Every year our village has an event entitled Bygones and Organs, a miscellany of stuff scattered about the village hall. In the yard are tractors, cars, motorcycles and bicycles, some are immaculate shiney examples of their marque and others clearly having seen better days cling to life in a near fatal state of collapse. Owners tenderly care for their much cherished vehicles, making information boards for passers by to read, details of past owners, restoration work, paint colours and miles travelled, some show photos of the vehicles perched in far away places, Hardknot Pass, the Dales and the rugged peaks of Scotland, some up-market vehicles having extended their travels to places as exotic as The Alps and the South of France, but not this year, possibly the credit crunch as stretched its evil greasey fingers into the wallets that finance the adventures of vintage tourers.

The continually chirpy organ music eventually drove me into the hall and to the displays of local Bygone collectors. Corgi cars, type blocks, tins, dolls, toby jugs, oil cans, jigsaws and a curious array of stupifyingly awful domestic flotsam. In the midst of this odd but undeniably attractive Ripelyesk madness was a stand with a collection of Fen skates, some dating from the mid-19th century and others from the turn of the 20th, wooden and metal, for adults and children, fine modern blades offset against the thicker Victorian blades. The eldery man on the stand, excited to talk, explained to me the reasons why some farmers were driven to skate. In the Mid-Winter, in this desolate frozen landscape the families on small holdings survived on a basic diet of potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes. Like the drawing of the The Potato Eaters by Van Gogh, these people existed on a meager diet, isolated and scraping a life out of the black soil. Rich locals would present meat prizes to the best skaters, people would battle in speed skating races on frozen flooded fields in order to feed their families. 

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). The Potato Eaters, 1885, Oil on canvas, 32-5/16 x 44-7/8″, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

 

 

Last night sofaman and I went to see a LedZep tribute band, I shudder at the thought of admitting this, I never summoned enough energy or enthusiasm to see the originals why would I go to see a Fenland tribute band?. Yet there we stood in line with Mark, Tracy, Keith, Yvonne, Andy, Tim and Janice, though Janice sped off to the front to gaze at the fab four at close quarters. The first and most distracting thing to strike us was the remarkably well sculpted sock hoard rammed inventively into the lead singers red drainpipes, this and his mound of curly blond hair gave a passing impression of a Plant-esk presence, possibly less Robert more just ‘for Hire’ but enough to drag us into a timeslip for a bit of a misty mountain hop. Aswell as the band the ticket also included a curry, Thai or Indian or for the more cultured a platter of Chicken Supreme, an odd combination but the hall was full and once the drummer had crashed and banged his way through an infinitely long solo the joint began to sway and jiggle appreciatively. Worryingly for the band might be the fact that the crowd came for the Quorn Madras and not the death defying finger trickery of a lead guitarist, but any concerns were swiftly dispelled and the crowd drew together and edged forwards towards the light of the stage. For a while the drummer rested his weary arms and we chilled out to Going to California in a sitting on the ground, crossing your legs, closing your eyes and drifting back to your hippy youth moment. The singers voice was suited well to this less far reaching range of notes and for me it was the highlight of the evening. Crowd chilled we were lead into the opening bars of… yes… it had to be done… the finger picking loveliness of… the lady who knows, yes… the stairway which goes, to the place we all know… crickey!. So we gathered for a spot of line dancing 1970s style. Sofaman was by this point in the moment and at one with his youth, one or two beerly bottles too many and surrounded by equally loose limbed 40 somethings the post-punk leg flapping, neck twisting, moshing began. My best instincts held on to him fearing for the safety of him and the innocent by-standers, Mark, a good yard and three-quarters larger when beered up and in his best boots grappled with sofaman, and resolved to a kicking and a fighting in the mud and the blood and the beer… ‘they’ll ache in the morning’ said a passing woman. Bruised, sweating and buzzing fortunately the moshing eventually subsided without significant physical damage, more to do with loss of stamina rather than lack of enthusiasm, and I walked back to the car with a somewhat bedraggled companion, a little worse for wear but hopping happily on his bleary mountain.

I love this 3D map that is outside Gt St Marys in Cambridge, you can see the city in relief and the street names are in braille for the blind, it often has swarms of tourists, both blind and sighted, exploring the city from a whole different angle. I wondered, as it has rained heavily over night, that a blind visited might suppose it is too realistic a sensory experience. The church you can see in the middle is Gt St Marys which faces the Senate House, this map sits in between these two buildings.

Visiting the UKs premiere literary festival in Hay-on-Wye is one of the highlights of the year for me, walking the winding streets of the town and searching the countless bookshops, beer drinking, eating, chatting, drawing, camping, and celebrity spotting [Dom Joly, Marcus Brigstock, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Jimmy Carr [he almost trod on me], Dan Cruikshank [he said hello, I think he recognised me] and that actress who used to be the Pathologist on Waking the Dead]. Ideally, I suppose, the ‘events’ should be the exciting junctions in the route through the whole proceedings, and it was thrilling coming face-to-face with Marc Almond whilst dancing to him singing Tainted Love. I felt the untainted affection flow between us, I wanted him to feel loved and he wanted to be loved, a thoroughly mutually platonic abundance of affection, though my individual feelings were somewhat swamped by the outpourings from the other 60 or so fourty-somethings dancing with just, if not more enthusiasm. It was a rare chance as the audience was quite small and the venue a tent in a muddy field. We also saw Kathleen Turner, who was as formidable as I expected but so not Hollywood and all the better for it. Of all the cultural wealth available in such a public arena I found a private event that for me was more special than any memories of times past or witty banter about Shakespeare’s colloquelisms. In the woods next to our camping field, in the shade of the tall canopy of trees and sometime in the early hours of Friday morning a litter of 7 piglets was born, I chanced to walk by their pen at about 6am and peeped in to see how the heavily expectant pig was doing. She had been trailing her belly through the muddy tracks the previous day having broken out of the pen and come visiting the campsite toilets as pigs like to do. As I leaned over there she lay grunting in pleasure and breathing deeply, her belly swamped in shiny clean piglets, suckling rapidly, and there the afterbirth warm and steaming in the early morning air. This was just lovely and eclipsed the festival of words and music for who needs noise more beautiful than the grunt of a happy pig.

Many folklore customs have their roots planted firmly back in the Dark Ages, when the ancient Celts had divided their year by four major festivals. Beltane or ‘the fire of Bel’, had particular significance to the Celts as it represented the first day of summer and was celebrated with bonfires to welcome in the new season. Still celebrated today, we perhaps know Beltane better as May 1st or May Day… [for further reading visit the link below]
http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/MayDay.htm

In pre-history the Fenlands of East Anglia were at risk of flooding from the sea and rivers. In the 16th and 17th centuries the Fenland was not a hospitable area. Upland river and gale-driven tides alternated their flooding influence on the area, some of which was dry enough for summer pasture, but submerged in winter, whilst other areas were flooded all year round.
The first major attempt to drain the Fens was undertaken in 1630, when the Dutch engineer Vermuyden was engaged by the Earl of Bedford to drain the ‘Great Level’ of the Fens. In 1637 he completed the straight watercourse from Earith to Denver on the tidal River Ouse which is now known as the Old Bedford River. This was designed to cut off the loop of the river through Ely and shorten its distance to the sea by 16km.
In 1650, Vermuyden was employed to undertake further works. During the 1650’s a vastly extended network of cuts and drains and sluices was completed. Parallel to the Old Bedford, a new river, called the New Bedford River (or Hundred Foot) was cut. In 1651 the first Denver Sluice was constructed across the Ely-Ouse at the lower end of the New Bedford. This excluded tidal water from the South Level Rivers and turned it up the New Bedford. A flood storage reservoir of 2270 ha was created between the two new rivers, and embankments built to contain flood water and tides. This area became known as the Ouse Washes. The photograph shows the Hundred Foot River in the foreground and some extensive flooding in the Washes, currently this is sufficiently flooded to disable the short cut through from Welney to Ely. I am standing up on the bank which holds back the water that sits 4 or 5 metres above the level of the Fens, having been drained the Fens shrank back and in some areas fell up to 1.5 metres below sea level.

Shibboleth is a crack in the floor of the turbine hall at the Tate Modern. It runs the length of the great room, it splits off into hairline cracks as it passes through many of the finely polished concret slabs that make up the walking surface. I wondered what people might think of it, do most them think of it at all and if not what are they thinking about. In my case I thought briefly but rather shallowly, its a manmade crack, its a photo opportunity, am I bothered how they created it, and whats for lunch. We had walked from Covent Garden and my blood sugar levels were counting the cost. I love walking round London, it is a grand place to visit, every corner has a story embedded in our common history. The National Portrait Gallery called me, I love portraits, but it was crack we came to see, so we passed history by in the desire to see Doris Salacedo’s cultural canyon. With little regard to the instructions from the Tate I like almost everyone else couldn’t resist reaching into the crack, small children were slipping down into it, pushing feet and tiny hands into the dark crevices. I dangled the camera down to get a view that satisfed me. I remarked that I wanted to shout ‘Oh God! theres a rat down there’ to see how quickly the hall could empty but my internal Health and Safety officer took over and I had a vision of hoards of small children trampled by mad adults.

Part B-movie, part speculative fiction, this is apocolyptic last-man-on-Earth stuff. It is staged in burnt out Manhatten populated only by one man and his dog, Sam, and a million banshee howling, blood schlurping, dark dwelling, viral mutants. The story lurks in the twilight zone, is it really a vampire shocker or is it a Hollywood action thriller?, surprizingly it teeters with skill in this dangerous retro-cum-contempory zone. It pays respectful homage to its 1954 origins in the pages Richard Matheson’s SciFi novel intergrating the period vampire theme with the newly trendy end of days theory in the world of CGI. Essentially Emma Thompson as Dr Krippen manages to cure cancer but wipe out mankind in one overly smug scienctist-does-good moment and from then on, in a suspicious air of Judeo-Christian whisperings a good American tranforms into a global saviour… hmmm. I enjoyed every moment, although I had to re-adjust my heart rate by distracting myself with feeding the cat [reality check] and a short period looking out of the window [checking it wasn't getting dark]. Apparently this script, in some previous incarnation, was planned for a Arnie Schwarzenegger/Ridley Scott project, I am really pleased Arnie wasn’t the main man and sadly can only try to imagine how Ridley Scott might have walked the line between retro SciFi and CGI.

The ground is frozen hard, the frost a bright silver glaze clinging to the bows and branches, stems and twigs. Sunrise in the clear blue sky a poets vision, the mind floods with emotions as the rising warmth melts the chilled air and my heart breaks at the beautiful day. Still some late stars hang in the dawns deepest shades, flashing seasonally. The fields white, and the sheep like Menhirs stand motionless, their shadows cast long and dark, bitten by frost, colourless and alien. Crows lurk in the branches of a blasted Oak, deathly festive birds. Swans woken early fly silently against the creeping daylight, coupled in search of frost free fields, hungry for fodder. A railway shed glows golden from within, the suns rays cutting the iron and glass, sparkling in a millions shards of icey light, a shadow of a man passes large against the panes and suddenly I am blinded and the train brakes hard and judders into the station.

More flatland skies, an early morning misty sunrise and a late morning dazzle.