INparvo

Start with Veg.  modified 140518

If you look at this Blog you may notice the title above.

My first. I must now fiddle with the mechanics

It's not a bundle of laughs, her indoors says. So be warned.

  For many years I have kept ephemera, (rubbish) and been writing accounts of things I have done alone, a diary Nature at Primary School -my best education (sporadic with certain obsessions then on 1952 miles mostly,cycling or running -walks have been more about place; about myself  or with others, partly to record how we lived. For the family. For posterity .
  My early life was Peasant, though in the words of that full blooded, 100% female, Helen Mirren, we were aspiring Middle-Class. There are others like Upper and Nouveau Riche which I would never be. Working Class? What does that mean in 2014? It seems plain to me that we are nearly back to the days my mum and dad thought were gone for ever. USA and rest of the world? No space. Sci fi  far see-ers, Apocalyptic Writers and Artists seem to see British education as a lost cause. Latterly my own working life satisfied me inasmuch  that I settled for helping Designers answer the questions they would have, while encouraging them to (mostly)  use the human figure as an easy-judge basis for understanding the world freed any spoken or written language.
 There has been volumes produced on the above. It seems far removed from the intention of trying to persuade all around me/us to eat veg -and less of everything.

Gradually I have come to see that the further back I go in my life, the more useful it may be. If only to show that nothing really changes. Folk never seem to learn from history, empires rise...and fall.

Like most, it wasn't till my late 40s that I wished I'd listened to what my mum seemed to trap me with. Write is down, I would tell her. Though Council School educated, she was a much better diarist of her era than many I know today. Even those with degrees.

Nowadays my eldest son Aaron wants his daughter to ask me to relate small incidents from my childhood. He has a little used blog and little spare time, but while I was ill last Sept. he set me up. His apt title choice : thoughts on life. Though he did not see the aptness of the rather untypical painting: my route to work,our route to the city, mostly by bike.One car for a family of 5, for 25 years.  Philosophy as a  full degree course seems a little formal  but I have inherited my dad's love of aphorism. An M. Phil. would not daunt me , but why? (See 140208 coincidences are me.)

At the same time my youngest son, Alex opened a Facebook account for me. It has been an interesting experience. I feel a little guilty about excluding some, including others, but never getting round to contact many ofthose I admire but hardly know.   

There are mixed and changing views about Facebook. As indeed there are about all social media, still in its world-shaking infancy, I feel.

In my view of it, there are those contributors, in no particular or complete order, who share cuddly pet pix; those who enjoy an excuse to be militant, those with chips bigger than ships on their shoulders; e-Paulettes? (with or without Pauls? Proud Parents, Happy Birthday do's, re-unions of old or long lost friends; there are those who want their contact in quickfix, preferably easily edited or via some clever doctoring of the pix, With such relish they create a new plausible world. For what? There are those who are guilty, sad, bereaved and lonely; the sentimental, the cast offs, those whose 15 minutes of fame was so long ago that it is already in life's attic, gathering dust. Shame is, that  they may have made bigger sacrifices for less fuss or recognition.

Or cash. It continues.  Most Masters still have to pay their own fares and pay to wear their country's colours. Chariots of Fire days!

There are those who carry on as before, with their email Fws, Illusions and jokes, with wish-you-were-here postcards. At least you could spray  postcards with scent. Names may hide behind wife cover. Reading some of the cynicism, I know I would. There are plenty of been-there-done-that-got-the-T-shirt.
Those who escape  dreary winters-to laze in the sun, if only for a week. We usually manage to. Nostalgic Antipodeans call..come buy, come buy , as in Goblin Market.

But you will find cheerful  folk  in urban, suburban or rural setting,  beach and mountain, often utilising ideal weather, or obviously really happy to escape what is beginning to seem like endless wind and rain in N  Europe. There may be   predicable and often devastating monsoons elsewhere. 
And we still enjoy our fossil burning hols and past-times! We are nimbies when we get the upheaval for someone else's gain. Seldom are there real revelations, for us to enjoy by proxy. But good luck to all. It is good to see so much enthusiasm, so much shared respect and occasional bad news but support in the new medium.

I notice if you shorten Face Book to FB some of my, much older cycling friends, may feel an esoteric twinge: Fratres Brivio (Brivio Bros : an Italian chainset for the less well off. I half aspired to one early in the 50s but went straight to what USA call Campy. We already called it Campag : Campagnolo.

(However good the films, that sheet of glass puts us the wrong side of the necessary slog and accident that enriches real experience. Plus the feel the real air; however putrid, the stuff we still call fresh.

Since I first wrote this  Barbara has overlapped  touching my wheel, tumbled and  is still suffering with cracks of her pelvic bone).

 I suppose  FB at least calls on you to use your imagination,
recall that sewer smell in the air in the seaside cove,
he two stroke oil and alcohol's farting roar,
as well April's lilac scent, sound of bees and blackbirds.

The very thing you often hope to make their story individual, remarkable,
is missing.
It often comes across as plain matter-of-fact.
As if they had never actually enjoyed it for real.

I never got round to qualifying my title. .Start with greens.
Until now. (I cheat: I edit at the bees and blossom stage!)

I edit it yet again as day now changes
to the beginning of warm fruit, rotting,
corn-flake leaves flicked by a breeze
later washed into a gulley.



Events of universality accelerate, are shared by more

Also for me, it is year of Round figure Anniversaries, some sad.

Over the years I have written in Cycling (Weekly) magazine, also supplied useful but sometimes unused ideas to sports areas. I have worked for BBC local radio, written in the Parish Magazine; I have organised things in the village..In general I choose to play a low profile. Most villagers will not know me by name. Shropshire mate  is pronounced maat  and can often sound the same as Mick 

I thought I was famous till I twigged it. I must admit though, I was was welcomed with less reserve than I recall in Suffolk.
This changed a little following the London overspill town of Haverhill.
 Harlow and Thetford were two others in East Anglia (Essex and Norfolk).

I have loved accents ever since I rode from 60 miles Haverhill to Braintree to Colchester and home via Sudbury. This a happened in one day per week in the early 50s few years while working.

The accents are still there but each generation seems London weighted.
It is much the same in Cambridge.

 Northampton meets Tyneside in Corby.

Shrewsbury folk tend to remind us of small animals  but  may seem accent free.

 I find the subject  a great chat line . Also usually if  more folk are around, a
chat-up line
 I find Writing to be lonelier than Painting. It gives me permission and an excuse to rant, mainly to compensate for many speak-first-think-later comments on Facebook.

While working on some painting and much other digressive DIY and gardening and rambles -metaphorical like this, and the real sort: by foot power. I listen to... and hear?  a lot of  BBC R4.
 Hating earphones, I rove. Sometimes I- and you, I guess - don't quite catch all the words.

You may recall the premise on which Ian McEwan's Atonement -book and movie- was founded (spoiler in Wikipedia, qv, optional ).ie  things may be half heard- ergo, misinterpreted.
 On other occasions  folk go on at length  about John or Dave while we are thinking of another one altogether.  This can lead to misquoting, or having a totally wrong idea for years. 65 years in one personal case

I was once tainted with being an uncontrollable rebel. We (then family of 4 were invited to tea by a reporter).
I was so pleased to hear his comment.
Perhaps we should invent even more names for our offspring. Bradley might date, as might Simpson our (ex) cat.
 Recycle older ones,  perhaps, like Alfred or Harold?

   And hey, isn't Google great? I've just found there are little rural industries I never knew existed, next door, so to speak.
It is Not like any 40's village I knew; and yet not 100% suburban, though we still battle with winter mud to remind us who we are and where we live.

This is not because I dislike the modern village. It is more Coke than coal fire that I met  in 1988. may be a little wood .
TV filming is often heavily edited to look quaint.
I do not yearn for a return to the proverbial village shop. Our own has changed hands this year, fortuitously  in the latter part of this year.

Life is too rich. Too fast . Stop the World -I Want to Get Off was a phrase before my kids were born.

You Tube does not give me quite what I hoped for. But by golly, it is comforting Like the internet.

The internet means the world gets reborn every few years..months.. weeks...?.
 Like a pc it seems to awake in Ground Hog Day

But it is no wonder folk move to the Outer Hebrides to join updated crofters; to where everyone can imagine themselves back two centuries, but with mod cons and all winter backups prepared for, natch.

How DO you Suck Eggs anyway?

The title then? Start with veg But even now I have a story (in my head).

LikeTim Berners Lee, I had thought I might do my little bit to put the world to rights. I have made various feeble attempts in the village, but at heart I cringe at being seen as a do-gooder.
 That side of me is private.

A few years ago, with the onset of the Internet, my eldest idealist son Aaron, after taking his time in life to find his way, was so full of its plus side: helping others.

Not just in the family, club, tribe, county, but those all over the world with problems.

He now has his own business, a different form of stubborness that seems to be both my family and the acquired family trait: desiring to be one's own person.

 Never a competitive cyclist, he has ridden at Manchester Velodrome for the experience. In the 80's he had already made for free, a device that got the Pursuiters' hearts pumping, in the form of the familiar bleeps at Leicester track.

Alas trees grow through the boards now: memento mori.

Start with veg

I suggested this caption to the smiley ladies in our cheap veg place in town which often seems to sell Covent Garden seconds.
Often the other supermarkets are nearly as bad ie. sell vegetables that are not as fresh as they might be. Or worse.
The co-operative is best locals fresh for dry exotics.  Of course nothing is like pick-your-own. Weekly W I    
And yes we did PYO that from earlier than 1940. Simultaneus glut 

Many small town Supers sell exotic stuff, flown in expensively. Born pre 50's I feel the need to treat myself in return for the deprivation suffered by war, imposed by our masters.

Of course, I should go to some UK federation of farmers or vegetable growers. I know I may only discover they are not co-ordinated, or have already sold out to the big boys. As for farms, big gets bigger, and small gets smaller.

Before B's birthday our modest celebration was a bike ride to a local Chaucerian pub. To eat. On her actual 60^th birthday I chatted with a farmer's son.

He was one of many subjects in historical novels with the dilemma for all large families.What to do. Follow or diversify?

He was emptying our jointly owned sewage container. Philosophically.

I felt quite heroic. I'll spare you the pix.

By coincidence, I finished up in hospital one month later, after violence caused by kidney infection following a live shingles vaccine injection offered free to 79 year-olds.

My Essex friend RW, among others, had suffered badly with the disease.

I found later that 70 year-olds were also offered it. This was either a literal mistake (70 79 mis- read and fluffed ; a cover-up) or a double entered instruction figure. All a bit Dad's Army, Yes Minister.

Either way it was awful PR. It may be a bad coincidence or a cunning plan to besmirch the NHS.

Plot, or cockup, take your pick! (I won't resort to my Irish navvy joke here, as he is a friend).

For me this stay was a confidence knocker. Earlier ones were after serious/spectacular  biking accidents. But same-day or one night only.

I woke thinking I was in some future predicted by Wells or Orwell. Everyone everywhere suddenly seemed to wear something on a neck ribbon. Though emaciated, I was the ward's most active member.

Subsequently, I finally stumbled on Primo Levi's life changing, If this is a man, with its surprising need to show his own selfishness.

Arts for me, for a while, got a bit morbid, but rich.

Books were in the same vein, but I saw the Railway Man, having known such a victim of war in Japan. If that was not enough I followed by seeing a film by top Artist, Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, and other serious books, though with redemption. (Map reading studies, WW1)

UK TV here is now so rich and often seemingly heritage based, compensating for the everyday entertainment like joking, cooking and dancing made into competitive bullying bling.
Generations are surprised when being linked by revival programmes.
We are taken, flown, railed or driven all over our own or  friends' favourite haunts, or tempted to travel  by  those staff  known as Celebrity swans -  and paid handsomely for it? - or freelance birds who pick up what they can. Un-lauded researchers, photographers get there first, and roadies make a living. Reviewers and educators are called in.  Spin-off future collectibles are sold while antique hunters help punters choose to bargain, entertain and inform the public, all to a climax.
All sports annuals, biennials, quadrennials, centenaries are like never before.

All with more than fireworks of old Empires; we have feel-good flights over landscapes, familiar or new; we trade in a rich constant diet of nostalgia, with surprises. If it is not saccharine in one area it may be in another. Easily won education in easy-eye Sunday night programmes, with little time to digest before embarking on  Monday to help produce what the world wants. And what it must have? 

(Unless you are on some sort of shift or irregular work. Or retired and managing ok).

The Internet is seemingly full of gift topics, new methodology.  Like many, I am still trying to keep up with all these new tricks, when long learned skills need so much practice.I think might take myself to a conve.... erm, monastery

Does the world needs to look at itself?Was it ever thus?

About 10 years ago my youngest son Al, accused me of getting cynical in my old age.

I have been cynical at least since I began paid full time work in 1951: a career as it was then called, job for life even. In a sense it was, part of what was then, more common in Japan: paternalistic.This time from Britain's heritage. e.g Huguenot weavers' Family Empire in its North Essex heart. There  I was designing jacquard woven textiles: an expensive product. In a time when fashion had moved on.

 Paternalism hung in the air but they were now past touch your cap. Even doffing caps at Grammar School, year one, 1945-46 was for us a mix of both mocking and fun.

It also sold simpler machinery to the East. No one seemed bothered that cheap labour there would ruin our home trade.Cynical? I had left that place 6 years before Alex was born.

Was it his perception perhaps? He was just older, more aware. Though there was good reason.

My Dad, born 1900, luckily returned from the Somme WW1. I was born in 1934. I spent my first 10 working years based in an office with a dozen WW2 returnees.

One of them had not long been repatriated from a POW camp, with one horrific story. Another was repairing lungs to emigrate to Australia, while yet another, associated with us had already returned from Oz, disillusioned. Also influencing me was an actor. Retired or resting, I never knew.
 Separately, there were two females whom I fear I treated with much chauvinism. I am glad to say that by the end of the decade I was mostly pc. As for homophobia, well, I was in a Art School environment one day per week. After the only gay in the village (read small town, and adolescent banter it never arose)
Our wartime childhood was a blip though, I'd rather not discuss in detail
 Once in cosmopolitan London City I soon had a good tolerance to race and colour.

The staff back at Grammar School  were mostly grant aided returning Servicemen. Trying to do their best.

I  felt like a dumb caged zoo animal when one batch of RCA textile students visited. I have RCA friends now. Nothing like that!
I would later take  ex Public Schoolboys touring round the building. It was all very much, I'm all right, Jack. I mostly enjoyed their company. A cheery one, went as an an officer, and killed in Malaya just afterwards .

I learned never to envy. Though probably I owe my dad  for this. He must have been grateful just to have returned and father us.

But I got to rarely totally trust anyone. I later went from blue to white collar, wore a suit, read all the right topical books etc. Out of sheer interest I read about textile history for pleasure (as well as rebelling against a diet of Shakespeare). Also better selected Sci-Fi,  oh so prophetic,  which both dealt with future possibilities, and the human condition, (if a masculine viewpoint).
Subconsciously it was the right thing to do.

The fact that it has now become fashionably respectable is neither here nor there.

Let's be positive. There are some idealists. My grateful thanks to those who give the answers to my online queries: forums when there are no strings attached. It is often tradesman who no longer fear competition.

Never mind protective guilds with arcane ceremonies and dress, I am grateful to those peers who put in time unpaid, to help in making larger events succeed. Just for badges. Just to increase the puff of politicians. The very ones who never seem to empathise with their servants.

I dare to say Essex boy Grayson Perry has given one of the best ever Reith lectures.

Politically it only follows a non-exclusive British tradition of mocking pomposity though the ARTS - search to see his Transvestite Style pose too alongside Beefeaters.

The BBC R4 News Quiz, 18.30 Fri 12.30 Sat (in season) can joke about politicians and the news in general. Yes, satirical.

Arguably Grayson  even may have gone over: Poacher turned Gamekeeper. Or not. It does not matter that much, if he joins the other side. Already he may have done his life's share. I reluctantly retired at 57. It never stopped me learning. Never mind any qualifications.

My underlying philosophy, mainly seeded by my dad, plus integrity and luck has got me by. I recognise my own hypocrisy as well  as that of others. Likewise mother-turned-lesbian, funny Danish lady Sandy Toksvig….and the team as a whole: all making money out of hypocrisy. No jealousy here: good luck to them.

I am not as po-faced as my writing.

 Celebration (me) or the radical in the Arts (me at times ) Either, or? Why not room for both?

But I/we also know that we want no disturbed grudgers, who may be likely to turn guns on innocent folk. After which, surprise! War Service is blamed? We also live in a gun free society, at least on Authority's behalf mostly. I can imagine being knocked breathless by a water cannon. Would I wimp! (Probably) 

The eternal insoluble problem is Power Seekers. They mostly have no sense of humour.
Jealous spoilers hacking honest small web sites.

Many, reasonably comfortably-off on life's raft, or not, may be tempted to vote for short term gains. Some may never pull up the ladder; others  are willing to contribute more, stay as they were.

 I have witnessed all sorts in my friends and family affairs.

To say the system is wrong is to tempt someone to ask, What are YOU going to do about it?

Well, I am not an orator and I have bad timing. Excuses excuses .

With NHS help, as ever, I shall continue to celebrate what is left in my statistically short time .

I have a modest 40 year old work in the Alfred East Gallery that supported my own world predictions in 73. I am now searching.

(I even sold to another art college! I wonder if I moved 20C art forward.)

Start with veg. In a week that seems to be extra full of topics, one suggested we now need not only 5 portions a day but 7 (I have previously seen what seems like reasonable studies, to say 12). So ?

A study of apes, though similarly genetic to us, suggests that eating much less of everything results in longevity.Admittedly the study does not have a huge number samples, but is over a long period of time, and there was a vast difference .

It can be argued that anything that cuts down consumption might be repressed by interested food suppliers. Google seems to be of little help here. Either they haven't picked it up or it has already been suppressed.

To be sure of trace elements eat veg and fruit by colours.

The 7 and 5 year old cousins shown with their arrowroot glaze and wild flowers may one day recall the funny old man who said that.

I hope it will be proved right..

I have already seen enough awful line-drawings of bellies for a life-time.

Back in the 50's, I was experimenting with small amounts of food advocated by a Dr Barbara Thompson. Among other things she said she would have a baby at 60...

But, read her for yourself in the modern version of Enquire Within Upon Everything: your favourite Search Engine. So now perhaps ,

Just eat less!

Nowadays, with half an eye on a little tasty protein, where we live we now use wild berries and leaves, grow edible plants where possible (sometimes edible) flowers and have a cache of veg and fruit – just like the bowl of  wax fruit sort of my peasant childhood- and we try to keep on top of the varying degrees of ripening.

It is not that easy or cheap, and can be/is time-consuming.

Anyone with kids and a tight schedule, or a city dweller with its distractions, has my sympathy. You can't pluck fruit huddled in the Tube.
Like many old peasants, even in Dig for Victory's predictable narrow range of carrots and sprouts  in the 40's and 50's, all but the most rootless, least proud travellers (the proud often had valuable silver) always seemed to have a desire to become suburban, with its spring grown alpines. They too fought mud, otherwise tramped indoors. Whitewash and tarpaint abounded, and a broom was ready for paths, once dry.
eat well ?

But anyway,

WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER?

Arguably, a slogan to be remembered.

Freddie Mercury's spirit, Brian May's words and Brian Blessed's chestnut tones in... Flash Gordon*..

*a remake of the original with its scary Rock-men  my Saturday 2½ mile childhood afternoon (sic) walk to The Pictures (Odeon matinee ) in Haverhill, Suffolk.

Cheers !