I don't have a problem speaking in public, no matter how many people I might be speaking to.
This comes about because of my work in the Arts, where I often had to address a group of people I had not met before, and usually I would be introducing them to the people that would be leading creative sessions with them, when I was the Education Officer for Opera North based in Leeds, or the Development Director for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra based in Edinburgh.
Development is the word the orchestra used in the same context as education, but with the distinct intention that it should imply that the musicians might learn as much from those that they might meet in the context of development workshops as they would impart through demonstrating their skills as musicians.
But there was one occasion when working in Leeds for Opera North that I had enough kittens to fill a cat rescue sanctuary.
The context is linked to my previous blog about my time spent in prisons. I was in the middle of a residency in Wakefield Prison, during which a team of artists including a director, a writer, a composer, a bassoonist, and a maker/designer, would enable a group of lifers on the education wing to create an opera in just a week. From scratch.
And just to make up the numbers, we had with us an entire BBC television crew, to film the entire process for a documentary that would be shown on BBC2.
I was living at the time in a gardener's cottage attached to a substantial walled garden in the grounds of a beautiful house on the edge of Leeds, in which I had worked for five years as part of a co-operative engaged in offering residential meeting facilities for the not for profit sector.
This explains why I was living rent free in this isolated cottage, the nearest neighbour to which was about 2 miles away, after the farmer's cottage just a few hundred yards from the gardener's cottage.
I was at home in this dilapidated cottage, and not paying rent simply because the house needed somebody living in it so that it remained standing. It was cold even in the Summer, because it was entirely North facing, as the garden faced South, which after all was the reason why the house had been built in the first place.
The entire rear wall of the garden would once have been heated, with a coal boiler that was still in situ behind a door that led almost underground. This would have made Spring arrive just a few weeks early, and I suppose would have had the secondary effect of making the cottage more habitable. No doubt for the head gardener, who would have had the duty of stoking that boiler to keep the early Spring frost at bay so that the garden could serve the table for the main house.
This was a substantial but not grand house, and we used the house and its grounds with the good wishes of the current owner who had no use for it personally, and whose generosity extended to encouraging our role in the development of co-operative enterprise around the UK. we paid a peppercorn rent, literally in our contract we had to pay over a peppercorn annually for the privilege of using this small estate that could accommodate 40 people on a residential basis, but daytime conferences of up to 150 people.
There were 15 acres of immediate grounds that came with the house, including woodland and a couple of fields that we allowed local horse-owners to graze for us. And there was a thatched 19th-century icehouse just on the edge of woodland, were ice would have been dragged from the natural frost trap at the base of a sloping field in front of the house. Now part of 150 acres of farmland that was let to a local farmer, and surrounded the house and its grounds, giving it the kind of seclusion that is rare for somewhere just 3 1/2 miles from the town centre of Leeds.
I was at home waiting for the telephone to ring, knowing that when it rang I would be interviewed live on the drivetime programme. I have never been quite so nervous waiting for a phone call, isolated as I was, but with this ominous machine that would connect me to the audience listening to one of the most popular programmes on what otherwise was the classical music channel within the BBC's stable of daily radio.
I have no idea how many people would have been listening, but it certainly must have been in the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions.
My job was a simple one, to answer the questions of the interviewer, but of course with the intention of doing so in as interesting a way as possible, and inevitably somehow justifying what we would be doing in one of the country's maximum security prisons.
Waiting for that telephone to ring the time of course stretched to breaking point, and all I wished to do was to get it over with, so that I could just get on with enjoying my evening in this fabulous environment. In spite of the cold damp atmosphere of the cottage, there is no doubt it was a beautiful place to live.
And then of course my peace was shattered by the ringing of the telephone, and I suppose it was all over more quickly than I could have imagined.
I think it went well, those that heard it said as much, and even by then I had plenty of experience under my belt. Local radio, even local television interviews on occasion.
But that single occasion still stands out as my most nerve wracking moment, as far from civilisation as perhaps it is possible to be, and yet suddenly speaking, to all intents and purposes, to the world. Terrifying.
Friday 27 April 2012
Wednesday 25 April 2012
My Time Inside
I've spent quite a lot of time in prison.
Never fortunately as a permanent inmate, but always as a visitor, with the opportunity to leave at the end of the day.
My reason for spending time in numerous prisons around the country has been in the pursuance of my work for Opera North's education department, and later in a similar role for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
And in addition to this, because the kind of work I did was undertaken by relatively few organizations, those of sufficient scale to have full-time education departments and with funding from the Arts Council that gave them the remit to spread an understanding of their artforms as deep into the community as possible, I would occasionally get invitations to see the work of colleagues in prisons.
On one memorable occasion, I went into Wormwood Scrubs prison to see a professional performance of Sweeney Todd, which many people may have seen a least in its screen version with Johnny Depp in the lead role.
It has been a genuine privilege to be able to visit and work in prisons, and it has left me with the humble wish that everyone at some stage in their life could see the reality of life in prisons.
If for no other reason than to recognize simply that prisoners are in the main exactly like every other citizen. There but for the grace of God, and perhaps a decent education, go I.
I suppose my experience of prison life has been limited by the fact that I have only been able to work with those prisoners that were engaged already in activities taking place in the prison education wing, and the work that I was able to undertake through the intervention of specialist artists was with people selected as suitable for such work.
Leaving this aside, the work I have been able to become involved with has been enormously enriching, demonstrating that the spark of creativity lives in every human being, whatever their circumstances.
It is unfortunate that for many people their first reaction to the idea of persons serving prison sentences having access to intense work with highly skilled creative people might be a that this is not what prisons should be concerned with, that they should be concerned with punishment.
This is a very shortsighted view, and one that is failing to recognize that it is through new and different experiences, and through education in particular, that dysfunctional behaviour might best be challenged. And hopefully be replaced by something that contributes to society, rather than is destructive of it.
I have been fortunate enough to have been educated well, and perhaps for this education to have taken place in the context of a loving home.
It is far too easy to take it for granted that every person has this same start in life, and that the choice to commit crime is in many cases a conscious one.
When spending time working with inmates, staff are always careful to stress that we shouldn't discuss the reasons why prisoners or where they are.
But human nature makes it impossible not to discover something of the circumstances of the people that soon become friends, in so far as to spend time with anyone makes this process inevitable.
There is a lot of talent in prisons, is a phrase that remains with me from those visits. If only it can be refocused, and that can often mean overcoming unbelievable obstacles that have been at the root of behaviour most of us will never countenance nor encounter.
Never fortunately as a permanent inmate, but always as a visitor, with the opportunity to leave at the end of the day.
My reason for spending time in numerous prisons around the country has been in the pursuance of my work for Opera North's education department, and later in a similar role for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
And in addition to this, because the kind of work I did was undertaken by relatively few organizations, those of sufficient scale to have full-time education departments and with funding from the Arts Council that gave them the remit to spread an understanding of their artforms as deep into the community as possible, I would occasionally get invitations to see the work of colleagues in prisons.
On one memorable occasion, I went into Wormwood Scrubs prison to see a professional performance of Sweeney Todd, which many people may have seen a least in its screen version with Johnny Depp in the lead role.
It has been a genuine privilege to be able to visit and work in prisons, and it has left me with the humble wish that everyone at some stage in their life could see the reality of life in prisons.
If for no other reason than to recognize simply that prisoners are in the main exactly like every other citizen. There but for the grace of God, and perhaps a decent education, go I.
I suppose my experience of prison life has been limited by the fact that I have only been able to work with those prisoners that were engaged already in activities taking place in the prison education wing, and the work that I was able to undertake through the intervention of specialist artists was with people selected as suitable for such work.
Leaving this aside, the work I have been able to become involved with has been enormously enriching, demonstrating that the spark of creativity lives in every human being, whatever their circumstances.
It is unfortunate that for many people their first reaction to the idea of persons serving prison sentences having access to intense work with highly skilled creative people might be a that this is not what prisons should be concerned with, that they should be concerned with punishment.
This is a very shortsighted view, and one that is failing to recognize that it is through new and different experiences, and through education in particular, that dysfunctional behaviour might best be challenged. And hopefully be replaced by something that contributes to society, rather than is destructive of it.
I have been fortunate enough to have been educated well, and perhaps for this education to have taken place in the context of a loving home.
It is far too easy to take it for granted that every person has this same start in life, and that the choice to commit crime is in many cases a conscious one.
When spending time working with inmates, staff are always careful to stress that we shouldn't discuss the reasons why prisoners or where they are.
But human nature makes it impossible not to discover something of the circumstances of the people that soon become friends, in so far as to spend time with anyone makes this process inevitable.
There is a lot of talent in prisons, is a phrase that remains with me from those visits. If only it can be refocused, and that can often mean overcoming unbelievable obstacles that have been at the root of behaviour most of us will never countenance nor encounter.
Saturday 14 April 2012
Less Can Be More
I am a great fan of film. Anyone reading some of my most recent blogs will already know this.
Quite recently, I have benefited from a VIP free membership from a well-known DVD rental company, and I have been able to supplement the films I already have purchased, and those that I have recorded over the last two or three years, with films which are more recent to DVD. This has vastly increased the range and number of films that I have been able to view, which has been very welcome indeed.
I have been sharing my membership of this DVD rental opportunity, with a good friend of mine who is perhaps in a similar situation to myself, in that a regular subscription to watch more recent DVDs than are broadcast would be beyond his means.
This is an act of friendship, but also shares the responsibility for choosing which films to watch, and this process of choice is surprisingly difficult, and particularly so when I already have a collection of approaching 1000 DVDs, over and above those films which I may have viewed already, and which for some reason are not available to purchase or to have recorded when broadcast.
What all of this has taught me, and surprisingly quickly, is that it is quite easy to feel swamped by the quantity and range of what it is possible to view.
I had not contemplated that like eating good food, I would have become so full so quickly.
The friend that shares my film viewing with me feels similarly that although of course this opportunity to make choices that would otherwise be beyond our reach is a great privilege, but he too has quickly become saturated, and almost ready for some kind of fasting or break from the treadmill of watching film after film.
What both of us find comforting in this situation is to watch those favorite films which we can view time and time again and in spite of regular viewing remain consistently films to which we can return for some kind of solace. Knowing what to expect perhaps, and certain indeed of the quality of what we will experience.
I am reminded of a story I heard many years ago, the origin of which I cannot remember, but it recalled a group of 16th century sailors that were shipwrecked on a desert island for some months, before they were rescued.
The island clearly provided sufficient by way of food and fresh water, and one of the ways in which the sailors kept themselves busy whilst they waited for the eventual rescue was to perform a piece of theatre that some of them had recently seen. In other words, in the days before there was so much to be seen by way of entertainment, it was possible for probably illiterate sailors to have remembered something that they may only have seen once at the Theatre. and remembered it sufficiently well to recount it to their shipmates so that they could re-enact the whole play.
It does not matter whether this story is true or false, the potential for it to be true ease what is important and remarkable.
There is no doubt that we all of us in what is referred to as the “civilized” world are subject to an enormous volume of sensory stimulation by way of theatre, film and television.
I have never discussed what this might mean from a psychological perspective in terms of our capacity to remember explicit facts and individual experiences. It is easy to assume that our capacity for memory expands continually to incorporate whatever range of experiences we need to remember.
I suspect that the exact mechanism for the brain to remember what it is stimulated to experience is not fully understood.
But with my experience of the past few months to draw from I have come to the conclusion that less might be much more. That it is far too easy to reach a point where what we wish to do is to cease adding to the volume of our experience, and concentrate instead on the quality of it.
I have begun to add films to the memory of my computer, as I have discovered that I can copy films that I have recorded from broadcast on to the backup drive of my computer.
I am therefore accumulating a selection of films that are consistently available to me without having to have them available on DVD so that I can play them. Removing the need for prior choice, or planning. Essential for someone in my position where I am unable to stand or walk, and therefore must depend upon my carers to provide for what I wish to consume.
I am finding that I get far more pleasure from the familiar than from the new and unexpected, which so often may disappoint, at least as often as it becomes something valued and worthwhile collecting.
This is an unexpected consequence of what after all has been a welcomed gift, and I wouldn’t for a moment wish to downplay my gratefulness for what has been done for me.
It is perhaps an unexpected lesson in the extent to which we are able to assimilate cultural things, and in a modern world that is saturated with sense experience, a reminder that a holiday could be as simple as not consuming those familiar things which we are so accustomed to consume. And thereby transforming perhaps the quality of how we experience those things that we do consume.
I haven’t yet quite understood how this might affect my general consumption of cultural things, but I have no doubt that I must at least have a good think about the implications of what I am experiencing.
This morning, my carer that looks after me at weekends, whose first language is not English, asked me to clarify some things that he had read recently.
This is a regular conversation that we will have, and he is often very complimentary at the extent of my understanding of the English language, which perhaps is more surprising to me then to him, as I am a native English speaker, and he has been brave enough to try to learn an entirely other language than his own, which is South American Spanish.
One of the things that he asked me to clarify was the meaning or something that I think is directly relevant here.
Quite simply, he had read in one of his many books aimed at introducing him to the breadth of English idiom a little story that had entirely perplexed him.
It was the description of writing a book of poems as like dropping a rose petal over the Grand Canyon, and expecting to hear a sound.
I did my best to explain this rather beautiful idea, and I don’t know if I was able to do anything other than explain that it is a beautifully poetic description of the indescribable.
Something else to think about in those moments when I contemplate what it is to make sense of the world through the senses that we are blessed with. I don’t even remember by whom the story was meant to have been told by.
Quite recently, I have benefited from a VIP free membership from a well-known DVD rental company, and I have been able to supplement the films I already have purchased, and those that I have recorded over the last two or three years, with films which are more recent to DVD. This has vastly increased the range and number of films that I have been able to view, which has been very welcome indeed.
I have been sharing my membership of this DVD rental opportunity, with a good friend of mine who is perhaps in a similar situation to myself, in that a regular subscription to watch more recent DVDs than are broadcast would be beyond his means.
This is an act of friendship, but also shares the responsibility for choosing which films to watch, and this process of choice is surprisingly difficult, and particularly so when I already have a collection of approaching 1000 DVDs, over and above those films which I may have viewed already, and which for some reason are not available to purchase or to have recorded when broadcast.
What all of this has taught me, and surprisingly quickly, is that it is quite easy to feel swamped by the quantity and range of what it is possible to view.
I had not contemplated that like eating good food, I would have become so full so quickly.
The friend that shares my film viewing with me feels similarly that although of course this opportunity to make choices that would otherwise be beyond our reach is a great privilege, but he too has quickly become saturated, and almost ready for some kind of fasting or break from the treadmill of watching film after film.
What both of us find comforting in this situation is to watch those favorite films which we can view time and time again and in spite of regular viewing remain consistently films to which we can return for some kind of solace. Knowing what to expect perhaps, and certain indeed of the quality of what we will experience.
I am reminded of a story I heard many years ago, the origin of which I cannot remember, but it recalled a group of 16th century sailors that were shipwrecked on a desert island for some months, before they were rescued.
The island clearly provided sufficient by way of food and fresh water, and one of the ways in which the sailors kept themselves busy whilst they waited for the eventual rescue was to perform a piece of theatre that some of them had recently seen. In other words, in the days before there was so much to be seen by way of entertainment, it was possible for probably illiterate sailors to have remembered something that they may only have seen once at the Theatre. and remembered it sufficiently well to recount it to their shipmates so that they could re-enact the whole play.
It does not matter whether this story is true or false, the potential for it to be true ease what is important and remarkable.
There is no doubt that we all of us in what is referred to as the “civilized” world are subject to an enormous volume of sensory stimulation by way of theatre, film and television.
I have never discussed what this might mean from a psychological perspective in terms of our capacity to remember explicit facts and individual experiences. It is easy to assume that our capacity for memory expands continually to incorporate whatever range of experiences we need to remember.
I suspect that the exact mechanism for the brain to remember what it is stimulated to experience is not fully understood.
But with my experience of the past few months to draw from I have come to the conclusion that less might be much more. That it is far too easy to reach a point where what we wish to do is to cease adding to the volume of our experience, and concentrate instead on the quality of it.
I have begun to add films to the memory of my computer, as I have discovered that I can copy films that I have recorded from broadcast on to the backup drive of my computer.
I am therefore accumulating a selection of films that are consistently available to me without having to have them available on DVD so that I can play them. Removing the need for prior choice, or planning. Essential for someone in my position where I am unable to stand or walk, and therefore must depend upon my carers to provide for what I wish to consume.
I am finding that I get far more pleasure from the familiar than from the new and unexpected, which so often may disappoint, at least as often as it becomes something valued and worthwhile collecting.
This is an unexpected consequence of what after all has been a welcomed gift, and I wouldn’t for a moment wish to downplay my gratefulness for what has been done for me.
It is perhaps an unexpected lesson in the extent to which we are able to assimilate cultural things, and in a modern world that is saturated with sense experience, a reminder that a holiday could be as simple as not consuming those familiar things which we are so accustomed to consume. And thereby transforming perhaps the quality of how we experience those things that we do consume.
I haven’t yet quite understood how this might affect my general consumption of cultural things, but I have no doubt that I must at least have a good think about the implications of what I am experiencing.
This morning, my carer that looks after me at weekends, whose first language is not English, asked me to clarify some things that he had read recently.
This is a regular conversation that we will have, and he is often very complimentary at the extent of my understanding of the English language, which perhaps is more surprising to me then to him, as I am a native English speaker, and he has been brave enough to try to learn an entirely other language than his own, which is South American Spanish.
One of the things that he asked me to clarify was the meaning or something that I think is directly relevant here.
Quite simply, he had read in one of his many books aimed at introducing him to the breadth of English idiom a little story that had entirely perplexed him.
It was the description of writing a book of poems as like dropping a rose petal over the Grand Canyon, and expecting to hear a sound.
I did my best to explain this rather beautiful idea, and I don’t know if I was able to do anything other than explain that it is a beautifully poetic description of the indescribable.
Something else to think about in those moments when I contemplate what it is to make sense of the world through the senses that we are blessed with. I don’t even remember by whom the story was meant to have been told by.
Thursday 12 April 2012
My Holiday At Home
It will soon be time to see the Bluebells once again.
I have my spies keeping an eye on a woodland not far from where I live in Worthing, in West Sussex, which is easily accessible for me to see this most spectacular event of Spring, in spite of the fact that I am a full-time wheelchair user.
This year, instead of an expensive week in a specialist care home, which is the only location that could accommodate my needs these days, I have opted instead to spread my holiday over the entire year, spending the cost of a week's stay in a specialist care home instead on a series of days out.
Ironically, this is exactly what messages have been given from central government, that for example schools should look more closely at their locality, within their local community, and use the local history around them as a focus for curriculum work.
In my case, because my home environment has been so carefully adapted to my physical needs, it will be so much more straightforward to plan a series of special days, approximately 1 each month, for me to explore these elements of local history and interest.
And there are many. I have already been to the theatre twice, to see Into The Woods, and a local amateur production of Oklahoma! Both of which were exceptionally interesting.
Bluebells will be next, and I am slowly researching and adding to my list of options throughout the rest of the year. It is surprising how much there is when one looks carefully. I was never much of an adventurer even when it was so much easier for me to travel, and in some respects I have been fortunate to have been able to travel widely through my work. So for example I have been as far afield as Japan, courtesy of my employer.
The same employer, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, enabled me to travel widely as the Development Director for the organisation, throughout the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. For two years, I ran the International Young Composer's Course, which involved around 15 of the world's most promising young composers visiting the island of Hoy, the largest of the Orkney Islands, to spend a fortnight sitting at the feet of the master, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who was the Composer Laureate of the orchestra, and this was his island home.
He was the Artistic Director of the St Magnus Festival, and every year his Young Composers Course would enable me to make several visits and spend the best part of a month on this small island, with a population of about 425 people.
400 of whom lived at one end of the island in a small town, and the other end of the island, on which Sir Peter lived contained the other 25.
Each day, the young people, aged between 18 and 25, would meet with Sir Peter in a local church, where they would develop a piece that they had brought with them, with the advice and help from the great composer, who could walk from his cottage almost at the foot of the Old Man of Hoy, about 3 miles away. They would be accommodated at a youth hostel next to the church.
In the second week of the residency, a small ensemble of musicians from the orchestra, about five, would arrive and would help to give voice to the compositions, and at the end of that week, as part of the Festival, a public concert would be given as part of the St Magnus Festival, in the church that had been the focus of the young composers work.
The most extraordinary thing was that there were only 25 people within several square miles of the Church where the performance of these brand new contemporary works would take place.
But there was a landing stage a few hundred yards from the church, and there would be a full audience of around 200 people that would travel from the mainland across Scapa Flow for the concert.
I would be accommodated for my time on the island at a local farmhouse, which had been a farmhouse for about 1000 years. And possibly had been established as a Viking outpost where longboats could be drawn up on to the sand that led directly to the water of Scapa Flow. From the window of the bedroom where I stayed, a colony of seals could be seen basking in the sunshine of this sandy strip.
Edgeworth is a very special way in which to see an isolated part of the UK, and staying with local people gave a sense of connection to that extraordinary history.
It is a part of Orkney that features in a Michael Powell film, the spy in Black, which is located almost precisely in that part of the island.
Extraordinarily, when I was just walking one year in that isolated part of the island, I bumped into someone that I had worked closely with 10 years before, who was now living in an isolated cottage overlooking Scapa Flow, with her husband who was a Marine Biologist. Her husband was at home waiting for some marine mammal to decay is sufficiently on the beach where they lived, so that he could collect the skeleton.
Kate was simply pushing her young child along a totally deserted strip of tarmac towards her home, and I was walking in the opposite direction towards where the workshops would be taking place. We were most surprised to be able to catch up in this isolated stretch of countryside. Kate had worked hard at trying to make an organic herb business by cultivating a walled garden at the Conference Centre Co-operative that I had been part of in Leeds in Yorkshire, all those years before.
How strange coincidence can be. And how small the world really is.
I have my spies keeping an eye on a woodland not far from where I live in Worthing, in West Sussex, which is easily accessible for me to see this most spectacular event of Spring, in spite of the fact that I am a full-time wheelchair user.
This year, instead of an expensive week in a specialist care home, which is the only location that could accommodate my needs these days, I have opted instead to spread my holiday over the entire year, spending the cost of a week's stay in a specialist care home instead on a series of days out.
Ironically, this is exactly what messages have been given from central government, that for example schools should look more closely at their locality, within their local community, and use the local history around them as a focus for curriculum work.
In my case, because my home environment has been so carefully adapted to my physical needs, it will be so much more straightforward to plan a series of special days, approximately 1 each month, for me to explore these elements of local history and interest.
And there are many. I have already been to the theatre twice, to see Into The Woods, and a local amateur production of Oklahoma! Both of which were exceptionally interesting.
Bluebells will be next, and I am slowly researching and adding to my list of options throughout the rest of the year. It is surprising how much there is when one looks carefully. I was never much of an adventurer even when it was so much easier for me to travel, and in some respects I have been fortunate to have been able to travel widely through my work. So for example I have been as far afield as Japan, courtesy of my employer.
The same employer, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, enabled me to travel widely as the Development Director for the organisation, throughout the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. For two years, I ran the International Young Composer's Course, which involved around 15 of the world's most promising young composers visiting the island of Hoy, the largest of the Orkney Islands, to spend a fortnight sitting at the feet of the master, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who was the Composer Laureate of the orchestra, and this was his island home.
He was the Artistic Director of the St Magnus Festival, and every year his Young Composers Course would enable me to make several visits and spend the best part of a month on this small island, with a population of about 425 people.
400 of whom lived at one end of the island in a small town, and the other end of the island, on which Sir Peter lived contained the other 25.
Each day, the young people, aged between 18 and 25, would meet with Sir Peter in a local church, where they would develop a piece that they had brought with them, with the advice and help from the great composer, who could walk from his cottage almost at the foot of the Old Man of Hoy, about 3 miles away. They would be accommodated at a youth hostel next to the church.
In the second week of the residency, a small ensemble of musicians from the orchestra, about five, would arrive and would help to give voice to the compositions, and at the end of that week, as part of the Festival, a public concert would be given as part of the St Magnus Festival, in the church that had been the focus of the young composers work.
The most extraordinary thing was that there were only 25 people within several square miles of the Church where the performance of these brand new contemporary works would take place.
But there was a landing stage a few hundred yards from the church, and there would be a full audience of around 200 people that would travel from the mainland across Scapa Flow for the concert.
I would be accommodated for my time on the island at a local farmhouse, which had been a farmhouse for about 1000 years. And possibly had been established as a Viking outpost where longboats could be drawn up on to the sand that led directly to the water of Scapa Flow. From the window of the bedroom where I stayed, a colony of seals could be seen basking in the sunshine of this sandy strip.
Edgeworth is a very special way in which to see an isolated part of the UK, and staying with local people gave a sense of connection to that extraordinary history.
It is a part of Orkney that features in a Michael Powell film, the spy in Black, which is located almost precisely in that part of the island.
Extraordinarily, when I was just walking one year in that isolated part of the island, I bumped into someone that I had worked closely with 10 years before, who was now living in an isolated cottage overlooking Scapa Flow, with her husband who was a Marine Biologist. Her husband was at home waiting for some marine mammal to decay is sufficiently on the beach where they lived, so that he could collect the skeleton.
Kate was simply pushing her young child along a totally deserted strip of tarmac towards her home, and I was walking in the opposite direction towards where the workshops would be taking place. We were most surprised to be able to catch up in this isolated stretch of countryside. Kate had worked hard at trying to make an organic herb business by cultivating a walled garden at the Conference Centre Co-operative that I had been part of in Leeds in Yorkshire, all those years before.
How strange coincidence can be. And how small the world really is.
Saturday 7 April 2012
Proud To Serve
My first collection of poetry, 50 x 50 - Useful Poetry For Troubled Times -has just gone on sale at the new online shop for the Queen Alexandra Hospital Home for Soldiers in Worthing.
The link to this will be given at the end of this blog, and I would urge you to visit the website of the Hospital, and of course the new online shop page which is an easy way of donating to this rather special cause.
I am incredibly proud to have had my work deemed suitable to be in effect promoted to support such a worthy cause, and one which has a rather extraordinary history.
The current hospital has been in Worthing since 1933, and currently provides care and rehabilitation for servicemen aged between 22 and 100 years of age.
The quality of the environment and of the care provided is to an extraordinarily high standard, and I have had the privilege of visiting on at least two of the annual open days during which the general public have the opportunity to visit the Hospital, to purchase items made by the residents, and in the context of a Summer Fayre to celebrate an extraordinary special place.
On both occasions that I have visited I have met Dame Vera Lynn, who has been a constant and regular supporter of the work of the hospital. It is funded by a mixture of public and private money, and public donations have been essential ever since the Hospital was first founded in 1915 when it was the George V Hospital located in London in what was originally to be built as the Stationery Office for the Crown. Plans were changed before the building was completed, and the hospital opened with around 2000 beds, and was the first point at which so many casualties from the Great War received the kind of care that they needed.
The current Hospital is clearly much smaller, but the ethos that was originally developed in that first incarnation of the institution remains to this day. Hence my dedication in this special edition of my poems to the memory of Constance Gladys, Marchionness of Ripon, who was so instrumental in the founding policies of the Hospital. She sadly died in 1917, but she is still remembered, and a rather beautiful marble bust of her remains in the depths of the Hospital.
I have written about her before in my blog, as she was far more than simply one of the many people that became engaged in the process of supporting the War Effort on the home front. She was a great Patron of the Arts, and was responsible for bringing Diaghilev and his Ballet Company, the Ballet Russes, to London in 1913.
This is I am sure the inspiration for the film by Michael Powell and Emmerich Pressburger, The Red Shoes, which tells the story of a ballet company that spent its winters in Monte Carlo, before travelling across the world to great acclaim.
Diaghilev in the film has become Lermontov, and in the story the film tells, the Prima ballerina Vicky Page becomes a victim of the obsessive nature of her art, when she falls in love with the composer of the ballet after which the film is named.
The film includes famously a 20 minute section in which the ballet is performed, after the death of the Prima ballerina with just her pair of red shoes on the stage. It is a most moving and accomplished film, and it was only recently when I discovered that Lady Ripon had been responsible for bringing Diaghilev and his company to London for the first time, and that this must be the inspiration for the film.
They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and in this case the strange truth is that my sister’s name is Vicky Page, and though she is far from a ballet dancer, I have had the great privilege of having worked with Opera North, based in Leeds, and thereby having worked with some of the best dancers as well as singers because no opera company can work without some kind of partnership with a Dance Company.
In the case of Opera North, on a regular basis they have worked with Northern Ballet Theatre, based just up the road from the Grand Theatre in Leeds. And on particular projects they have worked with Adventures In Motion Pictures, who are famous for having created their all-male production of Swan Lake, in which the dancers instead of representing swans, are seen as dancing fauns, and in the film of Billy Elliot, the young Billy Elliot grows up to be a principal in that company.
The final scene in that film shows his miner father attending a performance of Billy in one of the principal roles in that ballet, and it is one of the proudest moments for me as that dancer representing the adult Billy Elliot is limbering up in the wings. Because I have worked with those dancers, from that magical Company, which is possibly as close in modern dance to the amazing achievements of the ballet Russes, for which Diaghilev was the impresario.
Everything is connected, if only we knew the connections. And now, my book of poetry is available for sale to support this Hospital, and some strange circle has been completed, and my life working in the professional arts has made some kind of sense through my poetry being available to support the Hospital, as my disability makes it impossible for me to earn royalties without compromising the support that I require through my having multiple sclerosis.
I will also include a link where my book of poetry, that special edition as created for the Hospital, can be viewed online free of charge. I do hope anyone reading this blog will have a look at some of my poetry, and that it might persuade you to buy the special edition and thus to support something that began with the assassination of an Archduke in the Balkans in 1914.
http://www.qahh.org.uk/get-involved/donate/shop/
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/50-x-50-useful-poetry-for-troubled-times-extended-edition--2/read-online
The link to this will be given at the end of this blog, and I would urge you to visit the website of the Hospital, and of course the new online shop page which is an easy way of donating to this rather special cause.
I am incredibly proud to have had my work deemed suitable to be in effect promoted to support such a worthy cause, and one which has a rather extraordinary history.
The current hospital has been in Worthing since 1933, and currently provides care and rehabilitation for servicemen aged between 22 and 100 years of age.
The quality of the environment and of the care provided is to an extraordinarily high standard, and I have had the privilege of visiting on at least two of the annual open days during which the general public have the opportunity to visit the Hospital, to purchase items made by the residents, and in the context of a Summer Fayre to celebrate an extraordinary special place.
On both occasions that I have visited I have met Dame Vera Lynn, who has been a constant and regular supporter of the work of the hospital. It is funded by a mixture of public and private money, and public donations have been essential ever since the Hospital was first founded in 1915 when it was the George V Hospital located in London in what was originally to be built as the Stationery Office for the Crown. Plans were changed before the building was completed, and the hospital opened with around 2000 beds, and was the first point at which so many casualties from the Great War received the kind of care that they needed.
The current Hospital is clearly much smaller, but the ethos that was originally developed in that first incarnation of the institution remains to this day. Hence my dedication in this special edition of my poems to the memory of Constance Gladys, Marchionness of Ripon, who was so instrumental in the founding policies of the Hospital. She sadly died in 1917, but she is still remembered, and a rather beautiful marble bust of her remains in the depths of the Hospital.
I have written about her before in my blog, as she was far more than simply one of the many people that became engaged in the process of supporting the War Effort on the home front. She was a great Patron of the Arts, and was responsible for bringing Diaghilev and his Ballet Company, the Ballet Russes, to London in 1913.
This is I am sure the inspiration for the film by Michael Powell and Emmerich Pressburger, The Red Shoes, which tells the story of a ballet company that spent its winters in Monte Carlo, before travelling across the world to great acclaim.
Diaghilev in the film has become Lermontov, and in the story the film tells, the Prima ballerina Vicky Page becomes a victim of the obsessive nature of her art, when she falls in love with the composer of the ballet after which the film is named.
The film includes famously a 20 minute section in which the ballet is performed, after the death of the Prima ballerina with just her pair of red shoes on the stage. It is a most moving and accomplished film, and it was only recently when I discovered that Lady Ripon had been responsible for bringing Diaghilev and his company to London for the first time, and that this must be the inspiration for the film.
They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and in this case the strange truth is that my sister’s name is Vicky Page, and though she is far from a ballet dancer, I have had the great privilege of having worked with Opera North, based in Leeds, and thereby having worked with some of the best dancers as well as singers because no opera company can work without some kind of partnership with a Dance Company.
In the case of Opera North, on a regular basis they have worked with Northern Ballet Theatre, based just up the road from the Grand Theatre in Leeds. And on particular projects they have worked with Adventures In Motion Pictures, who are famous for having created their all-male production of Swan Lake, in which the dancers instead of representing swans, are seen as dancing fauns, and in the film of Billy Elliot, the young Billy Elliot grows up to be a principal in that company.
The final scene in that film shows his miner father attending a performance of Billy in one of the principal roles in that ballet, and it is one of the proudest moments for me as that dancer representing the adult Billy Elliot is limbering up in the wings. Because I have worked with those dancers, from that magical Company, which is possibly as close in modern dance to the amazing achievements of the ballet Russes, for which Diaghilev was the impresario.
Everything is connected, if only we knew the connections. And now, my book of poetry is available for sale to support this Hospital, and some strange circle has been completed, and my life working in the professional arts has made some kind of sense through my poetry being available to support the Hospital, as my disability makes it impossible for me to earn royalties without compromising the support that I require through my having multiple sclerosis.
I will also include a link where my book of poetry, that special edition as created for the Hospital, can be viewed online free of charge. I do hope anyone reading this blog will have a look at some of my poetry, and that it might persuade you to buy the special edition and thus to support something that began with the assassination of an Archduke in the Balkans in 1914.
http://www.qahh.org.uk/get-involved/donate/shop/
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/50-x-50-useful-poetry-for-troubled-times-extended-edition--2/read-online
Tuesday 3 April 2012
Stradivarius Tells A Story
Everything is connected, if only you can see the connections.
'Horizon' is one of the few documentary series that I find thorough and interesting. And being broadcast on the BBC, it is not subject to the worst that can be done to a documentary, to break it with adverts. Thus ensuring that after every break, the documentary is summarized to remind the modern day viewer of what they have already seen, reducing a television hour, to around 45 minutes.
This week, I watched an extraordinary documentary about the way in which weather extremes are becoming more common. And why this might be the case.
It is a fascinating insight into the different ways in which weather systems affect the world we live in, and indeed are affected by the Sun itself.
One of the most interesting threads which I have drawn from the programme was the use as an example of a Stradivarius violin. Made towards the end of the 18th century, it was the timber from which the violin was made which it was claimed has resulted in the quality of the sound produced by this most extraordinary of instruments.
In essence, the timber from which the carcass of a Stradivarius instrument is made is so finely grained that this must be the fundamental reason for the quality of the sound produced by the instrument. In the right hands.
The timber from which these instruments were made would have been grown during the preceding 200 years, mainly during the 17th century.
It was reckoned through the examination of ice cores that this coincided with a period of extreme cold in the northern hemisphere, which therefore meant that the trees from which the timber to make the instruments had been sourced had grown very slowly. And therefore, each year of growth for such trees was closer together, making for the unique materials from which the Stradivarius violins were made.
To some extent, I have had personal experience of this quality of timber, in that during the 1990s I spent most of my time restoring a 17th-century house on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.
The house had been built in around 1690, this date being fairly certain because in 1688 in the small Suffolk town in which the house was situated, there had been a fairly catastrophic fire that had destroyed most of the timber framed houses in that part of the town.
This small town was navigable to the sea, about 20 miles away, until sluices were built on the river that provided access to the sea in about 1932. This meant that the Norfolk sailing boats of that period, flat bottomed so that they could negotiate this narrow river, would be able to transport goods to and from Holland and the Baltic countries.
This meant that the house we were restoring had been built with Dutch bricks and pantiles, and that the internal room divisions consisted of Baltic first growth timber boarding, timber which had grown extremely slowly in the Baltic forests, and which was therefore finely grained and most beautiful when cut into wide boards that were used for the internal room divisions of the house.
Much of the original boarding survived intact behind Gypsum plasterboard that had simply being tacked directly to the wooden wall boards.
This preserved in places almost 300 years of wallpaper, including some extraordinary survivals, from a period in the 18th century when just about the only dye that was available to wallpaper manufacturers was an easily identifiable blue.
In other parts of the wall boarding, many layers of limewash still remained, a material which would have kept at bay any insect infestation.
The boards had been cut to a thickness of about an inch and a quarter, and the quality of the timber when simply scrubbed and oiled was quite phenomenal.
We kept some areas of the original limewash, and in the kitchen an area with many layers of the original wallpapers.
I don’t think I had quite appreciated the way in which the materials from which the house had been reconstructed after the great Fire of 1688 displayed so much on the way in which European climate has varied over the centuries, but the comparison with the Stradivarius violins is compelling.
In outline, what the documentary suggested was that the records kept quite carefully during the 17th and 18th centuries of the Sun provide an insight into the way in which there is a 300 year cycle during which sunspot activity reduces to a minimum, resulting in a substantial reduction in the amount of ultraviolet radiation that reaches the Earth.
Thus affecting weather systems that result in just the kind of cold weather that we have started to experience in the northern hemisphere over recent winters.
This apparently is a consequence of changes in the way in which winds in the northern hemisphere transmit cold air from the Arctic to affect our immediate weather systems.
All of this is over and above whatever changes have been effected as a consequence of global warming.
The restoration of 17th-century house on the Suffolk border was perhaps the last major practical project in which I was engaged before I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Preventing me from perhaps further continual obsession with such projects.
And so, instead, I have the leisure to be able to contemplate the ways in which I have myself experienced this slow grown Baltic pine, which is of such superior quality to the pine timber grown commercially during the past century or so.
I do not play an instrument, although I have had the great privilege of working closely with skilled musicians, for whom a Stradivarius would sing.
But perhaps I have had the extraordinary honour to have had close contact with just the kind of timber that Stradivarius would have prized for the manufacture of his violins.
'Horizon' is one of the few documentary series that I find thorough and interesting. And being broadcast on the BBC, it is not subject to the worst that can be done to a documentary, to break it with adverts. Thus ensuring that after every break, the documentary is summarized to remind the modern day viewer of what they have already seen, reducing a television hour, to around 45 minutes.
This week, I watched an extraordinary documentary about the way in which weather extremes are becoming more common. And why this might be the case.
It is a fascinating insight into the different ways in which weather systems affect the world we live in, and indeed are affected by the Sun itself.
One of the most interesting threads which I have drawn from the programme was the use as an example of a Stradivarius violin. Made towards the end of the 18th century, it was the timber from which the violin was made which it was claimed has resulted in the quality of the sound produced by this most extraordinary of instruments.
In essence, the timber from which the carcass of a Stradivarius instrument is made is so finely grained that this must be the fundamental reason for the quality of the sound produced by the instrument. In the right hands.
The timber from which these instruments were made would have been grown during the preceding 200 years, mainly during the 17th century.
It was reckoned through the examination of ice cores that this coincided with a period of extreme cold in the northern hemisphere, which therefore meant that the trees from which the timber to make the instruments had been sourced had grown very slowly. And therefore, each year of growth for such trees was closer together, making for the unique materials from which the Stradivarius violins were made.
To some extent, I have had personal experience of this quality of timber, in that during the 1990s I spent most of my time restoring a 17th-century house on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.
The house had been built in around 1690, this date being fairly certain because in 1688 in the small Suffolk town in which the house was situated, there had been a fairly catastrophic fire that had destroyed most of the timber framed houses in that part of the town.
This small town was navigable to the sea, about 20 miles away, until sluices were built on the river that provided access to the sea in about 1932. This meant that the Norfolk sailing boats of that period, flat bottomed so that they could negotiate this narrow river, would be able to transport goods to and from Holland and the Baltic countries.
This meant that the house we were restoring had been built with Dutch bricks and pantiles, and that the internal room divisions consisted of Baltic first growth timber boarding, timber which had grown extremely slowly in the Baltic forests, and which was therefore finely grained and most beautiful when cut into wide boards that were used for the internal room divisions of the house.
Much of the original boarding survived intact behind Gypsum plasterboard that had simply being tacked directly to the wooden wall boards.
This preserved in places almost 300 years of wallpaper, including some extraordinary survivals, from a period in the 18th century when just about the only dye that was available to wallpaper manufacturers was an easily identifiable blue.
In other parts of the wall boarding, many layers of limewash still remained, a material which would have kept at bay any insect infestation.
The boards had been cut to a thickness of about an inch and a quarter, and the quality of the timber when simply scrubbed and oiled was quite phenomenal.
We kept some areas of the original limewash, and in the kitchen an area with many layers of the original wallpapers.
I don’t think I had quite appreciated the way in which the materials from which the house had been reconstructed after the great Fire of 1688 displayed so much on the way in which European climate has varied over the centuries, but the comparison with the Stradivarius violins is compelling.
In outline, what the documentary suggested was that the records kept quite carefully during the 17th and 18th centuries of the Sun provide an insight into the way in which there is a 300 year cycle during which sunspot activity reduces to a minimum, resulting in a substantial reduction in the amount of ultraviolet radiation that reaches the Earth.
Thus affecting weather systems that result in just the kind of cold weather that we have started to experience in the northern hemisphere over recent winters.
This apparently is a consequence of changes in the way in which winds in the northern hemisphere transmit cold air from the Arctic to affect our immediate weather systems.
All of this is over and above whatever changes have been effected as a consequence of global warming.
The restoration of 17th-century house on the Suffolk border was perhaps the last major practical project in which I was engaged before I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Preventing me from perhaps further continual obsession with such projects.
And so, instead, I have the leisure to be able to contemplate the ways in which I have myself experienced this slow grown Baltic pine, which is of such superior quality to the pine timber grown commercially during the past century or so.
I do not play an instrument, although I have had the great privilege of working closely with skilled musicians, for whom a Stradivarius would sing.
But perhaps I have had the extraordinary honour to have had close contact with just the kind of timber that Stradivarius would have prized for the manufacture of his violins.
Sunday 1 April 2012
Sudden Awareness
It is April 1, but this is no April Fool stunt.
Earlier today, I received an e-mail from Australia. From someone that I have briefly corresponded with, and that has been kind enough to read my blog on a few occasions.
Perhaps just when I needed it, my new friend sent me a note to say how much she appreciated a poem I had included in a recent blog.
It was written about a year ago now, at about the time when bluebells appear in English woodland, which occurs some time in April/May. At the beginning of summer days, while when the woodland begins to come back to life after a long Winter.
What I have suddenly realized is that the appearance of bluebells in an English woodland is something unique. My correspondent has never seen bluebells in reality, although she has seen pictures of bluebells in an English wood.
In Australia, I hadn’t realized that this thing that I take for granted as the symbol of the start of a new year doesn’t happen everywhere. And certainly not in the Australian bush.
I suppose I have just assumed that this beautiful thing that I look forward to seeing every year is something common to everybody. Perhaps it is, in the sense that there is something about life returning after the Winter, whatever the climate of the country concerned.
It is a reminder that we take so much for granted, and that it is too easy to assume that what we experience ourselves is what everybody will experience, can experience, and does experience.
But of course, this is a cultural fallacy, perhaps an example in a fairly benign way of what in more extreme circumstances has been the cause of so much disharmony in the world, over centuries.
Perhaps it is also a reminder of the potential for the Internet to make us aware of so much more than the small world in which we live out our lives.
Bluebells in an English wood is a very special experience for me, and this year I will certainly ensure that once again I seek out this special moment, when the fragrance of the English bluebell becomes overpoweringly evocative of Spring, and in the woodland that it occurs that subtle moment of new green shoots on ancient trees reminds even the hardest heart of how life is returning to the world after Winter.
Moments of sudden awareness like this are incredibly rare, and this one has struck me all the more powerfully thanks to the existence at this moment in time of the potential to be reminded by strangers that the world is not quite the same for everybody.
Perhaps this year, it will not simply be the bluebells about which I will write, but about that special feeling that is given to the English by the Bluebell, but which I am sure must be experienced in a uniquely individual way by everybody everywhere. In every culture and climate.
Earlier today, I received an e-mail from Australia. From someone that I have briefly corresponded with, and that has been kind enough to read my blog on a few occasions.
Perhaps just when I needed it, my new friend sent me a note to say how much she appreciated a poem I had included in a recent blog.
It was written about a year ago now, at about the time when bluebells appear in English woodland, which occurs some time in April/May. At the beginning of summer days, while when the woodland begins to come back to life after a long Winter.
What I have suddenly realized is that the appearance of bluebells in an English woodland is something unique. My correspondent has never seen bluebells in reality, although she has seen pictures of bluebells in an English wood.
In Australia, I hadn’t realized that this thing that I take for granted as the symbol of the start of a new year doesn’t happen everywhere. And certainly not in the Australian bush.
I suppose I have just assumed that this beautiful thing that I look forward to seeing every year is something common to everybody. Perhaps it is, in the sense that there is something about life returning after the Winter, whatever the climate of the country concerned.
It is a reminder that we take so much for granted, and that it is too easy to assume that what we experience ourselves is what everybody will experience, can experience, and does experience.
But of course, this is a cultural fallacy, perhaps an example in a fairly benign way of what in more extreme circumstances has been the cause of so much disharmony in the world, over centuries.
Perhaps it is also a reminder of the potential for the Internet to make us aware of so much more than the small world in which we live out our lives.
Bluebells in an English wood is a very special experience for me, and this year I will certainly ensure that once again I seek out this special moment, when the fragrance of the English bluebell becomes overpoweringly evocative of Spring, and in the woodland that it occurs that subtle moment of new green shoots on ancient trees reminds even the hardest heart of how life is returning to the world after Winter.
Moments of sudden awareness like this are incredibly rare, and this one has struck me all the more powerfully thanks to the existence at this moment in time of the potential to be reminded by strangers that the world is not quite the same for everybody.
Perhaps this year, it will not simply be the bluebells about which I will write, but about that special feeling that is given to the English by the Bluebell, but which I am sure must be experienced in a uniquely individual way by everybody everywhere. In every culture and climate.
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