amusements, current affairs, history, natural history, photography, quotes, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week’s collection …

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
[Mark Twain]

Now I know foreigners do things strangely but …

The 31-year-old king of the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan announces his intention to marry this October.
[BBC News report]

Oh, that’s alright then. As long as he’s not marrying last October. That would be necrophilia.

I masturbate because it makes me feel warm, embodied, juicy, alert, calm, self-possessed, and fulfilled. I masturbate to celebrate my body and my sovereignty. I masturbate and am not ashamed to do so. There are other things I do when I’m alone that are far more embarrassing.
[Allison at http://thesexpositivephotoproject.blogspot.com]

One really shouldn’t laugh at other misfortune, especially in wartime …

9 May 1941 … We’d just got down to the Victoria in Turners Hill when there was a whoosh and a bang as a [250kg high explosive] bomb fell where the Fire Station is now – it was old Bertie Simpkins’ junk yard then. Mrs Whiddon who lived opposite had an old lavatory pan come in through her front bedroom window!
[Peter Rooke, Cheshunt at War 1939-1945]

Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.
[Luther Burbank]

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
[Dorothea Lang]

Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]

amusements, current affairs, freedom of speech

Sex and Football

Well I bet you think this is going to be about the goings on of footballers and their WAGs. Wrong!

I just spotted this headline on BBC News: FA raises mixed teams age limit. “A Devon girl is celebrating after her campaign to raise the age limit for mixed sex teams from 11 to 13 is accepted by the Football Association.”

Why? Why is there an age limit? Why is this even an issue? Isn’t this (legally) sex discrimination?

Why shouldn’t girls be allowed to play football with boys at any age? If they’re good enough why can’t they play for Manchester United, Arsenal or Dog and Bone Rovers? No, not in ladies’ teams. Alongside the men. Aside from the practicality of needing separate dressing rooms (and even that I don’t really understand; nor is it impossible), where is the issue?

I suggest the issue is all in the heads of the old stuffed shirts that run football – and not just football but all sporting organisations, at every level from the grass-roots to the international.

I remember many years ago (like the mid-70s) when I was 3rd XI captain of my then local cricket club, I got fed up with the lads not always turning up. The wife of one of the guys who played with me was a good cricketer – she played for the local polytechnic (now a university) side which was then one of the top ladies teams in the London area. I made it clear that if the lads weren’t going to be committed I’d play this young lady, who I suspect wouldn’t have disgraced the club 1st XI. And I got roundly condemned by a chorus of “You can’t do that!”. When challenged the only sensible objection was “Where will she change?”. Oh FFS! It’s not exactly an objection which couldn’t be overcome even though we did play on communal recreation grounds.

I found this so pathetic, even at the time, that ever since I’ve had a very jaundiced view of the hierarchy of sport governing bodies. Indeed I got so fed up with the attitudes of the stuffed shirts running cricket (my first love as a sport) that I gave up on cricket entirely some years ago.

Let the girls play with the boys if they want to. Just pick the best (wo)man for the team. OK?!

memes, music

Listography – Albums by Band

5 Comments

For this week’s Listography from Kate Takes 5 we’re asked for our top five albums, one per band. For once I’ve decide to play by the real spirit of the game and restrict myself to rock/pop and not include classical music. So here’s my selection, in no particular order …

1. Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
There are no special stories attached to any of these albums and I can’t tell you why I choose most of them except that I enjoy them. But Wish You Were Here is throughout a brilliant piss-take although you need to know the culture of the 60s and 70s to get much of it. For me this and Dark Side of the Moon (hard to choose between them) are classic Floyd and indeed classic rock – but then this is the rock of my (formative) post-grad days. Pink Floyd on Facebook.
2. The Beatles, Abbey Road
I was going to say this is the album where the Beatles started “doing it for me”, but that’s not quite true as I think that was probably Sergeant Peppers. I had to toss a coin between Abbey Road and Let It Be; Abbey Road wins by a short head. Again this is for me the quintessential music of my undergraduate years – I never really did get the very heavy rock of King Crimson and the like – but there was so much really great rock music around then. The Beatles on Facebook
3. Yes, Close to the Edge
Lyrical rock again from my post-grad days. I have to thank my then flat-mate Geoff for introducing me to both Yes and Caravan. And who can forget thos Roger Deam album covers?! Find Yes on Facebook.
4. Caravan, For Girls that Grow Plump in the Night
What do you mean you’ve never heard of Caravan? They’re a British band (originally from Canterbyr). And no, they weren’t a one hit wonder – they’re still touring and recording! You can find Caravan on Facebook too. See also Yes, above!
5. Moody Blues, Octave
Earlier Moody Blues (On the Threshold of a Dream, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour) are again the stuff of my student days. And listening to them again recently I found their mood rather depressing. Octave is a bit later and resonates more with me. Moody Blues on Facebook.

And I haven’t even mentioned Dire Straits, Queen, The Who, Rolling Stones …

Now a bigger challenge would be to find ones favourite five tracks (but only one per band). Hmmm … hard … and they wouldn’t necessarily come off these five albums!

Anyone else for choosing five albums?

food+drink

Microwave Kedgeree

Noreen did us a scrummy tea last night using one of my oldest, simplest and best tested recipes: Microwave Kedgeree. As you’d expect from me it’s a bit different, so here’s the recipe. If you don’t like fish there are some options at the end.

Microwave Kedgeree
Serves 4 normal people or 2 gluttons

6 oz (180 grams) Long Grain Rice
3 or 4 large Eggs
12 oz (350 grams) Smoked Haddock
2 or 3 Tomatoes (roughly chopped)
2 medium Onions (sliced)
2 cloves Garlic
Butter (or Extra-Virgin Olive Oil)
8-10 Black Olives (optional)
Pepper and Herbs (fresh if possible)

1. Hard boil the eggs and cook the rice.
2. Cook the fish in the microwave with a little butter.
3. Braise the onions and garlic in the microwave (3-5 minutes on 100%) with a little butter.
4. Meanwhile flake the fish, shell and chop the eggs, drain and rinse the rice, roughly chop the tomatoes, pit and halve the olives.
5. Mix everything together in a large serving dish.
6. Season to taste with pepper and herbs and dot with butter. (There will probably be enough salt from the fish.)
7. Heat through in the microwave for 5 minutes on 100%.
8. Serve and eat.

You could actually do this with any smoked fish, although I think kippers might not be the best option. Or you could even try a version with pancetta, chorizo or beans (just omit step 2 if you start with a ready cooked ingredient). Another option is to use mushrooms instead of tomatoes.

amusements, books, history, pleasures, quotes, topographical

Quotes of the Week

A small selection of this week’s strange and interesting findings …

Hogwash entered the room, and, having entered, decided, upon entry, having viewed all there was, and some of what was not, to be seen, to remove himself, once more, from the room by the same route through which he had, so recently, entered.
[Craig Brown, The Marsh-Marlowe Letters, parodying Anthony Powell]

He possessed that opportune facility for turning out several thousand words on any subject whatever at the shortest possible notice: politics; sport; books; finance; science; art; fashion – as he himself said, ‘War, Famine, Pestilence or Death on a Pale Horse.’ All were equal when it came to Bagshaw’s typewriter. He could take on anything, and – to be fair – what he produced, even off the cuff, was no worse than was to be read most of the time. You never wondered how on earth the stuff had ever managed to be printed.
[Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room]

I just love Tudor/Restoration “irregular” spelling …

[I]n 1558-59 St Mary Woolnoth paid ‘one Robert Bennett syngyngeman for servynge in the churche at dyvers tymes from the begynnynge of August tyll Michaelmas’.
[John Harley, The World of William Byrd: Musicians, Merchants and Magnates]

London is a patchwork of the fabulous and the shit.
[Antonia at Whoopee]

Too right!

Finally something bringing us right up to date …

This train reduces CO2 emissions
[Slogan on a Southern Trains emu at Clapham, 19/05/2011]

I’m not sure how this is achieved: presumably the train selectively sucks CO2 from the atmosphere. One suspects they mean “this train causes the emission of less CO2 than other trains/modes of transport. But that’s not what it says, guys!

books, photography, topographical

Rye

Rye, in East Sussex, is another of my favourite places because of its history, its friendliness, its proximity to the sea and to Romney Marsh and of course because of its “olde worlde” charm and picturesqueness.

St Anthony's, Rye
St Anthony’s, Rye, © Copyright by Keith Marshall, 2010.
Following on from my post of a couple of days ago about Fairfield church, I came upon this poem by Patric Dickinson (the poet, 1914-1994, not to be confused with my friend Patric Dickinson who is currently Clarenceux King of Arms and still very much alive).

Rye

It seems solid enough
As you come through the Landgate
And the streets climb up to the church
That, like a stranded ark,
     Straddles the hilltop.

But Time is different here.
The streets are full of beggars
You cannot see, who speak
The tongues of centuries
     To the deaf tourists.

‘We have always been perverse
And unprofessional beggars,
For we want to give, not take,
To offer you this town’s
     Particular nature.

‘It is not what you see
As you trip on the cobbles
And say the houses are quaint,
Nor was it ever like that,
     It is our presence.

‘The town keeps whispering
Its history – fishermen, merchants –
Lifetimes that have been built
From unimportant scraps
     To construct a clement

‘Enclave and sanctuary.
Once you have understood this,
You will feel Rye within,
And be disposed to come back,
     If you ever leave it.’

books, history, personal, topographical

Fairfield

Wanting something to read in bed the other evening, and not wanting anything heavy, I chose at random from the pile of books by the bed. My hand alighted on Betjeman’s England, an anthology by Stephen Games of extracts from the scripts of Sir John Betjeman’s TV films about England.

Now I love the Romney Marsh and Dungeness in Kent, and the nearby small town of Rye. So imagine my enjoyment when the book fell open, quite at random, at the following piece about Fairfield Church in the heart of the Romney Marsh.

KENT

FAIRFIELD CHURCH, ROMNEY MARSH
From the Shell series Discovering Britain with John Betjeman
Random Film Productions Ltd
ITV, Spring 1956 (exact date unknown)
Director: Peter Woosnam-Mills

Romney Marsh, on the Sussex border of Kent and close to the sea. Romney Marsh, where the roads wind like streams through pasture and the sky is always three-quarters of the landscape. The sounds I associate with Romney Marsh are the bleating of innumerable sheep and the whistle of the sea wind in old willow trees. The sea has given a colour to this district: it has spotted with silver the oak posts and rails; it gives the grass and the rushes a grey salty look and turns the red bricks and tiles of Fairfield Church a saffron yellow.

For a moment, when you see Fairfield Church there on the skyline, you think it must be a farm or a barn. There’s no road to it – only a footbridge and a path. And in the church, you feel you’re on an island in the marsh.

Inside, it’s like walking underneath an upturned ship. (Those great beams are made of Kentish oak.) The communion rails go round three sides of the altar as they used to in many churches two hundred years ago; and since in those days, just as much as now, people were literate, they hired a local inn-sign painter to paint, in yellowish-gold letters on a black background, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments.

The church is still kept up and used, though it’s miles from anywhere, and that’s what gives it atmosphere.

Another thing that endears Fairfield Church to me is that it’s been spared electric light and the surgical basins in the roof that go with it. How pleasant those Victorian oil lamps are and how well they fit in with the scene.

Let’s go into one of the high, white box pews. And sitting here in the quiet waste of marsh, islanded by grass in water, let’s think ourselves back two hundred years. The place can’t have looked very different. The parson read the service from that lower desk where the candle is, he climbed to the pulpit to preach, and if you found yourself not attending to the sermon, there was always a text to remind you of where you were and of the reverence due to this loved and lonely house of God.

Fairfield Church: it’s about ten miles from Tenterden in Kent and therefore sixty-three miles south-east of London.

I’ve been to Fairfield a number of times and it is even now just as fascinating and delightful as Betjeman paints it, despite several heavy restorations in the last 200 years. Fairfield really is in the middle of nowhere, and probably always was as there was never anything much by way of village there. There is still no electricity but the church is used, at least sporadically.

For me Fairfield has a further attraction. It is dedicated to my patron saint, Thomas Beckett (Thomas of Canterbury), ca. 1118 to 29 December 1170; murdered at the behest of Henry II and canonised by Pope Alexander III in 1173.

The church, which is tiny, is on a slight rise in the middle of a rather wet sheep field, and when you go into the church you have to remember to shut the door behind you so the sheep don’t follow you. I have been there and found several sheep sheltering in the porch!

Yes, it is one of those idyllic and idiosyncratic English places!

There’s more on the architectural structure of Fairfield church here.

Stephen Games (Ed.), Betjeman’s England (John Murray, London, 2009)