Songs from films

Today at The Dabbler I appreciate some memorable songs from some great films.

Tales from the riverbank

The Tales from Bibury Shop blog is back. And there's more intriguing news of riverbank developments:

...I have noticed that the grass around the river banks is often streaked with a silvery deposit. I have worked out that this is heron poo. As they take flight from a morning's fishing they almost always emit a long streak of sparkling deposit. On closer inspection the poo is entirely composed of fish scales which contrasts vividly with the lush green grass.

If you don't like hearing about that sort of thing there's something wrong with you.

In praise of Masterchef: The Professionals

Masterchef: The Professionals, where cocks of the walk end up as coq au vin. At The D.

Babooneries

I hoot on babooneries at El Dabblo today.

Baltis

Balti. Brum. Here.

In praise of AR

Antiques Roadshow. Admit it - you'd miss it if it wasn't there. At The D.

Win, win, win!

You - yes, you - could win one year's subscription to Slightly Foxed over at The Dabbler. Should you be witty as well as lucky you can also win a Stan Madeley book. Hie over there forthwith!

Gauguin at the Tate

Today I dabble away on the Gauguin exhibition at Tate Modern.

The future's not what it used to be

At The Dabbler today I muse on why the future's looking more and more like the present.

Writing's on the wall for wool

Preparing to celebrate Wool Week yesterday, I was amazed to learn from the enthusiastic Lucy Siegle (right, in a non-wool scarf) that there are question marks over the sustainability of wool:

It's too much of a stretch to say that wool is highly sustainable (there's the animal exploitation, for starters, though the industry claims excellent welfare conditions for all its 1bn sheep), but it is compostable and water resistant. 

Yes, there's been a question mark over sheep farming for a while now. Those Arcadian Shepherds really were on to something:

The strange persistence of "pseudo-history"

Well that break didn't last long. I guess if you're provoked enough, even a high temperature doesn't get in the way...

From a piece on trees in today's Guardian by Colin Tudge, a biologist and the author of The Secret Life of Trees (my emphasis):

But in Britain right now, woods are on the up. According to a survey carried out this week by the Forestry Commission for the UN, we have more trees than at any time since 1750 (after which we cut them down to build a navy to fight the French). In fact, we have 11,200 sq miles of woodland – which is more than twice as much as we had at the low point of the 1920s, after the first world war had taken its toll on timber and charcoal.

There is no evidence for either of the bolded assertions; in fact, the evidence points entirely the other way. The continuing use of woodland to harvest timber or make charcoal helps ensure its survival.

The other point to make is that there's woodland and woodland. Plantations - which ecologically have little interest relative to naturally occuring woodland - may well have increased our wooded acreage. However, ancient woodland has declined.

I came across this Richard Mabey review of the sainted Oliver Rackham's Woodlands. It makes the argument:

I was lucky to be at Rackham’s debut, at a conference 30 years ago. He was a shy young Cambridge botanist then, and was addressing the seemingly uncontroversial subject of The Oak Tree in Historic Times. But his paper turned out to be a bombshell, a clinical demolition of foresters’ paternalism and an awesomely evidenced account of the fact that, for most of human history, trees had been regarded and used as a self- renewing resource. He described how he had measured all the main timbers in the original part of his college, Corpus Christi (there were 1,249, mostly small squared trees about 7ins in diameter), and calculated how frequently such a building could have been created from the renewable oaks of an ordinary Cambridgeshire wood. He blew away the notion that felling trees destroyed woodland.

In the half-dozen books he has written since, he has revolutionised our understanding of historical ecology. In sharp and exquisite English, and with a historical intuition as strong as his scientific rigour, he has laid waste the conventional wisdom of foresters, the ideologies of theoretical naturalists, the “pseudo-histories” of historians. His simple — and to him sacrosanct — precept is that the final arbiter in all arguments about woodland must be the trees and woods themselves, in all their dynamic, mutable, particular detail.

And yet the "pseudo history" persists!

By the way, C Tudge appears to be plagiarising himself. His latest article begins and ends:

My passion for trees began at primary school, well over half a century ago. I was 11 when I started a nursery in our garden in south London, planting sprigs of sycamore, oak and holly salvaged from the bomb-sites that still pockmarked the city. They'd be grown by now, if I hadn't dug them up to make way for a greenhouse.

[...] 

We've been treating trees badly for a long time. At Binsey in Oxford in 1879 Gerard Manley Hopkins lamented the felling of poplars: "O if we but knew what we do When we delve or hew – Hack and rack the growing green!"

We still don't know what we are doing and in the world at large the hacking and racking continue more vigorously than ever. But right now, in Britain, although the leaves are dying the trees with luck are flourishing. I do hope we can keep it up.

Back in 2005 another article, which he must be proud of as he's posted it to his website, begins and ends:

At age 11 I started my own nursery—horse chestnut, sycamore, birch, oak, and holly, pillaged from the World War II bomb-sites that still pock-marked South London: those baby trees would be big by now, if they hadn't succumbed to later whims.

[...]

In Oxford in 1879 Gerard Manley Hopkins lamented the felling of poplars: “O if we but knew what we do When we delve or hew—Hack and rack the growing green!” We still don't know what we are doing, and never can in any detail, but the hacking and racking continue more vigorously than ever. The only half-way sane approach if we want this world to remain habitable, is to approach it humbly. Trees teach humility. We need to take the world far more seriously. It would be a good idea to begin with trees.

Other bits are very similar too. He's a fan of recycling and in many ways it seems. In any event, he could do with some fresh input on 'hacking and racking', a good thing when it's done in the right way.

If I may quote: 'We need to take the world far more seriously. It would be a good idea to begin with trees.'

No posts for a bit

I've come down with flu so won't be posting for a bit. Happy days...

Happy odyseey

Yonda lies my postage on da Dabblah (T Curtis homage). About the happy odyssey of a legendary and alarming soldier.

Cancelled

Op cancelled, for the third time now. I've been waiting since the end of May.

This time I got as far as the operating theatre, in gown and stockings, before being informed that I wouldn't be going through the doors - they'd run out of intensive care beds. So at least four surgeons are also twiddling their thumbs this afternoon.

Anyway. Cup of tea.

On not hibernating

I'm off into hospital tomorrow for a big op and it's intended that I shall stay there for about ten days. As little blogging will be carried on during this time I thought I'd leave you with a difficult poem (referred to here). It is mostly mysterious but illuminated by flashes of beauty - and therefore rather lifelike.

It's called The Winter Bees. I suppose it has some personal resonance as the honey bees of the title don't hibernate, they slow down and huddle together to keep going; more or less my modus operandi over the last couple of years and for the next couple of months. It's by Jon Silkin, a poet the majority of whose poems I'm not fussed about. However, occasionally and when he writes about nature I think he can come up with poetry as good as anything written in recent decades.

Anyway, ta-ra! Don't be afeard - the operation is intended to restore me to full fitness so it's a good thing. What's playing on my mind most right now is that I'll be missing most of Masterchef Professional. For a second year, too.

The Winter Bees

1.

Winter bees, finding enough blossom,

of the sweet small copiousness they cram

winter - frozen muddle - with amorous pressure;

the acetylene flare of bees, nectaring

in suffused purple light; the honey

cool moral, waylaid by feelers.

2.

Flickering sugary flowers, their doused blameless

substance a gelid intermittent veining,

like strands of wintery heat - the bee hunts them

for liquor, jabbing a superfluity.

Veined blossom flickering, scalloped clouds, these consonant

sharing forms, a bee their suffering link,

is also a heated wire, quick form.

3.

The zone forks its electrics, the sky, fanned

in ridges like a shell, splits with a flash;

the bivalve in a half form, coy fissure.

4.

In cold this unceasing flare is work

a prisoner of honey slowly unwinds

as if it were a spidery filament;

oozed sugary superfluity

the jasmine hardly notices it yields.

The face is winter's

5.

plum-coloured, a huntsman's hung up in the fog.

A doe, spotting soft grass and briar, her breath

gassed in exhaustion, inoperative limbs

tied as a thicket is, green liquid,

greasy manufacture you recognise

is gangrene. Recognise these shifting marshes,

the horses buttocks, the man's slighter ones

a contour upon the animal fixed like

a grin, blood misting the thicket. Remus,

with fierce light, with struggling blood, as if

you ploughed up North America, tune your horn

with fierce light, with straggling blood - as if

the evening's silvery flanks, the gashed flanks,

the simple sun, gashed. Hot star, rise up, see

your furred contemporary, curious nectar

of the lonely; the dead wings, without weight;

6.

the embrasures of honey, the queen's furred kinsmen

in rows and layers, effigies for the spider;

pointed receptacles, corbels of honey

fluted with dust, scum upon amber fluid.

The young boy shoves off for lunch, whistling -

his little pipes, the unbroken larynx, are reeds

of cheerfulness, earth for him so much down,

fluff, a mantle, on the bellowing cheeks.

Sex and shopping

Some thoughts on sex and shopping over at THE DABBLER.

It turns out I may be part-fairy

Tooling around on the web, as one does, I came across an extract from what sounded an interesting book, Wirt Sikes's British Goblins - Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions. The author explained what he was about thus:

In the course of the summer of 1882 I was a good deal in Wales, especially Carnarvonshire, and I made notes of a great many scraps of legends about the fairies, and other bits of folklore. I will now string some of them together as I found them.

What I found particularly interesting was that he started this passage with a reference to the village near where my paternal grandfather's family are from (I wrote about my Taid here):

I began at Trefriw, in Nant Conwy, where I came across an old man, born and bred there, called Morris Hughes. He appears to be about seventy years of age: he formerly worked as a slater, but now he lives at Llanrwst, and tries to earn a livelihood by angling. 

It turned out the strange tale he had to tell concerned the farmhouse where my Taid's family lived, at least during the summer months (it was a hafod*), up above the Conwy Valley:

He told me that fairies came a long while ago to Cowlyd Farm, near Cowlyd Lake, with a baby to dress, and asked to be admitted into the house, saying that they would pay well for it. Their request was granted, and they used to leave money behind them. One day the servant girl accidentally found they had also left some stuff they were in the habit of using in washing their children. She examined it, and, one of her eyes happening to itch, she rubbed it with the finger that had touched the stuff; so when she went to Llanrwst Fair she saw the same fairy folks there stealing cakes from a standing, and asked them why they did that. They inquired with what eye she saw them: she put her hand to the eye, and one of the fairies quickly rubbed it, so that she never saw any more of them. They were also very fond of bringing their children to be dressed in the houses between Trefriw and Llanrwst; and on the flat land bordering on the Conwy they used to dance, frolic, and sing every moonlight night. Evan Thomas of Sgubor Gerrig used to have money from them. He has been dead, Morris Hughes said, over sixty years: he had on his land a sort of cowhouse where the fairies had shelter, and hence the pay. Morris, when a boy, used to be warned by his parents to take care lest he should be stolen by the fairies. 

Interesting to think one's ancestors had social relations with fairies. But the next passage is even more intriguing as it concerns a Williams from the area (and all the Williams from there seem to be related):

He [our narrator] knew Thomas Williams of Bryn Syllty, or, as he was commonly called, Twm Bryn Syllty, who was a changeling. He was a sharp, small man, afraid of nothing. He met his death some years ago by drowning near Eglwys Fach, when he was about sixty-three years of age. There are relatives of his about Llanrwst still: that is, relatives of his mother, if indeed she was his mother...

To think that fairy blood might run in my veins... It would explain a lot.


* Hafod is Welsh for 'summer dwelling' or 'farm', and refers to the seasonal cycle of transhumance - the movement of livestock and people from a lowland winter pasture at the main residence (Welsh hendre) to a higher summer pasture from roughly May through October.

London calling

Today at The D I remark on how all three party leaders are Londoners - for the first time since at least WWI.

The Age of the Infovore

Just read The Age of the Infovore by Tyler Cowen. I enjoy his blog very much but I was disappointed in the book. It's about how to thrive in what he calls the information economy.

It's poorly written - baggy, rather cliched and lacking clarity of expression at times. One of its major problems is that it sets out to explain how we should think about the digital economy through a couple of analogies that will be unfamiliar to most readers: autism and Buddhism (contemporary culture also happens to be like a marriage). Analogies are usually used to enlighten by translating the strange into the familiar. In this case the strange is being explained - very extensively - through comparison with the even stranger; there are too many moving parts. The lack of clarity of expression becomes an even more serious problem in these parts of the book.

Unfortunately, where it's not confusing its observations are mostly commonplace, wrong-headed or just bizarre. From a couple of pages chosen more or less at random (pp58-60), we learn that Shakespeare is losing out to the internet; that a Walmart store 'doesn't compare' to Mozart's Don Giovanni; that carrying around an iPod is preferable to carrying around a Caravaggio or Picasso in a pop-up box.

How and why do books like this get written?

History of the Countryside

I post on Oliver Rackham's marvelous History of the Countryside over at The D today.