Jubilympic Depression

The closer we get to the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, the more I'm feeling like an enormous party-pooper. Am I the only person to be completely unmoved by the faux-festivities? I wish I could crawl away under a stone and not emerge until they are all over. Unfortunately, despite my reservations and strong republican tendencies, I shall smile bravely and take part in whatever I get roped into. Sometimes it's hard being a miserable old git!

I've just taken a look at the official London 2012 on-line shop. Good grief! What a fiesta of patriotic piffle. Is there really a market for 'Team GB Handbag Charms" at £60 a go? And how did the collection of "Host Cities Ingots" sell out at £775 each?  And what about the Team GB Cycling Duck? Who on earth buys these? Oh dear, it could be one of my neighbours. I'd better not go out at night just in case I meet one of these loonies in the lane sporting his/her cycling duck. Well, one thing's for sure, if selling over-priced tat were an Olympic sport, Britain would definately take the gold.

Getting bored now........

..but not before one last Olympic ring themed post - this time a pepperoni and chorizo combination to continue the continental flavour of the previous posting. This is a really a prelude to a mention of my wood burning oven but more of that next time (or the time after..).
And that's it for the Olympics: I'll try not to mention them again. I'm bored with them already.

Heinz Meanz Olympicz

During our Tuesday feast, a retro meal called a Beano Crisp (but made with spaghetti hoops instead of baked beans to add an exotic Italian flavour. I suppose we should call it a Spaghetti Crisp but we like to retain a nostalgic homage to the original dish), a weird thing happened. Five hoops mysteriously aligned themselves into a familiar geometry. Yep,the insidious tentacles of  Olympic fervour are reaching down into the very depths of my life. Whatever next, I wonder?

Showing the true Olympic spirit

The launch of the Olympic torch yesterday from Lands End inspired me to do something, albeit small and personal, to commemorate the Games. After a little thought (oooh, about 6 nanoseconds), I set about constructing my very own Olympic symbol (don't tell the organisers as they are guarding the brand zealously and Jan would not want to be woken up at night by a knock on the door from the boys in blue). The result of my labours is on the right. A gold medal winning effort by any standards: OK, more correctly by my standards and those of very few other people.

The long and short. Part 1: The short

To Dartmoor for a walk today with friends. "No more than 6 miles", said our walk leader, Richard. "Of course", we said and off we went.
We entered the moor on the eastern side about 3 miles from Buckfastleigh at Ludgate. Thence to the Avon Dam, up the Walla Brook, past the old clapper bridge, to an old blowing house and an open chapel built in the early 1900s by Rev. Keble-Martin. From there it was over the neighbouring tor, passing a lot of old mine workings, and down to Huntingdon Warren Farm. This was the abode of the warriner of the Huntingdon Warren. Although the trade in rabbits was pretty much over by the late 1800s, the farm remained occupied until 1950 or so. It is now a 'romantic ruin', stuck in the middle of nowhere and invariably prompting the question "why is there a farm alal the way out here?". Well, now you know. Up and over a hill and back to the car.  Yet another delightful walk - good company, good scenery and acceptable weather (coldish and wetish).
"How far was that", said Richard. "8 miles", said my GPS. Was it ever thus with Richard's estimates?
We like walking!

Music to beat those Coalition Blues

I first came across Ravi Shankar when I was a callow (and shallow) student in the 60s. Before, I hasten to add, the Beatles etc got into him.  I've still got my old vinyl LPs of his tucked away somewhere but have not played them for a while. I can't remember how I came across this clip but I think it's great.
The actual track is taken from his album "Shankar and Friends - Towards The Rising Sun"  and is entitled "Improvisation on the Theme of 'Rokudan' (East Greets East)". Shankar is commonly held to be the greatest Indian musician of the 20th century. Who am I to disagree with this assessment? This is him at his best. Listen, forget the outside world and enjoy it. The visuals are pretty good as well.

On the Road to Ruins

With a title like 'The A303: Highway to the Sun' who could fail to be attracted to the book by Tom Fort? Many people, probably, but those of us who have a love/hate relationship with the eponymous route will be able to identify with the author's interest.

Tom Fort is a BBC radio journalist and has written much more than an anorak’s guide to a road. Like him, I have driven the A303 many times but I have not noticed things the way he has. He misses nothing, from pig farms by the side of the road to roadkill; from ancient burial mounds to the Little Chef, which Heston Blumenthal tried to update at Popham services. He is also obsessed, in a good way, with cars, traffic, maps, roads, routes, planning and byways. He particularly likes bridges — the older the better - and also discourses amiably on cafés in caravans, ancient milestones, extravagant monuments like those at Stourhead, and Fat Charlie, the emblem of Little Chef. (Not the same outside all Little Chefs, you may be surprised to hear - I was).

His interest in Stonehenge, by a mile the star attraction of the whole 92 miles the A303 runs, and the powerhouse of magic, is obvious as he drives and walks around it. One of the best views, he says, is actually from the A303 itself. ("You can always go once round the ‘Solstice’ roundabout for a second look from the other direction"). He gives a wonderfully ironic account of Stonehenge’s ups and downs in the hands of the Antrobus family, the military and — since 1918 — the nation. He particularly loves the eccentrics — "a multitude of antiquaries, historians, archaelogists, visionaries, prophets and crackpots who have studied it, speculated on its origins and promoted their accounts of its meaning and purpose". Inigo Jones, sent by James I, decided it was a Roman temple. And the truth is -  nobody knows! Digs have produced shards of pottery and some bones, but the people who built it are beyond the reach of science. The druidical claims for Stonehenge seem to belong to that bonkers but persistent strand of Englishness that believes there is something particularly mystical about the English themselves, who were clearly a chosen people. But, as he writes, "the fact is, there are almost no facts about Stonehenge".

It's a delightful read and I've enjoyed it. One of Fort's opening sentences struck a particular chord with me: "many of us have a road that reaches back into our past". For him, it is A303: for me it's the A468 in South Wales. As soon as I read his sentence and thought about it, memories of the 50's and early 60's came flooding back.  Why the A468? This was the road that was the start of the journey from the villages of my childhood (Bedwas & Trethomas) to the seaside glories of Barry Island! Summer outings from chapel and the 'club' (British Legion or Working Men's), on Caerphilly Grey charabancs were invariably to the jewel of the Costa South Wales. The journey took us up to Caerphilly and, by way of Nantgarw Hill, through Taff's Well (a spa a long time ago and the site of one of the few thermal springs in the UK) and past Castell Coch (to our young minds always a fairy castle but more prosaically associated with the mine-owning Bute family). Thence around the TV transmission mast at Wenvoe (at this point we always had the first to see the sea competition) and down onto the Island. With its coal dust impregnated sand and sea, it was not a tropical paradise but every trip was Fun with a capital 'f'. What was there not to like? It had swimming, rockpools, candy floss, cockles and not forgetting the funfair with its scenic railway and its air of being slightly disreputable. Happy days. Here's a strange thing, a few years ago we went to Bondi Beach in Australia and, guess what, it reminded me of Barry Island.

DC LOL

OMG!
Phrased like a true statesman.
Ha ha ha.

It's Pantomime Season...............

..................or, more correctly, the State Opening of Parliament. I'll pass over making any comments about what I think of the pomp and pageantry and just make a few observations about what the Queen (gawd bless her!) had written into her speech. It strikes me that there is no over-arching theme to what is being considered and, as a consequence, no evidence of any strategic thinking, beyond "making difficult decisions etc etc". No surprises there really

On some of the specific proposals:
1.  House of Lords Reform - we've heard it all before and I'm certainly not going to get my hopes up that something radical will emerge. Given that the majority of voters in the UK seem to be disengaged from politics, what's required urgently is a revision of our entire political infrastructure to make it more accessible.  Anything other than a fully elected second chamber isn't going far enough; reducing the number of MPs in the Commons is a mistake as this puts more distance between the voter and their elected representatives. Similarly the fashion for larger Unitary Authorities achieves the same end.
2. Draft Communications Bill - which appears to make it easier for police and intelligence agencies to access, store and share data on private phone calls and email communications - regardless of a crime being committed or even suspected.

No doubt I'll be coming back to these, and other, topics as the next session of Parliament progresses. For a political nerd like me it promises to be interesting: for others probably completely boring!

Rough Tor in the rain!

Not pronounced Ruff Tor but Row Tor or, more locally, Rowta. There for an evening field walk with the Plymouth and District Archeaology Society, lead by Peter Herring, a consultant with English Heritage. And it rained and it was cold but it was enjoyable. This part of Bodmin Moor has a wealth of prehistoric remains- hut circles, bank cairns, stone rows - nestling amongst the remnants of much later agricultural systems. In many ways very similar to what you see on Dartmoor but, in other ways, quite distinct. Some of the features here, whilst almost definately linked to points in the landscape, do not seem to have any obvious function. The key to interpretation lies in knowing how prehistoric man thought and, unfortunately, we'll never be able to figure that out. So all remains a mystery and subject to much speculation. Some of it totally fanciful but some of it must contain an element of truth. After all, they were human, as we are, and thought, as we do. There was a reason for everything they did but we'll never know for certain what that was. A pity.

Reasons to be cheerful Part 2: Be Stihl my beating heart......

......or why I love my chainsaw!

After the seriousness of my last posting , I felt I needed to shift gears and lighten up a little. How better to do that than confess my love for my McCullough chainsaw! I spent an extremely enjoyable few hours yesterday hacking away at my wood pile with The Beast as my constant companion. Now it might not be the biggest or baddest chainsaw out there but it gets the job done. There's something primaeval about holding a high revving 2-stroke engine in your hands and zipping through a pile of wood. If you have never had the pleasure, I can recommend it.

And, yes, I do sing "I'm a lumberjack..." whilst in sawdust heaven.

Posh Dave - like a rabbit in the headlights.

Just imagine: you are crossing the road. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a car swings round the corner and heads toward you. Rather than run, you do something rather silly: you just stand there and wait as you zoom towards being flattened to the size of a grease spot. Watching Posh Dave on the televison last night, it struck me that this is what he is doing now. He is standing, rooted to the spot, as the inevitable doom of his premiership rumbles inexorably towards him. Every day brings a new indignity and fresh humiliation. Last week, for example, it was the ignomy of being summoned to appear before Parliament by Labour in a manner that he is definitely more used to dishing out rather than being on the receiving end of. Today, it's trying to put a positive spin on the disastrous poll results of yesterday.

After the rout of his Councillor activist base, he will feel the pain, and receive the anger, of many Conservative MP's. He may get some cold comfort from the Boris Johnson win in London but there is a view that he needs to be cautious. Rather than emboldening and empowering Cameron, Johnson's win may give Posh Dave's critics a huge boost. They will say, not without justification, that Johnson won despite, not because of Cameron, and he did so by pushing an agenda that is clearly distinctive to that of the government. Furthermore, while many Londoners do see Johnson as a toff and a Mayor for the rich, his victory shows to Conservatives that you can overcome that stigma and still win an election. Compare this with Posh Dave's extreme difficulty in ridding himself of this Achilles Heel.

But let's not be under any illusions. The Conservative Party has proven itself to be pretty brutal over its leaders in the past and will act swiftly and decisively once the best part of it is convinced it needs too. Generally speaking, as far as most Tory members are privately concerned, they were born to govern and rule the country and will deal with any obstacle to that. By contrast, privately, many Labour Party members feel they were born to storm the gates of heaven and change the world. An unpopular leader for them therefore, is something of a challenge worth undertaking and a secretly delightful two-fingered salute to the status quo. Ed Milliband lives to fight for a while longer!

No way exists for Mr Cameron to come out of Thursday's elections a winner. Ultimately, all he can do now is watch and wait…..

Finding it difficult to cope with British politics? My solution.

If you think today was a tough, depressing day, just think how gruelling the next few years will be when more of those proposed cuts become reality. Whenever you get too stressed, angry or upset about the handiwork of Posh Dave and Hapless Nick, I suggest you visit this page and look at the puppy on the left.
Look at it sleeping there,  so very, very peacefully. How could any harm possibly befall the world when there are extremely cute, sleeping puppies around? Not even George Osborne can ruin life for this puppy. Although you know he’d try if he could.
And, as I like to be inclusive, for those of you who prefer your fluffy animals to be of the feline variety, here's a heart-warming kitten for you to drool over.
I hope these pictures take you to a happy place!