MUSINGS
2007
Or, the reflections of just one more EU serf
An occasional online journal, partly concerning music, plus the voyages of Narrowboat Salaga. All sentiments expressed are completely off-the-cuff and spur-of-the-moment; I rarely revise or rewrite anything, and it all represents my state of mind as it changes from day to day, expressed with appalling honesty and tactlessness. All of which will do me no good whatsoever, I'm sure. Oh - and I usually write it up on Sunday evenings, after having my regulation half-bottle of wine, which might account for any slight fuzziness of expression.
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Boxing Day, 2007
It's been a bit of a funny old Christmas, though not unpleasant - just rather uneventful. The weather was absolutely freezing until Christmas Eve, and I made two attempts to break through the ice down to the end of the canal, where I like to moor for the festive season; I actually broke my barge pole in half trying to smash the ice! Finally it thawed and I got through, in time for the traditional heavy rain and gloom which so often prevails for the day itself. I went and put my bowler hat on to 'supervise' the queue for the carol service at Christ Church, then went in myself at the end - it was nice as always, and they did some favourites and one or two novelties. Then I went back to the boat and watched the first half of The Box of Delights - my perennial Christmas favourite. Since it came out in 1984 and I've watched the video, and now the DVD, every Christmas since, that means I must have watched it some 22 times! Yet it never fails - it really does have the most wonderfully magical quality, and has to be the best children's series the BBC has ever done. Sadly I can't imagine them making anything like that again - there's a kind of innocence about it all, and about the frankly upper middle class accents and behaviour of the children which simply wouldn't be deemed 'acceptable' or 'relevant' to the half-educated fools that seem to dominate the BBC these days. Anyway, having broached my Christmas bottle of gin, I was well away in a happy 1930's English magical world of snow, talking animals, cathedral choirs, 'caroplane-aeroplanes' and hot buttered crumpets for tea, and temporarily oblivious to the horribleness outside. I got up a bit late on Christmas Day, feeling a bit ill (more a slight chest infection, I think, than the gin) and didn't make it to matins at the cathedral, which was a pity - it was pouring with rain, as well. I put the TV on to watch the service from Worcester Cathedral, but it appeared to be run almost entirely by women, and what with the choir consisting largely of precociously-developed young females plastered in makeup, I had to turn it off again and put on a trusty CD of Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Christmas Carols. As I had no guests this year it was quite a simple day, and apart from a walk along the river and around a half-flooded Port Meadow, I spent most of the time stuffing myself and pouring alcohol down my throat in the time-honoured manner, and watched the other half of The Box of Delights. Later on there was a very interesting programme on Channel 4 about the different traditions of Jesus in different world religions and cultures. It does make you realise how very much Jesus was part of the tradition of 'world teachers', along with the Buddha, Krishna, Socrates and others - though I can't accept the suggestion of Mohammed as an authentic member of the that tradition suggested by the programme's presenter. Very thought-provoking, anyway. I find myself more and more drawn towards the gnostic tradition in these matters, and the idea that these teachers are 'sent' to us to try to remind us of our true nature as 'sons of light' rather than inhabitants of the darkness that so largely comprises the 'real world', as people like to call it.
My Christmas present this year (from myself, of course) was the CD of New College Choir's recording of Handel's Messiah. It is, simply, superb; the sort of performance that reminds one of the true greatness of the work. In particular, the counter-tenor version of He Was Despised is sublime, and the treble rendition of I Know that my Redeemer Liveth inevitably reminds me of my mother saying how when Tommy So-and-So used to sing it in the church choir when she was a girl it used to bring tears to people's eyes. When I was about 11 this seemed to me the apogee of all possible musical expression - and perhaps it still does.
Anyway - that's another Christmas more or less out of the way now, reasonably pleasantly - now for that rather odd time in between Christmas and New Year which doesn't seem to belong to any partiular year or time. I am going off to London and Shropshire for New Year, and I hope I shall receive that burst of energy and optimism that sometimes miraculously appears in the first days of the year to help me try and make something constructive of 2008!
Sunday 16th December 2007
Well, this has been a funny sort of week, but not too bad. At least the ghastly rain has ceased for the time being - in fact it's been cold, dry and frosty. So much so that one morning I couldn't actually start the engine - fortunately there happened to be another boat next to me with its engine running and I was able to jump-start with its help. Basically the batteries were a bit low as I'd been static for so long, and I didn't heat the engine up enough before turning the ignition key - it's frightening how quickly you can run down the starter battery in such circumstances, though. It had been several degrees below zero most of the night. I've now got some of the dreaded Easy Start spray for a similar emergency - it says on the can 'will start all engines even in arctic conditions', though as it is basically more or less rocket fuel I'm a little frightened of using it at all and will only do so as a last resort! I had been static all week waiting for the man to come and fit my new engine supports. Needless to say ' the end of the week' ended up meaning Saturday, and 'Saturday morning' ended up meaning 2.30 on Saturday afternoon. To make things worse I was sure I wasn't working that day, but just before the mechanic arrived I had a phone call informing me that actually I was working! So I had to leave him to do the work and cycle madly into college, then go back later to see about payment, etc., before returning once more for a very exhausting and cold evening on Tom Gate greeting endless dinner guests for a grand banquet in Hall that I as usual was not invited to. In fact he still hadn't finished when I went back, and I had to leave him to finish the job and lock the boat up, but he seemed a very reliable chap and was from Tooley's Boatyard, which has to be a highly reputable business, and everything was fine when I finally got back. I still don't know how much it's all going to be, but what can you do? At least the engine isn't vibrating anything like so much and I am no longer worrying about it flying off and going through the bottom of the boat, which has to be worth quite a bit! Also the gentleman who did the work on the engine which seems to have caused the oil leak finally returned, and seems to think that it's not too serious, and has promised to return with torque wrenches, etc. to sort it out. It's all been very tiresome, but I am beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel, at least as far as the engine goes.
Which is more than can be said for the state of this country, and this week's final betrayal to the EUSSR. In fact, I am so deeply upset and disturbed by it all, and I can see so little hope, that I've decided to stop thinking about it, if possible. There is nothing I can actually do about the nightmare which has overtaken us and our society, and feeling angry, bitter and frustrated is so inwardly corrosive and futile that it is best avoided. I suppose this is the way a lot of people felt under the Soviet or Nazi regimes - a feeling of helplessness and an inclination to try to distract oneself by thinking of other things. Funny, though, how the end of the United Kingdom and a thousand years of history can happen with so very little comment.
Talking of Tolkien, as I was last time, I've been reading some other stuff of his - specifically an unfinished novel called The Notion Club Papers, in which he uncannily explores the same idea I had a while ago and mentioned in these meanderings - the idea that the dream world could perhaps be as real in its way as the day-time world. Further, that one may be able in some way to travel in time and space in dreams in a way impossible in 'real' life. This is not so very far, in fact, from some of Jung's ideas about the collective unconscious, etc. He points out amongst other things what I have often noticed - that often one can find oneself in places and involved in events that have the distinct feeling that they have been going on independently of ones conscious presence while one has been involved in waking life. Obviously, some dreams are just confused garbled reworkings of things that have happened during the preceding day - but not perhaps all of them. In the Tolkien story the character who presumably represents him has trained himself to concentrate on the 'meaningful' dreams, and is able to voyage in time and space to other worlds using this facility. A fascinating idea. What a pity he didn't finish the story. Certainly, I have increasingly found in recent years that the more empty and futile my daily life seems to have become, the more vivid, busy and inhabited with friends and acquaintances my dreams. No doubt it is some kind of psychological compensatory process, but it is rather attractive to think that there could be something more to it. I am still pursuing my Trollope campaign, and have moved on to Framley Parsonage. Also another of those crazy speculative books, this time about the possible history of catastrophes on Mars and their implication for Earth, has taken my mind off things a bit. The idea that at any moment a comet could zoom in from outer space and destroy all life on earth does tend to put things somewhat into perspective!
On the musical front, I was alerted the other day to the fact that 2008 will see the 50th anniversary of Vaughan Williams' death. So I have started to write a musical tribute to my hero. In fact, I'm thinking of writing two - one orchestral piece which will naturally stand no chance of being performed, and perhaps a modest choral work which I can hawk around a bit and just possibly might get some interest. Perhaps it could constitute the one performance a year which seems nowadays to have become my average? The more I listen to RVW's music, and the more I think about him as a person and an artist, the more I realise the essential spiritual nobility - there is no other expression for it - of his work. How utterly impossible to imagine anyone producing music with the character of, say, the 5th Symphony, Flos Campi or the Tallis Fantasia, amongst many other great works, in this benighted day and age. It is simply inconceivable. The time of such giants is long past, and now we simply have to suffer the creative pygmies who pass as 'leading composers' of our day. Stockhausen died this week, of course - can you imagine anyone listening to or deriving spiritual solace from his creations 50 years from now? I think not! Unless hideous cacophonies and ludicrous electronic burblings and fartings constitute 'spiritual solace'? Perhaps they do for some people!
Monday 3rd December 2007
Here I am still stuck on the canal, and the river has once more risen to massive flood proportions, with more rain on the way. I couldn't really go anywhere at the moment even if I wanted to, as the oil leak problem has assumed epic proportions. After spending the whole of last week waiting for the mechanic who did all the work on the engine over a month ago, and who has almost certainly caused this oil problem, to get back to me, leaving messages and sending texts, I have now concluded that I have been completely let down by him and he has no intention of re-appearing as he knows he has botched the job. To say the least I am very annoyed about the way I've been treated. In the end today I rang RCR, as the oil leakage was so bad I was afraid to run the engine at all. When their mechanic arrived after looking at the engine and hearing about the problems I'd had since the head was put back on, he almost immediately suggested that the whole thing was caused by pressure from the combustion chamber forcing oil out through various apertures; he checked a few things and we filled up the oil again and started up the engine, and he was pretty certain this was what was happening, and that the problem was caused by something not being done correctly when the head was put back on. As RCR only deal with actual breakdowns, all he could do was arrange for them to find one of their contractors who can come to the boat, investigate, probably take the head off again and hopefully fix things - once again at considerable and as yet unpredictable expense. I just hope that by being very careful about topping up the oil I've managed to avoid doing really serious damage to the engine - fingers crossed. I've got to the stage where I hardly care how much it costs to get it all right - I'm so sick of this situation. But I am very disillusioned that any reputable mechanic could get me into this situation - but as he is freelance there's nothing I can really do to seek redress. For future problems I'm always going to go through RCR - they have a reputation to preserve!
At least I managed to finish all the work on the music for Mr. Hevey's film before reaching the stage of hardly daring to run the engine. In the end in order to get it onto a CDR I had to buy the update to sibelius 5 for the computer; although Mr. Hevey made a contribution, it still means that I haven't earned very much from it all - I have got the update which is all fine and dandy, but I'm still not sure it's really worth all the expense. Anyway now I hope to get back to some other music projects and try to galvanise myself into action on my Songs CD project - though at the rate I'm going with the boat I hardly think I'll have any spare money for that left!
I've been very much enjoying - if that's quite the right word - the book by John Garth on Tolkien and the Great War. Although of course I haven't been through anything remotely as shattering as the conflict he went through, I do feel a great empathy for what Tolkien was trying to do. At school and afterwards he was one of a group of four friends called the TCBS who decided very early on that their mission was to counteract the decadence of their age and create a sort of new romanticism and idealism. By the end of the war only Tolkien and one other were left, and for various reasons it was Tolkien who was left to carry on the mission. Essentially in creating his great mythological and cosmological edifice, beginning actually in the middle of the carnage in Flanders, he was re-asserting the importance of timeless themes and attitudes against the shallowness and ugliness of the modern - soon to be even shallower and uglier in the post-war world. And of course he was rebelling against the cult of 'modernism'; - what he called 'the extraordinary 20th century delusion that its usages per se and simply as "contemporary" have some peculiar validity, above those of other times...' How very much I agree with him - and it doesn't only apply to literature and art, but also to society, as the last ten years of cultural carnage in this country at the hands of the New Labour 'modernisers' has shown. I have come to the conclusion that the cult of 'the modern' is the curse of our times. As Garth puts it: 'Tolkien ...was acutely aware that in his lifetime realism had combined with modernism in an overbearing, intolerant and denunciatory orthodoxy, a monolith dominating the academic and cultural establishments'. This could stand as an epitaph for the alien Britain of 2007 in which I and other exiles are currently forced to live. I shudder to think what Tolkien would have made of it. It's intriguing to reflect how things Tolkien was involved in like the Battle of the Somme were translated in his imagination into the epic battles of Middle Earth, and the ambiguities of modernist 'relativism' - another curse of our time - were displaced by a moral vision in which a clear good was opposed to a distinct evil, and remote and unearthly beauties to an ugly and rapacious materialism. As far as I'm concerned, Tolkien was engaged in doing what all art should be engaged in doing - trying to redeem the ugliness and futility of mere contingency with visions of wholeness and meaning; unfortunately we now live in a culture where it is assumed that the role of art, apart from making a few artists 'celebrities' and very rich, is to 'reflect' the ugliness and meaninglessness of the contemporary world and make it even uglier and more meaningless. No wonder all 'modernist' persons such as Germaine Greer and her like hate Tolkien so much - he is opposed to everything they stand for, and he is enormously popular and influential. I can see that one of the reasons I haven't really got anywhere as a composer is that I never really was a committed modernist, even in my most deluded moments in the 70's and early 80's, and I most certainly am not now. In my music, like Tolkien in his writing though obviously on a less celebrated level, I ultimately seek beauty, harmony and serenity - the last thing on earth that 'sells' in the new music world (unless you're talking about Classic FM, and I am not quite able to sink to that level!)
I've now reached Barchester Towers in my Trollope outing - it really is delicious reading about the vicious internecine strife of Anglican clergymen, specially as I spend so much time at Christ Church surrounded by them! I've also found during my sojourns at Blackwells' a most fascinating survey of Christian Zionism, full of the most extraordinary and slightly mad characters who have spent their lives trying to hurry up the realisation of Biblical prophecies and hasten Christ's Second Coming. The alarming thing is that are even more of these characters around now, mostly in America, than ever before in history. Not that I don't have a certain poetic sympathy with their vision - but to take it all literally - that really is terrifying!
Sunday 25th November 2007
Here I am still stuck on the canal in Oxford, basically back where I was this time last year, and reflecting on what I have achieved in that time - basically, bugger all, to be blunt about it - but I am hoping that the river may go down over the next day or two and I can return to its broader reaches; although I'm glad to be able to retreat to the safety of the canal, I do find it rather dull and confined. Also I've been in a constant state of slight irritation and insecurity owing to the continuing problem of the oil-leak; it's funny how problems with the engine have a distinct psychological effect. I suppose it's because the engine is the heart of the boat, and the boat is basically my 'hearth and home', and so anything that affects the boat affects my sense of security. After struggling for weeks now messing about with the rocker box gasket etc. I have finally decided to give up trying to solve the problem myself and to call in the experts, no doubt at further massive expense - in the end it will be worth it just for some peace of mind.
Much of my time recently, apart from the struggles with the engine, has been occupied dreaming up little pieces of music for Mr. Hevey's latest film about Merrick, the celebrated 'Elephant Man'. It's been a bit strange, as I haven't actually seen any footage and only have the vaguest idea of what it will look like, and also I've been trying to write in a sort of Victorian pastiche style which is more difficult than I anticipated. But most of what I've produced seems to have gone down quite well. The embarrassing thing, though, is that owing to budgetary limitations I've been doing the music on the computer instead of relying on live musicians, which is fine in principle, as it's only for piano and the piano sound is quite good on sibelius, but when I came to transfer the files to mini-disk I found there was this irritating low-level buzzing in the background, caused by the limitations of my very limited equipment, so I'm having to find a way round this. I hate technology when it doesn't work properly! I must say I've found it quite difficult to concentrate on composing music at all with this ongoing engine irritation - it requires considerable self-discipline, a commodity which I find myself rather short of, these days.
Meanwhile, I have been diverting myself as ever from the irritations of earthly existence with a selection of more or less improving literature. I've very nearly reached the end of my magnificent Magnet volume, featuring the antics of the immortal Bunter and his pals at Greyfriars School, and very enjoyable it has been; it's amazing just the length of this one story, amongst the hundreds if not thousands Frank Richards, alias Charles Hamilton, wrote in his lifetime. I've found it very refreshing inhabiting the carefree and completely idealised universe of 1920's schoolboys, and I admit I actually got quite engrossed when Vernon-Smith, ' the bounder of the Remove', finally got to the point of solving the mystery of the temporary form-master, who of course turned out to be a Scotland Yard detective in disguise! Apart from such frivolities, I have been rediscovering the delights of Trollope, in The Warden, which has made me resolve to re-read the entire Barchester Chronicles - I have never forgotten how reading Trollope kept me more or less sane on a long night-time journey through the wilds of Finland to a town whose name I couldn't even pronounce properly! I've also just started reading a rather interesting book about Tolkien and the First World War; the relation of Tolkien's fantastically fertile imaginary secondary creation and his reaction to the horrendous events he was experiencing in the 'real' world is most suggestive; I can certainily empathise. As Tolkien himself said memorably in an interview when accused of 'escapism', "who is most praised and esteemed for trying to escape? A prisoner!" Or words to that effect. (It seems to me that basically people divide into two mutually incomprehensible types - those that understand and appreciate Tolkien, and those who don't.) And during my frequent sojourns at Blackwells' bookshop, pretending I have something useful to do with my time, I've been reading the very plausible but perhaps rather too well-meaning Karen Armstrong's The Bible - an Autobiography: quite interesting - for some reason I've always been fascinated by biblical history and exegesis.
On a musical note, I went to what might be my last evensong of the term, at Magdalen, on Thursday - it was men's voices only, and all 16th century and mostly Byrd, and very soothing it was too. Today I wanted to go to an evensong, but everyone was busy with Advent carol services, despite it being a week before Advent - they do this because of the students, even though not very many of them seem to be that interested. I decided I didn't want to start the Xmas season a week early, so after some jocular banter and tea-drinking in the custodians' mess room at Christ Church I returned to the boat and my excellent home-made risotto.
Sunday 18th November 2007
After a week of clear, cold, mostly sunny days and delightful frosts, during which I had a nice trip down to Abingdon, sadly the weather has broken and returned to hours and hours of horrible rain and everything being damp and soggy, but at the same time it's still very cold. After having seen the Met. Office forecast yesterday, which predicted about 12 hours of rain, followed by a day of showers, followed by another day of heavy rain, I decided to put my emergency plan into action and have come round onto the canal again - I really do not want to be stuck in yet another flood on the river! The rain hasn't actually been all that heavy so far, but it's been very persistent, and I'm not taking any chances. I'm still having trouble with this infuriating persistent oil-leak, and I still can't decide whether it's the result of my incompetence at replacing the rocker box gasket, or if there's some other cause. Either way I am desperate to solve the problem, as it really getting on my nerves and incidentally costing me a fortune in replacement oil.
The most exciting event of this last week was the broadcast on Radio 3 of Foulds' World Requiem. Having listened to it a couple of times on the R3 'Listen Again' facility, I think it is truly a remarkable work, and clearly the totally sincere and committed magnum opus of the composer. Reactions to it have been rather mixed, and rather dismissive in some cases - I think this is a a pity, and reflects more of the cynical and superficial standards of contemporary values rather than the worth of the work itself. It is full of the most astonishing and original music, created with total mastery for massive forces and carried off with a bravura the equal of Elgar, Britten, Walton or any other British 20th century composer, not to mention even of figures like Mahler. I think the misunderstanding arises more from the nature of the piece than anything else - I don't think Foulds was trying to create a 'work of art' in the rather precious modern sense - rather as a theosophist and mystic he was trying to create a sort of collective ritual and contemplation to help thousands of fraught people at the time come to terms with the colossal trauma of the Great War. It is more of a religious ceremony than a work of classical music, though at the same time it is carried off with great professional musical skill. I don't suppose it will ever suit everybody's taste, but I am so glad it has been revived at last, and I gather the BBC intend to re-establish the tradition of performing it each Armistice Day. There was a particularly touching element this time, though, in that Foulds' son, Patrick, who is 90, who took in the last performance in 1923 (!) as a boy chorister, was present to hear his father's piece again, more than 80 years later!
Another piece appropriate to the season this week was Elgar's Spirit of England which received a fine performance from Mark Elder and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The last movement, For the Fallen, is so very haunting and moving. Strange how while the very concepts of Britain and England as meaningful entities are being wantonly destroyed and we become ever more enslaved to the EU empire every day, these great monuments of our noble past are revived and revered. Some kind of emotional compensation, perhaps?
My huge outburst of rage last week on Remembrance Day is still with me, to certain extent, but I have become more resigned and less actively furious - but everything I said then still stands. It is is truism that we all feel as we grow older that the world was a better and simpler place when we were young. Only in this case, and in the case of what has happened to this country and its society, specially in the last ten years, I know it was a better place when I was younger, and it is all too evident was has spoilt. Apparently there is nothing people like me can do about it, and I am actively considering plans further 'inernal exile, and perhaps final emigration, but nothing will stop me from stating what I think it wrong and who is to blame for it while there is a breath in my body. At the same time I have been making an effort to recall some of the faith I had in religious and philosophical ideas like those of Buddhism, Hinduism and some aspects of Christianity in an attempt to mitigate the corrosive effects on my own inner state of the bitterness and resentment I feel at having my country, identity and way of life taken away from me. I don't know if I'll succeed, but I suppose it's worth a try.
Remembrance Sunday, 11th November 2007
I always feel a bit sad on Remembrance Day, but this year I feel bitter, as well. Somehow the enormous sacrifice of so many lives in defence of this country and its way of life feels as though it has been made a complete mockery by recent events. Seeing that contemptible person that calls himself our 'prime minister' parading at the Cenotaph in all his jowly, whey-faced glory, and enjoying every self-important minute of it, made me feel almost physically sick. This is the traitor who has signed away the last vestiges of our national sovereignty to a foreign dictatorship, and under whose administration the pitiful remnants of a culture, identity and way of life that took centuries to create are being torn to shreds. No wonder the Queen looked even more depressed than usual - I'm sure she feels like I do, only more so, given the generation she comes from. I have to say I was a bit disappointed that she didn't intervene over the signing of the EU treaty/constitution - if there was ever a moment when a constitutional monarch should have cried 'halt', it was that moment - when the British constitution she represents and upholds was finally and comprehensively betrayed. But I suppose it would be a bit much to expect of an elderly lady - to cause the political crisis of the century and threaten her own position, all on her own. What she needs is someone to act on her behalf and in her name. I am still waiting for the few people left in positions of power - specially in the armed forces - to act, before it is too late. But I am not very hopeful. Meanwhile if some crazed terrorist had shot that b**stard down in Whitehall this morning, I for one wouldn't have felt the slightest pang - it's no more than he would have deserved. I mean - I know all politicians are vile, unscrupulous, megalomanic scum - but how, how, HOW did we get in to the grip of crypto-marxist stalinist monstrosities like Brown, and why have the British people been so comprehensively fooled and effectively disenfranchised like this? Anyway, basically I feel sad and bitter that I have lived to see everything I ever believed in, everything I loved and cared about about this country, its history, culture and way of life, undermined, dismantled, dishonoured and spat upon - and all with the enthusiastic participation of the deluded crypto-marxist liberal left who have been wreaking destruction on us since at least the 1960's, if not before. Our sovereignty has been betrayed, our parliamentary democracy has been completely corrupted, our culture and education has been destroyed by braindead left-wing propaganda and Orwellian rewriting of history, our society has been brutalised by gross materialism and the cult of the lowest denominator, our streets are terrorised by completely out-of-control drunken and drug-fueled thugs, we have been invaded, raped and occupied on a massive scale by uncontrolled and indiscriminate immigration, and our very language has been terminally distorted by the gobbledygook of 'political correctness' and 'multiculturalism', we are under attack within from an arrogant and aggressive brand of Islam, and we have actually arrived at a time when Orwell's 'thought crime' has become a reality - having opinions that don't agree with official policy can now actually get you arrested - even some of what I say on here could be actionable. So hundreds of thousands gave their lives in two world wars - for what? For this? I don't think so. As I've said before, perhaps they were the lucky ones - at least they died believing they were fighting for something important, and knew the kind of decent Britain that is now almost gone forever. Those who knew the old Britain and have lived to see it devastated and betrayed are not so lucky. Peace be to the memory of the fallen. God help the survivors. Meanwhile I shall continue and extend my internal exile and no doubt feel even more of a stranger in my own country, as I do almost every time I walk down the street every day here in Oxford. How far I shall have to retreat in this country before I have to leave altogether I'm not sure - but if nothing changes for the better in the next 5 years and I am still alive, I shall be surprised if I'm not living in another country. I'd rather remember the country, culture and landscape I was born and grew up in from exile than bear seeing it degraded much further.
One other rather remarkable feature of this Remembrance Sunday has been the performance and broadcast for the first time since 1926 of John Foulds' legendary World Requiem. I'm listening to it as I write this - and it certainly lives up to its reputation. It's one of those works one never thought one would hear, as I expect people thought of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony before 1963. Foulds is a figure I've been interested in for years - there's no doubt that he was a visionary composer before his time who has never been sufficiently appreciated. I suppose the World Requiem is a very typical product of its time - idealistic, theosophical, pacifist and deeply unrealistic, it seems to me that as work of art it probably transcends all that. I only wish I'd actually gone and hear it at the Albert Hall - it might have been almost as exciting as my attendance at the Gothic Symphony as a precocious schoolboy in 1965!
Sunday 4th November 2007
Things have definitely become very autumnal on the river now, with all the leaves in delightful colours, but falling fast. Luckily it's been rather nice weather for the past few days, and looks good for the next few - dry, clear days with a little cloud but also plenty of sun, misty and a bit bleak in the mornings, but otherwise most atmospheric. And if course it's also that time of year I am rather fond of, in a melancholy sort of way - the season of All Souls, Bonfire Night, Remembrance Day, etc. I love all the mistiness and mysteriousness - tonight I am moored down-river from Oxford opposite Nuneham Courtney, and there is a thick mist on the river, interspersed with distant explosions of fireworks - rather exciting. I went on Friday to Magdalen for their annual Solemn Requiem for All Souls. This year it was the Durufle, which they did (I think for the first time, in my experience) with orchestra. It was a most beautiful and impressive service - the music is quite intense, with those sudden almost anguished outbursts in the Libera Me and elsewhere which can be shattering. I thought at the time, and afterwards, whatever your attitude to religious belief, surely it is so important to have ceremonies like this - actually to contemplate the subject of death and transience within the context of ritual, meaningful words and music, and try to give some meaning to it all, even if you don't believe the Christian promises of eternal life? As I said before, in relation to Gnosticism, etc., it is only through our higher aspirations and creativity that we can hope to rise above the futility of mere material existence; without expressions like that solemn requiem and other ceremonies commemorating and sanctifying death we merely live like animals and die like animals. In so far as we are physical beings then we do die like animals, and it is all 'meaningless', but in so far as we are spiritual beings we can hope for what used to be called 'a good death', and at least aspire to some dignity in the process - with luck.
Talking of Gnosticism - the more I think about it, the more plausible is the idea that the material world was the creation of some 'demiurge', and essentially and profoundly flawed, and the more convincing the idea that what we should aspire to is a return to the serenity and light of the universal spirit that is above the material plane - what the Hindus call nirvana. If this means the dissolution of the individual consciousness, then frankly the older I get the better that sounds! This isn't the first time by any means I've contemplated such ideas - in fact I was heavily into these things in my teens and early twenties; only then it was all rather theoretical, whereas now I am beginning to realise much more fully the essential unimportance of worldly 'achievements' in life, and their extreme transience, and that perhaps in the end none of it does really matter all that much.
Enough of such serious thoughts. I am still having a bit of trouble with an oil leak, though otherwise the engine is performing magnificently - and I should jolly well think so after the amount I've had to spend on it! I was advised I needed to replace something with the wonderful name of the 'rocker box gasket', and I did so, but it seems it's a trickier thing to replace than I realised, and I have been having the devil of a time getting it to seal properly. It's very irritating and apart from anything else has cost me quite a lot in replacement oil, but I am determined to get the better of it eventually. Then hopefully I can finally get back to some sort of sensible routine, as the last few weeks have been terribly distracted and distracting. I do really need to get back to a regular pattern of work on music. I recently read an interesting book called Elgar and the Nostalgic Imagination. As indicated by its title it is somewhat academic, and uses words like 'discourse' and 'construct', but despite this is quite enjoyable; there is no doubt that nostalgia plays a great part in Elgar's music, and is certainly one of the things that attracts me about it. But, viewed properly, I would say that nostalgia is not in fact necessarily a negative thing (the author at least acknowledges this fact, even though you can tell that he values his 'modernist' credentials too much to allow that looking backwards can ever be genuinely a good thing) - I have often said that if something in the past was actually better than the present, then looking back to it - and perhaps even trying to revive it is highly commendable. Perhaps the reminder, at least, of better things in a turbulent present can be of some use? And even if it is all 'just a construct', redolent of imperialistic and 'elitist' attitudes, what the exponents of contemporary 'cultural studies' never to seem to realise it that their own ideas are just as much a 'construct', and in no way definitive, either. Anyway, none of this actually matters when it comes to the actual music of Elgar, which rises above such nit-picking to a higher plane altogether. Incidentally, I came across a rather nice little 'slide show' om YouTube the other day, accompanying a recording of Elgar himself conducting the Prelude from The Kingdom the other day. It is well worth a listen:
YouTube - Elgar conducts Prelude to The Kingdom
Sunday 28th October 2007
The great engine nightmare finally came to end at the beginning of the week, leaving me several hundred pounds poorer, just in time for me to rush down to Christ Church Meadow for four days of rather hectic work at the college. I have now come up the canal to Wolvercote to meet Dusty the coal and diesel boat, and then after that I shall, hopefully, go for one last trip down to Abingdon before most of this section of the river closes down for a month for lock repairs, etc. I am not quite sure yet where I will base myself over the winter, but of course a lot of that depends on the weather. If we don't have too many torrential downpours things will be a lot easier; it rained quite a bit today, but mostly not very heavy, and it's supposed to be dry again from tomorrow, so I hope the river will stay navigable.
Things have been somehow rather turbulent of late - mostly, but not entirely, in my head, that is. I had a curious but very powerful dream last night (Friday) that has thrown me a bit. It involved the last person I was at all emotionally involved with - over ten years ago - an involvement that ended in painful disaster; but in the dream everything was miraculously 'all right' again, and there was a wonderful and intense feeling of contentment and happiness of a kind I haven't experienced for a very long time. And then I woke up and realised 'it was all a dream' - as you do - and I felt very sad. During the day it came back to me more than once and I have almost burst into tears - life can be very cruel. Funny how incredibly powerful dreams can be. It's all reminded me of the bleakness of my life these days, and the degree of unhappiness I must have, deep down,and the awful lack of affection and companionship in my existence these days, even though on the surface I seem to chug along without much emotion most of the time. But I've been having some thoughts about the stage in my life I'm at, lately, anyway. It occurs to me that the sense of 'failure' in my life that I have had in the last few years could be a sort of sign, indicating the way towards a new phase - that of realising that the true goals of life are in fact not those generally connected with worldly 'success', and that in some sense in order to 'achieve' your life you first have to 'lose' it? But I am becoming obscure. This current though process of mine connects with all sorts of things - one of them was a TV series recently that I found fascinating; it was one of those corny ones where they brought some islanders from the Pacific to visit Britain, and filmed their experiences. It could have been horribyl patronsing, but in the end it wasn't, and it had some curious elements, like their quest to meet Prince Philip, who is worshipped as the son of God where they come from, but the thing that was most striking was their attitudes to life, and their reaction to the strange way of life we live in this country nowadays. They were impressed by all the technological stuff, and the conveniences, and wealth, but they very quickly latched on to the things that were wrong, and sick, about our society - the alienation, the poverty in the midst of plenty, the dementedness and slavery to meaningless and unsatisfying work. As one of them said near the end, "We think that once the English lived very much like we did, and we are the happiest people in the world, but now they don't, and they need to go back to a more traditional way of life, or the consequences could be serious", or words to that effect. And another one, when they'd gone back to their village and all the people were holding a great dance in their honour, looked very proud and happy, and said, "This is what feeds us, every day - we share with one another - sharing things in life is the secret of happiness". It forcibly reminded me of the strangeness and selfishness of so much about our way of life in the west today, and the way that people like myself, who can't fit into it, end up isolated and marginalised; and many much worse - just on the waterways you come across a lot of people living in semi-derelict boats in squalor who really seem to have given up on life almost entirely. There is something very wrong somewhere. No doubt the problems can be mitigated somewhat, again, by sharing them with others, but even then, where can you actually go in this country today, to recover a more 'traditional' way of life? There aren't many parts that are not affected by the brutalisation and alienation of modern existence - drugs infest even the most out-of-the-way rural areas, and cars, roads, planes, helicopters, mobile phones, industry and out-of-control suburban sprawl and hypermarkets seem to be almost everywhere. I suppose there are still some almost untouched spots, but how far do you have to go to find them? And to what extent do you have to exile yourself from most of the rest of society to do it? I have already been thinking of moving on from Oxford - the places has just changed too much in the last few years, and I no longer feel at home here, despite some of the good things. Perhaps I will go back to East Anglia; or possibly Wales. But again - part of me would still like to be involved with things and people - I don't really want to become even more isolated - a hermit, in effect - but things seem to be pushing me in that direction. But then again that connects up with my other theme of total disillusionment with the politics and pseudo-democracy of this country today. Since the last remnants of our constitution, our laws and our culture have finally been surrendered to the EUSSR by the traitor Gordon Brown, I no longer have much hope for Britain, as the country I was born and grew up in, and used to feel so much part of. As I've said before, my only hope is for some sort of state of emergency, and martial law, to restore our sovereignty and liberty. But I can't say I'm really very optimistic about the prospects. So I am finally thinking 'the unthinkable' - of leaving this country for good. And as I don't want to be an EU serf, I will have to look further afield. I've been thinking of going back to the Indian sub-continent to do some more voluntary teaching - this time perhaps in the North, where the climate would be more bearable than it was in Sri Lanka or the south. I have always wanted to see the Himalayas, so perhaps I would go for Darjeeling or somewhere similar. Possibly even Bhutan? And then if that seems to work, I have thought that perhaps if I survive to 60 I may go somewhere like that permanently. The kind of enthusiasm, appreciation and respect, and the sense of involvement, and indeed, 'sharing', you get from teaching in places like that is the kind of thing that makes life feel worth living; I can't seem to find it in this country, even if I didn't feel repelled by so many aspects of life here today, so it's logical to seek it elsewhere. Particularly if it's somewhere like a Buddhist temple, again - there's a lot about Buddhism I empathise with. Which connects with another of the mental threads that have been running though my mind lately.
This is the theme of Gnosticism/Manichaeism I've been reading about. The common theme is the unsatisfactoriness - indeed, the downright evil - of the material world, and the idea that in the course of history teachers have appeared - the Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, amongst others - whose job has been to remind of this truth - that we are in reality 'sons of light', or spiritual creatures, at odds with the world of darkness, or materialism. One version is particularly vivid and poetic - that human souls are 'fragments' from the spiritual wold of light, that have got 'trapped' in the lower world by accident, and are constantly striving to liberate themselves. This makes perfect sense to me, whether you take it literally or symbolically; it's not that everything one encounters in ones earthly life is 'bad', but when you think about it, the good things are invariably connected with ideas, concepts, creative constructs, transcendent experiences of beauty and significance, that take their meaning from something outside of the material world; the purely material, on its own, is at best flat and at worst positively gross and even disgusting. I'm thinking of things like art, literature, music, idealised love, intellectual companionship, the aesthetic appreciation of nature, religious experience etc., that lift us above the material plain. Without these things life is surely simply 'nasty, brutish and short' - a rather precise description of so many lives being lived in the spiritually and morally impoverished Britain of today, I would suggest. None of this is exactly original, but I am currently experiencing a sense of the truth of all this that perhaps I have lost somewhat through the trail of years and the various red herrings of 'careers' I have pursued over the decades.I used to think that composing music was one way of redeeming the awfulness of mere contingency, and in a way I still do, but the problem is that when in order actually to realise that music you have to engage with the corrupted racket that passes for cultural and artistic life in our society today, the situation becomes problematic. It seems to me that you now either have to compromise your integrity and become part of the racket, or have ones efforts more or less nullified. Which means that its not enough merely to try to create meaning and wholeness through ones art - it becomes something you have to try to pursue through your whole way of life. Which brings me back to my idea of 'retiring' from the world, or at least the 'western' world, mentioned above.
I am feeling rather tired now, after another bad night's sleep, so these ravings will have to continue later. It does all make sense, somewhere or other, I assure my readers!
Saturday 20th October 2007
The recent ferment of mind has now been replaced by a sort of state of zen acceptance, for the moment, as I enter the 12th day of my engine nightmare. I've been moored at Osney so long now I've become a sort of fixture - for example, this afternoon I felt the boat lurch slightly and I looked out of the window to see two ladies 'of a certain age' sitting on the bows with gin and tonics; they had come over from the pub - when I opened the doors and looked out one of them said "Oh - I'm so sorry, we thought this was an abandoned barge". Charming! After waiting most of the week the engine head was returned and put back on, which took about four hours; but then it turned out that the spill-rail - a small but important engine bit - had ruptured; the only way to get another one is to order it from 'up north', but it being the weekend I can't do that until Monday, and the earliest time it can arrive is Tuesday. The engineer rigged up a temporary arrangement which he said would be safe for the time being. But then it turned out to be impossible to start the engine, as the starter battery was flat, as were the domestic batteries (almost) - this was yesterday, and today he came back three hours late with a charged up battery, but despite lots of encouraging noises and white smoke from the exhaust the engine still wouldn't start. In the end I gave up and called RCR, the marine rescue people I belong to, to see if they could help, and the first engineer went on his way to the umpteen other jobs he seems to have on. Eventually after some discussion as whether it was an actual breakdown or not, they sent someone round - rather an interesting retired gentleman from Wallingford. He took one look at the temporary spill-rail arrangement and said " If I started the engine with that arrangement I could be sent to prison - it's a severe fire risk"! He was absolutely horrified I'd been left with the engine still not working, but there was nothing he could do about the spill-rail because it was the weekend, but he has offered to repair it on Monday and also bring me a new starter battery, and then see if he can start the engine. I think it really ought to start, as it was giving all the right signs, but it has just got so cold over the last few days, and also been taken apart and put together again, and like me it's feeling its age. Anyway - the new chap inspired confidence, and said he would never leave a job without making sure the engine was running and safe, so I have resigned myself with fatalistic abandon to the rest of the weekend in rustic simplicity with a little bit of power for light and the water pump and reading to pass most of the time. Perhaps it will teach me not to rely so much on TV and gadgets in fact I'm almost getting used to it now. The whole thing has been a nightmare - when the engine goes wrong it's so much the centre of things on the boat that it affects my whole state of mind and I feel totally distracted. At least leaving it all until Monday means I don't have to worry about it for the time being, which is a relief in itself. Meanwhile I have to come to places like Blackwell's cafe to charge up my computer and go online, which is a slight pain but could be worse. The worst thing is it's almost impossible to work on music without being able to use my computer on the boat - it's far too noisy everywhere else.
One thing that's kept me going is this enormous tome by Chapman and Bauval, noted writers on loony theories of history, on the Ancient Egyptian/Gnostic/Manichaean/Cathar/Templar/Freemason tradtition of an 'alternative religion' through the centuries. Though all rather far-fetched and based on some tenuous connections, it is undeniably fascinating and full of interesting details about some of these obscure religions and philosophies. I find myself particularly drawn by the dualistic concepts of Manichaeanism and Gnosticism. Looking at the world around us today, I find it all too easy to believe in two gods - one of light, one of darkness - in competition, with the dark one in charge of the material world. It would explain so much about life. I don't mean this as a mere intellectual conceit - on some level or other I have really been feeling the presence of actual active principle of evil in the human world, lately; whether I believe in it literally or somehow symbolically I'm not sure, but I feel it may be an important pointer towards how to proceed with life. And I honestly don't think I'm going bonkers or anything! Of which, more, later, I hope.
Monday 15th October 2007
You could say my mind has been in something of a ferment over the last week or so - at one and the same time I have reached a revolutionary stage (perhaps literally!) in my views on politics in Britain today; I have been led to some interesting philosophical/spiritual reflections by a slightly dodgy but intriguing book about Gnosticism and its connections; I have been trying to get to grips with musical ideas for Mr. Hevey's latest film-making enterprise; and through it all I have been stranded at Osney in central Oxford with only half an engine while an interminable saga goes on about getting it mended.
As a little refresher from all the excitement I went down to Eton yesterday for the annual singing competition. This is always a delight - as I said to young Mr. O'Donovan (sen.), who is now teaching there, it's the experience of an island of civilisation in an ocean of barbarism, and I always feel a little encouraged when I leave, that there are still one or two places where the youth of this country are taught genuinely civilised values while receiving a real education (note I do not put the word civilisation in inverted commas, as is virtually required practice amongst the deluded liberal-left 'intelligentsia' who run what is laughably known as our 'culture' these days - cf. Theodore Dalrymple's seminal Our Culture - What's Left of It.) There were some good singers this year, although I didn't entirely agree with the adjudication: personally I thought the remarkably assured and ultra up-tempo performance of Bernstein's Something's Coming from West Side Story by a treble aged no more than 14 was worth any number of Sea Fevers or even Mendelssohn's On Wings of Song! I did enjoy hearing some of my old favourites, by Vaughan Williams, Finzi et al. - there is something so touching about very young people singing timeless sentiments that are quite new and fresh to them. Altogether it was a pleasant and heartening afternoon, and an excellent tea was provided, as ever.
Returning to grim reality, I am reading another political book I have discovered which I think should be required reading for anyone interested in the state of British politics and society today. This is The Triumph of the Political Class, by Peter Oborne. His essential argument - that the way of doing things in this country, established over centuries, and particularly by the Victorians, has in the last couple of decades been completely corrupted and turned on its head by a new, venial, ruthless, completely self-serving professional political elite of all parties - is not unfamiliar, but what is most interesting and useful is the way he pulls together the evidence and gives a coherent account of how this has happened and how the system works. I suppose it is a symptom of some hope that books like this are still being published - no doubt if the political class had entirely triumphed they would be able to arrange for such works to be suppressed. But perhaps they're subtler than that - they usually prefer smearing, ridiculing and career assassination to out-right suppression - for the moment, at least. I have decided after all that having a Politics section on this journal is probably a bad idea; it is after all supposed to be mainly about narrowboats and music and I don't want to frighten people off, although I cannot but allude to the political dimension of the experiences I have on a daily basis. Those who wish to experience the full horror of my politcal views have only to search on 'conservative anarchist', I think.
The engine saga has been bizarre. When my regular mechanic came last Monday to help fix a couple of broken manifold studs it all turned out to be a bigger job than expected, so he arranged to come back the next day. But he couldn't, it turned out, for the rather disturbing reason that a friend of his had committed suicide, and he was liasing with members of the family to deal with the situation; he didn't come the next day, as planned, and when he did come, on Thursday, it turned out that the delay had been caused by the extraordinary fact that he'd been called in for questioning in a murder inquiry. Not relating to the suicide, but to another person who had died on the moorings in Banbury in suspicious circumstances! After all that, it turned out he couldn't get the broken studs out in situ, so he had to take the whole of the top of the engine off and take it to an engineering works, who announced that they couldn't do the job until at least this Tuesday (tomorrow) - 'hopefully'. So I've been stuck, surviving on the solar panels, which would have been OK if it hadn't been overwhelmingly overcast for all except one of the last four or fives days. Still - these things are sent to try us, so they say.
Sunday 7th October 2007
Another, slightly unexpected, weekend working at Christ Church. I've been stuck at the moorings opposite the Meadow for a bit too long, waiting for a mechanic to come and help me fix a problem with the engine - I hope he's going to come tomorrow, as I want to get on the move again, before this section of the river closes down for repairs to locks, etc. at the beginning of November, or alternatively torrential rain and floods intervene once again. It's OK here, but I feel the need to get away even from the urban atmosphere of Oxford, and I do get tired of being woken a dawn by those fanatical rowers!
One of the things I celebrated my birthday with as usual was a present to myself - to my delight I came across a copy of one of the re-published books versions of the famous Magnet boys' comic, in this case from 1929, for a very reasonable price, in Blackwells' secondhand department. So I am now revelling in the adventures of Billy Bunter, Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry and all their pals at Greyfriars School, which I am enjoying enormously. People have noted before my penchant for children's and school literature - no doubt is it is deeply regressive and sad of me to enjoy such reading. But, frankly, I couldn't care less. Certainly if you examine some of the mindless, posturing, either depraved or frankly emptily pretentious, contemporary literature that passes as 'adult' (names like Rushdie come to mind here), frankly I'd prefer Billy Bunter any day!
Friday 5th October 2007
Today is my birthday. As I spent much of the day last year lying on a trolley in Stafford General Hospital wondering how painful it might be to die of amanita poisoning, after a somewhat inadvisable bit of fungus foraging, almost anything would be an improvement, but I wasn't expecting the BBC to celebrate my birthday by arranging the first ever TV broadcast in about 45 years or so of my favourite Radio 2 programme, Friday Night is Music Night! I have been listening to this show since my infancy, and indeed it's about the only one left, apart from Sunday Half Hour, which hasn't materially changed in all those years. They had all the old favourites, like the themes from Doctor Finlay, Dick Barton - Special Agent, Music While You Work, The Archers, etc., and finished with a rousing finale of The Dambusters March by the immortal Eric Coates. It quite made my day. Apart from that I went and did some more foraging of blackberries and some very nice apples from a location I know within about ten minutes walk of central Oxford, and I'm going to make more jam and home-made type things this weekend. I am back on the river opposite Christ Church, and have returned to my usual routine, being a part-time custodian wearing a bowler hat, etc. This is rather an exciting time of year, as the new term is about to start and feshers have been arriving and are rushing around town looking terribly young and naive and enviable. I had to greet some of them on Tom Gate the other night - there was one anxious-looking youth who announced himself with the immortal words, " I'm new, and I don't know what to do"! I was reassuring and avuncular and directed him to the porters' lodge and sent him on his way to his room in Peckwater Quad. Ah - how I remember the excitement and nervousness of arriving on ones first day at university.
Today and tomorrow was/is the UKIP party conference. I had thought of going, but I am currently going through a period of total disillusionment with democratic politics in this country, and I just couldn't face the trouble and expense. It's not that I've stopped agreeing with UKIP's policies - it's just that I have begun seriously to doubt the possibility of realising any of them in this country in its present state of political and social corruption. The implications are slightly alarming, and I may work through some of them on here, in my new section called POLITICS in which I expound what some people call my 'right-wing' views.
Wednesday 26th September 2007
Made it easily to Banbury yesterday, where I was able to sort out an internet problem and also get supplies. The journey down from Marston was pretty uneventful, except for a howling wind that was rather annoying. We've been having outbursts of rain, but in between it's still been rather beautiful autumn weather. The problem I had was that my bill for August's mobile internet from Vodafone was approximately seven times larger than usual! It turned out this had been a mistake, caused by ' a data problem', and a refund was organised; in addition to this I discovered I could get this amazing new gadget - a mobile USB modem - for free, and a new monthly deal that is much better value than the one I've had so far, so that's what I did. The rate of progress of technology never ceases to surprise me - this new modem is so effective that in areas of reasonable phone reception you get virtual broadband internet access - from a boat - with no wires attached! I stopped below Banbury at my favourite place, where I was stuck for about 5 months last autumn because of flooding, then I had an easy trip down to Somerton, whence I am almost in striking distance of Oxford, where I don't actually need to be until Friday evening, so I don't really need to hurry. The weather again today we very bright and clear, but again with a wild, and this time, freezing cold, north wind. I've started collecting wood for the stove in preparation for what may well be a cold autumn. As long as it isn't horribly wet. I also made the damsons into jam, which though I say it myself is absolutely delicious. I made about three and a half pounds of it, but I don't think it's going to last very long!
Sunday 23rd September
On the Oxford Canal now, on the Marston Doles section, so I'm well in the orbit of Oxford again now, which is just as well, as I am supposed to work at Christ Church next weekend. The weather has gone a bit funny now, with some light rain on and off, and outbursts of gusty wind which annoy me intensely. Today I decided to have a rest day, as this is a nice spot in the middle of nowhere and as yet totally unblighted by the disease of modern urban Britain, and diverted myself by going on a foraging expedition along the hedgerows. I got an excellent haul of blackberries, elderberries, damsons and crab apples. I'm going to make the damsons into damson jam, and the rest into something I've decided to call 'Hedgerow Jam'. I thought I'd avoid fungi this year, after the excitements of October 5th last year! (see below).
With relation to my continuing negative experiences of Enlgish towns and cities on my travels, I am glad to see that I am supported at the very least by the perceptions of Theodore Dalrymple, who puts it all so much eloquently and comprehensively: 'To paraphrase Burke, all that is necessary for barbarism to triumph is for civilised men to do nothing. but in fact for the past few decades , civilised men have done worse than nothing - they have actively thrown in their lot with the barbarians. ...They have denied the the superiority of man's greatest cultural achievements over the most ephemeral and vulgar entertainments...above all they have denied that it matters how people conduct themselvesin their personal lives, provided only that they consent to their own depravity....For the last decade I have been observing close-up, from the vantage point of medical practice, the effect on a large and susceptible population of the erosion of civilised standards of conduct brought about by the assault upon them by intellectuals. If Joseph Conrad were to search nowadays for the heart of darkness...he would have to look no further than an English city such as mine.' Really it is no surprise that when I on any other sensitive person with any concept of the history and culture of this country walks around an unfamiliar town they should notice all around them the signs of a collapsing civilisation. It's not so much the material circumstances - though they can be grim enough at times - but even when materially things are not that bad, even if not that good either, it's the state of mind demonstrated in the appearance and behaviour of the people that is so disturbing. I'm sure Dalymple is right - that the efforts of the liberal-left 'intelligentsia' to undermine and destroy all the values of traditional civilised life while replacing them with their own crazed socialist utopian constructs have been an absolute disaster, and we can see the results all around us. The atmosphere by the moorings in the centre of Northampton I mentioned is a perfect example. The area has very recently redeveloped with 'social housing' - an excellent idea in theory, to give affordable housing to the less well-off and bring back residential life to a run-down area - the only problem is that the majority of the people who were moved in clearly belong to the massive underclass of benefits-dependent, dysfunctional products of 'alternative' families and emotional, psychological and drug-fuelled chaos that they no longer actually know how to live in a civilised way - thus the area was strewn with rubbish which none of them apparently thinks of picking up for themselves, is polluted with raucous thumping 'music' blaring out of windows and is populated by unappealing gangs of youths in shell-suits and baseball caps congregating threateningly in public areas and adding copious lagers cans to the piles already lying around whilst engaging in heaven knows what worse activities. So the historic riverside centre of a long-established, formerly bustling and prosperous manufacturing town is now a hostile-feeling urban wasteland and an image of hundreds if not thousands of similalr parts of towns and cities across Britain. And any amount of 'regeneration' imposed from above by deluded members of the ruling liberal elite will never change this, until they start addressing the central problem of the intellectual barbarism which is destroying what's left of our culture and creating a nation of clueless morlocks, who feast. metaphorically, off the dwindling population of middle class eloi who still think they are living in a civilised society.
Friday 21st September 2007
I'm starting to have difficulty keeping this up to date. The problem is that most of the events on this journey are so trivial, if not unentertaining in a mild sort of way, that I tend to forget them almost instantly. It all merges into one long vista of water, boats and locks. I have now reached Braunston, on the Grand Union, which is almost 'home' territory, and I'm having a little rest today before tackling the Napton flight of 12 locks or however many it is, tomorrow; my arms and hands are showing signs of strain, and I don't want to really overdo it like I did last year - but then I'm not in anything like such a frantic hurry as then. The journey up from the Northampton Arm was pretty uneventful - I got some coal in from a convenient canal-side yard, as the temperature is starting to go down and I shall start needing the stove on again soon; I've also started collecting wood - I know from experience that it's best to start early and be prepared. The only real incidents in the last few days were at Whilton Locks, where on two occasions the well-meaning but blundering assistance of hire-boaters nearly caused an accident - they will try to do everything in such a hurry, and though I always try to say something like 'could you start off a bit slow?' or 'could you do just half a paddle to start with?' they often don't seem to know what I'm talking about. It's a wonder there aren't more serious accidents involving hireboats - though there are quite a few already. People just can't seem to grasp that locks are dangerous places and that water is very heavy and when it's moving fast things can get out of control very easily. The second incident was when my boat was tied up on one rope waiting for the lock and the hire-boater opened a whole paddle in one go, on the opposite side, thus causing a massive torrent of water to push my boat across and pull it so hard against the rope it could have capsized; I was up by the gate and looked round to see the boat at a horrendous angle and nearly had a fit! Luckily he had the sense to drop the paddle very quickly, but I could do without these experiences - it is my home we're talking about, after all. I've found that I can get along quite well and safely on my own - it's when people offer to help things get dangerous, and you often don't know whether they know what they're doing or not.Having said that, yesterday after negotiating Braunston Tunnel (I don't like tunnels much - they make me get claustrophobic) and having to pass no less than six boats coming the other way, when I got to Braunston Locks a hire boat caught up with me and we went through together - but luckily they were experienced hire-boaters, and the whole thing went beautifully smoothly and without incident, and in fact I hardly had to do any work at all, which was nice.
Braunston is a nice little village, with a very homely, English feel to it. A total contrast to Northampton and the places round it. With regard to my 'cultural' lamentations - I am embarrassed that I keep repeating the same complaints about the state of many of the places I visit on my travels; but the thing is that I keep having the same sort of experiences in different places around the country. Travelling as I do by boat, it is simply impossible to avoid the contrast between the rural areas - most of which are recognisably culturally, historically, architecturally English and inhabited overwhelmingly by British people with whom I can commnicate and feel something in common, however stupid and tiresome some of them may be at times, and the urban areas, most of which seem like physical and cultural wastelands inhabited by a combination of the dregs of our massive 'underclass' and large numbers of rootless immigrants from every corner of the globe many of whom barely speak English and know nothing and care less about the country they have invaded. In many ways it's like experiencing two different countries - only they are right next to one another and on a boat you pass seamlessly from one to the other. In the circumstances it's hardly surprising I react strongly to the experience. The alternative would be to do what quite a lot of people, including a number of intelligent and otherwise observant people I know, do, and pretend not to notice what is happening and carry on ones own immediate every-day life as though everything is normal. But everything is not normal in this country today, and although sometimes I feel I should give up caring about it and resign myself to the chaos and squalor of contemporary Britain, unfortunatley I am one of those people who feels that something should be done about the situation, and that we shouldn't just give up and surrender. Which is why I joined UKIP, I suppose, and why I keep on about it all in these pages, despite it probably being seen as terribly 'negative' and in rather bad taste even to mention such things - I suppose I hope that if I and enough other people go on pointing out the mess we are in eventually something might be done. And it's not as though it's all negative - there is much I experience on my travels which is quite positive, and I would be only too happy if it could all be like that. There is so much beauty in this country, so much history, so many magnificent architecture - not least the endless wondrous churches and cathedrals which I love visiting. But in a way I often think the latter are symbolic of the state of things in general - these absolutely glorious monuments to Christian faith and the rich history and culture of Britain; but what are they now? - largely tourist attractions which people go in to gawp at and tick off on their list of places to see, but for most their main and essential purpose is completely alien. And that's the people that bother to go in at all - for the majority it seems that these buildings are simply an uncomprehended part of the background that has no purpose whatsoever in their lives. It all reminds me repeatedly of the last days of the Roman Empire - when the barbarians had been let through the gates no doubt they gawped without understanding at the great temples and monuments for a while, then pitched their tents amongst the smouldering ruins and got on with the important stuff of raping, looting and carousing. It must have been a sad thing then, and it is a sad thing now, to feel that you're living amidst the last stages of a collapsing civilisation; I wish I didn't feel that, but I do. I just wish more people would wake up to the situation before it's too late. But it's probably too late already. Meanwhile I keep chugging on and trying to avoid the worst areas, and trying to carry on with my life; what else is there to do? But I feel more and more alienated from the country and society I am supposed to be part of. Perhaps that's part of the problem - being on a boat on you own most of the time does make you see things rather from the outside; in fact I have met a few people on this trip that I appreciated and that were decent, civilised (more or less) and with whom I felt I could communicate. There are still many people like that all over the place, no doubt - it's just that I don't meet them as much a I would like. Perhaps if I was a more 'out-going' sort of person I would, and would thus have a less negative view of things. But I'm not a very 'out-going' person, these days, which makes it difficult. Perhaps if I go and base myself in the middle of the Fens, or in Wales or somewhere I could get more 'involved' with the local community - a thing I would very much like to do. I think sometimes I'm getting too confirmed in my way of life as a 'loner' - I've noticed that even on the rare occasions people come to visit me on the boat it doesn't seem to work very well, and to be honest I feel quite relieved to regain my solitude.
Monday 17th September 2007
I finally made it today up the canal branch from Northampton back onto the Grand Union, and also the weather has finally turned and it has suddenly become quite cold, slightly wet and definitely autumnal. It feels psychologically like a clear dividing point between summer/holidays/aimless freedom and autumn/back to work/routine. In a way I regret leaving the Nene, as it seems to signal a departure from the wide lands of East Anglia and a return to the orbit of the Midlands and Oxford. On the other hand it's a relief to know that even if the rain starts again on a large scale I won't be stuck in a flood miles away from where I need to get to, although I wouldn't be at all surprised after this last year to be greeted by floods on the Cherwell and Isis on the way to Oxford. On the whole my experience of the East Anglian Waterways, and particularly the Fens, has been quite positive. What I liked most was the lesser number of boats on the move and the wondeful peace and quiet; on the Middle Level and the Great Ouse in most places once you stopped it was delightfully peaceful, and for once there was a noticeable lack of the constant background traffic noise which infests the countryside around Oxford and the Home Counties. That alone makes the area appealing to me. Also most of the places I visited felt quite old-fashioned and distinctly British, except for Peterborough and Northampton, which both had the standard 'multicultural'/foreign-occupied atmosphere of most large towns in the greater part of England. Though of course I realise the total destruction of our cultural identity is now a foregone conclusion, I am attracted to those places where I feel that at least an element of of the world I grew up in will survive long enough to see me out. I've talked before on here about how I have felt I am being forced almost into 'internal exile' in my own country - first from London to Oxford, and now probably now from Oxford to - well, maybe East Anglia? I have also found what I havce learnt about the history of the region rather fascinating, specially that of the Fens, and I could imagine getting more involved in that sort of area if I lived there.
Sunday 16th Sept.
In the morning it was still very bright and sunny, but there was a howling gale blowing from the north-west which made things a bit awkward getting in and out of locks, etc, but in the end I had a surprisingly quick and easy last leg up to Northampton and arrived at those slightly grotty moorings in the centre of town. I went to finish looking at the museum, which had a rather good display on local history (I appeared to be the only person in the museum) , then I took a walk round town, which I rather wish I hadn't, as it reminded of all the things I dislike about most urban centres in Britain today, and which I largely avoided during my East Anglian sojourn.Not only was there such a contrast between buildings like the Victorian Guildhall and the beautiful churches and the horrendous, bleak main shopping centre, full of places like Argos and pound stores, but I swear that about 80% of the people I passed in the street were conversing in various foreign languages and were quite obviously recent immigrants. This in a town that from the museum you knew once had a strong and proud character and municipal identity of its own, and which is now not only visually ruined but apparently under foreign occupation like so much of the rest of the country. And the few indigenous inhabitants that I saw were almost exclusively of the brutalised Dalrympean underclass, slouching along snarling at one another, on the way for the next crate of lager and takeaway, or the latest fix. A great wave of despair and frustration at the sheer barbarism and cultural chaos of modern Britain came over me, and I almost groaned out loud in the street at the wretchedness of it all. Once again I recommend readers to investigate Theodore Dalrymple's Our Culture - what's left of it. He says it all so much better than I can. How ironic, then, that later I attended Evensong at All Saints, the parish church of Northampton, where miraculously they keep up a full choral tradition with a choir of men and boys as well as a girls' choir (quite the best solution, I always think. And yet this did not assuage my earlier feelings - it merely reminded me that these institutions which used to be at the heart of our local and national life are now a minority interest incomprehensible to the deracinated masses and only kept going by the dedication of a few. There were only about a dozen in the congregation, mostly quite elderly, and we were outnumbered by the choir, but I still found the familiar BCP words and the music (good old Stanford in Bb and Charles Wood's O Thou the Central Orb ) consoling; the singing was quite creditable and it was nice to hear some old favourites. The clergy were of a very traditional and somewhat severe appearance, and I was delighted to see that the Rector was carrying a mortarboard which he actually donned at the end of the service when the choir and clergy for some reason processed out on to the porch. He did slightly remind me of the Vicar in Dad's Army in both his appearance and manner, but he gave an erudite and quite interesting sermon on the festival of the glorification of the Cross (I think it's called), involving curious information about the early history of the Church, Byzantium and the Empress Helena's discovery of the 'True Cross' and the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem - interesting as Northampton itself has a round medieval Church of the Holy Sepulchre (closed when I went to look at it, of course) and there was also one in Cambridge. The sermon in the end was rather heartfelt, and as the cross-bearer passed down the aisle in the concluding procession I felt a stronger than usual feeling of the potency of this actually rather extraordinary symbol that we see all the time and hardly notice. I managed to convey my appreciation of their efforts to the clergy and the director of music at the end of the service, then I retired to the boat for dinner and to forget the earlier fit of the horrors with the aid of the weekend's allowance of alcohol, and the weather finally broke, with cloud and some intermittent drizzle.
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< Northampton's
magnificent Victorian Guildhall All Saints' Church > |
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Saturday 15th Sept.
I made a super-moominal (in joke for Tove Jansson fans) effort and got up at 6amto get upriver from the curiously named town of Irthlingborough through the debatable and dangerous lands of Wellingborough and its gypsy-infested locks before they were likely to be infested for the day. Irthlingborough was sadly another of these possibly historically interesting but brualised ex-working towns that seem to abound in this area, with the usual gangs of thuggish youth in tracksuits hanging around the streets. Funnily enough once I got over the shock of rising at dawn I felt reasonably OK, and there was considerable compensation in the quite unearthly beauty of the surrounding landscape at that hour. There were lots of marshy areas and ponds and lakes across the river, and as the sun came up a mist curled across the surface, so you had an amazing effect of green grass, blue water and sky and white mist all intermingled - one of the most remarkable scenes I have witnessed on the boat; I took photos, but of course they just couldn't capture the magical effect. So I continued through the mists and under Irthlingborough's splendid many-arched bridge and got through the dodgy area without incident. I was soon caught up with by another boat, which helped me along quite a bit in my epic journey through yet nore blzing sun to Cogenhoe - a delightful large village on a hill with a lovely old church and a mill by the river; the whole place had that sort of quiet, hushed summer atmosphere that I seem to remember from my childhood, timeless and enchanted. Maybe it was just subjective, but it seemed to me that it was at least one place that had escaped the general rot, at least a little - even the local youth seemed more human - the type that might wave at you from the river bank as you passed rather than chuck stones. Of course it's very superficial to pa ss judgement on places on such a short acquaintance, but then it is true that first impressions of a place are often telling.
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< Misty moisty morning at
Irthlingborough Sunny but windy Cogenhoe> |
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< Me looking manly at the tiller in my snazzy new boating hat |
Wednesday 12th September
Goodness - time seems to be whizzing by. From when I left Whittlesey and went through back on to the River Nene to today everything seems to have happened very fast. It does seem like quite a different world here from the Middle Level and the Fens - rural Northamptonshire is all woods, fields, little hills, cattle grazing and little old villages with big old churches. Given the incredible weather we've been having - a real indian summer - it has all seemed perfectly idyllic. No doubt renewed contact with Northampton and its brutalised environs will bring me back to earth! On Monday I just stopped off at Peterborough briefly - long enough to have a proper look round the cathedral and get some supplies, then I shot off up river and moored for the night in the most amazing great lake at a place called Orton - part of a big country park. It had the feel of some sort of exotic lagoon, with lots of (rather noisy) wildfowl hanging around. I had one other boat for company that night, but after a couple of hours of peace and quiet the next morning, which I decided to have off for a rest, the next convoy of narrowboats started arriving; after the fourth in a row I decided it was time to leave and seek somewhere more secluded, so I set off in the blazing sun and made it as far as Yarwell, which was a fair stretch.
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< Glories of Peterborough Cathedral > |  |
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< More glories> |  |
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< Sleepy lagoon near Peterborough |
I came up against this perennial problem of lack of moorings on this navigation, so as it was quite late I just stopped on the lock lay-by; I forced myself to get up horrible early the next morning to get away so as not obstruct anyone. The river and the countryside were so beautiful and unearthly at that time of day, before the sun really got up - I sometimes wish I could get up early without feeling like death, as it is often the nicest part of the day. I stopped for lunch briefly again at Fotheringhay - what a lovely peaceful place.
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< Morning has broken Indian summer at Fotheringhay> |
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Sunday 9th September 2007
Self-respect is restored today as I managed to get up quite early without feeling half-dead, by some miracle, and got through Marmont Priory Lock before most of the next convoy, made it to March in good time, filled up on water, got diesel at Fox Narrowboats, then made it to Whittlesey and through the lock there in time to watch most of the Antiques Roadshow, my absolute must for Sunday evenings. The weather has remained dry and mostly sunny and warm, though there is a cold wind at times and the mornings and evenings are getting a bit chilly; will have to get some coal in soon!
Saturday 8th September
I'm feeling a little annoyed with myself today; I finally got through to the Middle Level yesterday evening, after a long wait, and I had intended to get to March today, so as to be able to get ready to go through onto the Nene on Monday. But there were no less than eight narrowboats that had gone through ahead of me, so I decided to let them get well ahead as I hate 'convoys'; but when I finally set off I was feeling so tired and irritable after yet another poor night's sleep, and the weather suddenly turned cloudy and quite cold, that when I stopped at Upwell I rather gave up, and decided to stop there for the rest of the day. Which was a bit pathetic, really; and it won't help at all now, because whatever time I set off tomorrow I am quite sure another convoy will have come through from Salter's Lode - in fact I know it will, as they're going back to mornings there tomorrow, so once again I will be stuck behind a convoy, who will then hold me up at the locks and pinch all the moorings before I get to them. It's all these narrowboat fanatics coming back from the IWA Festival - I thought I'd left it long enough to have missed most of them, but apparently there are still hordes of them on the move. The one thing s about this area I was looking forward to was that it's supposed to be quiet. But I can't really hang around much longer, as I've said I'll be back in Oxford for the end of the month. It's all rathe tiresome, and I could do with a quiet morning, or even a day off, soon, before the epic ascent of the Nene and the Northampton Arm.
Today was the Last Night of the Proms, but for the first time possible ever I decided just to ignore it - the whole occasion has been so bowdlerised and spoilt that it just upsets me; and it used to be such a big thing for me. Oh well, I suppose I must resign myself to every last vestige of the world I grew up in and felt at home in being mangled or dismantled relentlessly, to the last iota, by the vile, shallow 'modernisers' who seem to hate this county so much.
One cheering thing has been the new Michael Wood TV series, The Story of India, which I've been watching as I go along. It has been abolutely marvellous - absorbing and beautifully filmed. Wood is one of the last documentary makers of the old school on the BBC - no gimmicks and silly jangly pop music, wacky camera angles and 'feisty' presenters - just a very intelligent, well-researched, thoughtful and above all intensely enthusastic examination of a serious but also intrinsically fascinating subject. It's such a relief to find something like that on TV at all these days, but of course it's very much the exception. On a slightly more frivolous but still gratifying note, I came across a VHS in a charity shop in Ely of three of the extremely silly Ripping Yarns starring Michael Palin which I have been chortling over after a hard day's navigating; my favourite was Roger of the Raj, in which our hero commits the most unspeakable crime known to the British Army - though Through the Andes by Frog was pretty good, too. On the literary front my wanderings have been peculiar and eclectic, as ever. A book on historic travellers called Britain Revisited by one Anthony Burton has been diverting - specially as the first chapter concerns the journeys of John Taylor, the 'poetic waterman' , in the 17th century, down the rivers Isis and Thame - Thamesis. Some of the Para Handy stories have proved mildly amusing, while a very strange book about the eating and other passions of the ancient Greeks has provided the fascinating that many of them were what we would call addicted to fish - there was even a specific term for it - opsophagous - something equivalent to our term chocoholic. Only relating to fish.
Friday 7th September 2007
Feeling a bit shattered this evening - mainly because it turned into a rather hot and muggy day and I had to hang around until 6.30 pm to get through Denver Sluice and Salter's Lode Lock back onto the Middle Level. Not only were there eight narrowboats waiting ahead of me, but apparently the tide was a bit 'late' or something. Anyway, after my excursion into Norfolk I am now heading back towards Peterborough and the dreaded River Nene with its 37 locks. The excursion was fun - it consisted of an expedition on the train to King's Lynn and then on the bus to West Norfolk's superior seaside resort, Hunstanton - neither places I have visited before. The railway line is rather good, and seems remarkable punctual - you can get very fast trains to King's Cross in just over an hour, though they are not cheap. King's Lynn was a bit of an odd place - the first impressions, at the bus station, were pretty awful - the usual human derelicts and very rough-looking members of Dalrymple's 'underclass' sitting around smoking and drinking cans of lager for lunch. And the shopping centre on the way into the 'historic' town wasn't much better. But the actual old town and riverside were rather impressive and scenic, with some delightful old medieval streets, a huge parish church, and a long quayside notably free of ships, although there were some smaller boats moored a bit further along. The sad thing was that the atmospheric, historic part of the town felt completely dead and lifeless, whereas of course the bus-station and shopping centre were heaving. It all had the air of what used to be a rich and prosperous ancient port that had fallen on hard times, and though there is apparently a King's Lynn Regeneration organisation, and there were one or two winebar type places opened in old quayside buildings, the general effect was rather forlorn. In the small museum there were paintings and early 20th century photos that showed what a bustling place it used to be. Must all these places become moribund in the name of economic efficiency? And must the alternative always be shopping centres and theme-parks or urban desolation? Apparently, yes.
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< The one large vessel
moored on King's Lynn's quayside 15th century buildings of the Hanseatic League- deserted street> |
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< The impressive parish church of a prosperous sea-port |
From the aforesaid bus-station I took a rather bumpy bus-ride by way of such august locations as Sandringham to Hunstanton. The journey was rather scenic - a lot of quite nice countryside, quaint little villages and woodland - no doubt kept up by the royal estate for shooting, etc. - before finally sighting the sea and rolling into the seaside resort. By this time the weather had turned really lovely, and I went into a sort of seaside daze - just strolling along the prom and sitting gazing at the sunlight on the waves; there was a sort of 'end of season' feeling about it all which was rather pleasant. Hunstanton is not one of the most exciting places in the world but it has a gentle - or perhaps genteel - feel about it which is quite congenial. The only jarring note was that as I was sitting on a bench looking out to sea eating a chelsea bun I noticed a large CCTV camera in a pseudo-lamp-post just next to me swivel round suddenly and point at me! So I took its photograph in revenge; which meant that when I got up to go later it followed me out of sight. Life in Britain in 2007 for you! It makes me sick, but there is simply nothing any of us can do, apparently. And of course it's all for our own good, of course.
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< Hazy Hunstanton Evil surveillance camera masquerading as streetlight on the prom> |
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Today, Wednesday, I am moored at Downham Market, Norfolk, which is a bit unexpected; this morning I set off intending to go back through onto the Middle Level, but while I was waiting at Denver Sluice and there was some sort of delay about the tide, a theatrical couple called Jane and Ray who drew up behind me told me about something called the Great Ouse Relief Channel, which is a waterway going parallel to the tidal Ouse almost down to King's Lynn - I hadn't known this was navigable, but they pointed out a lock which was built quite recently leading into the aforesaid 'channel', so in a moment of abandon I decided to explore it. It turned out to be worth doing. 'Channel' is hardly the word, as it is on the scale of the Suez Canal, almost, and a little frightening, but it is non-tidal and at the moment quite manageable, though in a strong wind it might be a bit intimidating; but there are large pontoon moorings to stop on and I met another couple of narrowboats on my way down here to Downham. I had a stroll round the town, which has a strongly rural and agricultural air and a distinct character of its own. A quick trawl through the charity shops produced Dad's Army - the Movie and an LP of South Pacific - so I shall be able to have a lovely wallow in nostalgia. Highbrow culture received its due in the form of of another LP, of two of Handel's magnificent Chandos Anthems. Total expenditure a princely £1.50. I listened to the South Pacific record over tea - it does have some excellent songs; why is it no modern musicals achieve anything like that quality, I wonder? I was greatly delighted to find a reasonably-priced barber's shop in Downham Market, as my hair was getting to the point of being very annoying, so I had all the scraggy bits sheered off, then went and got some supplies. There is also a railway station and as it's only £3.50 day return to King's Lynn I may well go down on the train tomorrow, rather than by boat, which would add another day onto the trip - I might even go on on the bus to Hunstanton, as I haven't been to the sea-side at all this year and I hear the town is rather nice, and vastly superior to Skegness, I believe, which formed my seaside excursion last year.
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< The fearsome sluices at
the head of the Relief Channel Moored on East Anglia's answer to the Suez Canal (the small speck on the right is Salaga) > |
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Having recovered from my depressive fit on Tuesday morning I proceeded down the brilliantly sunny Ouse towards Denver; it seemed further than I remembered, so I stopped overnight a little way up-river at Ten Mile Bank.
On Monday I woke up feeling very tired, and one of those huge waves of depression and futility descended upon me from somewhere - abetted by not having slept well and some disturbing dreams. After going into Ely town to get some shopping I realised it was one of those days which I find easiest to deal with by declaring them a 'write-off' and not even trying to do anything constructive. This usually works quite well, and I know that by the evening or next day I will probably feel normal again. In fact in the end I managed to fill up on water and go down-stream a bit to a rather pleasant spot, where I did a bit of re-touching of the paintwork, so it wasn't a completely wasted day in the end. It was a quite sunny but very windy day, and I felt a bit sorry for the rowers from the King's School who were having to batter their way into the wind against quite sizeable waves; very character-forming, no doubt. I had noticed earlier that it was the first day of a new term at the school, which is all mixed up with the old Abbey buildings, and I felt a tinge of nostalgia, as the atmosphere and the appearance of the pupils reminded me of my school-days and how I always rather enjoyed the first day of term and the excitement of it. I do sometimes on my lonely wanderings wish I could be part of some sort of community again. I probably should have taught in a decent independent school - I probably missed my real role in life, there, but it's bit too late to do anything about it now.
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< Brilliantly sunny Ouse Brilliantly sunny rowers > |
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Sunday 2nd September 2007
I have been having an extremely indolent day here again in Ely; yesterday I finally left the outskirts of Cambridge - with a certain reluctance, I must admit, as I have taken a liking to the place - and spent and easy day chugging back down river. I decided to spend the rest of the weekend here in civilisation before venturing back across the windswept and lonely Fens towards Peterborough and the rather taxing River Nene - I'm not really looking forward to those 37 locks again!. It's remarkable that the Rivers Great Ouse and Cam have only three locks between them, once you have come through the tidal lock at Denver! That alone is a definite recommendation of this area for basing yourself in - the only problem is getting here, though of course with a sea-going boat that would be comparatively easy. Ely today was quite pleasant again, though the weather was overcast this afternoon - there was even a proper brass band playing in the bandstand, and they included one my great old favourites, The Cornish Floral Dance, as sung often on the late-lamented Your Hundred Best Tunes by the inimitable Peter Dawson. I was looking forward to going to Evensong in the Cathedral, as the Cathedral Choir was supposed to be back from its holdays, but I was disappointed to find it was the Girls' choir on today; I accept the principle of girls singing in churches, but I'm afraid it is not at all the same sound or effect, as far as I'm concerned, as the traditional male choir, whatever anyone may say. So instead I went to the quite interesting little city museum, where there were many quaint exhibits of Ely and the Fens' past. Perhaps the most enjoyable bit was a video of archive films about the area set from the 1930's onwards, with those wonderful old-fashioned clipped-voiced commentators and scenes of amazing old Fenland characters catching eels and practising ancient crafts, all of which looked like something out of another world but of course was probably going on round here until a mere generation or so ago; also some marvellous film of the traditional skating races when the fens freeze over - something that thankfully still is going on, apparently. I love those old films, but they fill me with nostalgia for a recent, but totally vanished, world which may have been harder but seems to have been a lot more decent and human.
I've been thinking quite a bit about how I feel about this area, and the idea that was half in the back of my mind when I came here that perhaps it might be a place to base myself in future. And the more I think about it, the more I think I was right. There are lots of pros and cons, and I think I am going to go back to Oxford (well, I have to anyway because of work) to consider them, but I would imagine there's a good chance I might return here for longer in a year's time. On the con side, there is the fact that I would have to 'start all over again', again - not least in finding some means of financial survival; and then I know absolutely nobody round here at all, and I find at my age it's terribly difficult to make new friends - but then I have very few friends in Oxford, anyway, though at least it's a place where acquaintances say 'hallo' to me when I walk down the street, which is something. And I would find it quite a wrench in some ways to leave the place - Oxford is somewhere that's had at least a symbolic significance for me for most of my life, and it has some sentimental associations; it does have a lot going for it, in many ways, but the problem I've found in the nearly 7 years I've been based there is that it has changed so quickly, and so much of what used to appeal to me about the place has been spoilt - not least, the atmosphere, which has been ruined by urbanisation, the massive tourist presence, and the baleful influence of London, from whence huge numbers of extremely unattractive people and influences seem to have invaded the city. Even on a brief acquaintance, I'm fairly sure that Cambridge has somehow avoided the worst of these things - it was distinctly quieter, more provincial in some ways, more East Anglian and more English. Whether it's because of the transport links or the fact that Oxford is so much better known abroad, but it seems to me that Cambridge has not been swamped by alien influences to the degree Oxford has. And the river is much quieter and less effort generally - though there is no canal to retreat to in floods, etc, but then I gather that the waterways round here are very well controlled by the drainage of the Middle Level. And certainly, being able to circulate between Ely and Cambridge, with stops in between and trips up various little rivers that run into the Ouse, not to mention I suppose going further, to St. Ives and so on,and on to the Middle Level, would give me as much if not more scope than the Isis and Thames around Oxford. And then the music, with the Cathedral at Ely and the Cambridge colleges, and all the concerts and things, is at least as good. And then Cambridge itself seems to have retained a lot more of its local shops, and a really nice daily market, and lots of bookshops and things. Though I did find to my dismay that all three of the main big bookshops have musak playing, which is a tragedy - the one wonderful thing about Blackwells in Oxford, and one reason it is one of my main haunts, is it complete peace and quiet and absence of aural wallpaper. And it seems that nowadays transport links with London are actually better and faster from Cambridge, though it would be trickier to get to important places like Eton. It's all so very difficult to decide. I suppose I have this idea that I might find a place somewhere in this country where I might actually feel 'at home', and have some kind of half-decent and half-fulfilling life, what's left of it. Anyway, I shall cogitate on this for while. In any case, even if I did move and it turned out to be a disaster, there is no reason why I shouldn't just move back - that is of course the advantage of a narrowboat - moving in itself is not that difficult.
Friday 31st August
Today I moved down to Bait's Bite Lock, preparatory to leaving Cambridge tomorrow and going back down to Ely. However, I had not totally relinquished the city, and went for a cycle ride with the intention of examining Grantchester - haunt of Rupert Brooke and other privileged young people when the world and they were still young. It turned into one of my epics that I have been having rather too many of recently as a result of setting out without maps and trusting to my sense of direction. The latter must be getting a bit wonky these days, as I went far too far south and ended up doing a massive detour through the countryside round Cambidge; this at least gave me a chance to get a further idea of what the place and its surroundings are like. Generally it compares well with Oxford - at least it doesn't have that awful ring of motorway all round it, even though the M11 is not too far away and there is certainly plenty of traffic on the main roads in the vicinity. One nice thing is that in one village I passed through there was a table outside a house with some very fine raspberries and damsons for sale for charity at a very modest price - I put my money in the unattended box and went off well pleased with such a find in this day and age. Eventually after many a long mile I did actually find Grantchester, but it was a bit of a disappointment; you could see that it would have been a delightful place once, and it still has some fine houses, pubs and a church, but the constant stream of traffic and the double yellow lines on each side of the road indicate the kind of suburban commuter village it has now become. There was a rather stiff and uninspired statue of Rupert Brooke in the driveway of the Old Vicarage - in uniform; I would have thought something based on one of his naked swimming sessions in Grantchester Meadows (that he was careful to have photographed) would have been both more appropriate and more aesthetically satisfactory for a statue.
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< Rupert Brooke looking uncomfortable next to obligatory ugly modern car in the garden of the Old Vicarage |
I have been afflicted today and yesterday with the most excruciating and intense attack of hay-fever I can remember having for many years. It must be something in the local atmosphere - I have no idea what, but the endless streaming nose, sneezing, running eyes and hot flush are simply torture. And the ridiculous thing is I haven't really had hay-fever for years. I earnestly hope that going down to Ely may produce a change of atmosphere and some release - bad hay-fever is, as I now remember, the kind of trivial yet absolutely unbearable thing that could quite realistically induce one to blow ones brains out, if the requisite revolver was at hand.
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< The old ones are the best ones |  |
Thursday 30th
Moved down-river out of the centre of Cambridge to somewhere a bit quieter where there used to be a ferry; just some kids fishing, and cows grazing across the river. Though there were quite a few people wandering along the towpath there were few if any of the thuggish types you get on the towpath in Oxford. I went for a walk through the south part of the city and visited the museum of Archaeology and also the Scott Polar Institute - the latter a fascinating place with rather poignant association in exhibits like final letters from Scott and his comrades discovered with their frozen bodies. It's good that they are commemorated by such an institution, anyway. I purchased a delightful postcard of that photo of a crew member with 'Mrs. Chippy' the ship's cat who accompanied Shackleton's famous expedition.
I had also visited the Fizwilliam Museum, which seemed even better than I remembered, and has acquired a whole new modern wing with a rather nice tea-room. The visit was slightly marred by the screaming and shrieking of two small children who were their fat, t-shirted and be-shorted father who obviously had no concept that their behaviour was in any way a problem for other visitors. I noticed the gallery attendant looking a bit perturbed, but as usual these days he didn't dare say anything, so I had to leave that gallery without looking at it properly - but in any case you could hear them more or less everywhere in the museum. Why is such anti-social and ignorant behaviour tolerated nowadays? It certainly wouldn't have been in the past.
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< A city that has remained civilised? |
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< Moored in Cambridge at
last The view from Jesus Lock > |
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< The first of the very
easy all-electric Cam locks Strange boathouses hale into view > |
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Wednesday 29th August 2007
I have been moored here by Jesus Green, in Cambridge, since yesterday, having arrived in a state of some exhaustion and uncertainty about finding a mooring, having stayed the night before just outside the city, and being misled by a signpost indicating a mere two mile walk to Cambridge. I've been very lax in updating this journal along the way because after journeying on my own for almost a month a couple of people decided to visit me on the same weekend. The journey up from LIttleport was quite idyllic, really, with sun glittering on the wide and surprisingly straight river and lots of boats around. Littleport was quite a nice little town, but once again slightly spoiled by gangs of uncouth-looking youth hanging around. But I was impressed by a small monument on a side street to an heroic act by two railwaymen during the 2nd World War which not only had not been vandalised (it was at hand height), but even had a wreath in place that had clearly been there for some time. There was a small railway station where I was impressed to see that trains from London Kings Cross took only about an hour to Cambridge - much quicker than getting to Oxford. The line goes to King's Lynn, and I am thinking of taking a trip there if I have time. It was only a couple of hours up to Ely, and I was immediately taken with the atmosphere of the place; the river-front was really lively and picturesque in a way quite unlike anywhere else I've visited on this journey - although I have been to Ely before, years ago, I didn't even notice the river part then, so it was something of a revelation. Also it was extremely noticeable, to me at least, that there was an almost absence of the usual feral youth wandering about; even later on a Saturday night the atmosphere was surprisingly restrained - is it possible I have found a town in Britain that has retained its air of civilisation? And of course there is the Cathedral, that dominates the place and looms from afar as you go up the river, like some vast mythical castle, from some angles, and like 'the ship of the Fens' from others. Although I vaguely remembered the building and I definitely went to Evensong there many years ago, it was somehow far more impressive and grand than my memories indicated. Perhaps I have become more sensitive to such things - though that hardly seems likely. There was a free organ recital on the Sunday evening, which was rather good and gave time to absorb the full effect of the place. The nave is really quite magnificent, with proportions that make it seem incredibly high, and the effect of the great lantern from inside is awe-inspiring. I hope to be able to attend a service on the way back up, when the Cathedral choir has returned from its holidays. Otherwise Ely is a small but pleasant place, with a shopping area that hasn't completely succumbed to the usual homogeneity.
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< Doesn't capture the awe-inspiring quality of the nave at all > |
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< Monumental is the word for Ely Cathedral >. |  |
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< Ely waterfront. Pleasant streets in Ely > |
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The trip up from Ely to Cambridge is only really a day's one, though a fairly longish day at my speed. But as usual I got worried towards the end about getting a mooring in the city centre and so stopped about an hour away near a village called Milton. We were going to get a bus in, but after waiting at the bus-stop for a while I remembered it was a bank holiday and on ringing the enquiry number found there were no buses at all! So it was an Indian takeaway and couple of cans of lager on the boat that evening. The River Cam, up to Cambridge, doesn't have the grandeur of the Isis, but is quite