books, topographical

Rye Reprise

It feels like time for another piece of poetry about Rye, again by Patric Dickinson.

William Henry Borrow, Rye from the Marshes

Topographical

Van Dyck drew it from the South
From the river, seeing a plateau,
The great church riding eastward
In its tideless ocean of faith.

From the East, coming over the marsh
Or from the golf-club it’s a pyramid
With the church tower at the top.
A black silhouette in the twilight.

Turner halfway from Winchelsea,
From the West, romantically stationed
Upon some dangerous sea-stropped
Causeway of his imagination.

Drew Camber Castle floated away
Almost hull-down to the east
And Rye in a spotlight, half Italian,
And half as it were a volcano.

With smoke and fire belching
From the church, it is always the church
That crowns the unique town.

From the North you come down hill
From the mainland then climb again,
Up this rocky hillock like a moraine heap:
Rye is an island, St Mary’s Mount.

Is also a castle, should have a drawbridge,
There are aeons of life in this pyramid,
Fire in this volcano,–
Is also like a beautifully jewelled broach
Worn at South England’s throat,
As land gives way to channel:
The Tillingham mates with the Brede
And both mix in the Rother
The sweet and the salt waters,
Below Watchbell Street and under
The eyes of the Ypres Tower,
Last dry land or first island,
A place between past and future,
A historic present to speak of
In a language of salty silence
That is sweet on every tongue.

amusements, current affairs, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week, a few words of wisdom from some Americans …

Any social organization does well enough if it isn’t rigid. The framework doesn’t matter as long as there is enough looseness to permit that one man in a multitude to display his genius. Most so-called social scientists seem to think that organization is everything. It is almost nothing — except when it is a straitjacket. It is the incidence of heroes that counts, not the pattern of zeros.
[Robert A Heinlein, Glory Road]

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
[Thomas Jefferson]

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.
[Scott Adams]

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
[Thomas Edison]

I have always believed that I was slightly saner than most people. Then again, most insane people think this.
[Truman Capote]

history, topographical

Shoe Shine

I had a minor-ly interesting experience last Thursday. I had to go into central London for a meeting and chose to travel on the Chiltern Line from Harrow on the Hill to Marylebone. Being early we stopped for a coffee. It was then that I noticed, in a corner of the station something I’ve not seen for many a long year: a shoe shine. So of course I had to do something I’ve only ever done once or twice before when quite young and have my shoes shined.

Well they did need it!

Apart from the fact he was there, what interested me were two things.

First he wasn’t the old-style shoe shine with a wooden box, a mat and a stool. He had a sort of booth affair which meant the young man had a better working environment as he could sit in relative comfort while I perched on a high seat as well. It felt a bit unsafe as the super-sized me was perched some way off the ground on what felt like quite a small bolster. But with feet on the foot-rests it was actually fine and a fine view as well.

The other interesting thing was that he had three grades of service: basic at about £2.50, a better one at about £4.50 and the luxury job at £5.99. I went for the luxury job, as I felt my shoes needed the extra nourishment and they got several rounds of polish and buff. The job took about 5 or 6 minutes — nice time for Noreen to finish her coffee.

I remember the old shoe shines in London in the 1950s. Indeed I remember my father telling me about them and taking me to experience having my shoes shined, I think by an old boy on Liverpool Street Station, when I was probably about 8 or 10. By the time I remember shoe shines they were mostly old men (often war veterans). They were all real old characters, often dispensing worldly wisdom, racing tips or Stock Market predictions. But they were a dying breed as there weren’t many boys learning the trade and even fewer people prepared to pay for their services. Essentially they had died out by the 1970s to be replaced by inferior mechanical brushing machines in hotels and offices.

But they’re making a come-back albeit often with upmarket stands/booths. I first noticed one a few years back in Heathrow Terminal 1 and they now seem to be creeping back into central London — there are certainly shoe shines in Leadenhall Market and Burlington Arcade — although I can’t see them becoming as ubiquitous on street corners as they obviously were before the war.

I don’t recall the cost of a shoe shine in the fifties (one shilling comes to mind, but I’m sure someone will be along to correct me), nor if they had several differently-priced offerings, but the cost of the modern version seemed eminently reasonable.

beliefs, freedom of speech, memes, thoughts, words

Word of the Week

Libertine.
1. A freedman; one freed from slavery. [Roman]
2a. The name given to certain “free-thinking” sects (of France and elsewhere on the continent) of the sixteenth century.
2b. One who holds free or loose opinions about religion; a free-thinker.
2c. One who follows his own inclinations or goes his own way; one who is not restricted or confined.
3. A man who is not restrained by moral law, especially in his relations with the female sex; one who leads a dissolute, licentious life.

The word ‘libertine’ was first applied in the 1550s to a sect of Protestants in northern Europe who, with unimpeachable logic, reasoned that since God had ordained all things, nothing could be sinful. They proceeded to act accordingly. Their views were regarded with horror by both Catholics on one side and Calvinists on the other.
[AC Grayling, The Form of Things]

memes, music

Listography – Gigs

1 Comment

For Kate’s Listography this week we’re asked to nominate the top five bands we’d like to see live. I’ve never been a great one for going to gigs and seeing bands live partly because they’ve often seemed unreasonably expensive and partly because you can often get a better sound from a studio recording without being deafened — but then I grew up with the excessively loud rock bands of the 60s/70s. Nevertheless there are a few bands I wouldn’t mind seeing live. Those of you who know me at all can probably guess a lot of the list …

Well we’ll start with three all-time favourites Pink Floyd, closely followed by Yes and Caravan. What more is there to say about any of them?


At I’d probably but The Beatles. It would have to be late Beatles, as of the era of Abbey Road and Let It Be, by when they’d stopped performing live and the cracks were beginning to show.

All of those four create such magical music (at least it is for me). How I’ve never been to see especially Pink Floyd I just don’t know.

Creeping in at #5 would I think be the Barron Knights. Originally formed in 1959 they’re a set of guys who performed for the hell of it (as I recall they all had regular jobs) and did those brilliant Christmas-time parodies of other bands. And they were still performing live until relatively recently.

And the Barron Knights win by the shortest of short heads from Who, Rolling Stones, Queen, Dire Straits, Moody Blues, not necessarily in that order.

personal, thoughts

Intellectuals

Why do I matter? If I matter at all it’s because I’m an intellectual. And society needs intellectuals, pace this short essay in AC Grayling’s collection The Form of Things …

The role of the intellectual

Ideas are the motors of history. They take many forms and have many sources, and often assume a life of their own, and prove to be bigger than the epochs they influence. As such they are matters of vital concern; and therefore it is necessary that they be examined and debated, clarified and criticised, adopted when good and defeated when bad. The job of doing these things belongs to all of us, but in practice it falls to those with a particular interest in, and sometimes aptitude for, the task. Such are the ‘intellectuals’.

Intellectuals are people who are not just interested in ideas, but who actively engage with them. They set themselves the task — some of them see it as a duty, given the opportunities they have had for acquiring the relevant interests and skills — to analyse, to ask questions, to clarify, to seek fresh perspectives, to suggest, to criticise, to challenge, to complain, to examine and propose, to debate, to educate, to comment, to suggest and, where possible, to discover. They see it as part of their remit to contribute to the conversation society has with itself about matters moral, political, educational and cultural, and to remind society of the lessons history taught it, and of the promises it has made for its future. And thereby the intellectual comes sometimes to be — as Socrates elected himself to be — a gadfly on the body politic, stinging it into alertness of mind.

The risk run by intellectuals is to seem pretentious, fatuous, pompous, self-congratulatory and given to polysyllabic mouthings of banality and cliché. And too often they actually are so — often enough to have a bad name in the Anglo-Saxon world, where blunt common sense is valued above Gauloise-wreathed nuances of gossip about concepts.

But the advantage to society of energetic intellectual activity is that it offers society self-awareness, wakefulness and clarity, inspiration and new ideas, and intelligence in debate and action. A sluggard community which never asks questions or inspects the world around it with a bright eye, and which never tries out different ways of understanding its circumstances, is sure first to stagnate, and then to slip backwards.

Thus do intellectuals perform a service: by keeping the hope of progress alive, and by never ceasing to argue about its nature and direction.

And for me being a working thinker goes hand-in-hand with being a catalyst and with my role as Hon. Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society.

history, medical, pleasures, quotes, science, thoughts, topographical

Quotes of the Week

Somehow I’m not writing this week, probably because I’ve spent a lot of time with my head in family history research. But here is this weeks strange set of bedfellows.

First I’ve been reading a 1923 book about my home town and discovered that even Cromwell’s officials in 1650 could write estate agent-ese …

The Presence Chamber. One very large, spacious delightful Room called the Kinge’s Presence Chamber, being wainscotted round with carved wainscott of good oak, coullered of a liver color, and richly guilded with gold, with antique pictures over the same ; the ceiling full of guilded pendants hanging down, setting forth the roome with great splendour […] Also a very fair, large chimny piece of black and white marble, with four pilasters of the same stone […]
[Government Survey of Theobalds Palace, 1650 quoted in Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt]


This really is what it’s thought Theobalds Palace looked like!
And from the same volume this delight …

For, if those enemies to all good endeavours, Danger, Difficulty, Impossibility, Detraction, Contempt, Scorne, Derision, yea, and Desperate Despight, could have prevailed by their accursed and malevolent interposition either before, at the beginning, in the very birth of proceeding, or in the least stolne advantage of the whole prosecution; this Worke of so great worth had never bin accomplished.
[John Stow, Survey of London, quoted in Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt]

And now for some things much more of our time …

Face to face advice on the internet.
[BBC TV London News, 11/07/2011]

Be especially sure to wipe your children down. Children are just about the grimiest thing in the world.
[Rob Dunn at Scientific American Blogs]

Boris Johnson knows even less about geology than he does about geography. Undercutting Ealing with a tunnel means my constituents, and his electoral voters, will fall into the ground. London’s transport system is built on clay, it would cost more money to tunnel through that than if we replaced HS2 with sedan chairs and walked people to Birmingham.
[Ealing North MP, Steve Pound, on Mayor Boris Johnson’s idea of tunnelling HS2 rail under outer London]