollen I managed to walk back to Pontcysyllte and take some pictures of and from the Aqueduct - I am usually too paralysed with fear to so when crossing with the boat! The Dee valley is such a lovely place. A few lucky people actually have houses down there overlooking the river.

Sunday 24th May 2009

The ghastly weather finally moderated by the end of the week, and today was an absolutely superb, sunny day - the first day this year I've actually felt hot to the verge of being uncomfortable. As it was another bank holiday weekend I was expecting mayhem, and retired once more to the Prees Branch, but in fact it doesn't seem to have been nearly as busy as the last time. I went for a walk round the Moss, and it was incredibly beautiful and quiet and I didn't meet a single other person in over an hour. I decided to listen to Choral Evensong on Radio 3, which was from Lincoln Cathedral, and was very good - I was delighted that the Magnificat setting was the glorious one by Finzi - they sang it very well, and I think the Nunc Dimittis was the one by Holst, if I remember rightly. It all reminded me of what a magnificent setting Lincoln is for worship, and how much I miss the music and atmosphere cathedrals. During the Finzi I was sitting on a clump looking out over the Moss towards the distant Welsh mountains, and that intense sense of timeless joy that I used to feel quite a lot at one time, specially through certain pieces of music, returned for a while. It's always when you're not expecting it that it comes back, I find. If you try to pursue it, it tends to elude you. I think I am rather lucky to be able to spend a lot of time in the sort of places and atmospheres where some contact with the world beyond this demented material one is possible. I've been thinking that the strange, rather hermit-like life I've been living on the boat recently is perhaps in some way 'meant' - so that I have the space to think properly about these things. You have to lose some things in life, I suppose, in order to gain others. Also, as I read the Edward Carpenter biography, it occurs to me that I am essentially doing much what he did - discovering a way of living 'the simple life' in the midst of turmoil. In this crowded, noisy country it is certainly more difficult than perhaps it was a hundred years or so ago, but hopefully it's still possible, with determination.

Yesterday I finally had the dreaded safety inspection done on the boat; although I was full of trepidation, as at a medical check-up, there turned out to be nothing seriously wrong, which was a relief, but I still have to get a number of things done which I had hoped I'd have had done already by now, so the process is not yet completely over. The engineer came after the inspector, and we went through what needed doing - God knows how much it will all come to, but at least it should be less than if I'd had it done at a marina, as he charges about half what they do. Even so, I wouldn't have passed yesterday even if I'd had all the work done by then, as there was a problem with a slightly leaky gas valve on a gas canister which couldn't be resolved immediately, anyway. I suppose one just has to be philosophical about these things, as they are just part of living on a boat, but I will be glad when it's all over, and then I can plan where I am going to go next to get away from the summer season on the overcrowded Llangollen.

Monday 18th May 2009

Somehow I've got rather behind with things on here. Mostly, I think, owing to my trip to London over the weekend of the 9th, which though enjoyable was also shattering, as usual. I have this curious dilemma these days - on the one hand I need to live on the boat and spend as much time as possible in quiet country places, for my sanity - but on the other hand I do greatly miss seeing people, good conversation and a sense of being part of some sort of social life. The only solution I suppose is to go to London and other places more regularly - only financially speaking I am not in the best position to do so just now - at least until I can start earning some money again. I met several people while I was there, and had a high old time; a perambulation between Highgate and Hampstead with Mr. Partridge and his friend Jonathan was very enjoyable; also a dinner with Mr. Dickon Edwards on Sunday evening was most pleasant - he was on good form having just returned from an adventure to the fabled island of Sark, and I visited the strange new King's Place concert venue with Mr. Lipnicki. I also had other meetings, more of a business nature, which were more or less fruitful. The weather was generally quite good, which is more than could be said for the weather since I got back! It seems to have gone back to that ghastly pattern we've had for the last three years or so - a fairly dry spring and then a constant series of massive deluges which will probably result in wretched floods and disruption again. After just a week of constant heavy rain storms I am already getting impatient!

I've slowly been transfering the wonderful cassette of brass band hymns into mp3 form. I think my absolute favourite has to be For All the Saints, to the glorious tune Sine Nomine, by Vaughan Williams. I think if I could write one tune as perfect as that in my whole life, I would feel it had not been wasted.

I made it to the library in Oswestry on Saturdy, and found a couple of quite interesting books - one is an ccount of contemporary Bombay called Maximum City, which is vivid and rather frightening but fascinating - I'm glad I avoided the place when I went to India; the other a biography of the extraordinary Edward Carpenter, Victorian/Edwardian apostle of socialism, 'homogenic' love, 'the simple life' and many other things, mostly a long time before anyone else, it seems; I've always been curious about him, and this biography seems extremely thorough and readable. I always find these late Victorian thinkers rather congenial - I think I would have fitted in well with their romanticism and wide-ranging speculation.

I watched a programme on BBC4 about this new theory a chap has devised around C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, published in a volume called Planet Narnia. It basically says that each book is based around one of the planets as conceived in medieval cosmology and symbolism; it does seem rather convincing, though I can't see that it is therefore so very important in itself; but what it does do, as this programme points out, is to help renew an older way of looking at the universe as 'drenched in meaning' that has been out of fashion for some time under the influence of the bleak, modernist 'materialist' view of things. They had some quite interesting people, including one or two respected scientists, pointing out just how very narrow and poverty-stricken the atheistical version of things actually is. I also liked the way the programme reminded us of what a tremendously intelligent and acute person Lewis was - not in any way the rather self-indulgent, woolly, sentimental Christian apologist some like to depict him as, nor the wicked theistical propagandist depicted by fanatics like the dreadful Mr. Pullman. What has always struck me about the Narnia books is their quality of sheer joy; I think I latched onto this even as a child - or perhaps particularly as a child - and it's that quality that has taken me back to them time and again; I don't know how anyone could feel that element in them and not sense something truly spiritual, 'children's literature' as they are. To my mind this connects up once more with the Gnostic idea that spiritual or religious knowledge can in the end never be truly derived from ratiocination and analysis, or even outwards proofs and arguments - it has to come from with, from an intuition 'which passeth all understanding'. It's a hopeful thought.

I've had this crazy idea recently that I ought to write my autobiography. It's not that I've had a very remarkable or particularly successful life, by worldly standards - in fact a lot of it has been a bit chaotic and wayward. And I hope it's not quite over yet. But I do think I've had quite an interesting life, and when you get to my age you find yourself thinking about things in the past and trying to link them up into some sort of meaning. Also I feel perhaps I ought to record things while I can still remember (some of) them - people I've been in touch with lately who remember me from days gone by keep mentioning things I've almost forgotten about already; perhaps they can help remind me of some of the details? In any case all autobiographies are inevitably selective, and vast amounts of 'stuff' disappears forever - perhaps rightly so; however, it's not easy to know what might actually be of interest to future generations, supposing they ever read it; quite trivial things can be very interesting in retrospect - not least social history. I've realised recently that the sort of world I grew up in in London in the 1950's and 60's would seem almost incredibly remote, exotic and unbelievable in some respects to many born only a decade or two later - such has been the rate of change. We shall see if I have the energy and application to carry it through. As I am not exactly overwhelmed with other creative work at the moment, I don't see why not!

Monday 4th May 2009

It's a bank holiday today, so of course it rained. I am feeling somewhat exhausted after a trip to the seaside over Saturday and Sunday - it was ages since I'd seen the sea, so I thought I'd take the bus to Barmouth from Llangollen, where I am again. The weather was fine and sunny, and the two hour trip through North Wales via Bala and Dolgellau was amazingly scenic, but I hadn't realised how cold the wind would be on the coast - by yesterday it had freshened and was absolutely freezing! Rather unusually I had to wear a sun hat and a woollen scarf at the same time. I was heading for the beautiful beach at Dyffryn Ardudwy, but annoyingly I missed the bus, and decided to walk, which was definitely a mistake - it took me over two hours and I was exhausted by the time I got there - also the sun decided to go in after about an hour and it got quite cold. I took my tent so stayed in the dunes over night, which was OK, if windy, and was treated to a magnificent sunset over the Irish Sea and a superb sunny morning with miles of beach to myself, though it was so cold I mostly had to shelter behind the tent most of the time! Luckily I could get some breakfast at the holiday camp nearby and some much-needed tea.

< Sunset at Dyffryn The path to breakfast >

< I do like empty places! Barmouth view >

Eventually I got bored and decided to go back to Barmouth and look around; to my disgust there was the grand total of one train and two buses a day back there, and I had to wait one and a half hours for the only train. It was bang on time, though. Barmouth is quite a likeable little place, in spectacular surroundings, with the remnants of a fishing port, and although a seaside resort not as awful as some, but I'd forgotten it was a bank holiday weekend, and though it was Sunday the place was full of drunken people mostly from Liverpool and Birmingham, from their accents; why is it so many men under about 40 have thuggish shaved heads and go around with terrifying shrieking hard-faced harridans - just the ugliness of contemporary 'working-class' fashions is so depressing - not to mention that awful 'chav' get up they all wear, with clothes that seem to be made entirely of nylon. I was also struck by the number of grossly overweight men and women, not old by any means, with walking sticks to help them lurch around on their over-burdened hips. Do they really think they can abuse their bodies mercilessly for years and then rely on the NHS to assist their crippledom? Apparently, yes. Popular 'culture' in Britain today is just so hideous - that's why I prefer empty beaches and windswept mountainsides, I think. The journey back to Llangollen wasn't too bad, but even then half the people who got on the bus on the way were drunk - including two separate groups of girls, heavily tarted up, who were clutching cans and bottles and falling about screeching, on their way into town; and this was at about 5pm - heaven knows what kind of state they were in by the end of the night! The fact that they were right next to me, and screeching partly in Welsh and partly in English made the whole thing even more bizarre - one of them fell on the floor right in front of me, and I had to help her get up again. And then three local men got on who could hardly stand up either, and engaged the entire (silent, and full) bus in loud and slightly aggressive conversation - the oldest one nearly fell down when he got off the bus again. This on a Sunday in Wales, where a few short years ago you couldn't even have got alcohol on the Sabbath; it's noticeable that nowadays people don't just get drunk on bank holidays themselves, but for the whole weekend before them, too. I'm no puritan, but it does seem almost tragic that people can't have a good time without almost destroying themselves physically and mentally in the process.

A few days ago I went on a little cycle ride from Chirk to investigate a place called Selattyn, whose name had intrigued me. It sounds Welsh but apparently it isn't. It was quite a strenous ride, uphill most of the way, but a most charming village, in beautiful surroundings in the Welsh foothills, and actually with that sort of rural peace which is so rare these days, with the incessant drone of traffic everywhere. There isn't very much there, except a nice little 17th century pub, and the church, but I liked it a lot. There was a delightful 19th century sundial in the churchyard, with a typical inscription on it, and the church, though completely Victorianised, had a nice atmosphere, and a rather Pre-Raphaelitish window of St. Hubert, whose story I can't remember, but I know it had something to do with a deer, as you can see in the photo. Behind the church there was a nice old house with the most amazing deep dell behind it, in which the householder had constructed elaborate terraces and created a magnificent allotment, complete with chickens in a coop. I never fail to be struck by the fantastic places some people contrive to live in.

< Selattyn church 'Let others tell of storm and showers - I'll only count your sunny hours' >

< Saint Hubert The magnificent allotments >

On the reading front, I finally managed to get hold of the 'County' series book on Shropshire, in Oswestry Library - they are always my favourite books of that type, and this one being the 1949 edition makes it even more appealing to me, as it celebrates the area when it was even more unspoilt than it is now, and before various road 'improvements', etc. The author, one Edmund Vale, takes the sort of romantic, 'landscape mysteries' sort of approach I like, and summons up some of the same magical quality of some parts of the Marches that Mary Webb evokes in her books, too. I've also been reading a social history of the Royal Navy in the 20th century, a subject that for some reason never fails to fascinate me. And I picked up a copy of the children's classic, Tom's Midnight Garden, which I know I shall enjoy reading again.

I've also been reading Peter Hitchens' 'blog' again. http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/ People are rude and dismissive about Mr. Hitchens - mainly people who don't actually read what he has to say, of course, but categorise him as 'right-wing' and thus to be ignored. I have a lot of respect for him, and think he is one of the few people who really tell the truth and express the depth of the disaster that has overtaken this country and its culture in recent years. I don't agree with absolutely everything he says, but an awful lot of it strikes a very deep chord. For example:

'My suspicion is that the guts were knocked out of us British by the First World War, in which the best people of all classes died by their thousands in the great volunteer armies which marched off to Loos, Passchendaele and the Somme. Those who survived lacked something of the spirit that a free country needs, and we never fully recovered'

This is something I too have thought for years - we lost something at some point in the 20th century that was essential to our character as a nation; I would add that those of the best type of us who weren't wiped out in the 1st World War were probably finished off in the 2nd, probably our 'finest hour', but also our last great effort to stand up for something important.

Or this:

'One contributor asks why I don't go to live in the USA, since I like it so much. Why should I? This is my country, where my ancestors are buried and where I hope and intend to be buried myself, where I grew up, whose landscape, climate, music, poetry and architecture are in my bones, whose battle-honours are my battle-honours and whose history is my history. Nowhere else is like it. It is precisely because I know and like so many other countries that I know and love my own best of all. Given the way things are going, I don't completely rule out the possibility of becoming an exile, but that will not be because I want to be. It never is.'

This is exactly how I feel on this subject. I too was rudely asked recently why I didn't emigrate if I thought things were 'so terrible' here. My answer is the same as Peter Hitchens'. And anyway, in a sense I feel it's my duty to stay and do what little I can to counteract the evil influences which are destroying us - if everyone who cares about Britain and its history, culture and identity leaves, then we will have betrayed generations who have resisted tyranny and invasion. I do feel it's sad to live in a period of apparently terminal decline, but there are certain civilised values that remain true and worthwhile, despite their apparent abandonment by our rulers and the majority of the population at large.

Sunday 26th April 2009

I've been moving very slowly along the canal, with the idea that I might need to be at Chirk in order to go to London next weekend, but now that's postponed slightly, so I might as well go up to Llangollen again. In the meantime, I've been moored at a spot just next to Wat's Dyke, an ancient earthwork similar to Offa's Dyke, but not so well known. In one direction it leads to a delightful country lane by a beautiful old park and house called Henlle Hall, while in the other it leads into a magical place called Glyn Morlas, with little glens and woods and streams, with small cottages dotted about and lots of horses. And yet this is all within shouting distance of the A5 and some rather grotty areas around old mining villages, with big council estates - two different worlds.

< Wat's Dyke The stream in Glyn Morlas >

< Colemere A sea of wild garlic, or ramson, in flower >

The amount of wild flowers around these parts is quite amazing - far more than I ever remember seeing in Oxfordshire; I suppose it shows how less intensive farming really does affect the natural landscape. As well as masses of primroses, still, there are wood anemones, campion, aconite, wild garlic, bluebells, as well as a number of small, violet-type and other flowers I can't identify. Having grown up in London, I never have been very good on wild flowers, or even trees, for that matter - but I am trying to learn. I have a book about it all, but I find that there are so many similar-looking varieties it's still quite confusing.

On the music front, I found this delightful cassette in a charity shop of hymns, played by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. It has many of my favourites, and I have always loved hymns played by brass bands - it sort of evokes Sunday afternoons in the municipal park long years ago (I remember bands in York in the 70's always used to finish their Sunday programme with a hymn). Many of these tunes have been favourites of mine since I was at school, when I was one of those odd people who actually used to look forward to singing them in assembly. I wonder how many schools in the country - at least state schools - do that now? But how could you not enjoy singing such stirring tunes, and sometimes stirring words? For all the Saints, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, Praise my Soul the KIng of Heaven, The Day Thou gavest, Lord, is Ended, and so on and on. I believe there is some attempt to revive singing in state schools at the moment, but why did they let a great tradition die in the first place? And I shudder to think what they might be singing these days! I've been putting some finishing touches to the Welsh Melodies, and continuing to tinker a bit with the Paradise Lost idea - also I've been composing what might be the first of a series of 'gnostic anthems', based on words from the Gospel of Philip.

Hordes of hire boats are continuing to hurtle past at the moment - I would have the school Easter holidays must be over by now; there seems to be some sign of things quietening down, but it doesn't bode too well for the next couple of months. I was hoping to have a bit of a respite before the summer mayhem begins and I have to flee elsewhere - oh well. I was thinking of going up to Yorkshire, and hopefully York, and perhaps basing myself there for a while, but looking at the waterways guide I don't like the sound of the tidal Ouse from Selby up to Naburn, or the mention of flood defences! Perhaps if the weather conditions aren't too bad I will brave it - it would be lovely to go back to York, scene of my wild student days, again by water. And Ripon sounds nice too, and it's on a short canal, which presumably doesn't flood. We shall see. At the moment I am mainly just wondering how on earth I can get some money-earning work, as I certainly don't seem to have succeeded round here.

Tuesday 21st April 2009

I am at one my favourite spots, near Hindford, with the flocks of sheep and lambs for company. The lambs are getting quite big now, as I discovered when I rescued one this afternoon which had fallen into a small pool at the edge of the field; it was very waterlogged and had obviously been there for some hours, if not all night, and was just sitting up to its neck bleating very loudly and pathetically, being unable to haul itself out. It wasn't all that co-operative, but I managed after some effort to get hold of it under its front legs and get it out - at which it ran at high speed to its mother. Not that she seemed very sympathetic; so I watched it for a while, and it seemed a bit dazed - it shook itself a few times and eventually the ewe let it have a drink of milk, so I hope with that and the sun shining quite warmly (though with a cold wind) it will recover OK - you never know with young animals though - it must have lost a lot of body heat and exhausted itself struggling. It seems silly worrying about it when in a few weeks time it will probably end up on someone's dinner table, but you can't help it when they are so pathetic and woolly!

Sunday 19th April 2009

The weather has returned to sunny and warm, after some days of rainy and rather cold conditions; it's still a bit cold at night, but generally things are getting more and more summery, which is nice. Let's hope it continues that way! There are still a lot of hire boats charging around (one rammed me today), but I think the onslaught is diminishing as the Easter school holdays come to an end, and I am told it will 'quieten down' now until June or so. Thank goodness for that. I am now definitely planning to move off somewhere by then - hopefully up to Yorkshire, where I haven't been by boat yet - it would be lovely to re-visit York again, where I was a student - if only we don't have crazy summer floods again this summer! It would involve going up the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, which sounds quite picturesque, but features the longest tunnel on the system, which sounds rather fearsome (I don't really enjoy long tunnels much) - apparently there are 'special arrangements' with British Waterways to pass through, whatever they may be!

I've been re-reading the Gnosticism book immediately - a thing I almost never do, but it's so interesting. It's curious how it seems to touch on so many things I have done and thought over the years. For example, the fact I composed my magnum opus, the choral symphony Towards the Light in the early 90's virtually before I'd even heard of the Gnostics, but using texts from Hindu, Sufi, Christian and Buddhist traditions, as well as from Plato, all on the theme of the triumph of light over darkness. Or the influence of Michael Tippett, in my teens and twenties, on my whole conception of the role of a composer, and particularly his interest in Jung, who himself was a great researcher into and supporter of the Gnostics. For a long time now I've considered that music (classical, and some other traditions of it, at any rate) is essentially a form of spiritual contemplation, in the long run. Or in some cases the basis for ecstatic dance (I mean 'ecstatic' in a spiritual sense, not a drug-induced sense, of course). It is one of the primary ways in which we can experience, at last temporarily, a sense of beauty and wholeness, and a sort of suspension from the tyranny of the material world; of course some of the best music for this is religious music, such as that, pre-eminently, of Bach - but not only religious music; in a way, all good music is 'religious' music. This quality in music is what is so very obviously missing from most 'academic modernist' music, from Schoenberg's serialism onwards - it's all about 'mind', or intellect, and very little about 'spirit'. It's interesting in this connection that the Gnostics identify two modes of enslavement to this world - one is materialism, but the other is excessive 'intellectualism', or attachment to the structures of one's own mind. This sort of excessive intellectual abstraction and the construction of absurd ideological strait-jackets is to my mind one of the great failings of modernist thinking in all areas. Although we are now supposed to be in a 'post-modern' period, in fact the influence of modernism - specially in politics and sociology - is still all-pervasive, and I would suggest is responsible for many of our problems. Rather than going 'back' to more traditional ways, perhaps a Gnostic approach would be more to go for 'timeless' truths that have always been around but have become obscured by the insanity of our modern world?

Another, slightly different angle on all this was offered by an interesting piece on the BBC website recently, about some scientific views of 'ultimate reality'. I specially liked the phrase 'there is a spiritual reality which is veiled from us'. If even scientists are thinking like this, maybe there is some hope for us!

I am happy to report developments on a much more material front - gardening. My broad bean plants in tubs in the well at the front of the boat are doing well, and showing signs of their first flowers. I have also got three grow-bags that I will put on the roof and attempt to grow tomatoes, courgettes, dwarf beans, herbs, etc. I think it should work very well, as long as we don't have to many strong gales this summer! I've never done this before on the boat because I've been mostly based on the Thames, and you really don't want vegetables cluttering up the roof on a river, as you may need to get along it quickly in various situations. I used to love growing stuff in the garden in London and in an allotment in Oxford, so it will be nice to do it again.

Easter Day 2009

For once the weather has been appropriate to Easter. Good Friday was overcast and a bit rainy - today has been a most glorious sunny Spring day, full of the feeling of life renewed; out here in the middle of nowhere it's perhaps easier to feel the depth of it than in some grotty, manic urban setting. Though unfortunately both the hireboats and what I call the 'marina boaters' have come out in force for the Easter weekend and on the main line of the canal there is a considerable amount of mayhem - luckily I positioned myself just off it, on the Prees branch near Wem, so it's been a lot more peaceful here. This afternoon I went to the farm shop on the canal to get some more of their rather good home-baked bread, and then for what turned out to be a very long and rather tiring walk almost all round the perimeter of Whixall and Fenn's Moss - but it was wonderfully quiet and peaceful; I went to explore some sort of strange lake things I had seen on the map in the north-east corenr - I think they might be old quarries or something - very atmospheric and deserted, with an island in the middle inhabited by hundreds of seagulls, of all things. I only saw about four people in nearly three hours, and most of the time was completely out of sight of all signs of human habitation or 'civilisation'. Such a relief.

< The Moss in Spring A wild flower I don't recognise > (P.S. Mr. Lappin says it's a wood anemone, and he's probably right)

Of course it being Easter Day, I've been thinking more about the Gnosticism book, and the significance of the Crucifixion and Resurrection in that way of thinking. I didn't mention before that of course, the 'gnosis' that Gnosticism refers to is an inner knowledge, or intuition, or perhaps 'inner light, as the Quakers would put it, which in the end may be better than any amount of ratiocination, analysis and examination of evidence, and also than a faith demanded by dogma. In fact the Gnostics would say that this inner knowing is the only real way of knowing the divine that there is - a discovery of the pneuma, or spirit, or 'divine spark' within ourselves, which is our link to the ultimate Divine light. St. John's Gospel is the closest of the 'authorised' gospels to the Gnostic point of view, and you remember that in it Christ comes as 'the Word' (the Logos) from God, and also as 'the Light of the World' - and that 'the light shines in the darkness' (of this material world) 'and the darkness comprehends it not'. To my mind, Easter is indeed about 'resurrection', but not the literal resurrection of a dead man (even in the conventional gospels Jesus only appears in a rather insubstantial way to His disciples after Easter Day, disappears suddenly more than once, and then 'ascends into heaven'), Rather it is about a resurrection of the spirit which is possible in all of us, and which Christ acted out for us as part of his message of liberation; not 'liberation' in the socio-political sense of 'liberation theology', but a liberation - ultimately completely from this world - which is the same as the nirvana of the Hindus, or the samadhi of the Buddhists. Jesus's way of telling us about this, and the mythical way in which He enacted it is perhaps the most powerful in history - but it seems it has also been severely distorted by the accretions and dogma of two thousand years. Perhaps at last we are returning to a state of things where we can see that message in the way that many saw it in the time of Jesus himself, and soon after. And looking at the state of the world today, and particularly the state of western 'culture', particularly as evinced by the brutalisation of modern Britain, I would say that some sort of 'spiritual resurrection' is what we are in dire need of. The curious thing is that I think I knew instinctively of the existence of a reality beyond and behind 'every-day' reality even from my childhood, and later on, in my teens and twenties, in a muddled sort of way, from the speculations of particle physicists in books like The Tao of Physics, etc., not to mention my roamings around Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, the works of Plato, Jung, Thomas Traherne and other literature, and of course through the intensity of my experience of music, and even later I wrote music like my 'magnum opus' Towards the Light, and Three Mystical Songs which are full of the same idea of a sense of a lost heritage of light, and life's journey back towards it. But somehow I seemed to lose touch with this intuition over recent years, and was drawn into a confusion of distraction, disillusionment and depression. It seems to have taken me until now to start renewing my sense of 'inner light', so to speak - and that does not mean that I'm out of the woods yet, by a long chalk. I am still all too easily distracted by the insanity around me, and worried and disturbed by all manner of things. But the important thing is to have a sense of hope; my hope is that, though there is no true fulfilment in this transient life and the things of the moment, there is that within each of us that can lead to an inner peace, if we only know how to bring it to life. To quote two paragraphs from the Gospel of Thomas (one of the 'apocryphal' Gnostic gospels):

These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke. Whoever finds the interpretation of these words will not taste death. '...Let him who seeks keep seeking until he finds. And when he finds, he will be troubled; when he becomes troubled, he will marvel, and when he has marvelled he will rule over all.' (Prologue and Saying 1)

..'If you bring forth that which is within yourselves, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will kill you.' (Saying 70)

Good Friday, 2009

I've continued to read the book on Gnosticism, entitled Gnosticism - New light on the ancient tradition of inner knowing. Despite being by someone called Stephan A. Hoeller who lives in Los Angeles and has a goatee beard, I find it to be an unpretentious, lucid and clearly well-informed and erudite work which has been something of a revelation to me. Besides giving a very clear account of the origins of Gnosticism in early Christianity as well as to some extent in Greek pagan thought, and giving fascinating details of various Gnostic myths, texts and teachers - many of whom are hardly known generally today - it also makes very plain the parallels and probable connections to Hinduism and Buddhism. I find this very encouraging, as I have been interested in those cultures since my teens, but always found them rather difficult to reconcile with mainstream Christianity. In particular the figure of Jesus has bothered me - the idea of him as the incarnated Son of God who had to suffer and die horribly as a 'blood-sacrifice' for the sins of mankind has always seemed barbarous and nonsensical. Why would God create mankind capable of 'sin' and then punish them eternally for it? And how would the sacrifice of Christ be of use unless it was to placate a vengeful 'Old Testament - style' Creator; and how to reconcile such a cruel, wrathful and unjust figure (so familiar from the Old Testament stories) with the loving Father that Jesus talks of? And yet the figure of Jesus carries great charisma and authenticity, to my mind, even in the partial versions of the four gospels that were allowed into the church canon in a way that sticks in the mind, and convinces one that He truly was a hugely powerful and siginificant figure in human history. The Gnostic vision provides a beautiful answer to this, which in the early days of Christianity was as influential as, if not more so than, the 'orthodox' version later enforced by the Church. Essentially they argue that the Old Testament 'Jehovah' is not reconcilable with the New Testament 'Father of Light' - their explanation is that the true, ultimate Deity exists in a non-material sphere outside of the world as we understand it, and that the material world we live in was created by a lesser being, or 'Demiurge', and is ruled by him and lesser servants, known as 'archons'. This Demiurge could be identified with 'Jehovah', or possibly with Satan ('the Adversary', as his name signifies in Hebrew). Not surprisingly, this material world, which was created in pride and a sense of ownership, is deeply flawed. Human beings are seen as containing sparks of the true divine light , which have somehow been 'drawn down' into and trapped in, the material world and in material bodies, and who suffer as a result. Jesus, the Christ ('anointed one') is seen as one of a series of divine messengers - emanations, in some sense, of the ultimate Deity, who have been sent into the material world to liberate us. Other messengers may have been figures like Krishna, the Buddha, Socrates, Zarathustra, Mani (prophet of the Manichaeans) and others. Whether you understand this explanation as poetic, mythical, psychological or literal, it is one that makes a great deal of sense particularly if you look at the teachings all these figures have in common. Namely, that the material world we live in is illusory and innately unsatisfactory, that there is a greater, spritual reality beyond it, and that there is a way of liberating ourselves from our enslavement and achieving enlightenment (en-LIGHTen-ment).

Dr. Hoeller's book contains many quotations and vivid passages which illuminate these ideas very well. Of the 1st century pupil of St. Paul, Valentinus, he says:

' Valentinus's premise is that both the world and humanity are sick. The sickness of both has a common root: ignorance. That is, we ignore the authentic values of life and substitute inauthentic ones for them. We believe that we need physical things (such as monry, symbols of power and prestige, physical pleasures) in order to be happy or whole. Similarly, we fall in love with the ideas and abstractions of our minds. ..The sickness of materialism was called 'hyleticism' (worship of matter) by the Gnostics, while the sickness of abstract intellectualism and moralising was known as 'psychism' (worship of the mind and the emotional soul).

If this doesn't sound even more like a description of the 21st century world than of the 1st century, I don't know what does!

'At the time of the Gnostics it was the Olympian throng of the old classical gods that failed. In our own time we have seen the twilight of the modern gods - political ideology, science, sociology, medical-based psychology and most recently perhaps environmentalism. Our culture still functions as if founded on the rationalistic humanism of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, but it does so with less and less confidence in that philosophy. New doubts are eroding the secular faith of the last three hundred years.

This is the kind of thing I've been banging on about in this journal for years - the emptiness of the secular, liberal-left agenda that has reigned in the west for a century or so and the terrible results it has produced in our society and culture.

'Gnostic scriptures have identified the human predicament as one of ignorance, sleep, drunkenness or forgetfulness....We are like animals so habituated to their confinement that they refuse to leave their cages once the doors are opened.'

In other words, we have been offered a way out of the nightmare more than once by remarkable teachers, but we prefer to stay in our nice cosy, squalid little cage of materialism. Again, if 'ignorance, sleep, drunkenness or forgetfulness' isn't a perfect description of every-day life in modern Britain and much of the rest of the world I don't know what is!

I have been an agnostic for about the last 40 years - though always one in interested in religions and mysticism. During most of that time I've felt drawn to various mystical traditions, but have never been able to reconcile them with the Judeo-Christian tradition I come from. Under the influence of this book I think I might - just might - have become a 'gnostic agnostic', and be on the way to being a Gnostic. A lot of things in my life and thoughts sem to be linking up properly at last. Hopefully I shall have more to say about it, later.

For those who are interested and would like to find out more, there is a very useful website:

www.gnosis.org

Which has huge numbers of writings and Gnostic texts otherwise rather difficult to find.

Meanwhile, today is Good Friday. Easter has always seemed an important time to me. From a Gnostic point of view, it is the time when Jesus gave his final message to his disciples and the world and returned to His Father. The horror of the Crucifixion has always disturbed me, and I have never liked the huge agonised crucifixes you find in some churches - to my mind the depiction in the Orthodox church, of a Christ serene and indifferent to mortal pain is more fitting. Strangely enough, in one of the (suppressed) Gnostic gospels there is even an account of Jesus laughing joyful on the Cross - this seems like a strange and blasphemous idea to those brought up in the orthodox tradition, and I admit it takes a bit of getting used to. But after all, if He was in fact a spiritual being who only took on the appearance of a mortal form, and his 'death' was in fact his return to the world of Light after leaving his message to those in darkness, then would He not be joyful indeed?

Last night I listened to Holst's wonderful Hymn of Jesus again. I've always been fond of this piece, but I never fully realised until now that it is clearly of a Gnostic nature. The text itself is from a Gnostic scripture, and what it describes is a mystical ritual supposed to have been conducted by Christ with his disciples the night before Good Friday. Even some of the 'orthodox' gospels refer to the singing of 'a hymn'. But the unconventional thing about the Hymn of Jesus is that it in fact depicts an ecstatic dance, of mystical initiation. Jesus is said to have told the disciples to hold hands in a ring, with Him in the centre, and answer 'Amen' to the words he chanted. Holst's version of this is quite amazingly evocative, beautiful and powerful - and when you realise it was written in 1917, in the blackest part of the 1st World War, you realise that this was Holst's answer to the problem of human suffering in a dark world. Also the idea of an ecstatic dance and mystical vision evoked on the eve of the Crucifixion by Christ and His disciples somehow gives the best possible idea of what true Gnosticism is about:

'To you who gaze, a Lamp am I. Amen.

To you, that know, a Mirror. Amen.

To you who knock, a Door am I. Amen.

To you who fare, the Way.

Amen, Amen, Amen.'

Sunday 29th March 2009

After about five days of howling gales and intermittent downpours, the weather has returned to some semblance of sanity, and today it was delightfully sunny and pleasant. The clocks went forward, so now the evenings are staying light, though the nights are still pretty cold. I'm so glad I managed to get across the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct during a lull in the storm - it's quite terrifying enough as it is, without storm force winds!

I managed to make the Magnet 'Billy Bunter in the Land of the Pyramids' volume last quite a long time, but all good things come to an end eventually, and I finished it a few days ago. Of course the 'Eye of Osiris', the priceless gem that the villainous Kalizelos was after all that time turned out to be actually inside the golden scarab - something I guessed in about the second chapter, but there were lots of amusing and exciting adventures on the way to that denouement - things like the foolish Bunter being sold the same donkey three times over, being carried off on a runaway camel, etc; Lord Mauleverer gnerously donated the Eye of Osiris to the Egyptian people, and the Greyfriars chums all survived to return home looking forward to a new term and the next spiffing spread from the tuck shop, etc.- so that's all right! On a slightly more serious note, I finally got round to joining Shrewsbury Library, and found a most interesting book on Gnosticism, which finally seems to clarify this mysterious set of doctrines, and they make a lot of sense to me. Their alternative take on Christianity, and links with Buddhism and other eastern belief systems, seem to me to fit the world we live in and the tenor of our times far better than more conventional and dogmatic faiths. I shall say more, perhaps, when I've finished the book. Another very different but entertaining book I found was an account of naval warfare in World War I from eyewitness accounts; I was once told by someone I was 'obsessed with' war - I would say more that am fascinated by it - partly as I am fascinated by history in general, but in particular because war in its extremity seems to me to bring out both the best and the worst in human beings; certainly in some sense it raises them above the mundane level of everyday life - sleepwalking through existence as most people seem to do most of the time. I have also had a brief excursion into Thomas Peacock's Nightmare Abbey - an old favourite, and will no doubt follow it up with the other piece in the same volume, Headlong Hall. And so the time goes by. Also I am still finishing off the scoring of the Welsh Melodies, and have returned to work on the vast canvas of Scenes from Paradise Lost, which should keep me going for a while! Meanwhile I am still worrying about finding some sort of money-earning work soon - I can't go on spending money without earning any for too much longer.

Sunday 22nd March 2009

I've been back at Llangollen now for two or three days, which is nice. The town itself - at least the centre of it - I find a bit grotty, traffic and tourist - ridden, but if you just walk for a few minutes outwards it rapidly becomes very rural, and once you get up into the hills it's quite splendiferous. The views everywhere are fantastic, though sadly the whole area is blighted by the constant roar of traffic on the A5 and Wrexham road - it's difficult to conceive just how remote and peaceful it must have been before the advent of the internal combustion engine. On Friday I walked along part of the 'panoramic route', on the north side of the valley, which feels delightful and remote, with little cottages and hill farms, and today I walked over to Plas Newydd, the home of the Ladies of Llangollen, the celebrated Regency female companions, whom Walter Scott described as 'resembling a pair of hazy, crazy old sailors in their manner'. Actually I find the whole story rather touching, as is the atmosphere surrounding their house and garden, with a sort of mountain stream running through a vale, and little grottoes and rustic bowers dotted about, not to mention the old font from the ruined abbey of Valle Crucis, nearby. With the sound of the murmuring stream blocking out (most of) the traffic hum, specially as I was the only person there most of the time, I felt you really could catch something of the idyllic, retired atmosphere enjoyed together by the ladies for nearly fifty years. Apart from the odd visit by the Duke of Wellington, Wordsworth, et al., that is.

< Plas Newydd - the Ladies' house Lady Eleanor's bower >

< The font from Valle Crucis Abbey The view from the Ladies' rustic summer house into their magical garden >

I was thinking today, strolling across the hillside in the sunshine, how incredibly lucky I am to be able to lead this sort of life,though rather solitary, considering the awful lives so many people are obliged to lead in our demented society today. I am a bit worried at the moment about the need to earn some money, but I am only too happy to live at a materially frugal level in order to have all this freedom. I just wish I didn't feel so embattled so much of the time by the signs all around of a diseased society that you can't get away from completely, even on a narrowboat. I must just try to concentrate on the positive things.

< Up into the hills - quite wild A mountain stream >

< Spring flowers in the Vale of Llangollen At least the neighbours are well-behaved >

Wednesday 18th March 2009

I went to the NO2ID meeting on Monday in Shrewsbury, and it was quite enjoyable. It was a pleasure to meet some new people and be with people with interests beyond those of humdrum 21st century consumerism. Though it was also slightly alarming, as the more they told me about the national identity register and its ramifications, the worse it sounded. Although I knew the projected ID cards would be linked in electronically with a national (and international) database, I hadn't realised the legislation, which has already passed, effectively gives a free hand to any future government to amend and expand in any way the kind of information considered 'registrable' without even reference to Parliament, let alone its consent. Also that the government will have to right to remove anyone from the register at any time without having to give a reason, which will effectively render them a 'non-person', quite possibly unable to get employment, benefits or travel out of the country legally, amongst other things. Or that failure to comply with the scheme would at the least deprive one of a passport, and at worst lead to a fine of £1000 or up to 2 years imprisonment! I intend to keep in touch with these people, and try to go and help with street stalls, etc. Not only does it supply me with some social contacts in the area, but it may make some tiny contribution to resistance towards the most authoritarian government this country has had in living memory! There was another 'new boy' at the meeting, who was quite an interesting character - from his appearance and what he told us about ID cards in the War, he must be over 70, and is a typical 'Old Labour' member; brilliant that at his age he cares enough about liberty to take some action - a pity that so many of that generation are no longer with us - they had guts in the way I fear many modern, distracted, cowed Britons don't.

On a lighter note, I have been moored up here at Chirk for a couple of days, and today was most gloriously sunny and warm, and I went on an exploratory cycle ride along the Ceiriog Valley, which was delightful, if exhausting (very up-and-down). Once you get up over the ridge to the west of Chirk, all the noise and tumult of the A5 and industry drops completely away, and its like another world - archetypal Welsh hill country, with little farms and cottages, and no sounds but birds and the bleating of lambs. Quite magical. I made it to the small town of Glyn Ceiriog, which is in the middle of spectacular, almost alpine, scenery, and was the first place I actually heard people speaking Welsh, in the shop. I cycled back directly along the valley road, rather than long the hillsides, which was about 6 miles and not nearly as busy as I expected; a very pleasant trip and the sort of thing I've been looking forward to doing during the winter weather; though I must say I was pretty shattered by the time I got back, which shows how out of form I am! I need to do more. I intend to head up to Llangollen tomorrow, so hopefully I should be able to explore more there, if the weather holds.

< West of Chirk in the Ceiriog Valley Glyn Ceiriog >

< One of the classic but slightly tiresome lift bridges at Whixall

Sunday 15th March 2009

Nothing very exciting to report in the last week; the weather continues spring-like and pleasant, on the whole, though we've had a couple of nasty cloudy cold days and some very strong winds. Today I came up to Hindford, near Oswestry, and it was positively warm , with the sun shining and the lambs jumping about in the fields alongside the canal. Unfortunately the nice weather and the fact that the canal is now open again up to Llangollen has started bringing the boats out again, including the dreaded hireboats. It's reminded me of just how frantically busy this canal is in the season, which will start very soon full pelt at Easter, and that it would be a good idea to get away from the area for at least part of the time, though I do want to enjoy some months of good weather in this delightful part of the world. As I may have mentioned before, I am thinking in terms of spending part of the year elsewhere - possible Oxford or even near the northern outskirts of London, or both, and basing myself round here for perhaps six months of the year or so as it's a peaceful and as yet relatively unspoilt part of the country where I am not constantly affronted by the urban diseases of 21st century Britain. Of course it all depends on being able to earn some money at some point - other than that it doesn't really matter that much where I am physically, but I would like access to some culture and a degree of social life for at least part of the year. I'm going to a meeting of the NO2ID group in Shrewsbury tomorrow, so perhaps I might meet some interesting people there?

I'm trying not to read the 'Magnet' volume too quickly; it's quite entertaining - specially Hassan " I am Hassan, I am your dragoman!", though how poor old Lord Mauleverer can possible survive being knocked out, throttled, threatened with daggers, locked in sarcophagi, snatched off into the desert sands by Bedouin, etc, etc evry five minutes with such equanimity I don't know; "Oh Gad!" is about the only comment he ever emits throughout his adventures!

The Welsh Melodies are proceeding fairly well - I am rather pleased at having found a traditional tune that I can interweave with Men of Harlech very effectively, thus introducing a much-needed element of counterpoint to the piece. Otherwise on the musical front I've been mostly engaged rather distractedly with trying to co-ordinate performers and put together a budget for the projected CD of songs - the trouble is everyone I have to liaise with seems to be an awful lot busier and than me and very difficult to get hold of, and when you do get hold of the them they only have a moment because they have to rush off to do something else! I know I lead a remarkably un-busy life, but I wonder if it's absolutely necessary for people to be quite so overworked as they mostly seem to be? I suppose it's another symptom of the strange distraction of our times.

Sunday 8th March 2009

We had a sudden return of rather wintry weather for a couple of days this week, and then this weekend it suddenly turned very windy and rained buckets - still, not totally unexpected for March. I am proceeding with my Welsh Melodies, and quite enjoying it; I don't know that many, but have found two or three quite good less well-known ones, as well as the obvious The Ash Grove and Men of Harlech. The only difficulty is not relaxing totally into my 'light music' mode- I want the settings to be just slightly 'modern' to carry conviction while still being fun and enjoyable. I don't know if I will have succeeded, but it's interesting to try.

I've purchased a cheap portable cassette player, and have discovered a way of converting cassettes into computer files so that I can then transfer them to CD, as I've done with some of my old LP's. I've started with these marvellous brass band arrangements of Elgar pieces I acquired somewhere, played by the Desford Colliery and Foden bands; many people just don't realise what superb musicians the players in top brass bands are - hearing a solo euphonium playing a version of the 'Cello Concerto, or a solo cornet delicately playing Chanson de Matin is quite something! There is also an arrangement of the entire Enigma Variations. I remember years ago hearing, I think, the Black Dyke Band, at the RAM, playing an arrangement of parts of Elgar's 2nd Symphony, which was simply stunning.

My reading of the Decline and Fall is now intermingled with my latest acquisition, the collected volume of Harry Wharton and his pals from Greyfriars School 'In the Land of the Pyramids', from the famous Magnet magazine, which I acquired through eBay for a small sum. It's proving to be as entertaining as I expected - the usual idiocies of Billy Bunter interspersed with spiffing and exciting adventures. Will the suspiciously swarthy Greek antique dealer Kalizelos succeed in kidnapping Lord Mauleverer, earl and schoolboy millionaire, and forcing him to hand over the legendary Golden Scarabaeus? Will Wharton and his plucky British schoolmates succeed in fighting off those hordes of foreign 'johnnies' to save their chum? And will Bunter stop stuffing himself long enough to yell 'Yarooh' in time-honoured fashion? I expect so. The stereotypes come thick and fast - and I may say the British characters are just as much stereotypes as the rest. Something in me hugely enjoys reading these stories, and I have to ration myself so as not to finish the volume too quickly! Also the period ads for 'stamps on approval' and very dubious-sounding 'methods' for increasing ones height and banishing embarrassing blushing are rather entertaining too, not to mention the 1930's jokes and limericks for which boys will receive a valuable 'Magnet' wallet worth at least 2/6d!

Since the failure of my adult education course to get off the ground, I've been wondering what on earth I can do to earn some money - something I really do need to do soon. I did investigate seasonal work with British Waterways, but all their positions seem to involve working from March to October, which is much too long - I can stand doing a full-time job I'm not really interested in for a month or two, but that's about it; what I really want is just something over the summer holday season; I've looked around for other things, but without luck so far - specially in the current economic climate I think casual work may be rather hard to come by. If anybody has any idea, please let me know!

Sunday 1st March 2009 - St. David's Day

The weather is still mostly quite pleasant and springlike, though it's been a bit more cloudy of late - but the wind seems to be getting colder again and there is a threat of below-zero temperatures at night again by the end of the week. I've sown some broad beans in my tubs on the boat, and look forward to developments. Full of energy, I finally made it to the swimming pool at Oswestry last Monday to try to start swimming regularly again, and promptly picked up another 'flu bug and chest infection, which has meant I've spent the rest of the week up till now feeling very ill; two bouts of 'flu in one winter is really too much! I need to be doing lots of things and being positive, but it's difficult when you feel half-dead all the time.

I have begun reading the Decline and Fall again - what a marvellous author Gibbon is! It's one of those books that are so long and engrossing that you can never really exhaust them - and to my mind there is a sort of grandeur and ordered weight to the language that is a great antidote to the manic and trashy gobbledygook that passes for modern cultural expression. Also I suppose reading about the decline and fall of one civilisation puts in perspective that of our own. Also I am re-reading the excellent The Language of Music by Deryck Cooke - a book which influence me a lot many years ago and which I thought I had mislaid, but hadn't. Looking at it again I realise I'd forgotten just how much it did influence me; ideas I thought I'd originated myself turn out to come from this book. In any case, I simply can't understand how anybody reading it can fail to understand the fundamental status of tonality in music, derived from the harmonic series, and the consequent nonsensical nature of all so-called 'atonal' systems. And yet there certainly are such people. Perhaps they just haven't read the book? Or not read it properly! Gone to Earth is proving to be quite beguiling, though knowing how the book ends casts a bit of a pall over proceedings; Mary Webb's rather purple prose actually works very well for what she is trying to do - evoke a very intense vision of nature and man's perplexing place in it, and the book is certainly not without humour, either. On a lighter note, I have located another of the collected volumes of Billy Bunter's adventures from The Magnet on eBay and have purchased it for a very modest sum - it features the famous five's adventures in 'the land of the pyramids', which augurs well for non-'pc' hilarity!

Sunday 22nd February 2009

The Spring weather continues, and my thoughts have turned to growing things; I've gor a couple pf corner-shaped tubs to go in the front well of the boat, so I will be able to grow some broad beans, and later sweet peas, in them. I love eating broad beans, but also their flowers have one of the most delectable scents I know. Then later I will get a couple of growbags and grow courgettes, tomatoes, herbs etc. on the roof - I used to love growing vegetables and have rather missed it since I've been on the boat - as I'm not on rivers very much any more I no longer think it positively dangerous to have too much stuff on the roof, though I still don't want to let it get cluttered.

The other day I finally made it up onto Old Oswestry, the great hill fort situated just outside the town of Oswestry. It's an impressive place, with marvellous views towards Offa's Dyke on one side, and the South Shropshire Hills, on the other. I like places like that, that give you a sense of connection to the landscape and the past; though it was a pretty brutal past, in some respects - the name 'Oswestry' comes from 'Oswald's Tree', referring to the gallows or cross on which the butchered remains of Oswald, king of the Northumbrians, were placed after his defeat at the hands of Penda, king of Mercia!

< The brooding ramparts of Old Oswestry>

This week I finished re-reading Aldous Huxley's first novel, Crome Yellow. I used to be very fond of Huxley in my youth, and I feel the urge to read him again - specially Brave New World, which I must say I think a very accurate prediction of our present zombified society in all its mindless hedonism. However, the only Huxley I could find at the excellent secondhand bookstall in Oswestry Market was Eyeless in Gaza, so I'm going to read that instead. I also picked up a copy of Mary Webb's Gone to Earth - a book I've never read, though I know the wonderful Powell and Pressburger film - as I'm spending so much time in Shropshire and the Marches I feel I should get to know its most celebrated author.

Sunday 15th February 2009

At long last the very cold spell seems to have come to an end, after what seemed like weeks of ice and snow and temperatures around or below freezing. Of course one must expect such weather in February, but it does get rather wearing when it goes on too long; it's perfectly possible to live on a narrowboat quite comfortably in such conditions, but it does all become more of an effort - sawing up wood, etc. Suddenly this weekend it's felt quite like Spring, and I've seen a few flowers coming up, which is a relief. I'm looking forward to exploring this area, and specially further into Wales, in the warmer weather.

I dug up an old LP the other day with suites from Elgar's King Arthur and Starlight Express (not the piece of trash by Lloyd-Webber, who stole the title!). It has some lovely music - parts appear in the reconstruction of the Third Symphony - and both subjects are eminently suited to Elgar, specially in his late period. The King Arthur music is full of a moving sense of world-weariness and transience, shot through with nobility (what an opera he could have made of that subject!), and The Starlight Express, dealing with the world of children and magic, of course is full of that peculiarly Elgarian sense of nostalgia. The older I get, the more I can appreciate that particular quality in his work - for him, as a Victorian who lived on into the 1930's, the feeling of a whole world he had known having vanished, and the sense of the brashness and increasing insanity of the 20th century must have been almost unbearable at times; in my own small way I can relate to that feeling now, in my own life - it's a sad thing to feel that the world one grew up in and felt at home in has gone forever and been replaced by something ugly and brutalised. However, I have not forgotten my resolution about being positive, and I do continue to believe that in its way music can still help to redeem the hideousness around us, and that it's still worth trying. In fact if that is not the primary role of the composer, then I don't know what is.

I finally sat down and watched the whole of 49th Parallel - what a marvellous film it is, full of wonderful and evocative Canadian scenery and brilliant cameos by the likes of Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard and Anton Walbrook; though to my mind the two most outstanding things about it are Vaughan Williams' superb music and the mesmerising performance by Eric Portman as the Nazi leader - the coldness in his face is quite terrifying. After seeing the film I had a strong but mixed reaction: on the one hand, a feeling of pride that this country could have produced an effort like that, full of flair and humour and celebrating the timeless values of freddom and democracy, at a time when Britain had its back to the wall; on the other a feeling almost of physical pain that a country like that is reduced to the state we are in now. A nation of brutalised slobs and consumer zombies, watched over by more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world, subject to politicised policing and ideological censorship on all sides, intruded upon by official busybodies in every area of our lives; only today yet another totalitarian plan was anounced by this nightmare government, to keep a database of the travel of everyone in the country - almost unbelievable. And worst of all, the knowledge that our own leaders have handed us over into the power of the most sinister and corrupt bureaucratic dictatorship since the fall of the USSR. It's enough to make you sick - and what makes me even sicker is that so many people still can't see, or won't see, what is going on. Powell and Pressburger must be turning in their graves. I know I must seem to be getting back into my 'Oh my God, everything is awful and society is falling apart' mode again, but things are really getting very worrying in Britain at the moment, and I simply can't ignore it. This is not supposed to be a political blog, but I don't think it's always possible to divide art and politics, and looking at what was produced creatively in the past is a good way of perceiving the paucity of the present.

Anyone reading this who cares about liberty might like to visit this link: http://www.no2id.net/index.php

Thursday 5th February 2009

I have been somewhat remiss in keeping this journal up to date - at first it was because there didn't seem much to write about, and then suddenly everything seemed to become rather busy and I got distracted by other things I needed to do. However. We've been having another bout of winter weather, this time with considerable amounts of snow, which has been picturesque but a bit of a nuisance - as ever, half the country has ground to a halt with a few inches of snow as an excuse: as someone said in the Daily Express today, it make you feel ashamed - this is no longer the country that stuck it out through two world wars and soldiered on; it's something very different - a society addicted to laziness, excuses, sloppiness and self-indulgence. Sad, really. But I am told that making criticisms like this is 'moaning' which apparently you must never do and is terribly 'uncool'. Pah!

Anyway, I've been soldiering on, as I try always to do. And my policy of trying to stay positive and making a 'to-do' list seems to be paying off to some extent. My doubts about the publishing thing have been resolved by the glad news that they are intending to publish ten works of mine this year! - how much more can you ask than that? I am currently proof-reading the score of my A.E. Housman settings, The Wood of Dreams, which I must say looks very nice. Also I've managed to get back in touch with young Mr. Jackman about the Songs CD project, which I very much want to get done this year, and which is also to be put in the WWM schedule; it will take an awful lot of organising, and I am still worried about where all the funding will come from, but at least it's on the move again. And I finally received a reply from the Riverside opera festival thing, expressing potential interest in my idea for a section of the Doctor Dee music theatre piece, so I must get a good proposal together for that. On the negative side, I've had very little interest in my planned music appreciation course, and I've almost decided to cancel it for the time being; if only someone had told me earlier that the time I chose clashed with three of the main choirs in Shrewsbury I might have been able to alter things, but it's a bit late now. With a bit of luck I might be too busy with all this other stuff, anyway, and I can always have another go in the autumn, I suppose. It's ridiculous really - it's so obvious that teaching is what I should be doing!

< Siberia? The Yukon? - no, Whixall Moss in the snow I don't mind the snow if ths sun's shining >

< Cruising through the snow

< A nice walk around Ellesmere before the snow - first lambs of the season A distant view of Ellesmere College - what a lovely place to go to school >

I've still been reading the marvellous Michael Powell autobiography; of course it's made me want to watch all the films again - specially some of the early ones I haven't seen for years - I used to have lots of them on video, but I can only find A Canterbury Tale and I Know Where I'm Going. I'd like to watch Contraband again - I remember that was very striking, specially the sequence at the end with a shoot out in a work-room full of busts of Neville Chamberlain! You can get it on DVD but it's rather expensive. Through eBay I've managed to get 49th Parallel (a great favourite) and Ill Met By Moonlight, which is a very late one that I haven't seen for a long time, either, very cheaply. I just allowed myself a quick peek today at the opening titles, with the glorious music of Vaughan Williams - it's rather a pity he didn't work with Powell and Pressburger more, as he was the ideal composer for them, really. There are still several films of Powell's I still haven't seen - rather obscure ones, but I'd still be interested. I dug out a VHS tape of the Arena documentary, which is entertaining - there's a lovely scene at the end with Powell and Pressburger, both quite old, sitting together, and Powell says in answer to a question, "Well, when did the British ever appreciate their great men?" And Pressburger quickly says, " I hope that will be cut from the film!" But Powell was right - they were great film makers, and they were never fully appreciated until they were re-discovered in their old age - and Powell was treated disgracefully over his admittedly disturbing but brilliant Peeping Tom, which effectively finished his career in Britain. And now we no longer have great film makers, or anyone else of that sort of stature, as far as I can make out - it almost serves us right, but as the nation of Shakespearr and Milton, Purcell and Vaughan Williams, Dickens and E.M. Forster, it is rather sad. I've also found this odd book written in 1942 by a German on the struggles between continental powers - Napoleon, Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany, against British sea-power; the book is specially interesting as it was written while the last conflict was still going on; the author is clearly sympathetic towards Britain and America, which is probably why the book was published in Stockholm! Reading his account of the way Britain stood out for liberty over 200 years or so is rather ironic in the light of our present relationship with the 'continental powers'. By way of contrast, I've been re-visiting some E. Nesbit books of yesteryear - they are so amusingly and cleverly written; I love the way the magical creatures are always so grumpy and difficult! Like the Powell films, I used to have copies of nearly all of them, but seem to have mislaid several, so I will have to start collecting them again. My favourite is The Story of the Amulet.

Sunday 15th January 2009

There has been a bit of a gap in this journal - not for any dramatic reason, but because I've been going through one of those periods when there doesn't really seem to be that much to write about. The days zip by in that alarming way they do when you reach my age, not unpleasantly, but with that slightly worrying feeling of not having achieved much. Though I am still sticking to my new year's resolution of trying to be positive about things, and have revived my old system of a written list of 'to do' things I look at every morning and try to cross at least one off of every day. But that strange burst of energy one gets with a new year is gradually dissipating. I'm getting just a little worried, too, about the lack of activity on the publishing front - when I signed up I was expecting a certain amount to have happened by now - at the very least to have a few actual physical, published scores to bandy about; so far I have been a trifle disappointed, and my position doesn't seem to have altered at all. Oh well - perhaps I just don't understand how these things work, and it all takes much longer than I imagine.

However, on the whole the weather hasn't been too bad since the end of the last freeze, and I've been enjoying the first hints of a Shropshire spring in the air. And I've been attending to various details of the wind band scores a band in the Wirral have purchased (from my sibeliusmusic page), and slowly adding bars to my massive, and probably doomed, project of setting (part of) Paradise Lost - it certainly inspires musical ideas in me; also I've decided to start some Welsh Melodies to add to the Jewish and Hebridean ones I've done already; I could send them to the National Youth Orchesra of Wales or someone, as I'm in that sort of area now.

I've been transferring my Kenneth McKellar Burns songs LP to CDR, via the computer; no matter how many times I listen to it I love it - as I've said before, Burns's songs, specially the love songs, are superb, and this recording of them is one of the best and most tasteful I've heard.

Monday 5th January

2009 Hey - ho - another year down the drain, then. But my New Year resolution this year was to be more positive about things, so perhaps I should say. 'another new year, full of interesting possibilities'? Well, whatever it should be, it is undoubtedly 2009, and I managed to get here from last year without too much grief, whihc is good - just a very quiet New Year's Eve, with some food and drink at Mr. Brown's in Wem. I find I have totally lost interest in the idea of wild drunken celebrations, these days. I took down the Christmas decorations roday and girded my loins for another year.

One thing about 2009 is that it has started off with some of the lowest temperatures I can remember, since I've been on the boat, and perhaps before that - officially it was minus 5 C on Saturday night, but I suspect it may have been even colder; about 3 am I was woken by this curious scraping noise, and in the end I went outside to see what it was, and realised that the canal, even though it has quite a strong flow here, was starting to freeze and the noise was bits of ice scraping along the hull! Even by morning it wasn't actually frozen solid, but there was a very heavy frost and the engine was pretty hard to start; I also suapect that the water in the domestic water tank has frozen, as the pump is refusing to send water through the taps - I shall have to pour some boiling water in from my drinking supply to see if that will help. What a palaver! And this weather is forecast to go on for a few more days. At least the sun is shining, but of course that means it's clear, which makes it even colder at night. Still, this is just one more aspect of living on a narrowbot, and such conditions are (thankfully) pretty rare. I hope. Last night something really odd happened - in the early hours it rained - not snowed, but then it cleared again and the rain froze solid on everything, so that there were horrendous sheets of ice everywhere, much of which didn't melt all day, despite it being sunny. The result was that when I took the boat to the water-point I slipped on the ice and fell heavily right on my hip-joint, which was quite painful and means I will be hobbling now for a few days; then when I went round to the marina to try and get a pump-out I couldn't get in as it was iced over- also they said that the pump-out was frozen anyway! Anyway I got some smokeless fuel and some anti-freeze and was able to get drinking water there, so I am OK, but they say the freeze won't end until the weekend, which is a bloody nuisance. I must say I can't remember such drastic temperatures for so many days for a very long time. The worst thinbg is that as they have started work on the canal 'upstram' of here from today for a couple of months, it means the flow will almost disappear, so it will freeze over much more easily.

< Freezing in Ellesmere

While I was at Llangollen I cycled up to the top of the canal at Horseshoe Falls, where the water feeds in from the River Dee - and a wild and romantic spot it is, too!

< Horseshoe Falls Llantysillio >

I have finished reading Boswell's Life of Johnson and am now on the ever-enjoyable Tour of the Hebrides. One of my favourite passages in the Life is that descibing Dr. Johnson with his cat, Hodge - the cat climbing up Dr. Johnson's waistcoat while he stroked it and whistled to himself in the odd way he had! It shows charmingly the human side of a man who was many ways rather fearsome, amd feared. I've also finished Post Captain - another in the John Aubrey naval saga - one of those books you feel really sorry to finish; and I've been re-reading the remarkable autobiography by the great British film director, Michael Powell, A LIfe in Movies. It's such a fascinating work, and of course has inspired me to watch some of his films again, but I must admit that the bits I enjoy most are not about film, but about his growing up in England and the South of France in pre- and post-Great War days, and the lost world he evokes. The depth of his attachment to this country, despite the shabby way it sometimes treated him, shines through, as in films like A Canterbury Tale, of course. He mentions hew would like to have made a movie of John Masefield's The Midnight Folk - the precursor of The Box of Delights, but sadly he never did - now that would have been a magical film! I've started re-reading that too, as a result, and it is delightful. It would be nice if the BBC would make a version, like they did of the other Masefield novel in 1984, but I fear that they would ruin it, as they don't seem to be able to adapt classics any more without totally re-writing and destroying them, as in the ghastly and ludicrous recent version of the lovely Lark Rise to Candleford.

Christmas Day 2008

Well, here I am in Llangollen again, having decided it would be a scenic and peaceful setting for the festival - and so it has. The weather has been a bit grey and disappointing (no snow), but today there were a number of sunny intervals, when everything was totally transformed. It seemed to take absolutely ages to get here, for some reason - I expected to make it one day from Hindford, which isn't really very far away, but what with helping some Italians on a hire boat through New Marton locks and so on, it ended up taking two days; even then the last bit seemed an awful grind, but then that is partly because it's so narrow and you are fighting against the quite strong current coming down from the River Dee at Horseshoe Falls which feeds the whole canal. I had intended to go to Wrexham on the bus to get shopping but in the end I couldn't be bothered and found everything I needed in Llangollen anyway. Having stocked up with the usual important supplies (this year I got a bottle of economy gin from Sainsbury's - I loved the label on the bottle: it said 'no fancy packaging - just Gin'! ) I launched into the usual Christmas rituals yesterday evening, starting with the first gin and tonic and Carols from King's College, (there was a lovely thing called Wither's Rocking Hymn set by Vaughan Williams this year, which I'd never heard of, yet alone heard, before - and the new carols were quite inoffensive, too - one by Eric Whitacre, an American composer, was rather good, I thought, though not without evidence of certain contemporary cliches; but at the least they're nice cliches nowadays, unlike the dodecaphonic cacophonies of yesteryear!) then the first half of The Box of Delights - the 24th or 25th seasonal viewing, I estimate, and ending with listening to Vaughan Williams' wonderful and so utterly appropriate Fantasia on Christmas Carols. Today I walked along to the nearby bridge and then up into the hills, to an amazing ruin called Castell Dinas Bran - up on a crag with the most spectacular views in all directions; I hadn't realised quite how wild the countryside is round here, once you get away from the main road - it's a different world up on the hills, and so close to the canal. Glorious walking country, specially in the spring and summer, though pretty damn cold and breezy at this time of year! I only had a banana for lunch, so I've built up quite an appetite for my Christmas dinner - venison is on the menu.

One of the highlights of the season this year, as far as I'm concerned, has been a complete reading of Paradise Lost on Radio 3 in daily instalments; it's always been one of my favourites, but hearing it read out like this is a reminder of the utter sublimity of the conception and language of the piece. Actually I seem to remember organising a live reading with some friends in York in the 70's, when I was a student. Once again the crazy idea has presented itself to me of setting the work to music - or at least parts of it. I don't know if anyone has attempted it; I expect they have at some point or other.

< The ascent of the hillside Castell Dinas Bran >

< A Christmas mooring Me up a Welsh hill in my amusing Christmas hat >

14th December 2008

The year is hurtling now towards Christmas - I don't mind, as I am quite fond of Christmas, but I am really looking forward to its starting to get lighter again after the solstice; I detest it getting dark by 4 pm or even earlier as it does at this time of year; not being an early riser it makes the days so terribly short and is so inconvenient. If it hadn't been for arriving at Chirk last week in the dark I wouldn't have dropped my phone in the canal! (Could anyone I know who reads this please kindly forward their contact details, as I may well have lost them). Chrisk is a funny old place - quite schizophremic in a way; on one hand there's the amazing aqueduct and viaduct and the glrious Welsh hills and Offa's Dyke, while on the other there are grim housing estates and the most hideous and massive factory where I am told chocoltae os manufactured, though it might as well be nuclear bombs or chemicals from the look of it! Also I noticed a very strange and haunting juxtaposition of Eric Gill's war memorial, with its brooding soldier and the Chirk Christmas lights, which was rather strange; I managed to get a reasonable picture with my new phone. Since then I've been back down in Ellesmere to pick up some coal and a new fan belt, and am now on the way to Whixall again, and perhaps Whitchurch, before turning back and heading for Llangollen, where I hope to be for Christmas itself - I think it should be rather atmospheric, specially if it snows.

< A wintry scene at Whixall Moss

I am still diverting myself with the Life of Johnson, and have also made the thrilling discovery that Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels are to be found in charity shops. so I've been wallowing in early 19th century nautical exploits of an evening. Also in a charity shop in Ellesmere I discovered a double VHS box of All Gas and Gaiters - a TV comedy I used to find hilarious in some unimgainably remote era in the late 60's but which I'd almost forgotten about, and I've been hugely enjoying seeing it again; very innocent and silly humour about Anglican clergymen, but I confess I finhd it delightful; clearly I am sinking into a lovely relaxing hot bath of nostalgia in my old age. And I don't care! And I have just this moment found that there is quite a collection of old music-hall artistes in YouTube, of all places, so now the BBC just ignores all that sort of thing in favour of lowest-common-denominator cntemporary trash, I know where to find what I really enjoy - the great Lily Morris singing My Old Man said Follow the Van, for example!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GG-wjkB7gXM

< One side of Chirk - Eric Gill's eerie war memorial, with Christmas lights another side of Chirk - the Cadbury-Schweppes factory! >

Sunday 7th December 2008

We have had some very cold nights recently - last night it went well below zero and when I got up this morning not only was everything outside covered in a very thick frost, but there was actually ice on the inside of the metal shutters of the side window - always a sign that is really very cold! I was, however, perfectly warm and comfortable inside the boat and once I'd got the stove and the engine going it was all rather fun. So far we haven't had much snow, but that could change very easily, and evidently in this area weather conditions can be pretty severe. It's all rather interesting as a test of what it's possible to put up with living on a narrowboat, but I hardly think it's likely to get much colder than it did last night for the rest of the winter - at least, I hope not! As long as I have fuel for the stove and the engine keeps running OK, I am fine.

I'm still having trouble getting my plans going for a music appreciation course in Shrewsbury - every time I put forward a date and time to hire a room something seems to go wrong - they didn't tell me at the centre that charges are double on Saturdays, for example. I'm worried I am not going to be able to get publicity out in time at this rate to have a chance of getting enough people. It;s very frustrating. I am still experiencing this difficulty getting things going that I didn;t seem to have years ago - there are loads of musical things going on in Shrewsbury and Shropshire which I should be getting involved with, but somehow I haven't managed to - for example, today I went all the way in to Shrewsbury to hear the Shrewsbury Light Orchestra, who sound a rather interesitng ensemble, but somehow I misunderstood where they were playing, and in the end it didn't seem worth going by the time I might have found my way to the venue somewhere out on the ring-road. I really can't go on like this - I must get something concrete going - apart from anything else I can't live on nothing at all. I did speak to a very nice lady from the Shrewsbury Arts Association who was very encouraging, and I hope to meet her at some point.

GUEST BOOK

Musings 2008

Musings 2007

Musings 2006

Musings 2005

Musings 2004

free hit counters