140414 Tumbleweed bucket

After a day working in the back garden (East) aka bgE, rebuilding a wobbly step, with a set of tools from the shed. That's N shed, not S shed where I dump, then grope for small items. (There is more). Then pm-ish, now in front garden, and sunny, in just double figures, where I am repairing our side-fence next to our neighbours. ie our posts, so we pay. A branch we cut off the cherry tree caused this. Because of through draft in the house, we try not to pass through without front or back door closed.

There are nearly two sets of tools, one out the back as mentioned, and another in a shed containing most of the useful garden tools..and all our outdoor shoes for running, cycling, walking etc.

In the garage … oh, never mind.

We see ourselves as North rather than South. Never mind Watford! Birmingham will do for this. Never mind that our rare treat (pre-paid train return ticket) to Brum (our south) last week, cost us £25 each. And all the rigmarole!

Now, take a look at the map to see where the Lands End, John o' Groats line might fold*.

Still, when it's dry, one must not carp, one must carpe diem, musn't one?

Unbeknown to me, a light north breeze had sent a circular weed bag, ex-light-weight, as was mother-in-law whose once it was, tumbleweeding down the lane.

Convinced for once I had not forgotten where I left it ..you know, specs in every room, that migrate etc, I spent time searching … I found it behind a wheely bin 4 doors south.

An escaped lamb was mowing the lawn for free.

Anyway, everyone likes colourful snaps;

I think the loveliest time of the year

is the spring, don't you?

Course you do?

(Poo poo, said a pigeon).

So 3 pix of: contre-jour, avec- jour?, and the cherry blossom buds and leaves; c-j, just like the first pic, but evening.

The sort of pic where in the 70's a young someone used to stick an elliptical patch on your print telling you, you didn't want to do that, did you?

* in big names: Lancaster.

Today I stir at the first bird sound 5.35am.

At 7.00 I touch the floor, to rise and stagger, recalling those 70's little penguin things that used to be pulled to the edge of the table. I continue my stagger to the loo. The motion sensitive lamp (ha ha) blinks intermittently. Unlike the fire alarm which makes the littluns look for a birdie.

You see, living in a terrace block of 6, with not even a central or public through access, has its problems.

Yesterday, on top of the unusually dry spell, I was trying to go from the back, rebuilding a top step in danger of collapsing, our falling and being taken away to hospital ….to the front.

I was devising a novel to make the fence junction slightly moveable. There was a reason. It is about services. Gas was installed soon after I moved in.

The old question. Why don't Services make and keep maps?

Both operations involve TIME. Time for mortar to go off, time for paint to dry.

In the case of art-paint, time for paint to dry to the exact moment ready for more

to be added..

In art-speak, le moment exact.

Which is why some artists may have several paintings on the go.

My excuse, is that mine are often palimpsests.

It is no wonder artists need dedicated space. See Love is a Devil. 
Third son Alex, is sometime |Art Director -he once asked
 if he could have an old pattern  Stanley knife I used in Corsham. (BAA).

He wasn't born till 3 years later. It must have fascinated him.
I have referred to them as Aa, Ad and Al so far. Aaron, Adrian and Alexander*
in alphabetical order.
*The first two have their own business sites. Though as unlike a pike as you could imagine, and like many freelances, spending much of his time resting

This a.m. I have another pic.

Sunny, frosty at 7-ish and a balloon glides by, drifting northwards, lands quietly by the trunk road.See it? 

The BBC forecast is spot on. Needs no intelligent interpretation today.

No wonder our ancestors wanted to sing songs of praise to some Being.

Shame about the disciples! Disciples' disciples....

100415 If you use quotes, I hope to add more tips and ideas, please, acknowledge Mick Ward.

If you find this site useful, entertaining or uplifting in some way,  please give something to Altzheimers.org.uk

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 !

140401 Tuesday: address coincidence

A dry weekend calm with sunny spells. The weather in 2014 seems even more important than ever before.

On Friday evening we took two friends and their neighbour, over the border, up the valley to the art film cinema in the sticks. It is in a modern secondary school, so a little quaint. For us there are closer multiplexes and art cinemas.

Weather permitting, it has been a winter Friday evening treat for several years.

If you are familiar with Monsieur Lazhar and its location you can imagine the deja vue we had when visiting the loo before returning home on the night we had seen that.

The film this time was another: Philomena, but that is not the point.

I had always assumed our extra lady passenger, sounding mildly rural, friend of the married couple, came from Suffolk, as did her husband. And me.

But no, it seems she came from Wiltshire. I tried to establish whether she knew the places my mother had taken me to as a child 70 odd years ago. But with no map at hand, squashed in the small car with three others...

Thus began a weekend of talking, me mostly, as is my wont, where I was to meet a distant relative, namely first wife of a nephew, a god-child, not seen for 22 years, separated from her husband, with a boy and a girl. This was on the first whole day.

On the second day, Sunday, they were was added to, by her older sister, her husband, and girl and smaller boy.

I gradually ran out of voice. By the Sunday evening, with the 3 older grown-ups remaining, my prominent proboscis had also turned into a dripping tap, long before I now write this.

The first wife and I have art in common. Whereas I was forced to go to church as long as I can remember until teen-age, she has had a life in religious -at least-spiritual activity.

She was talking to establish where we lived. She spoke in a little detail of a quiet serious man she knew and, with vagueness of unfamiliar distant landmarks used the familiar vague phrase: he lives your way somewhere.

She then looked up the address, which in part, had a similar address to us but not the same post code.

Tonight we walked a post prandial up the lane to see if we could find the vaguely familiar house nameplate..

We did. It is very tonally similar to its brick surround AND right opposite our exit from the lane. In 25 years our exiting took 100% attention.

With the hill-start, by bike or car there was enough never to notice the name.

Back to art .

Almost inevitably I was to find I had made marks on supports i.e paintings or drawings on whatever, showing where the house was suggested through trees.

Maybe he has spent more time looking at us.

Now with our four eyes peering in the gloom he suddenly seemed to appear.

We continued a circuit.

I wondered, was he thinking, must have been a bird ?

140225 mod 140326 What is social media?

Target was 55 miles, a 10 mile increase for 2014. Another dry Sat= Whizzday on more used B roads. Cons: Drivers pass more closely, sometimes cutting in too sharply. Pros: less risk of thorns and floods. We were to go East via the Severn valley's more open southerly route, with a cross back-wind.

Riding might suggest horses. We call it biking, though Motor-Cyclists hijack the word biking for brevity's sake. I would too. Push-bike suggests that you get off (on a hill) reduced to pushing it. Definitely pejorative, or in modern parlance, a no-no.

I am happy to do this: riding a bike, biking whatever, for fun.

I - well, we – were to struggle with a forecast 24mph wind at temps. in single figures for much of this late February day.

We climbed uphill from the house till we looked east over the shallow valley.

more pix with brief note at the end.

After the event- it is now Sunday- I need a sit-down, even if it is only to open a conversation with similarly minded readers (as in those technically and philosophically struggling with implications of social media) but at least occasionally with contiguous folk, similarly with time on their hands. Contiguous, as in having something in life in common with me which might brush against me from to time to time.

Also, I am a slow two fingerer, only even slower than slow: I look-at-the-keys and dreamily wallow in my unintentional transpositions. I could do cartoons of these, I suppose, but cartoons are well practised forms, not learned overnight. Like the finer points of cycling. If I ever had this facility, I pay the respect of not revisiting it with disappointment. Practice as in, I suppose golf, or some religious, or other specially fancy-dressed meeting of kindred spirits.

Cycling, say more than running, say more than squash (the trad

busy-peeps game) all have one thing in common: they benefit by being done every day. (Perhaps with a rest day …..but that's another thread

Note many of these italicised words have a textile origin . Also as in a sea-faring country we also use watery metaphors.

OK, non-cycling readers ... Cycling is easy too. Just do it?

Just sit on the saddle. Level pedals. Relax. Check behind. Push gently on which ever pedal you fancy, then keep on turning the pedals. The gyroscopic motion will mean you balance.

Tots could ride up a velodrome banking. Doubtless, someone will now show me a sophisticated video clip, to support this.

Another will tell me it is my fault that little Johnny now has broken a collarbone... or worse.

Textiles

I began work as a textile designer in structural as opposed to decorated, textiles, then moved into teaching it (and other things).

Where I began, in the Fashion and Textile school a colleague, Harry M, a technical northerner, a lovely man, would chide me for using flowery language. I got on equally well or better with the enlightened add-on bookish part of the course). My reply to him was, call a spade a digging instrument but ask if anything else that might do job too? Literalism can be a drag. What job are you trying to do?

Later, I was encouraged to teach on a course attached to the Technology part of the Art and Technology college, later to become a Poly, where I introduced new ideas from my lowly position, (and seen as a threat, winning no higher friends.

The unenlightened Textile Institute, whose external course it was, produced a maverick. They suddenly leap-frogged us. Notes were allowed in exams. It was our the first use of hand-outs: reprographed. Those with the best filing system might pass exams.

A bit like the real world where the sensible go to a specialist for advice, or an information source such as a library, now often effectively on-line.

My notes were spare enough for them to only really understood by attending. I hoped this would show in their results

We kept a watch on course work: forté of any art school.

The in-college time of the majority of the Fashion Textile school students were now undergraduates -we had moved on from HND to Honours Degree as it became a Polytechnic. (Now it is the DMU - or De Montfort University for those with historical King Richard 3 bones and Car Park flavouring).

I was a rebel/misfit. As far as I was concerned it a PLOYtechnic. I was voted on the Academic Board as a spoiler, but apart from that enlightening experience I made a point of avoiding grey meetings, doing any student contact teaching that came along to the best of my ability. After some best forgotten no-man's-land years, like a long term prisoner I finally fitted in, deemed I guess as no threat to the status quo, and asked to do what I really wanted in the first place, namely to teach drawing to all ART and DESIGN student areas, a little outside my original remit. It was the best 7/8 of my 25 years in the college. Apart from a separation of my making, my 8th was a shambles when models were expected to pose and students to work with holes in the winter wall while a 70s factory, after one year of luxury, was rearranged to suit money-saving panic management of the late 80s. It got worse I was to hear later, culminating in 1997. Irrevocably tarnished it seems.

I enjoyed all-well nearly all-the experiences. I earned my salary with a clear conscience. We had visitors like the long lived Abram Games and I would take students along when his annual visit coincided with my hours. He was famous for his wartime posters and 1951 Festival of Britain logo.

I befriended part-timers, who bore out my teaching, found empathy with Illustrators and OU Engineers who would often come to our cottage with a bottle. My long suffering wife, J. would cook meals better than those found in pubs at that time.

Drawing can mean to really look and study structure, form phenomena.

Design aesthetic is not an add-on but a time-heavy ethos, slowly absorbed.

Drawing can be communication .

Elements of depiction, denotation, expression, bearers of ideas used with or without words. 

(I just thought I'd pop these in. They are just examples for my grandchildren. Just continuing a family tradition of epithets.

History twists

Just as art and science, along with many other school subjects were long ago separated for convenience, so the French have only one word, dessin for both drawing and design. Some of us fashion cloth around our bodies.

You, me, everyone plans things: designs, as we also draw from life's experience.

Engineers design.  I was called into Cranfield, itself given Uni status. the word design has been well abused in recent decades as were New and Improved before it. Still are. I taught mainly before CADCAM became widespread. Later I was asked back to Cranfield a few times for the early stages of an engineering manufacturing course.

Even now I find I am best thinking with a pencil in my hand. If English is the lingua franca of the skies, so drawing is pretty much universal. For example. You are driving in a foreign country, you seek out an address. You hand over a suggested plan of the route. Or pass over pen and paper. Please mark the garage on the corner.Or maybe you sketch a shed with a car in it. You communicate.

I am as hopeless at remembering a list of instructions as B is without place names. Read the words of Mike Parker in Map Addict. ISBN 978-0-00-735157-2

Later that day I was to say nothing as I noticed one of those old posts while still upright had collapsed fingers having first been blown 90 degs out .

(This might be un-reliable evidence. My stomach juices were working, I knew we still had a mile of cross headwind and glanced up with bleary eyes into it.

Teaching was never cramming, beloved of nameless reactionaries in this decade; never, this is how you do it. Instead it was posing questions. As a pen or pencil to make marks was most likely to be used, I sometimes set depiction problems for illustrators .

It meant I was always learning too.

For example, in examining cues to space, show a pebble beach coastline receding into the distance. 

  Staying ahead of the students' likely needs was the game, or in some cases getting them to show me things they had learned, so I could put them into the course. I learn from everyone, help everyone. Still do. Don't you?

I became more educated - for fun ! not qualifications.

I was doing a good job but a higher about-turn cost me my autonomy.

Since then I have been unintentionally largely hedonistic, though not in a Bacchanalian way.

Too bad I have got so slack in retirement. I am always changing my systems. It makes for an untidy desk and clothes drawers, never finding anything.

I never quite get the implications of Facebook or Blogging. Do you? Our young GP admits to not using a mobile but just keeping it in the car. B, a few years my junior, sits at the desk-top, or tablet (we've just skyped distant folk). Apps we guess, are short for application i.e things you can apply to your gadget.

Oh, and there are Smart phones. Still somewhere else.

We are probably way behind most, even on the subject of mobiles. I even think the word cell-phone might be better. It explains itself:warns of its fallibity. With mobiles, Alexander Calder always comes into my mind and I wonder why he is there.

 thread : a topic to comment on. Another textile analogy!

Never mind all the Boson jokes.

I take some comfort that Prof. Peter Higgs has never sent a email (I guess this might be true).

In an earlier blog I referred to my coincidences. This may also be said of Alan Coren with his short cut via Marie Lloyd. Though he can be fanciful! ISBN 978 1 8467 321 3

I used to find any teacher admitting defeat to be endearing; I felt I was taking part when another asked, well, what do you think?

In a similar way I still have to come to terms with GPs not knowing everything, already half-expecting younger folk to be looking on-line. 

I was born in a more rigid age where, in the rural areas at least, the professions: parsons, bank-clerks, solicitors, school-teachers, (freehold) farmers, were small gods. They were also the only car drivers-everyone else rode bikes or used buses and trains. On top of that I was/am a mix of conformity and rebellion.

You can imagine my thoughts on cramming. I was delighted at privately having a reasonable excuse to quit tertiary education.

I have had a great life since. AND BEEN LUCKY.

I certainly left the education-dog earlier than I wanted to, when it became wagged by its tail. I continue what I now see as one outcome of the influence of the how and when of my parents. The era and environment.  Enjoying life, though often worrying about whether I or we, as a group (any?) could do better, whatever that means.

We are driven by success at all costs, exhorted to consume more. What you do, who you become, is generally referred to as gene and environment luck. Add a few more: right place, right time:

horsesforcourses, notwhatyouknowbutwhoyouknow.

What about those less ambitious souls, happy to support?

Ignoring traditional carpe diem.

Because vanity will out I hope to pick up a few readers by wallowing in my slow understanding of the various merits of social media. If I ever catch up. There seems something new everyday.

I can't be alone in this surely? Someone always has something to sell. To Old established businesses trying to keep up .. well, good luck ! But ...  

...back to the ride

Here we face Rodney's Pillar. Now for a bit of true back wind. This was testing: easy way out, hard way back, toughens.

Such is the variation of standard of cyclists, that a pair (half-term father and son?)flew past us bird-like, in blue, while we turned into a reliable lane. 15 minutes later, after using a longer route, they repeated their 2x faster flight.

    I knew there were more hedges and woods for homeward shelter. But as soon as we turned there were diversions, traffic lights, puddles and men in hi-viz mending drains. They were as frequent as the rotting flat badgers, whose stink if any, was whipped away in the rising wind. My aide-memoire type pix of these were not needed. After about 3hrs we were on the way home but by then needing a luxury break to eat. Like an ex 12hr rider I used to be at times, I can manage by feeding on the hoof.. we had bonk food ie energy bars and water (but the missus likes to be taken out). I had secretly lightened her bottle so she had less weight and we both had anticipated a light sit-down lunch. The next few pix save a few words. I waited on top of a slope in a wood (with only one gear I must work harder and use momentum but keep moving. Or topple over. A bright green sign in a wood promised a fishing lake where food was effectively served 7/7. We freewheeled down through a farmyard balancing on mud atop clinker or concrete. Surprise surprise! B's fear pheramones attracted the inevitable trailing, though silent, collie....

over mud on concrete.

through to the sandstone rockcaked mud, but in clean air (note the orange lichen on hawthorn) to a lake and shed cafe.

that face won't lighten your on-line album, Mrs W.

homeward overnight fishermen shouted, Not open? it wasn't last night either.

We might have picked the only weekend in the year when a tree had fallen on the owners' house. Or someone had passed away in their sleep. or... or...

They brightened up as I recalled being on a Leics campsite last year, hearing a huge splash. Turning to see what I thought was brown dog: a ghost carp .

 We then had to climb back up over the slimy concrete, pass Cerberus and onto the road again.... then into the wind, past the signposts I omitted to mention... onto our next reliable destination ....

...in Listed Sandstone-land

    No staff around, kitchen muzac drowned our calls. The landlady finally arrived, flushed, apologising for trying out the chef's moped. A virgin ride I would say. What can I get you the chef's good? I did not doubt it.

Indeed the French onion soup was better than I had ever had in France!

     Outside the wind had worsened. But there was that spring feeling. It was like leaving an afternoon cinema performance into light. I hoped no disaster had befallen the house and garden sheds, still an hour away.

C Mick Ward 26^th March 2014

140219 Geoff's knee 

This might have been like that old French movie: Claire's knee by Eric Rohmer. Sorry it's an old bloke. Handsome, mind.

We had not seen him since before Christmas. Then he was having to do the Dr Strangelove thing of helping to move his knee to where he wanted it to go.

Even so he was in great spirit for someone who had been happily twiddling up and gliding down French Alpine passes on his annual camper-van trip to France when slowly and quietly disaster struck.

Margaret was doing it too, though not quite so ambitiously. With an aggregate age of nearly 140 years you might ask why?

But you don't: cyclists have so many reasons.

One, because they can, and

two, because there is more space in France and,

three, other road users there, almost without exception,

have a healthy respect for cyclists.

He found his knee slowly swelling and becoming painful. They did the usual: ICE Ice Compression and Elevation. To no avail. They came home.

He was X-rayed and found to have a rare cancer normally only found in 30 year-olds. 
Cheaper option was amputation of the lower leg. 

More expensive, was the removal of quad muscles with brace inserted at the knee. This would mean he would use crutches then stick for support. He would eventually be able to ride a bike, probably with electric help. 

Over the centuries there have been so many variations on human powered movement on wheels it seems impossible to keep up. I think the latest might be the Copenhagen wheel. https://www.superpedestrian.com Trouble is, since I began typing this I feel there might have been another released.

His GP, whom he had introduced to cycling was on his side, and NHS funding was found.

He had walked a mile that morning. I think for the first time, he had begun to look at the road in detail. With no reference to the detail in my own paintings and photos over the past intermittent  20 odd years of friendship, he told me how each subtle bump had more bumps: 1 in 60 consisted of mini 1 in 6's. Going down slopes was worse. This was a climbing man who was used to having his nose in rock; a fell runner who organised and ran in them. He hand-and-knee'd them, though would avoid that practice when scrambling or climbing. He would bury his nose in moss and lichen of muddy turf in fell races. Even sheep shit on occasions!
As knees aged, he returned more and more to cycling. 

I tried to convince him that his biography would be better that mine.

But I might explain that later. Well NOT as I explain 

7th Sept 2014. 

WELL, I can't even keep up with mine, which I began 10 years ago. Events have moved on at such a pace in cycling and  communications that mine, about the 50's with updates, may now go back into childhood and add to those of a working class boy born in 1934; a boy who saw London burning from 50 miles away; an excited boy who was innocently enjoying being strafed by a German bomber.
My Dad had returned from the Somme. My mum....
It has become a search for ...?

With Geoff's friends and wife Mary in 2006, and former World Master at 25km, I shared a few of their last hours, as did others, and to a lesser extent, Barbara was still at work. We had watched  morning mist lift on the Welsh border hills to reveal the clear blue sky of sunny March days. Being a mere 4 mile cycle ride away, I was then to listen to his poetic thoughts on many mornings for a while, till he went further afield and finally on to family friend Margaret.

It was Margaret, unknown even to us at Mary's funeral, who herself was now bereaved.

 We had visited him in a hospice, which it seemed he might need to visit for up to 2 years, if only to give Margaret respite.

She was in their camper-van in the grounds when she was called in on the night of August 5th to hear he had quietly passed away.
Later we were in the congregation of his former village church where he was quietly laid to rest, high up the slope beside his wife Mary.

                RIP Geoff Gartrell 1935 - 2014.