Blog-off and bloggone

Just for a short time.

I am off to glorious Northumberland for a couple of weeks, if I manage to last that long. Otherwise we might be back earlier.

The monks used to have a personal 'place of the resurrection'', a favourite location where they hoped they might be resurrected at the final judgement. It was somewhere that somehow spoke to their deepest needs.

This concept could be so very inconvenient on the last day, and it would be extremely disappointing to wake up, shake off the dust, and find yourself surrounded by crowds of people, all dressed for the era in which they kicked the bucket. Having spent my life trying to miss the queues, I'd be very upset to be resurrected in one.

But with some minor tweaks, it's a fun concept. 

If I believed all that guff, Northumberland would be right up there with barges everywhere as my place of resurrection.

To readers everywhere, thank you for reading. Enjoy the break !

See you soon. 
 

Whistle while you work

My dad used to whistle, usually when he was by himself and idly enjoying something. He wasn't much of a singer, but loved music, and whistling was just something he did. You'd catch him behind the counter in the shop, trilling happily while fiddling around with this or that, displaying biscuits or stacking bottles.

You could tell what sort of a mood he was in by the tunes he was whistling. Happy ? La Donna e Mobile. Reflective, and maybe a little sad ? Che faro senza Euridice. Pumped and expectant ? Mario Lanza's Drinking Song.

I picked it up just by being around. Though I lost his voice years ago, I can still hear him whistle in my head. And I still feel the mood. The final note of La Donna still makes me laugh. And cry a little, too, half a century on.

And now, of course, I am a whistler, too, and catch myself whistling in the shed, or when mucking around in the garden.

Suddenly today it struck me that whistling is so easy to do, that prehistoric peoples must have discovered it. But what would they have whistled ? It's hard to imagine whistling without known tunes to shape it. Easy to do fancy descants when you have tunes in mind. But what about when they were no tunes ? 

I wonder if whistling was originally just a signalling device, and without any melodic content ?

I think there is some evidence of primitive flutes being made of animal bones, so maybe there was rudimentary music - or much better than that - which would have been known and idly whistled.

Comforting, in a way, to think of an unbroken chain of whistlers cheering themselves up down long-corridored millennia. The people may have looked different, but the sounds must have been almost indistinguishable from those of today. It's terrific to think of them standing in front of some sunset (the same sun, of course, as is shining across the fields this morning), and whistling some fabulous joyful cadenza.

I do worry about God

I do worry about God. 

And not just about whether she likes a capital letter or not.

It's true that I do not worry about god a lot. After all, you know that I have ASD.  If someone finds relating to other people tricky, it's not exactly a shock to find them a bit vague about relating to god. 

But the thing that puzzles me is that God has done so little in the way of updates. I mean, yes, Microsoft is annoying, but at least they do update their stuff pretty often. If god had been running silicon valley, we'd still be working with the manuals for Babbage's difference engine.

It makes me wonder why god stopped when all those sages wrote down his most significant thoughts generations ago. You'd think he would have done something over the years to iron out the bugs, get rid of at least the misunderstandings and some of the wilder misinterpretations.

You'd think he would have told us to watch out for the next update, get ready for nuance and something taking our context into account.

It would be so easy to put people right. Homo sap has made some advances over the years, so you'd expect god to have another go now we are that bit smarter, and also when things seem so likely to come off at the curves.

Instead, we have the best advice transmitted by god to people in very different circumstances. Hard to get a clue about how god might view space exploration from his guidance to unruly tribes wandering around in the desert. 

Imagine that you need your car fixed. You take it to the garage where they go through the usual routine of pursing lips, silent whistling, and slow head shaking. It's about then that you discover that their latest manual is an ancient book, written down (with the best intentions) somewhere around 546 BCE, and it is mostly concerned with mules, harnesses, and wooden axles. You'd be a bit dispirited. And also ever-so-slightly nervous.

And yet, in the case of god, and issues of ethics, and sex, and life, and death, we are expected to accept crusty ideas in dusty tomes, thick with secretarial anomalies and myriad mistakes. It is also alarming that godly wisdom is dispensed largely by men in fancy dress, but I guess that's another issue. On the whole it's the male dominance and not the fancy dress that makes me jumpy.

If there is a god, and if she has half the qualities the most suspended-disbelief-adept among us imagine, she must sigh daily, by the minute or even second, that we have got ourselves into such a tangle. Why such a mad proliferation of beliefs, sects, deities and religious requirements ? Surely god could have put these right in an afternoon with a bit of celestial communication.

When things go wrong, Microsoft issues patches to sort problems out, even on a temporary basis. I so wish that god would catch on and do the same. It could save so much trouble.

What's it FOR ?

When the latest masterwork came in from the shed she was underwhelmed.

Size matters: about 900 mm long

"Very nice," she said. 

Pause. 

"What's it for ?" 

What's it FOR ?

This is as if Van Gogh traipsed in with Sunflowers under his arm with the paint still wet and his landlady saying "Very nice dear. What's if for ? And by the way, one sausage or two ?"

This... this useless thing is the latest in my Spalted Beech Series. There wasn't much to do with the wood as it has huge knot holes in it, and was at the waney edge - hence the odd shape. 

But the grain was just so tasty and the wood felt so nice.

Anyway, I could not resist sawing it in half and bookmatching it, so that there is a kind of reflection in the grain. Like this:

I don't know what it's for. Maybe something will occur to me. But I like it.

Meantime, I wonder what this could be for ? It's bits of old barge board from a friend's house and when I had the board, these waves just emerged. They have been living in my study for a while, wondering what they were for, and I can't think either. But they are pretty kind on the eye. Maybe add a boat ? A lighthouse ? Who knows....

Come to that, what am I for ??? Oh dear !
 

Keeping fit Colorado-style

My bloganonymous American son lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Like me, he's pretty crackers about bikes and loves riding. Unlike me he has really fancy bikes, one of which has a fixed wheel. He tows the kids' trailer  behind him on this fixie, which strikes me as verging dangerously close to masochism.

Yesterday, while out on his bike, he pulled up at some lights next to another guy on a super-slick triathlon bike. He described the guy as 'typically Colorado' and explained that this means wiry, skin tanned like leather, a regular outdoor type.

The guy turned out to be 75, and just off for a ride. Bloganonymous Son got chatting to him as they pulled away from the lights. What had he been doing today, and was he going far ?

Just bike riders' chit-chat, really.

But the answer floored him, being so unexpected even for a Coloradan septuagenarian, however tanned and wiry

The guy had run to Denver and back, a round trip of 60 miles, and was hoping to squeeze in a century on the bike before the end of the day. No misprint, that's sixty miles running followed by 100 miles on the bike. At 75 years old.

I was feeling really proud of my minuscule 50k this morning, but now I need to go lie down for a bit. 

Even my suntan feels paler.

 

The politicians win. Again.

Well, we are in a right pickle with the referendum.

Our future stands frozen on a ledge, and way down below two utterly dysfunctional groups of vested interests shout advice about jumping or standing firm.

My grandfather used to tease me with puzzles, one of which was: How do you drop an egg four feet without breaking it ?

The answer was to drop it from five feet, and my grandfather explained that falling never hurts anything: it is always the sudden stopping that does the damage. 

The EU referendum debate, as conducted by the politicians, is a bit like the egg puzzle. The politicians are happy to talk about the first four feet of free-fall, but not about the actual stopping.

It has been a nasty, mendacious, deceptive campaign. Just like the ones they politicians run at elections. 

And for me, the really annoying thing is already being able to hear the post-result commentary. The winning side will tell us that in the end their arguments prevailed, that the public saw the light and produced a great victory for common sense.

That will be the final lie of the campaign, and the elites will continue almost without pause for breath.

I wonder, though, if they will feel good about a result based on deliberate obfuscation and careful avoidance of so many issues ?

My sympathy is with this woman, who told Cameron:

“I’m voting Remain, but nothing to do with you guys. I hate the Tories. You’ve fucked everything fucking up in this country. You’ve screwed students, you’ve screwed the disabled, the vulnerable.

“I’ve heard you want to take the human rights act and everything as well. I can totally believe that, I wouldn’t put that past you at all.” 

Well, exactly.

If you really were standing on a ledge, would a politician be your first choice to have yelling up advice ?

No. Me neither.

 

Horseshoes

Have you seen that game where you have a metal spike in the ground and throw horsehoes at it ? The trick is to get them to stay on the spike, rather than just spin round it and shoot off.

Here at Hepworth Mansions we tend to play damn fool games like this, and last week I had a sudden irresistible urge to play. Maybe what got me thinking was watching my neighbour take the Shetland pony idly up the lane for a walk. 

Anyway. I had the spike. No problem with spikes, and plenty in store in the shed.

But horses hoes ?

(Love that. Aren't words weird sometimes ?)

A friend of mine used to be in my class a long time ago when she was 10. Now 46 and with kids of her own, she is a vet. She owns a horse. Now who better to ask about horseshoes ?

I told her I needed about two horses' worth, and yesterday she came across with her kids and a box of horsehoes that had fallen off a variety of horses.

In the rain we quickly got the spike in the ground, carefully sited to avoid dinging cars, breaking windows, braining neighbours, wrecking flower beds and generally creating mayhem with equine footwear.

Her kids loved it, once they got over the feeling that it was slightly nuts, and her daughter (aged 8) was by far the most successful. I think she much have been using maginetic shoes.

The horseshoes were a bit damaged, being straight from the horse, as it were, so when they had gone, I removed all nails, heated the shoes to red-hot, quenched then, then took off surface rust and waxed them. And here they are, ready to play.

If only it would stop raining. Just 20 minutes would do.

It's a great game.

Shinsei Mystery

My horseshoe friend spotted a puzzle in my sitting room. She had last played with it when she was in my class 36 (aaarrrgghhhh) years ago.

My classroom was bulging with puzzles, partly because I loved them and collected zillions of them, and partly because we got so much maths from them. I was a huge enthusiast, and wanted to share some of that with the kids. Of course.

In todays' schools I would probably be out of a job pretty quickly.

The puzzle she spotted yesterday was the Shinsei Mystery, and this is it.

The things unfolds:

 You suddenly realise there is a different shape within .....

..... and that it separates into two stars. The puzzle is sometimes known as the Twin Comets puzzle.

It's quite tricky to re-assemble ....

.... and with one further move you are back to the beginning.

The puzzle has a proper name, the Yoshimoto Cube, and it was invented, or perhaps discovered, in 1971 by a heavy-duty mathematician with serious intent. 

There are two things about this puzzle which are remarkable. 

The first is that it has an amazing tactile quality. It is almost mesmeric, like fiddling with a rosary. It folds so easily and so silently that you can manipulate it without even thinking about it. Very therapeutic.

The second thing is that this thing cost a few pounds in 1982, and after being handled by literally hundreds of kids over a period of 34 years it is still going strong. Sure, it has faded a bit, just like all red-spectrum colours do, but it works as well as it did when I bought it, and has never lost its appeal.

How much other stuff survives from 1982 in such good condition after intensive handling ?

I don't think you can get this puzzle any more, except on eBay where it seems to fetch about £50. It seems crackers that you can't buy it now.

If you know where I can get another, well, please let on !

The space you were watching yesterday.....

Here it is: the spalted beech I was talking about yesterday.

It's warm and very smooth to the touch. I cut it to follow the grain and used  aluminium oxide paper from 40 grit to 120 grit to get rid of any unevenness.

The pattern of the grain is pure chance, but it looks great here.

If this isn't nice, what is ?

Bloganonymous daughter gave me this chunk of spalted beech today.

If there is a more delicious wood, tell me what it is.

This chunk is an off-cut, and not a lot of use. You can see that it is part of a roundel cut from the log across the heart of the tree. The heart is right at the top of the picture. And you can see the shakes that are splitting the piece as it dries.

But just look at that grain. Isn't it just amazing ? 

Spalted beech is just standard beech that has been affected by a fungal growth which gets right through the tree and puts that stunning marking into the wood. 

It's tricky wood to work, and the light and dark parts tend to be different in terms of hardness. In this case the lighter areas are pretty soft.

This chunk is beautiful. At least I think so. My plans ? Well, I think I will smooth it down to make if feel like silk, and maybe wax the end result. Wood like this does make you want to touch it, stroke the grain.

Watch this space.

Seize the day

Carpe diem. Seize the day.

When Horace, and, later, Martial, shared the same obsession, life expectancy was much lower than now, and the majority of Romans died in their prime, long before what we would consider old age. Life was uncertain. Famine, war, disease all came unexpectedly and seemed unstoppable.

All the more important, then, to make sure that every hour was packed with 60 minutes of living. Not for them the dull satisfaction of existing. They had an urgency which isn't uncomfortable today.

Neither Horace nor Martial felt that he wanted to bet too firmly on tomorrow, and did not want to postpone experience, achievement, friendship, pleasure.

This particular carpe diem hangs in my hall. It's a great reminder (if I needed one !) that life is short, and time is not there to waste. Larkin talked of the 'forgotten boredom' of his childhood, and later of 'time torn off unused', and he fervently wished to avoid both.

I wasted too much of my life on the illusion of achievement at work, and not enough on the reality of living a joyful life.

Carpe diem reminds me that enough is enough. Wasting days is a luxury I can no longer afford (if I ever thought I could). 'As if', said Thoreau, 'you could kill time without injuring eternity.'

Exactly so.

 

Birdsong today

Last night was really warm here, and for the first time this year all the windows were open all night.

Result ?

This morning I was woken by massed birdsong. There were more birds than I could possibly count, some calling, but most singing.

For me the glorious liquid bubbling of the blackbird is magical.

But amongst this morning's orchestra the call of the local finch cut through the rest. Two notes, repeated endlessly, with all the charm of a rusty hinge. The finches drive me nuts every year with their iterative lack of ambition.

But what they lack in melody they make up for with sheer energetic and enthusiastic determination. Finches may not have the most engaging song, but nobody can fault them for effort. And for some reason it does cut through the rest and stand out in the rising light.

Oddly, the singing this morning made me think of Larkin's gloomy Aubade, one of my all-time favourite poems. His "soundless dark" brought him no birdsong to disperse his anxieties, and to remind him that life continues vibrantly even after our own small demise.

It made me think, too, of my tutor at university, J H W G Liebeschuetz, a man of vast beaming geniality and warm, though puzzled, humanity. I think his air of slight and infinitely kind bewilderment must have come from wondering how his students could cope with having such small brains. He was a blackbird trying to teach finches.

A plague on both their houses

I have given up on the European debate.

Or at least I had given up until yesterday when Martin Kettle cheered me up in the Guardian. I found I could disagree with him only on Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy is in grave danger of making me thnk that politics might work. I like him a lot.

But read what Martin Kettle had to say about our politicians and be prepared to polish up your nodding skills.

He might have added (why didn't he talk to me before writing ? Hah !) that it is our mad adversarial 'system' of political debate which has led to a campaign of obfuscation, mud-slinging, ad hominem attacks, and far more heat than light.

At the end of this shabby, squalid, unworthy debate will the politicians review and regret the way they ran it ? The way they shafted the electorate ? Again ? Not a bit of it. The winning side will crow and assert that it was their arguments which prevailed with the Bristish people. That's pretty sad, I think.

I also wonder what out European friends think of this strident tirade of insults. It is almost like rowing about someone while they are still in the room, as if they cannot hear.

Sigh.

Reforming Europe ? I had rather hoped that Europe might reform us. 

It'll be a big job: our politicians are clearly in need of a lot of work. 
 

Life in a bunch of objects

The Telegraph runs an occasional column where people use objects to illustrate their lives. It's called "My Life in Eight Objects" - or however many they have chosen. The actual number seems to range from a brisk seven to eleven for the indecisive.

I liked this recent effort by Simon Callow.

Some people use objects to sketch a trajectory through time, and choose things that transport them to past experiences. Others choose objects relevant in the immediate present.

It's a bit like a Desert Island Discs of Things.

It got me thinking and seemed like a fun thing to do. You don't need to be famous to wonder which objects somehow speak about your life. My problem is that I am not really into possessions and don't really buy a lot of stuff: I like things that are useful of beautiful or both. I do pick up junk in the same way my jumper picks up fluff, and I cannot bear to throw anything out.

Oh dear. Anyway, here goes.

This little block plane is a gem and something that should have been in my toolkit years ago, decades ago. It fits snugly in your palm, is unbelievably sharp, and cuts cleanly even across the end-grain. It is just a laughing joy to use, and it does so many jobs. It also makes a soothing swishing noise.

I have eaten yogurt for forty years or so, and it is the main staple food here at the Mansions. No meal is really a meal without yogurt. If I could, I'd eat nothing but yogurt. Nothing beats Longley Farm, but Sainsbury's have the best deal around at the moment.

This is my Gibson guitar which I bought after my mother died in 1973. The fingerboard is hollowed out between the frets with constant playing. I play every day on it, and it has been an outlet for every kind of mood. Its voice has mellowed over the years, and so have I. This guitar isn't as slick as modern guitars, but it does sing so well.

It feels shaming to have a computer on the list. But I spend a lot of time with it, researching family trees, and especially mailing. It has a white cardboard hood because it is black, and Aspergers make me unable to tolerate black in large areas. It just makes me jumpy. The white cardboard works a treat. The computer needs a much overdue update.

These are Dickies dungarees, and they do not mind if you treat them like this. Dickies make my favourite clothes: tough, uncompromising, and able to shrug off stains. They are so comfortable to wear and very forgiving. Did I mention that they seem to last forever ? They are really useful and in winter I wear them almost constantly.

Shorts. What would I do without shorts ? They are what I wear between April and October. (Different, clean pairs, obviously.) My legs like the freedom and wonder what happened to the light when I have to put on trousers now and then. Most of my shorts are violently striped and have to be kept well away from the camera. They do not need the air of publicity. These are slightly more restrained.

Hello Catullus. He has been a friend for life. At least it seems that way. When I first went to university, and went to the local bookshop clutching my reading list, Catullus was the first book I bought for the course. Or rather, my father bought it for me. It was the wrong edition. Neither of us knew then that Catullus would become a life-long passion. I read him at least three times a week, and have done for nearly fifty years now. I learn something new every time. I love the emotional directness, and I adore the feeling that you can hear real Romans talking in some of the poems. It is time travel and emotional intelligence in just the one book.

And this is my copy of T S Eliot's Collected Poems. At university I was Obsessed (capital O) with Eliot and carried this book around like a Linus blanket. It went everywhere with me, and was never out of my sight except when I was actually asleep. It battered now, and is my most-travelled book. Eliot's magic still remains, though the obsessive quality of my love of his thinking has faded. As a young man, the Waste Land spoke to my condition, but latterly it is the beauty of the Four Quartets which has continued to entrance me.

And this is my father's spring balance. He used it most days, and it is the only thing I have of his. The balance was lost in a fire, and was badly damaged and blackened when I dug it out of the ashes. It was expertly and sensitively restored by Salters completely free of charge. It's face needs re-coating, but I think it is fine the way it is. It lives in the kitchen and though I do not use it often, I enjoy its presence.

The last object is my bike. Not really my bike, but almost any bike. My current bike is not my favourite and was a huge mistake. But bikes have been a vast and important part of my life and no day feels complete without riding one. I get jumpy if I do not ride, and, like music, bikes have rescued me so often. Tandems, trailers, side-by-sides, road bikes, mountain bikes: all have helped me bliss out.

Hmmm.

Wonder if I would pick the same objects tomorrow ? For sure.

PS I got a comment which Blogger would not put up for some reason. It was this:


Oh I love this post. It really is you. I don't think I could do this, as I don't think I am attached to anything like you are. Except one of my mum's fleece green jackets that I wear often. It just gets me feeling close to her. Second would be a special ring that I wear all the time.

Occam's razor

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

Things should not be complicated except by necessity

That is, keep things simple. 

It works for me.

Wabi-Sabi

An artist whose work I admire introduced me to the concept of Wabi-Sabi. A lot of her work is around Wabi-Sabi principles, and she lent me a book by Leonard Koren: Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.

What I needed really was Wabi-Sabi for Practical Yorkshiremen with Aspergers, but Leonard hasn't got round to that yet, so that book will have to do.

Basically, and clearly I am no expert, Wabi-Sabi is about the beauty found in impermanence, imperfection and incompleteness. In practice it is about rough edges, loose ends, intriguing gaps, and small Islamic errors, maybe the errors of nature.

Leonard Koren tells me it is loosely aligned with Zen Buddhism, but as far as I can see, it is much more to do with entropy and science around us.

Interestingly, one my friend's clients needs a plinth for a sculpture, and I am about to make it. What I do is never art, of course, but even at this level small imperfections are not to be welcomed. No good having the plinth wonky or with a chunk out of the bottom. Because it is to showcase a sculpture on the top, the plinth must have a sort of seamless invisibility. If anyone notices the plinth, it will have failed. The plinth should not be the centre of even fleeting attention. It is the lift-attendant of the art world.

I am trying to think of how Wabi-Sabi might influence my plinth, and am in danger of getting splinters through scratching my head.

Wabi-Sabi feels to me to have much in common with Dadaism, with found art, and I love the idea that there should be nothing there which is not necessary to the structure of an object. This shouts at me that it is the un-ornamented structure itself which is inherently beautiful.

Wabi-Sabi is no more than Occam's razor slashing at artistic endeavour. I love the idea that the best solution to a problem is often the most elegant, the most beautiful, the least baroque. It works for maths, it works for problem-solving generally. Why shouldn't it work for art, too ?

I have to admit that Japanese culture feels psychologically alien to me, and I am much more a sucker for personal development and self-realisation than for taking my place in an honorific hierarchy. But Wabi-Sabi does seem to chime with Thoreau's love of nature, his deeply unsentimental attachment to growth, blooming and decay.

Maybe the spare beauty of invisibility is a good thing. Maybe that's the lean goal for the plinth.

Watch this space. (Not that you will see anything in it.)