The Warp and Weft of History

It’s not so much that I am obsessed with celebrity, and I have no illusions about my own sense of impact on history.

But I am fascinated at observing the way in which I can perceive the threads of connection between people and places.

There is great comfort to be had from a sense that I have been wrapped in these threads, and though it is clearly the case that we are all in some way connected to these threads and by these threads to everything, it is not necessarily the case that we are aware of those threads that bind us.

I suppose this particular blog is partly my reminiscing about the way in which I have been fortunate to have uncovered and become aware of some of these threads, and partly a means of finding some sense of meaning that I have gained from the whole process.

If I ever try to name drop about some of the people that I have met or worked with, more often than not other people do not know who I am talking about.

This only amuses me is, and perhaps underlines the fact that I have spent my life in a rarefied not to say mysterious world.

But it has been a world nevertheless connected to so many things.

This morning, as I was beginning to contemplate what I might write about, one of my starting points was to think of a title, such as why Les Miserables is such a favourite of mine.

Most recently, I am meaning the 25th anniversary film that Cameron Mackintosh commissioned to celebrate this important anniversary of his stage adaptation.

I did once see the staged adaptation, and it may have been in the 1980s, since I remember attending with my wife. Or at least the woman that was to become my wife.

I saw it at the Prince Edward Theatre on Drury Lane in theatre land.

When I was at university I lived only 30 minutes walk or so from Drury Lane, when I lived in Gower Street as a student. I was a student at University College London, the godless college in Gower Street.

Strangely enough, it was from an old-fashioned theatrical costumier close  to here that I first obtained moustache wax, when in my early 20s I first attempted to grow a relaxed moustache.

I have only one photograph from that time, the identity photograph from my London tube ticket.

I am currently attempting my second waxed moustache, and after much stress about whether or not I would be able to find another supplier for moustache wax, I searched on Amazon and was amazed at how many suppliers there were to be found.

This is an extraordinary reminder of how times have changed. It would have been unfixable in the early 1980s to use the Internet to shop for this kind of product, and yet today we can almost take it for granted.

I was even able to get some tips on how to wax my moustache from YouTube. Another unthinkable thing.

And of course having thought of Les Miserables, I made the connection with syndicalism.

Perhaps not everyone might have made this collection, but since my first working years were spent building a cooperative business, for me the link from those last scenes in the film where idealistic young men are talking about the blood of angry men and black, the colour of ages past.

Black and red are the colours of the anarchist flag.

Although I would not consider myself an anarchist, I would consider myself a syndicalist. And the two have a great deal in common.

Much of the Basque region in Spain has been the focus of significant industrial co-operatives, and I once owned a washing machine manufactured in one such business.

Working in eight co-operatives context has been an important part of my early experience, and indeed made me aware of some significant historical threads.

So for example the premises within which we operated a conference centre providing residential facilities for up to 40 people were provided to us at a peppercorn rent by a Christian socialist named Tom Lupton whose family had owned the Beechwood estate since Victorian times.

They had been manufacturers of fine woollen carriage cloth, and this substantial estate on the edge of Leeds was where they lived, in fairly grand style.

Examples of their cloth had been exhibited at the great exhibition in 1851.

Tom Lupton trained as an architect, and became a manufacturer of furniture. He eventually sold his furniture business to Terence Conran when that entrepreneur was building the Habitat empire, and since he lived in Oxfordshire he had no use for the Beechwood estate that he inherited from two spinster aunts in 1972.

As a Christian socialist, Tom Lupton was motivated to ensure that this resource was made available to pursue objectives that he had some belief in.

And so I became aware of the way in which Christian Socialists like him have had an important influence in the UK.

For example, the Scott Bader Commonwealth, located I believe somewhere close to Middlesbrough, is a chemical factory making injection moulding chemicals. The owner of the factory, Scott Bader, gave the entire factory to his workforce, in perpetuity, in the 1950s.

It is one of few examples of industrial cooperation in the UK, where co-operatives have tended to be consumer co-operatives.

Later, when I was working as the education officer for Opera North in Leeds, I became involved in a project to help the co-operative movement celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Rochdale Pioneers.

This took place at a national centre owned by the co-operative movement nationally, located in Staffordshire.

Strange how threads can link up on themselves, and I found myself in a unique position to appreciate what I was helping to celebrate by virtue of my own history.

It was whilst working at Opera North that I had the opportunity to meet and work with an extraordinary range of creative people, broadening my own horizons substantially.

Opera was not an art form that I had ever previously experienced, but for five years, I had the opportunity to see as many shows as I could, and never had to pay a thing.

I even had the opportunity to see work at other opera houses, including Glyndebourne and English National Opera, since the education officers at all of these institutions formed a small but unique network.

Thus I got to go to Glyndebourne twice, and though I did not possess a dinner suit, working for Opera North meant that I was able to be kitted out with a very fine dinner suit thanks to the wardrobe department.

And so it is that I have met many of the most important composers working in the 20th century, often only at those kind of drinks parties that take place when a production opens.

But nevertheless, to someone like myself interested in those threads of history, I have had a field day.

I met Sir Michael Tippett during the opera lost production of his last opera, New Year.

He was in his 90s and almost blind, but still composing.

As a conscientious objector, he was imprisoned for his beliefs during the Second World War.

Later, working as the development director for the Scottish chamber Orchestra, I would work closely with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, master of the Queens music, organising his international young composers course on his island home of Orkney.

And so in the course of my work, I have had dinner with the likes of Arnold Wesker, at the Cheltenham Festival, and gave Sophie Dahl her acting debut in Goldilocks and the three Bears.

When I tell people that I have had dinner with Sophie Dahl I usually omit to mention that another dozen people were at the table with us, including her mother.

But that is the nature of personal experience, you can choose what you wish to include in any anecdotes.

Where I now live in Worthing in West Sussex is just across the road from the Queen Alexandra Hospital home for soldiers, and every year this important place has an open day.

I have met Dame Vera Lynn at the open day twice now, and because I included a short story about meeting with her at the hospital, in a special edition of my first collection of poems, a copy of this collection has been included in the local history collection of West Sussex county council, where it is rubbing shoulders with works by Shelley, Balzac, and Kipling.

I must have no illusions about the reason for my poems being included in this prestigious selection, it is the importance of the hospital and of its connection with Dame Vera Lynn, but it is nice to be thus included.

Keeping Back The Damp

I have lived in my own home in Worthing for just over 10 years. I live alone, although with a dog, you are never alone.

When I first moved in, I received a small settlement as a consequence of an accident in a public space. It was entirely not my fault, and as someone that was still walking but with crutches, my fall though not serious did much to damage my confidence.

This small settlement I spent almost entirely on the redecoration of my small apartment, just one bedroom, two or three streets back from the seafront.

It is a 1920s house, the ground floor or what we would in the UK  call a garden flat.

I have access to the rear of my property over the adjoining property, which enables me to gain access in my wheelchair from the street.

When I bought the house, on a mortgage, I was aware that all of the internal walls had been dry lined with plasterboard.

After 10 years, what I might have suspected has proven to be the case, that the plasterboard walls hide a general problem of damp.

Not serious damp, but sufficient to require sorting out properly now.

When I first moved in, I was able to benefit from a disabled facilities Grant, which meant that the local council spent a considerable sum turning my bathroom into a wet room, and giving me a new ramped access at the rear, with new double glazed wider opening to the ramped access, as well as the installation of superior fire alarms.

In spite of these improvements, when it rains and the wind is from the south, I get water coming in and spoiling the decoration, which is simple and minimalist white throughout.

I had the notion that I would like to live in something that approached a gallery space, and so the ceilings throughout were skimmed to smooth out the stippled texture, and the overall feel is simple and perfect for the display of my numerous pictures and photographs.

One of my last means of earning money before I ceased working entirely because of my condition, multiple sclerosis, was as a freelance graphic designer.

To facilitate this, I purchased a large format printer, which can print in full colour up to A1 size. At very high quality.

This means that some of my picture frames contain images that I have printed myself, either from photographs I have taken myself, or of images that I like.

Thus I can change my environment to a great extent. And I can offer to print large images at photographic quality for friends.

This printer is a great luxury, and I still keep it in working order even though it is much less used them once it was.

It is a great pleasure to be able to print images in this such a large format, and at such a high resolution.

To complete the needed improvements to my small apartment will cost more than I can afford, and a good friend of mine has offered to help me with some fundraising that may be needed.

I have already had the assurance of a local council officer that I may be able to secure a small grant from the same council that helped me with the disabled facilities Grant, but the available money is small, and I may have to find some additional resources.

This is my project for the next season, it may be that work will not be able to commence until next spring, and I will need to be relocated for about six weeks whilst the work takes place.

But my independence depends upon having this island of my own in my sea of troubles, somewhere that is shaped to my needs, and from where I can survey the world.

I don’t know exactly how much will be needed, but the issues and problems have begun to be more closely identified.

So as experts are consulted, my dog has new people to bark at. And she barks so well.

Oscar is a girl, and we have been together for the whole of her life, since she was rescued at the age of just over a year.

And so she is elderly, very protective, pays no attention to my commands, and yet remains my constant companion.

She is walked professionally by my most important carer daily, and so in spite of suffering arthritis for which she receives anti-inflammatories, she is happy and healthy for her age.

Any help the two of us, strays both, can keep back the waters will be most gratefully received.

No doubt this blog will regularly update any readers on the progress of my little scheme.

A Radical Idea Concerning The Socialisation Of People with Physical Disabilities

No lifts, no stairs, no steps and no barriers: an innovation in the care and long-term support and socialisation for people with physical disabilities

If at first this proposal sounds like it might begin as an architectural competition, then that is precisely my intention.

My proposal is multilayered in the suggests that there could be considerable savings of scale to be made in the way that people like myself with physical disabilities are supported and accommodated.

Further, and very much by way of improving opportunities for socialisation and integration, my early work experience as a member of a workers co-operative providing conference accommodation for person centred organisations with small budgets has proven to me that there is a substantial need for meeting and conference space that could generate substantial sums of money that could cover the running and operational costs of such an innovative type of building.

The early 1980s, from an overdraft of £3000 I was part of a team that grew a conference business with a turnover of £250,000 per annum during a five-year period.

Clearly, the circumstances in which the business operated were rather different. In our case, we’ve benefited from the provision of a substantial Victorian estate by the goodwill of its owner at a peppercorn rent, and located only 3 miles or so from Leeds city station, we were ideally placed to attract a national audience.

But the need still remains today for businesses of all kinds to find affordable conference and meeting space, on both a daily basis and on a residential basis.

For the purposes of an architectural competition, I have plucked out all my head the notion that the capacity to accommodate 30 to 40 people on a residential basis in single rooms would be initially adequate, with perhaps 10 additional twin rooms that were organised so that they were fully disabled access suited, perhaps in such a way that carers and cared for people of different sexes might have sufficient privacy within that accommodation.

In addition, on a more permanent basis, accommodation for between 10 and 20 people with a variety of needs would need to be created, and their accommodation might consist of the kind of space within which all of their living needs could take place - such as a small bedsit.

On-site catering would be an important component of servicing conference needs, and on a day-to-day basis should be able to accommodate meetings of up to 150 people plus the residential people and their carers.

A licensed bar could be included, although some innovation might look at the way in which this is an innovation in what it stocks.

So for an example, it might be much more like a cafe bar rather than simply an alcohol bar, and indeed could offer a wide range of alcohol free and healthy drinks as an alternative for everyone when socialising.

It is such a building used the most recent innovations in every aspect of its accommodation and the way in which it were designed to be fully accessible by people in wheelchairs, then it might also be attractive for use in respect of functions such as wedding receptions, and indeed it should be attractively presented with work commissioned by a range of artists in disciplines that would make it an attractive space in which to meet.

A multiplicity of breakout rooms could be used for all kinds of specialist small meetings, and should be equipped with a high level of technical equipment.

This level of technical equipment would of course be available outside of conference times for the use of residents, and it may be possible for residents to be able to contribute to some of the work supporting the conference business, such as graphic design for the creation of reports and follow-up for each event.

Any fees that might be generated could be made over to the social enterprise at the heart of this community business, because of the sensitive earning position of those people.

One of the principal benefits of such integrated living and working circumstances would be the way in which residents would be able to socialise with visiting conference and meeting attenders, and if more than one of these kind of facilities were to exist, as centres of excellence in their accessibility, it would make it possible for residents to be able to have a change of environment, typical hotel accommodation be out of the question for the majority of them.

It may be possible to have some additional services available to be rented out to commercial purposes, and so for example it may be advisable for someone like cooperative legal services to have a branch office within the premises. Preference should always be given to the type of business and how it is structured, so that other community businesses or cooperatives might be deemed more suitable.

If constructed on a brownfield site, there may be scope for substantial parking, for the use of residents, residents families and carers, and of course those attending meetings.

I stressed at the beginning of the concept of no barriers, and the use of technology for door opening and the ability of wheelchair users to access all areas with the minimum of assistance is critical.

Hence the idea of access to different levels being by way of gentle slopes rather than by lifts or by stairs.

The Pictures Are So Much Better...

This might have been written by way of advertisement.

It is unashamedly a positive reflection upon a new service available through Amazon.

I have been subscribing to this service for only a couple of months, and it may sound trite, but it has rather suddenly transformed my life.

This may sound grand, but if I may recount is little background this claim will make much more sense.

The service I am talking about is Audible, the means by which it has become possible to download audiobooks at a fraction of their normal cost.

I have become an avid listener to audiobooks more recently, quite simply because though I have been an inveterate reader for much of my life, the fact of my multiple sclerosis means that I cannot hold a book, nor turnEach page.

Although I am able to make out what the text of a computer document is, my eyesight has been severely affected by optic neuritis.

And so, my recent discovery of this means by which I can immerse myself in the written word has restored something important that otherwise had been lost to me.

Now the only issue is that age old problem, what to read.

Over the past couple of years, perhaps for obvious reasons, I have become much more interested in film as a medium.

Now suddenly I have become fascinated with reading the novels that have become the basis of films, and it is extremely interesting to me as someone that has been interested in creative writing for many years to see where the resulting film perhaps differs from the novel that inspired it

This is one of numerous possible ways in which I might direct line interest the written word, although there may be numerous other means by which I could navigate and make choices.

But for now, this is an important first step, and goodness I have much distance to travel to catch up with where I may have reached is books had remained accessible to me.

I still like to surround myself with antiquarian books, their pages filled with extraordinary images, and the wondrous smell of old paper.

But my imagination is once again inspired by accessing works which I thought were beyond me.

And after all, just like listening to radio, the pictures are so much better.

Tthe Land of Memories

I watched a fascinating documentary on BBC recently, about British whaling and how it had continued into the 1960s.

This was quite a surprise to me, as I am sure it would have been to so many people. Something that is unthinkable today, and yet was happening as recently as in the 60s.

What perhaps has stimulated my thoughts in an unexpected way was simply the knowledge that the principal whaling station on South Georgia was called Port of Leith.

This is the kind of geography that no one would be expected to know, not even to remember.

I suppose I only remember it because for three years I lived in Leith, the port of Edinburgh, between 1995 and 1998.

In this period of my life, two years before I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I was working as the Development Director for the Scottish chamber Orchestra.

I have fond memories of my time in this employment, and it is perhaps more frequently in my thoughts these days as the vote for Scottish secession comes potentially closer.

Who knows which way the Scots will vote, and far be it from me to second-guess them.

But I do have personal experience of that peculiar sense of Scottish nationalism, in that working for a National Scottish company, I did experience at times what can only be described as racism.

I was told to my face on one occasion that the job I was doing should be done by a Scot, but when I spoke about this to my boss, who was also an Englishman, he reassured me and said quite simply that they had appointed the best person for the job.

What this has reminded me of our those experiences that I had living in Scotland, almost exclusively positive, as Leith in Edinburgh was definitely on the up during my time there, thanks primarily to the fact that a new Scottish office building had recently been constructed in the port area, as a preliminary to the construction of the new Scottish Parliament building.

This meant that the flat in which my wife and I lived was within 400 yards of an extraordinary selection of world class restaurants, most of which had been opened in the wake of the transformation of the old port as part of the general tidying up of a depressed part of Scotland’s capital.

We loved eating out, and we truly had an incredible selection within short walking distance of where we were living.

This was a purpose built block of flats, but constructed in about 1816. The style of apartment is particular to Edinburgh, and would be described as a drawing room flat.

In short, this meant high ceilings and a huge living room.

We had a period shutters and a truly gigantic living room, that gave us spacious living, and good views from our second floor position.

Another proposed development that happened whilst we were in Edinburgh was the location of a permanent mooring for the Royal yacht Britannia, in the Port of Leith itself, with an associated shopping mall linked to a mooring station for transatlantic shipping.

This certainly added to reasons why people might visit Leith, and perhaps explains why when we left Edinburgh, we made a small killing on the sale of our flat, after owning it for just three years.

Of all of the restaurants available to us, perhaps our favourite was a small French restaurant, the name of which escapes me.

This was located just a little out of the way in the conversion of one of the many old warehouse buildings that would have served the merchants of the port.

It was an excellent conversion, and whilst we never ate upstairs, there was apparently an upstairs room that could be used for functions is required.

But we quickly felt completely at home in the beautifully and simply designed ground floor restaurant, and we seemed never to have a problem getting a table.

Service was attentive and efficient, and the linen was crisp and white.

And the food. French influenced but of the minimalist and uncluttered by sauces, but beautifully presented on a fabulous selection of square white plates.

It became a home from home for us, and though not as inexpensive as we might have liked, it became the place that we regularly dined weekly at, and if occasion presented itself, at the least excuse.

I remember precious little detail of the menus, but then, this is not a restaurant review. Suffice that the food was excellent and to our taste.

I remember that the restaurant was presided over by the portrait of a woman, that was I think uncompleted. But this only added to the sense of the space, and it may have been a genuine period antique, though it may equally have been painted only recently but with an accomplished hand.

Everything about the place spoke of style, and no wonder that we wished we could eat there on a daily basis.

I wonder sometimes if it still exists, though it matters not as it remains one of my fondest memories of time spent in Scotland.

And in the land of memories, nothing need change.

Confessions Of A Moustache Waxer

I have recently started to wax my moustache.

Why this feels like some kind of confession, I don’t know.

It isn’t the first time that I have waxed my moustache, although to be honest I had thought that I was no longer subject to the vanities of youth.

I am 53 years of age, and severely disabled thanks to multiple sclerosis. So this is hardly something that is designed to improve my Saturday nights on the town.

The first time that I waxed my moustache was when I was much younger, and years before MS was over on the scene.

I was 22 years of age, living as a recently graduated student in London, and active in the management of the housing in which I had been living since my last year at university.

This was a housing co-operative in East London, and my only photographic evidence of my appearance at the time is my old underground monthly tube pass, which has a small passport sized photograph showing me with my waxed moustache.

Although I display this small image proudly tucked into the frame of a picture on one of my walls, most people that see it think of it as something rather quirky, and my ex-wife and good friend (still) has been quite frank with me, and says that I look as if I were some kind of terrorist.

I can’t say that I agree, but perhaps there is something less than typical about this photograph.

This would have been taken in about 1982, and at the time, I obtained my supplies of moustache wax from a small costume supplier somewhere off Drury Lane in the West End of London.

It was the kind of small shop that I imagine would have gone out of business many years ago, and so when it came to obtaining supplies of moustache wax once again only recently, I had no idea where I would obtain supplies.

Of course, what I had failed to take into account was the fact that we live in the Internet age, and a swift search of the Internet led me to a page of moustache wax suppliers on Amazon which quite took me aback.

The choice was astonishing, I had no idea that I would be presented with the problem of choice rather than the difficulty of finding the stuff.

Clearly, there has been a resurgence of interest in moustache waxing.

And of course, since I have started to wax my moustache, I have started to see waxed moustaches in many contexts where otherwise I might have entirely missed them.

So for example garden designers at the recent Chelsea flower show, and this has made me reflect simply that when you get a red car, you see red cars everywhere.

Another inspiration for me has been the recent BBC dramatised documentary of the 37 days leading up to the start of the First World War.

Set in that summer of 1914, it is a veritable parade of extraordinary moustaches, from all across Europe.

It has made me start to ruminate about the way in which this was of course the glory day of the waxed moustache, and I realise that I have been a secret collector of old photographs of men with grand moustaches, picking them up in junk shops and at the markets. Almost rescuing them or adopting them when they have become forgotten and unloved.

But there is perhaps something sombre and sad in the realisation that it was the First World War that put an end to this aspect of male vanity in its ultimate flowering.

Because all of those grand moustaches from the Edwardian period were destroyed in that terrible conflict, and in some respects, it is a terrible cliche that the young officer leading his troops from the trenches and into battle would have sported some kind of handlebar moustache.

But there it is, I have started to cultivate a waxed moustache, and in my case, given the limitations placed upon me by my multiple sclerosis, I am fortunate that my carers have risen to the challenge of waxing my moustache for me.

It has become part of my daily routine, being assisted with shaving using an electric razor, rather than having a three-day stubble which has been my typical appearance since forever.

And then, a slap and a wax. The application of aftershave, the slap, and then the waxing of the moustache.

It’s my only vanity, I console myself.

An Inspector Calls (1954)

For the first decade of my working life I lived in Leeds in West Yorkshire. This meant that I was a fairly regular visitor to Bradford.

Bradford has many attractions, not least of all the quality of its curry houses.

Fairly central to the city is the National Museum of Film and Photography, in my memory one of the first major national museums located purposefully outside of London.

And just outside of the Museum is a bronze statue of the novelist and playwright JB Priestley, someone whose writings have somewhat fallen out of fashion in more recent times.

One of his most important early works is his English Journey, and I remember that 50 years after it was written, another important writer of a different generation was commissioned to write a similar work that followed in the kind of footsteps of this pioneering writer.

In spite of having what might be described as socialist leanings, one of the most interesting facts concerning the original JB Priestley English Journey is that he undertook it from the back seat of his chauffeured limousine.

This perhaps sets him apart from someone like George Orwell, who of course famously went down and out in London and Paris, and whilst not exactly adopting a disguise to do so, he actually lived the life of someone without a penny to his name.

And this is the background to the man that wrote An Inspector Calls, perhaps one of his most famous stage works, and one that I have at some point in my theatre going life seen presented on the London stage.

Most recently, I have recorded a broadcast version of this work, and transferred it to my growing collection of over 600 films, accessible at the click of a mouse from a 2 TB hard disk attached to my computer.

It is extraordinary that such an elderly play can be so fabulously engaging even in the present day.

A recent blog entry of mine talked about the way in which the BBC has been looking at the circumstances in the lead up to the First World War, in this centenary year.

In some respects, this play is closely linked to an understanding of what was lost by the destruction of the generation that fought this terrible war.

At the outset of the play, we are told that it is 1912, and the events that take place on a single night that will forever transform the lives of the participants shed great light on this time in our nation’s history.

Without giving away any of the plot details, no spoilers, sufficient to say that a mysterious police inspector interrupts a family in the middle of a family celebration.

Without providing any significant detail, but simply by asking questions about the knowledge that the family members have of a young girl that has taken poison and died horribly at the local infirmary, it is discovered that each of them has played some crucial role in determining the fate of this woman.

It is an extraordinarily moral work, and one which it would be difficult to imagine staged outside of its own period.

But it is fundamentally a work of great insight into the human condition, and the way in which we affect the lives of others, quite fitting then that such an imposing statue of the author should stand so prominently as a memorial to him in his home town.

I am sure it was not simply a quirk of fate that it should be shown at this point in time, when there is so much s thought about the world left behind after this conflict.

That the play should have had such a durable life is a tribute to its quality, and if anyone has not read or seen it, catching the film is an excellent way of appreciating it.