I am not a great fan of sport. Neither participating or watching.
But over the last fortnight I have been keen to see the progress of athletes, and I have been as absorbed as anyone in the emotion of ceremonies and medal presentations alike.
The sight not just of the Union Jack being raised if we have won gold, but listening intently to the unfamiliar sounds of national anthems from around the world.
Perhaps from the outset I was gripped, when the opening ceremony seemed to capture in an extraordinary way everything that has led us to this moment in the present.
I have watched the opening ceremony several times since I first had the foresight to record it, and I have watched the opening hour once again just yesterday, perhaps beginning to feel that as the closing ceremony comes into sight, that I wanted to be reminded of that fabulous opening.
It is difficult to imagine how something so spectacular could be imagined, but in a strange way I have spent my entire professional life working to create just such events, with a combination of professionals and amateurs.
It is perhaps something that we are very good at in Britain, it is often said that more people are involved in some way as participants in the performing arts as amateurs than the total number of spectators for a weekend's football matches.
When the Arts Council of England was founded in I believe 1951, out of The Festival Of Britain, and the sense of a nation reborn after an extraordinary world conflict, it perhaps for the first time created an unnatural distinction between the professional arts and what had been happening for decades, perhaps centuries, in most communities throughout the land.
We do not have to look any further than Handel's great oratorio The Messiah to appreciate that it has been the committed amateur that has been the engine of the Arts in Britain over the years.
For some years, I was the Development Director for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Edinburgh, one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world.
As an orchestra of 37 full-time players, expanding on occasion as required by the music performed, the SCO has made numerous recordings from Opera and of Choral music, and perhaps not unusually, whenever it has needed to employ the United voices of a choir, it has turned to its own trained choir.
But this is not a professional choir, but a choir of dedicated amateurs, admittedly conducted and trained by a professional Choir Master, but nevertheless composed of people whose living is not derived from their participation professionally in music.
Many orchestras in modern Britain do have the services of a professional choir, as indeed most opera companies will have their own in-house professional chorus.
But it is easily forgotten that this has only been the case for the past 50 or so years since funding has been possible through the Arts Councils of Great Britain.
And over and above the network of professional choirs and choruses, there is still an important sector of impassioned amateurs.
It has been a stroke of genius to make this level of participation part of the opening of these extraordinary games, which have begun to be described as the crying games, as people have begun to reflect back on what has taken place during this 30th Olympiad.
I have met and worked with the Artistic Director of the opening ceremony, Jude Kelly, when she was the Artistic Director of an important regional theatre in Leeds when I was a humble Education Officer for Opera North based in the same city.
It is therefore unsurprising to me the way in which so many volunteers have become involved in this extraordinary pageant.
My own career within the professional Arts took place as a consequence of my involvement as a volunteer in something perhaps not so dissimilar, the creation of a musical theatre celebration of the City of Leeds.
I was at the time involved in creative writing on a regular basis, and as a group of creative writers, we were approached to be involved in the creation and performance of a community opera.
In the precincts of the University of Leeds, in the open air, around 300 people told through a pageant, the story of how the City had come about, and what its present concerns were, and what it perhaps might become in the future.
Over the course of more than a month, performances were developed and refined with the help of a professional Opera Director. A chorus of amateur voices were taught how to sing an original score composed by a young professional composer, and three performances took place to an audience of more than 2000 people.
As a writing group, we commenced work with a workshop led by the poet that was to become the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.
We then met together over several weeks, supported by a local creative writing specialist, to come up with ideas for ways in which we could explore the open theme of Leeds past, present and future.
Whilst most of the participants and performers were to be drawn from the local community, we had the involvement of one professional opera singer, and of course the professional team leading and shaping our work.
The end result for me was life changing, in the sense that I soon made the transition from the work I had been doing to becoming a junior in the Community and Education Department at Opera North.
I took a substantial cut in salary, but for the next 20 years, I found myself working alongside profoundly talented artists in the worlds of opera and classical music, finding ways in which their abilities could inspire and be communicated to people that had never experienced these artforms.
By the time that I was forced to stop work at the age of 43 because of multiple sclerosis, I was still concerned with my own creative writing, but I have been inspired by working closely with some of the most talented musicians, singers, writers and composers of our generation.
And so perhaps I am well placed to confirm that the experiences I have seen take place in this Olympiad may well have the potential to change the lives of so many people.
I find myself in the strange position of having been rather cynical at the outset, and since the opening ceremony, I have become totally convinced that participation alone - let alone the success we have seen - and the emotions associated with it, will have made this a strangely cathartic experience.
Perhaps it is the fact that the Olympic movement is so concerned with the peaceful coming together of nations in competition that has so moved so many people.
That we have been able as a nation to host this event so successfully must serve as some kind of therapeutic boost to our flagging sense of self.
It is of course the first time that a country has hosted the modern Olympics on three occasions, and perhaps this too is significant.
We first hosted the Olympics in 1908, just at the cusp of the First World War, when an Empire began to fade.
The second occasion was in 1948, and was described as the Austerity Olympics after we had survived the second world war. And coincidentally, the year in which the British Empire became the British Commonwealth.
And at this point in our times, you could say it is another Austerity Olympics, in that we are suffering a depressed business environment, and some would say could ill afford the £9 billion cost of hosting the games.
And yet, as I write this on the final day of the 30th Olympiad, it is as if it has been more than worth the cost, in the way that it has brought a nation together, and demonstrated that we can achieve something extraordinarily positive.
It is as if it has been a transformative therapy session, teaching us what we can achieve if only we have the vision.
As people, as human beings, and as a planet.
In 1908, just 22 nations took part, but this year 204 nations took part, and each took the oath that has bound us all together in this experience.
By the time the opening ceremony had taken place, I was convinced that it was not through medal successes that the games would be measured.
The fact that we have been so successful is wonderful, and has been perhaps the catalyst for our sense of national catharsis.
But it has been simply taking part, not winning, that has been most important.
It is as if the Olympic movement has been more successful than The United Nations at bringing nations together, in peace and in celebration of what can be achieved.
Let us truly hope that what has been described as the crying games can become known as the smiling games as we look back on them.
Saturday, 11 August 2012
Saturday, 4 August 2012
A Little Known Fact About Her Majesty The Queen
Few people will realise that the Queen is the patron of pigeon racing in the UK, and perhaps one of its most passionate participants.
No doubt she will have help and support with the work of keeping pigeons, but nevertheless it is a little known fact that she is in this country's most prominent pigeon fanciers.
Keeping pigeons is something I know more than most about, because my father was a lifelong pigeon fancier, keeping and racing pigeons for most of his life.
I cannot help but imagine that this lonely hobby, spending much time simply waiting for pigeons to return to their home loft after a race, was the ideal pursuit for men of my father's generation, for whom perhaps there was much to contemplate, after the terrible experiences of a World War in which my father served for eight years, from 1940-1948.
One of his brothers, my uncle Harry, was also a pigeon fancier, and I'm sure they had much to discuss whenever they met, about the details that concerned them both about their breeding stock, and the prospects for the races that they both competed in.
My uncle Harry had also served during the war, but all I know about his war was that when he returned from his service, his young wife and child had been killed after the last V2 to fall on West Ham destroyed the house in which they lived.
Although uncle Harry remarried, he never again became a parent.
Perhaps for him the lonely vigil awaiting the return of his pigeons on race days was filled with thoughts of a life he may have lived, had his first wife not been at home on that fateful day.
Uncle Harry's first wife was never discussed, and I only discovered recently about what had happened. My memories of him as a child had no inkling of what had taken place for him during the war.
He was simply one of my father's 12 brothers and sisters, and one that he perhaps was closest to, whether because they both shared a passion for pigeons, or because of a shared background in service during the war I never knew.
The technical details of pigeon racing are fascinating, and probably not understood outside of the fraternity of pigeon fanciers.
It is a simple fact that pigeons will return to their home from enormous distances, and their capacity for navigation was not until recently completely understood.
Or perhaps it is still not completely understood, but it is nevertheless now known that there are several species of animals that are able to navigate in quite extraordinary ways.
Other animals include turtles, and of course many species of birds that regularly migrate huge distances to find warmer climates during the Winter.
It seems that there is some mechanism within them that can work just like a compass, so that for example if a magnet were attached to their beaks, their capacity to navigate is seriously impaired.
This inbuilt facility to navigate means that pigeons have been used in the 20th century for numerous means of communicating across distances, long before the development of more technical means of communication.
For example, sending messages in wartime.
Their instinct to return home is a strong one, and one that I can remember my father using to great effect on race days by separating a mated pair of birds just before a race so that the instinct to return to the nest was sharpened.
My father's most successful pigeon was a dark chequer hen that came third in the London Combine from Thurso, one year back in about 1969.
About 30,000 birds were able to race together, thanks to the way in which pigeon fanciers measure the speed of their birds from release to return to the home loft.
Pigeon fanciers that live 20 or 30 miles distance from each other can race against each other because the distance from the race point can be measured exactly, and each pigeon fancier would be equipped with an extremely accurate timepiece that is designed specifically to record the exact time of the return.
Quite simply, birds entered for a particular race are fitted with a unique numbered rubber ring, and then when the bird is recaptured at the home loft, this rubber ring is placed inside a metal thimble which is inserted into this accurate timepiece, which when ‘struck’ notes the exact time that the ring has been placed into the clock.
Clocks are carefully measured against each other for their accuracy at keeping time, and simply the velocity of the pigeon in yards per minute can be established because the time of release is known, and the exact distance to the loft where it lives.
Thus the winning pigeon is the one with the highest individual velocity, and for the race in which my father's pigeon came third out of 30,000, the race distance was around 600 miles.
Of course, the speed with which a bird can be captured by its owner and the rubber race ring removed from its foot is critical to a successful race winner.
The art of capturing a pigeon is one that is perhaps a function of the familiarity of the birds with their owner, and the fact that after a race, they will be hungry and can be lured by a few tasty nibbles so that they can be handled by their owner, and the ring entered into the clock.
I still have my father's pigeon clock, or at least one of them.
The one I have is a French model, a Toulet. Quite a beautiful timepiece, perhaps with much in common with a ships’ chronometer.
Clocks are sealed with a special lead seal for races, to make sure they are not tampered with, and something like a paper dial such as would verify the driving of a large lorry would be the proof of when a bird had returned to its home loft.
Pigeons for races are placed in special baskets that contain about a dozen birds each, and the special lorries that take them to a race point are designed so that these crates containing the birds can be opened almost simultaneously so that the races are kept as fair as possible.
Perhaps it will only take a few minutes for two men to open all of the crates in which several thousand birds have been transported to a particular race point.
For several years as a young boy I would attend with my father to the club where his birds participated in races, and where perhaps the majority of fanciers were men just like my father, content with a hobby that meant they spent many hours just scanning the sky looking for the return of a speck on the horizon.
It was perhaps the only occasion in the year when my mother would be taken to a dinner dance, to the annual Pigeon Fanciers’ Ball, when cheques and cups would be presented to mark the success of the years racing.
For my father, it could mean considerable winnings, in the order of several hundred pounds, at a time when this was a substantial sum of money.
Quite simply, every bird entered into a race could be entered into a pool, often of quite small sums like a shilling or a two shilling pool, but if the bird was one of the first in this section, the pool of money placed might amount to quite significant sums.
I can still remember the way in which my father taught me to identify the different colorings of bird types, and if I see racing pigeons in the street, wearing the permanent metal rings over their feet placed there when sufficiently small for the rings to be fitted, I cannot help but recall all of those occasions when I went to the club with my father to see his birds safely on their way to a race.
No doubt she will have help and support with the work of keeping pigeons, but nevertheless it is a little known fact that she is in this country's most prominent pigeon fanciers.
Keeping pigeons is something I know more than most about, because my father was a lifelong pigeon fancier, keeping and racing pigeons for most of his life.
I cannot help but imagine that this lonely hobby, spending much time simply waiting for pigeons to return to their home loft after a race, was the ideal pursuit for men of my father's generation, for whom perhaps there was much to contemplate, after the terrible experiences of a World War in which my father served for eight years, from 1940-1948.
One of his brothers, my uncle Harry, was also a pigeon fancier, and I'm sure they had much to discuss whenever they met, about the details that concerned them both about their breeding stock, and the prospects for the races that they both competed in.
My uncle Harry had also served during the war, but all I know about his war was that when he returned from his service, his young wife and child had been killed after the last V2 to fall on West Ham destroyed the house in which they lived.
Although uncle Harry remarried, he never again became a parent.
Perhaps for him the lonely vigil awaiting the return of his pigeons on race days was filled with thoughts of a life he may have lived, had his first wife not been at home on that fateful day.
Uncle Harry's first wife was never discussed, and I only discovered recently about what had happened. My memories of him as a child had no inkling of what had taken place for him during the war.
He was simply one of my father's 12 brothers and sisters, and one that he perhaps was closest to, whether because they both shared a passion for pigeons, or because of a shared background in service during the war I never knew.
The technical details of pigeon racing are fascinating, and probably not understood outside of the fraternity of pigeon fanciers.
It is a simple fact that pigeons will return to their home from enormous distances, and their capacity for navigation was not until recently completely understood.
Or perhaps it is still not completely understood, but it is nevertheless now known that there are several species of animals that are able to navigate in quite extraordinary ways.
Other animals include turtles, and of course many species of birds that regularly migrate huge distances to find warmer climates during the Winter.
It seems that there is some mechanism within them that can work just like a compass, so that for example if a magnet were attached to their beaks, their capacity to navigate is seriously impaired.
This inbuilt facility to navigate means that pigeons have been used in the 20th century for numerous means of communicating across distances, long before the development of more technical means of communication.
For example, sending messages in wartime.
Their instinct to return home is a strong one, and one that I can remember my father using to great effect on race days by separating a mated pair of birds just before a race so that the instinct to return to the nest was sharpened.
My father's most successful pigeon was a dark chequer hen that came third in the London Combine from Thurso, one year back in about 1969.
About 30,000 birds were able to race together, thanks to the way in which pigeon fanciers measure the speed of their birds from release to return to the home loft.
Pigeon fanciers that live 20 or 30 miles distance from each other can race against each other because the distance from the race point can be measured exactly, and each pigeon fancier would be equipped with an extremely accurate timepiece that is designed specifically to record the exact time of the return.
Quite simply, birds entered for a particular race are fitted with a unique numbered rubber ring, and then when the bird is recaptured at the home loft, this rubber ring is placed inside a metal thimble which is inserted into this accurate timepiece, which when ‘struck’ notes the exact time that the ring has been placed into the clock.
Clocks are carefully measured against each other for their accuracy at keeping time, and simply the velocity of the pigeon in yards per minute can be established because the time of release is known, and the exact distance to the loft where it lives.
Thus the winning pigeon is the one with the highest individual velocity, and for the race in which my father's pigeon came third out of 30,000, the race distance was around 600 miles.
Of course, the speed with which a bird can be captured by its owner and the rubber race ring removed from its foot is critical to a successful race winner.
The art of capturing a pigeon is one that is perhaps a function of the familiarity of the birds with their owner, and the fact that after a race, they will be hungry and can be lured by a few tasty nibbles so that they can be handled by their owner, and the ring entered into the clock.
I still have my father's pigeon clock, or at least one of them.
The one I have is a French model, a Toulet. Quite a beautiful timepiece, perhaps with much in common with a ships’ chronometer.
Clocks are sealed with a special lead seal for races, to make sure they are not tampered with, and something like a paper dial such as would verify the driving of a large lorry would be the proof of when a bird had returned to its home loft.
Pigeons for races are placed in special baskets that contain about a dozen birds each, and the special lorries that take them to a race point are designed so that these crates containing the birds can be opened almost simultaneously so that the races are kept as fair as possible.
Perhaps it will only take a few minutes for two men to open all of the crates in which several thousand birds have been transported to a particular race point.
For several years as a young boy I would attend with my father to the club where his birds participated in races, and where perhaps the majority of fanciers were men just like my father, content with a hobby that meant they spent many hours just scanning the sky looking for the return of a speck on the horizon.
It was perhaps the only occasion in the year when my mother would be taken to a dinner dance, to the annual Pigeon Fanciers’ Ball, when cheques and cups would be presented to mark the success of the years racing.
For my father, it could mean considerable winnings, in the order of several hundred pounds, at a time when this was a substantial sum of money.
Quite simply, every bird entered into a race could be entered into a pool, often of quite small sums like a shilling or a two shilling pool, but if the bird was one of the first in this section, the pool of money placed might amount to quite significant sums.
I can still remember the way in which my father taught me to identify the different colorings of bird types, and if I see racing pigeons in the street, wearing the permanent metal rings over their feet placed there when sufficiently small for the rings to be fitted, I cannot help but recall all of those occasions when I went to the club with my father to see his birds safely on their way to a race.
Thursday, 2 August 2012
A Floor Reaching To Heaven
In some respects my restoration of a 17th-century townhouse on the Norfolk/Suffolk border was my greatest act of vanity.
It was a work of love, and as it happened, my last opportunity to express myself through workmanship. Towards the completion of the project, I was diagnosed with the multiple sclerosis that would, ironically, mean that I would be unable to live in the house that I had lovingly restored.
Listed buildings are famously unsuited to the use of wheelchairs. And only so much can be done to make them reach the kind of standards that a disabled person would require, before an act of vandalism takes place.
Hours of labour were devoted to the restoration of this unique survival of an age past. the fact that the house had been abandoned and squatted had in some strange sense protected it from the worst excesses of inappropriate restoration.
With us when we purchased it from the squatters that could not really afford to repair the house, and make it more habitable, it was purchased not freehold but with the kind of title deeds that allow for the lost owner to potentially reclaim their property, through a form of insurance.
My partner and I were able to transform this to a proper freehold when we purchased the neighbouring cottage, and combined the two houses to make a five bedroomed house. With two full-size bathrooms and just the one kitchen, but with the second kitchen used as a utility room.
When finished it was indeed fabulous. We had adopted high standards in the work we mostly undertook ourselves, only bringing in experts when absolutely necessary.
Thus a firm specialising in the restoration of churches were employed to replace a 6 foot section of solid oak on which the roof rested, because such work would have been beyond us, and the Carpenters that did the work were gentlemen in their late 60s that had spent a lifetime using skills that are almost beyond modern craftsmen.
We taught ourselves to be able to work with lime plaster, and one of my proudest possessions was my large container full of goats' hair that was used in the mix of lime and sharp sand to help bind the soft mortar that is essential to the sensitive repair of an older house. So that it can continue to move and to breathe.
On the ground floor, what had perhaps once been a simple earth floor had been concreted over many years before we came on the scene, and this was both cold and somehow not right for the period of the house.
Research suggested that the correct floor would once have been red pine boards, and eventually we located a local timber yard in which we found something that we felt was exactly right.
It was a plank of Wellingtonia, Giant Redwood, Sequoia Sequoia. This single plank measured about 4 inches thick, was 3 feet in width, and about 12 feet in length.
In other words, when we sent it to a specialist to be machined into random width boards, we had more than enough to cover the entire downstairs reception room and hallway.
It wasn't really until the boards were delivered from their machining into tongue and groove boards that we realised quite how pink the timber was. And how soft.
The colour was simple to dye, and several coats of diamond hard varnish made it suitable for walking upon. But I suppose it was the romance that had convinced us of its suitability, as it had been harvested from the Duke of Wellington's estate, and must have been one of the first of its kind imported into the United Kingdom, as indeed the common English name for this timber, Wellingtonia, suggests.
I fixed Marine ply boards to the concrete floor, and was thus able to nail the random width boards directly to this subfloor with nails that in effect were invisibly driven into the side of the boards. The overall effect was simply stunning.
The softness of the timber made it easy to cut and fix, and once the colour was turned from the pink to an acceptable brown colour, it looked as if it might have been in place since the house had been built.
But I would tell people the story of the floor at every opportunity, and it was always admired.
In the room that it mainly adorned, there was our front to the street, and we found a beautiful marble fire surround, simple enough to have passed for an early 19th-century example, perhaps it was original, and at one of the road closure fairs we found a Carron grate, which fitted perfectly and gave us a roaring fire. local supplies of hardwood logs were easy to come by, and stored just outside our side entrance, became an attractive and efficient winter feature.
The chimneys proved to be in remarkable condition, and were quite safe to use.
It was a work of love, and as it happened, my last opportunity to express myself through workmanship. Towards the completion of the project, I was diagnosed with the multiple sclerosis that would, ironically, mean that I would be unable to live in the house that I had lovingly restored.
Listed buildings are famously unsuited to the use of wheelchairs. And only so much can be done to make them reach the kind of standards that a disabled person would require, before an act of vandalism takes place.
Hours of labour were devoted to the restoration of this unique survival of an age past. the fact that the house had been abandoned and squatted had in some strange sense protected it from the worst excesses of inappropriate restoration.
With us when we purchased it from the squatters that could not really afford to repair the house, and make it more habitable, it was purchased not freehold but with the kind of title deeds that allow for the lost owner to potentially reclaim their property, through a form of insurance.
My partner and I were able to transform this to a proper freehold when we purchased the neighbouring cottage, and combined the two houses to make a five bedroomed house. With two full-size bathrooms and just the one kitchen, but with the second kitchen used as a utility room.
When finished it was indeed fabulous. We had adopted high standards in the work we mostly undertook ourselves, only bringing in experts when absolutely necessary.
Thus a firm specialising in the restoration of churches were employed to replace a 6 foot section of solid oak on which the roof rested, because such work would have been beyond us, and the Carpenters that did the work were gentlemen in their late 60s that had spent a lifetime using skills that are almost beyond modern craftsmen.
We taught ourselves to be able to work with lime plaster, and one of my proudest possessions was my large container full of goats' hair that was used in the mix of lime and sharp sand to help bind the soft mortar that is essential to the sensitive repair of an older house. So that it can continue to move and to breathe.
On the ground floor, what had perhaps once been a simple earth floor had been concreted over many years before we came on the scene, and this was both cold and somehow not right for the period of the house.
Research suggested that the correct floor would once have been red pine boards, and eventually we located a local timber yard in which we found something that we felt was exactly right.
It was a plank of Wellingtonia, Giant Redwood, Sequoia Sequoia. This single plank measured about 4 inches thick, was 3 feet in width, and about 12 feet in length.
In other words, when we sent it to a specialist to be machined into random width boards, we had more than enough to cover the entire downstairs reception room and hallway.
It wasn't really until the boards were delivered from their machining into tongue and groove boards that we realised quite how pink the timber was. And how soft.
The colour was simple to dye, and several coats of diamond hard varnish made it suitable for walking upon. But I suppose it was the romance that had convinced us of its suitability, as it had been harvested from the Duke of Wellington's estate, and must have been one of the first of its kind imported into the United Kingdom, as indeed the common English name for this timber, Wellingtonia, suggests.
I fixed Marine ply boards to the concrete floor, and was thus able to nail the random width boards directly to this subfloor with nails that in effect were invisibly driven into the side of the boards. The overall effect was simply stunning.
The softness of the timber made it easy to cut and fix, and once the colour was turned from the pink to an acceptable brown colour, it looked as if it might have been in place since the house had been built.
But I would tell people the story of the floor at every opportunity, and it was always admired.
In the room that it mainly adorned, there was our front to the street, and we found a beautiful marble fire surround, simple enough to have passed for an early 19th-century example, perhaps it was original, and at one of the road closure fairs we found a Carron grate, which fitted perfectly and gave us a roaring fire. local supplies of hardwood logs were easy to come by, and stored just outside our side entrance, became an attractive and efficient winter feature.
The chimneys proved to be in remarkable condition, and were quite safe to use.
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Martian invasion
We have always been imaginatively concerned with a Martian invasion, but in just six days time, our own invasion of Mars takes place.
It is an extraordinary endeavour. We are sending a vehicle to explore the Martian surface, the most complex vehicle ever sent into space.
It is a roving laboratory that is intended to ascertain whether conditions have ever been suitable for organic life to have existed.
It seems that it has been accepted that if life ever existed, that the general conditions as they prevail, would make it highly unlikely for life to be able to exist to day.
Temperatures seem to be consistently around -150° centigrade, and solar radiation make conditions particularly inhospitable.
Once again, the team of scientists working on this extraordinary project have been looking at some of the most extreme environments on Earth to assess the possibility of life existing, or having existed, on Mars.
The Rio Tinto was used as a particular example, where water is a deep red because of Iran's, and the pH of the water is extremely acid, around 2.7.
And yet extraordinarily there is life, microscopic life, in this water and actually the cause of the acidity. metabolising what at first sight appears to be pollution from mining in the area, microscopic life forms then excrete acid, and the consequence is the extreme acid environment in which this life exists.
Curiosity, as the Mars Lander is entitled, will make its landing with extraordinary ambition to ensure that the billion-dollar craft lands safely.
A parachute will be deployed at first, using the thin Martian atmosphere to slow entry, and then a remarkable rocket powered crane will lower Curiosity to the surface.
And all of this takes place in just six days time.
It is a remarkable endeavour, and if successfully deployed, is remarkably well equipped to discover if the right kind of minerals have ever existed for organic life as we know it to perhaps have once existed.
It seems that it is already accepted that we are the only complex lifeforms that exist, and to that extent what is being sought is simply the conditions in which perhaps single cell lifeforms may once have developed.
The philosophical implications are enormous: that we may well be alone in the universe. That life exists at all on our planet seems to have been an extraordinary thing, but that it has become as complex as we see around us is all the more miraculous.
And so, no doubt this eight month journey will be more highly publicised once it is reaching its conclusion, and if successful, perhaps this question of whether other planets in our solar system may once have enabled life to be created will be answered.
The implications are extraordinary, and perhaps might make us think for a moment how special this planet is.
For it seems that space is a hostile environment, and the sun can be a most destructive force as much as it is an important source of energy for us.
That our atmosphere has not been stripped away by solar winds appears to be a function of our magnetic fields, which protect us from the worst excesses of the solar wind, and this in itself seems to be dependent on the fact that we have a molten iron core, that same phenomenon that gives us the destructive power of earthquakes.
It is an extraordinary endeavour. We are sending a vehicle to explore the Martian surface, the most complex vehicle ever sent into space.
It is a roving laboratory that is intended to ascertain whether conditions have ever been suitable for organic life to have existed.
It seems that it has been accepted that if life ever existed, that the general conditions as they prevail, would make it highly unlikely for life to be able to exist to day.
Temperatures seem to be consistently around -150° centigrade, and solar radiation make conditions particularly inhospitable.
Once again, the team of scientists working on this extraordinary project have been looking at some of the most extreme environments on Earth to assess the possibility of life existing, or having existed, on Mars.
The Rio Tinto was used as a particular example, where water is a deep red because of Iran's, and the pH of the water is extremely acid, around 2.7.
And yet extraordinarily there is life, microscopic life, in this water and actually the cause of the acidity. metabolising what at first sight appears to be pollution from mining in the area, microscopic life forms then excrete acid, and the consequence is the extreme acid environment in which this life exists.
Curiosity, as the Mars Lander is entitled, will make its landing with extraordinary ambition to ensure that the billion-dollar craft lands safely.
A parachute will be deployed at first, using the thin Martian atmosphere to slow entry, and then a remarkable rocket powered crane will lower Curiosity to the surface.
And all of this takes place in just six days time.
It is a remarkable endeavour, and if successfully deployed, is remarkably well equipped to discover if the right kind of minerals have ever existed for organic life as we know it to perhaps have once existed.
It seems that it is already accepted that we are the only complex lifeforms that exist, and to that extent what is being sought is simply the conditions in which perhaps single cell lifeforms may once have developed.
The philosophical implications are enormous: that we may well be alone in the universe. That life exists at all on our planet seems to have been an extraordinary thing, but that it has become as complex as we see around us is all the more miraculous.
And so, no doubt this eight month journey will be more highly publicised once it is reaching its conclusion, and if successful, perhaps this question of whether other planets in our solar system may once have enabled life to be created will be answered.
The implications are extraordinary, and perhaps might make us think for a moment how special this planet is.
For it seems that space is a hostile environment, and the sun can be a most destructive force as much as it is an important source of energy for us.
That our atmosphere has not been stripped away by solar winds appears to be a function of our magnetic fields, which protect us from the worst excesses of the solar wind, and this in itself seems to be dependent on the fact that we have a molten iron core, that same phenomenon that gives us the destructive power of earthquakes.
Sunday, 29 July 2012
A Lasting Legacy Already Achieved?
I have already watched the opening ceremony to the 2012 Olympics twice more since I watched the first hour or so live, but it did start later than my normal time for sleep.
The more I have had time for the incredible spectacle of the ceremony to sink in, the more I have realised that already I feel it has made a substantial difference to me.
And likewise, I am sure it must have made a similar important difference to many other people, and perhaps particularly those that were present on the evening, or who were lucky enough to have been personally involved in some way.
It is like having been present at the first performance of a new opera, which is something that I have had the privilege to have done many times during my professional life in The Arts.
But this has been something quite different. Engaging in quite an extraordinary way, through the brilliance of the storytelling, and perhaps in particular by the way in which it was achieved, by the involvement of so many volunteers.
I have suddenly become so much more interested in watching the sporting events as they happen, whatever they are.
Because what they all have in common is that they have had their birth with this extraordinary opening, which has somehow made clear the significance of the Olympic ideals.
And the context of this event as the summation of our cultural heritage and history, and from the imaginative and creative world that has been so intertwined with the lives of all of us.
This is quite an achievement. Happening at this point in time when our future seems so uncertain, I can only hope that the message of these games will have moved the hearts of many more like me, and that this above all things in our common experience will be remembered as a catalyst for a new and resurgent sense of Self and of Society.
It hardly seems important exactly how many gold medals we may win. It is definitely simply the taking part, and perhaps this may translate across more than simply the arena of sport and supporting excellence.
It is more than simply the regeneration of my part of East London, where i was brought up, but of myself, and of my Country - the Country to which we can all offer our proud allegiance.
The more I have had time for the incredible spectacle of the ceremony to sink in, the more I have realised that already I feel it has made a substantial difference to me.
And likewise, I am sure it must have made a similar important difference to many other people, and perhaps particularly those that were present on the evening, or who were lucky enough to have been personally involved in some way.
It is like having been present at the first performance of a new opera, which is something that I have had the privilege to have done many times during my professional life in The Arts.
But this has been something quite different. Engaging in quite an extraordinary way, through the brilliance of the storytelling, and perhaps in particular by the way in which it was achieved, by the involvement of so many volunteers.
I have suddenly become so much more interested in watching the sporting events as they happen, whatever they are.
Because what they all have in common is that they have had their birth with this extraordinary opening, which has somehow made clear the significance of the Olympic ideals.
And the context of this event as the summation of our cultural heritage and history, and from the imaginative and creative world that has been so intertwined with the lives of all of us.
This is quite an achievement. Happening at this point in time when our future seems so uncertain, I can only hope that the message of these games will have moved the hearts of many more like me, and that this above all things in our common experience will be remembered as a catalyst for a new and resurgent sense of Self and of Society.
It hardly seems important exactly how many gold medals we may win. It is definitely simply the taking part, and perhaps this may translate across more than simply the arena of sport and supporting excellence.
It is more than simply the regeneration of my part of East London, where i was brought up, but of myself, and of my Country - the Country to which we can all offer our proud allegiance.
Saturday, 28 July 2012
Pride And No Prejudice - 2012 Opening
I have just finished watching the recording I made of the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, and I can only echo Sebastien Coe's words in his speech as the President of the Olympic Association, and central to the bid itself, in that my most immediate feelings are a sense of Pride in being British.
The opening ceremony was always going to be difficult, following in the footsteps of the remarkable Beijing ceremony four years ago.
But I can speak as someone that went to school in Stratford itself for part of my education, just a few hundred yards away from where the amazing development has taken place in which the games will be hosted, and in which the opening ceremony took place last night.
I am immensely proud of what has taken place, and I suppose I speak as someone brought up in precisely that part of London, which is now so much in the world's eye.
The point was well made by presenters at the end of the nearly four hour event, it was bold, British, barmy, and brilliant.
There were numerous moments when I was completely moved by what was presented, and I was continually surprised at how the whole event unravelled.
There are too many memorable moments to mention, and no doubt many people unfamiliar with the particularities of British culture and social history will have missed the numerous intimate details.
But what no one can have missed is the sense of spectacle, and the scale of the spectacular.
I have had the good fortune to have met in meetings with the Artistic Director Ruth Mackenzie, when she was the Artistic Director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse and I was a humble Education Officer at Opera North, also based in Leeds.
I have known her to be a great visionary, and well deserved with a reputation for working well with communities of ordinary people to manufacture something of great artistic merit.
In my professional life, I was for five years the Director of an Arts Trust concerned with the regeneration of a coastal town in the East of England, and my remit in that role was to create through community engagement multimedia projects, with substantial funding from The Arts Council of England and from many other sources.
And so I suppose I watched the celebration with a professional eye, and I was certainly impressed.
Mixing the range of disciplines that the event did is not straightforward at all.
And the fact that so many of the participants were not professionals but members of the community is just amazing.
It is unfortunate that it did not start until 9 PM, which is typically when I go to sleep, and unfortunately though I tried to watch the whole event live, I only managed to watch it until about 10:15 PM, perhaps because so many people were watching online and my normally reliable broadband connection was just not up to it.
But I am so pleased that I recorded the nearly four hours it took, and I have watched all of it today.
Last night, I only reached the part where it appeared that the Queen and James Bond, in the guise of Daniel Craig, parachuted into the stadium.
This film component of the celebration was inspired, and perhaps is testament to the fact that Denny Boyle is a filmmaker, and he was the Director with overall responsibility for the event.
He has certainly added to his reputation with this extraordinary beginning to the 2012 games.
But everything about it, from the design of the torch that has travelled 12,000 miles around the country to the amazing theatrical impact of the Olympic Cauldron in the stadium, was just stupendous.
Anyone that hasn't seen it should certainly try to catch the first one and a half hours, and perhaps then the final 15 minutes or so when the Olympic oaths were taken, and the event formerly opened after the lighting of the Olympic Cauldron.
It has been memorably emotive, expressive of so many values that we would wish could be more universal in the world.
I hadn't quite realised that London is the only city to have played host to the games three times since the games were reinstated in the modern era by Baron De Couperin at the end of the 19th century.
Something special is happening, and its commencement has been memorably special too.
The opening ceremony was always going to be difficult, following in the footsteps of the remarkable Beijing ceremony four years ago.
But I can speak as someone that went to school in Stratford itself for part of my education, just a few hundred yards away from where the amazing development has taken place in which the games will be hosted, and in which the opening ceremony took place last night.
I am immensely proud of what has taken place, and I suppose I speak as someone brought up in precisely that part of London, which is now so much in the world's eye.
The point was well made by presenters at the end of the nearly four hour event, it was bold, British, barmy, and brilliant.
There were numerous moments when I was completely moved by what was presented, and I was continually surprised at how the whole event unravelled.
There are too many memorable moments to mention, and no doubt many people unfamiliar with the particularities of British culture and social history will have missed the numerous intimate details.
But what no one can have missed is the sense of spectacle, and the scale of the spectacular.
I have had the good fortune to have met in meetings with the Artistic Director Ruth Mackenzie, when she was the Artistic Director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse and I was a humble Education Officer at Opera North, also based in Leeds.
I have known her to be a great visionary, and well deserved with a reputation for working well with communities of ordinary people to manufacture something of great artistic merit.
In my professional life, I was for five years the Director of an Arts Trust concerned with the regeneration of a coastal town in the East of England, and my remit in that role was to create through community engagement multimedia projects, with substantial funding from The Arts Council of England and from many other sources.
And so I suppose I watched the celebration with a professional eye, and I was certainly impressed.
Mixing the range of disciplines that the event did is not straightforward at all.
And the fact that so many of the participants were not professionals but members of the community is just amazing.
It is unfortunate that it did not start until 9 PM, which is typically when I go to sleep, and unfortunately though I tried to watch the whole event live, I only managed to watch it until about 10:15 PM, perhaps because so many people were watching online and my normally reliable broadband connection was just not up to it.
But I am so pleased that I recorded the nearly four hours it took, and I have watched all of it today.
Last night, I only reached the part where it appeared that the Queen and James Bond, in the guise of Daniel Craig, parachuted into the stadium.
This film component of the celebration was inspired, and perhaps is testament to the fact that Denny Boyle is a filmmaker, and he was the Director with overall responsibility for the event.
He has certainly added to his reputation with this extraordinary beginning to the 2012 games.
But everything about it, from the design of the torch that has travelled 12,000 miles around the country to the amazing theatrical impact of the Olympic Cauldron in the stadium, was just stupendous.
Anyone that hasn't seen it should certainly try to catch the first one and a half hours, and perhaps then the final 15 minutes or so when the Olympic oaths were taken, and the event formerly opened after the lighting of the Olympic Cauldron.
It has been memorably emotive, expressive of so many values that we would wish could be more universal in the world.
I hadn't quite realised that London is the only city to have played host to the games three times since the games were reinstated in the modern era by Baron De Couperin at the end of the 19th century.
Something special is happening, and its commencement has been memorably special too.
Friday, 27 July 2012
Bread And Circuses
This phrase has suddenly come to mind because I have began to feel myself swept up with the sense of National zeal that is sweeping the UK at the moment, as the Olympic torch makes its way throughout the country.
Billions of pounds has been spent on this project, that is no doubt fulfilling the purpose of distracting the populace from the difficulties of a recessionary period.
I am not decrying this nor thinking it is a bad thing at all, simply it has suddenly struck me how appropriate that this phrase is for this moment in time.
It originates in the Roman poet Juvenal from about 100 AD, and was very much intended as a satire on the way in which Rome had begun to be governed.
It is perhaps ultimately a good thing that we have something to distract us, and there is a tangible sense of expectation surrounding the opening ceremony for the Olympics, which as I write will take place this evening.
This morning, I was excited in expectation of hearing church bells from my open bedroom window.
Sadly, I could hear no bells, not even a local doorbell.
I watched the Olympic breakfast News programme, broadcast for the first time this morning from the beautifully situated BBC studio overlooking the Olympic Park.
Rain is possible during the course of today, but it seems not to matter, and everybody is talking up the chances of the ceremony this evening not suffering rain at all.
Enough television footage of the theatrics we will see this evening for everybody to be keen to see it, and there is a conspiracy of silence around the question of who will actually light the Olympic flame at the culmination of the opening ceremony.
If I were a gambling man, my money would be on it being the Queen herself, or perhaps the eldest of Prince Charles's sons, who one day himself will be our King.
I cannot imagine what other celebrity might be asked in this special year to undertake such a significant symbolic act.
But it is certain that the event this evening will perhaps break the record for the largest ever television audience worldwide in history.
Tomorrow will tell.
This is certainly a moment of history in the making, and I feel certain that we will all look back at this moment in time as a great moment of satisfying success, and certainly everything I have seen to date of the arrival of the Olympic flame has had an almost religious sense of purpose.
But it is Bread And Circuses, what was satirised by Juvenal, almost 2000 years ago, and perhaps the first recognition that the great ambition that was Rome had become lost in the midst of entertainments that were to distract the people from lack political of direction.
I say again, I do not wish to come across as cynical about everything Olympian, at this moment in time I am puffed up with pride at what is unrolling.
Perhaps I just wish that as a Nation we might recognize something important in our joint enterprise as a society more often, and in ways that perhaps might cost less when everything is said and done.
Billions of pounds has been spent on this project, that is no doubt fulfilling the purpose of distracting the populace from the difficulties of a recessionary period.
I am not decrying this nor thinking it is a bad thing at all, simply it has suddenly struck me how appropriate that this phrase is for this moment in time.
It originates in the Roman poet Juvenal from about 100 AD, and was very much intended as a satire on the way in which Rome had begun to be governed.
It is perhaps ultimately a good thing that we have something to distract us, and there is a tangible sense of expectation surrounding the opening ceremony for the Olympics, which as I write will take place this evening.
This morning, I was excited in expectation of hearing church bells from my open bedroom window.
Sadly, I could hear no bells, not even a local doorbell.
I watched the Olympic breakfast News programme, broadcast for the first time this morning from the beautifully situated BBC studio overlooking the Olympic Park.
Rain is possible during the course of today, but it seems not to matter, and everybody is talking up the chances of the ceremony this evening not suffering rain at all.
Enough television footage of the theatrics we will see this evening for everybody to be keen to see it, and there is a conspiracy of silence around the question of who will actually light the Olympic flame at the culmination of the opening ceremony.
If I were a gambling man, my money would be on it being the Queen herself, or perhaps the eldest of Prince Charles's sons, who one day himself will be our King.
I cannot imagine what other celebrity might be asked in this special year to undertake such a significant symbolic act.
But it is certain that the event this evening will perhaps break the record for the largest ever television audience worldwide in history.
Tomorrow will tell.
This is certainly a moment of history in the making, and I feel certain that we will all look back at this moment in time as a great moment of satisfying success, and certainly everything I have seen to date of the arrival of the Olympic flame has had an almost religious sense of purpose.
But it is Bread And Circuses, what was satirised by Juvenal, almost 2000 years ago, and perhaps the first recognition that the great ambition that was Rome had become lost in the midst of entertainments that were to distract the people from lack political of direction.
I say again, I do not wish to come across as cynical about everything Olympian, at this moment in time I am puffed up with pride at what is unrolling.
Perhaps I just wish that as a Nation we might recognize something important in our joint enterprise as a society more often, and in ways that perhaps might cost less when everything is said and done.
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