White-Out

Clutter? What clutter? I've just tidied up!

Have you come across this ridiculous person (I can't even be bothered to look up her name, she's some kind of self-styled "de-cluttering" guru) who has claimed recently that nobody needs to keep more than thirty books? THIRTY?? Surely a zero or two have gone missing there? It's all a bit King Lear, to my mind: you know, the scene where the Ugly Sisters try to persuade him that keeping his own retinue of 100 knights is terribly inconvenient for them and, you know, really, what is the point, father? Here's a reminder:

GONERIL:
Hear me, my lord;
What need you five and twenty, ten, or five,
To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to tend you?
REGAN:
What need one?
KING LEAR:
O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous:
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,--
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!
Act 2 Scene 4

Reason not the need, indeed... And for goodness sake put a jumper on, missy! Is it just me, or is there quite a draught in this castle?

That said, I have been trying to keep my book-buying under control, and in particular my photo-book addiction. Like any recovering addict, I really shouldn't be touching the stuff, but one or two now and then can't hurt, surely, can it? Not least because I believe in supporting the photographers I admire by buying their books. I can't afford to buy their actual prints and, even if I could, I'm sure buying prints would pose a far greater domestic "clutter" problem than any amount of books. As with paintings, you need wealth but, above all, space in abundance to collect original art. One of the many wonderful things about books is the fact that there's no doubt about the best way to store them, although I concede that "in tottering piles on the staircase" is not it. It's also a curious fact that a great many photographs look far better presented in a book than either hung on a wall or fumbled from a portfolio. Quite apart from all the advantages of juxtaposition and thoughtful sequencing that a serial succession of pages offers (with random access thrown in, should you prefer that), the threesome of photograph, printer's ink, and book-quality paper is a very happy one. Although, obviously, the gigantism of recent years is not well served by any book smaller than an actual coffee table.

However, it's another fact – a sad one, but, for us addicts, quite helpful – that the glory days of the photo-book, like those of pop and rock, have passed. Sure, there are more being published than ever, and to a far higher production standard, but the parallel with pop is instructive. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had put in their 10,000 hours before cutting their first singles, recorded on wax cylinders (or whatever the technology was), in studios equipped with nothing much more than a glass booth to muffle the engineer's cries of despair and a pair of scissors. They then went on to change the world as we had known it. Today, some kid will go straight from his bedroom to fifteen minutes of pointless but remunerative global domination on the strength of two decent songs, a nice face, and a voice that can be straightened out in a studio where he is little more than a flavour to be tweaked and added into the mix. Similarly, too many young photographers, with their half-baked, fashion-forward, art-school projects, are going straight to publication, as if that were Stage One of a career – the equivalent of sleeping in the van and endlessly touring small clubs – rather than one of its major peaks. There's no opportunity to learn anything much that way, beyond what a mistake it was to blow grandad's legacy on a vanity project. I was depressed, looking through an online photo-book seller's January "on sale" list (come on, don't you mean "remaindered"?) to see how many of the hyped hot items of the last few years have failed to sell. Unsurprisingly: even at a tenner each, I wouldn't buy any of them.

Nonetheless, I continue to have a loyalty to certain veterans I have been following since the 1980s, prominent among whom is Thomas Joshua Cooper. As with Jem Southam, I will buy anything he publishes, sight unseen, and have never regretted it. I've mentioned TJC several times in this blog, and I wrote a piece in 2017 for the online magazine On Landscape which described a workshop I did with him in 1991 at Duckspool. He is a remarkable man, by any measure, producing remarkable work in remarkable circumstances. He was recently persuaded to give a session at the annual "Meeting of Minds" conference organised by On Landscape, and this event was videoed and generously made available on YouTube. You can see it here. Go on, I urge you to watch it, I can wait. It's not short – about 90 minutes, in fact – but if you have a serious interest in photography, art, long-term projects, landscape, geography, adventure, or even just enjoy the intersection of swearing and scholarship, then this is essential viewing.

Meanwhile, here is an utterly inconsequential photograph of one of the lovely 1930s leaded windows in our house:

Back? I hope you agree it was worth it. He does go on a bit, I know, and, despite his many years in Glasgow, has that curious American academic/artistic habit of assuming (or pretending to assume) a British audience must be aware of this, that, or the other piece of cultural arcana. Oh yeah, we do all that stuff in school, mate... I also think a skeptical person would be justified in wondering quite how many times an 1898 Agfa-Ansco view camera on a tripod (never mind an ageing human being) can really survive repeated swampings by unexpected waves, or tumbles into the sea, or down crevasses; the "weather-proofing" on those things being about on a par with an orange-crate. Or, indeed, why anyone would consider it worth the risk of being shot by third-world border guards or tortured to death by drug-smugglers in order to secure a photograph – and just one photograph! – from precisely the right spot on some godforsaken promontory with a name like For Fuck's Sake Point on Keelhaul Bay. But I believe every word; the man is cut from the same mad cloth as the guy who just had to climb the sheer faces of El Capitan and Sendero Luminoso without ropes. Or, indeed, film-maker Werner Herzog.

But the sheer improbability of Cooper's quest raises an interesting question, I think. What if – just what if – the whole Atlantic Basin project was a complete hoax? What if all those evocative photographs of rocky shores and breaking waves and misty horizons were actually made in, say, the Hebrides during holidays with the family? It's a pretty varied geography up there, the weather changes every ten minutes, and you can face out to sea in pretty much any direction you like. It could be done. What's more, if your claim is to have photographed from a place where only nine other people (or even no other people) have ever stood, what possible contradictory evidence could there be? As far as I know, even the very latest sheet film has no GPS functionality. So, what difference would it make, if the whole enterprise was shown, on completion, to be one enormous, slow time, conceptual-art put-on? That, far from hitching rides to the North Pole with Russian ice-breakers, Cooper had been marking student assignments in his Glasgow office, with the central heating turned up to max? Would the photographs lose all value, like the currency of a country that has ceased to exist, or would they still retain an aesthetic charge, like the prettier, collectable, high-denomination notes of that obsolete currency?

It's an outrageous question, obviously (and one I have no intention of answering), but it goes to the heart of the eternal debate between "photograph as document" vs. "photograph as autonomous art object". Cooper's work has always shown an intriguing oscillation between the two. From the early work like Between Dark and Dark or Dreaming the Gokstadt to the current Atlantic Basin "Atlas" magnum opus, the captions and texts have always played an important role, being both both highly specific as to location, but also always gesturing towards an image's place in a well-defined series, as well as to certain highly personal mini-genres spread across all his projects (such as "premonitional works"). Somewhat paradoxically, you might think, here we have fine art prints made to the very highest standards (Cooper is a master printer) presenting a very conceptual thesis about a direct engagement with geographical extremity (literally, it seems: you can download his "PhD by Publication" at Glasgow School of Art here). It's an unusual mix. If one were looking for parallel contemporary enterprises, I suppose the work of Sally Mann or Raymond Meeks would come to mind.

In a way, I think trust is the key. In that videoed Meeting of Minds session, the story behind the photograph "Polar White-Out" is crucial (at: 1h 22m 43s). How far do we trust Cooper, when he describes feeling the desperate urge to photograph, on day 13 of an Antarctic snowstorm severe enough to confine everyone to their tents and sleeping bags for 23 days? Can we accept that, with the aid of seven others – three to hold the tripod, three to hold Cooper, one to hold the darkcloth according to the video; three on the tripod, three on the camera, one on Cooper according to the thesis – he ventured out into a horizontal blizzard to record what turned out to be a blank white image, slightly vignetted at the corners? An image that could have been made anywhere in front of any blank white wall? Of course we can. We have to: the story belongs in the same folder as the making of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, or Turner being lashed to the mast, like Odysseus, to observe a storm at sea. Without the story, the picture is nothing. Without the picture, the story is nothing. Without the overarching project, without the specificity of time and place, neither picture nor story have any context or coherence. Put them all together, however, and something truly extraordinary has been made, so long as we are prepared to invest the necessary trust, going so far as to consider a blank white photographic print as, at the same time, documentary evidence, a work of art, a testament, and a semi-parodic condensation of the whole romantic enterprise, a sort of negative image of the "black page" in Tristram Shandy. Or, perhaps, as an evocation of how it feels to be "nothing himself" beholding "nothing that is not there and the nothing that is"...

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man

Meanwhile, I await the publication of The World's Edge later this year with some anticipation, "Polar White-Out" and all. I'm sure I'll find space for it somewhere.

A Mind of Winter

De Profundis

I came across the unfinished picture above yesterday, while looking for something else. I appear to have been putting it together in January 2017 and, when I look at it in context, it seems it's not untypical of the sort of thing I was doing two years ago, as I was consolidating my move away from "straight" photography into construction and collage. And yet it seems to me now that it was made by someone else; I recognise, but don't "own" the characteristic moves and judgements made by this person, and I'm pretty sure that even if I were to take the exact same raw material now I'd end up somewhere completely different. It's not an experiment I'm likely to try, though: most of those elements no longer really speak to me. Submarines are so 2017.

Mind you, I think I do now know from where at least part of the impulse behind this picture came. I was looking for something to watch on Netflix recently, and came across the condensed, cinematic version of Wolfgang Petersen's enthralling U-boat drama, Das Boot. I had watched and admired the original miniseries on my little 8" screen portable TV when it was first broadcast in 1984, and it's clear that U-96 and its crew must have made a deep, deep dive into my subconscious and stayed lurking down there. Watching it again condensed into 149 minutes – and on an 18" computer screen! – was peculiarly vivid: it was as if I was recalling an actual lived experience involving those people and that series of events. Yes, yes, that's exactly how it happened! I remember it so well! In particular, there were two contrasting scenes which must have made a strong impression on me. The first is when U-96 surfaces at night in Vigo, Spain, in order to make a clandestine rendezvous with German officials on board an impounded but well-supplied ship ("Frische Feigen! Hab' ich noch nie gegessen..." [1]), and must quietly manoeuvre through the dark waters and moored boats, fitfully illuminated by the twinkling lights of the harbour. The second being when the submarine is surprised and attacked on the surface by a British aircraft while attempting to pass undetected through the Strait of Gibraltar. My unfinished picture is clearly a sort of synthesis of the two.

These false or borrowed memories, if we can call them that, are the persistent afterimage of the true lies of art, particularly those of narrative fiction. In time they become part of the sediment at the bottom of our minds, pretty much indistinguishable from the wreckage of the "real" stuff that has actually impacted our lives. In fact, because of its artfully-contrived nature, the detritus of art can seem even more compelling than proper, real-life junk. With any luck, none of us will ever have to experience such a perfect storm of tragedy as that forced upon King Lear by Shakespeare, and I'm pretty sure that if we did, in real life we'd shut down emotionally and submit willingly to whatever medication or counselling we were prescribed. We would avoid feeling the pain at all costs, choosing "comfortably numb" over agony. What we would absolutely not do is head for the nearest heath, rip off our clothes in a violent storm, and rave quotable profundities about the human condition. No, that way sectioning lies... Similarly, I fully expect never to find myself in a disabled, depth-charged submarine, sinking uncontrollably to the bottom of the Mediterranean, as the rivets pop like bullets and men's nerves are tested to destruction under the excruciating physical and psychological pressure. Even if the crew are just actors, and the sub a stage-set.  But, in an important, if vicarious way, I have "been there, done that". Sure, I will never actually have to reap the consequences of unwisely dividing my kingdom between Cinderella's wicked step-sisters [2], or really have to devise a cunning, it-might-just-work plan to rescue my comrades from certain death (though my work life did often feel like that). But, in something like a more practical, bodger's version of Platonic anamnesis ("learning is remembering"), I may well find that bits salvaged from those intense but unreal experiences will come in very handy when lashing up a fix for some more mundane crisis. Or even just making a picture.

Some would go further and say that, like artificially exercising a muscle, our understanding and sympathies can be enlarged by the willing suspension of disbelief in convincing, artfully-told untruths. That, unlike a pumped-up gym-bunny physique, an augmented ability to empathise is a real strength, and an asset to ourselves and those around us. Certainly, that's the official, critical line: art is good for you. Which, of course, it can be. Not all of it, not all the time, and not for everybody. Anyone who has attempted to ease their inner turmoil by listening to Harrison Birtwistle or reading Samuel Beckett really should have tried paracetamol or even something a little stronger first. The spectrum that goes from "mindless entertainment" to "ascetic self-flagellation" is very broad indeed, and the benefits of any particular point on it are rarely predictable, consistent, or immediate (unlike paracetamol). But, when it comes to art making, this allegedly wholesome, therapeutic aspect is not really a factor, unless you regard creativity as a form of occupational therapy, harmlessly channelling impulses that would otherwise be a social nuisance [3]. I mean, let's be honest, most top-flight artists and performers are also first-rate monsters of ego; it's pretty much part of the job description. Their art may be good for you, but it hasn't done much for them. Although who knows what perverted criminal masterminds they might otherwise have become?

Mental well-being aside, it's that curiosity shop at the bottom of your mind that interests me. I think one indication you may be destined for a life afflicted by creativity is this: you tend to be less concerned with the overall shape and message of an experience ("the moral of this story is...") than with the shiny bits and pieces that can be prised off it, stolen, and recycled. Yeah, yeah, nice car, but look at those fancy hubcaps! Would they make great flying saucers or what? Unlike normal people, you just need to be constantly restocking those basement shelves with random psychic bric-a-brac, whether acquired by real experience, imitation, theft, or bought second-hand. The truly amazing thing, though, is how the subconscious mind is able to descend into the depths and fetch up exactly the right bit of junk at the appropriate moment [4]. Pretty much everyone will have been startled at some time by some cutting or hilarious remark that popped unbidden from their own mouth. Where did that come from? But only a few of us have the magic combination of a well-stocked, constantly replenished mental cellar and free and immediate access to its contents, which is what gives the sparkle to, say, a brilliant comedian's repartee. It's the opposite of l'esprit de l'escalier: to be able to produce, with a magician's flourish, the most unexpected but apposite response, instantly, as if prompted by an unseen team of script-writing angels.

Mind you, few things will kill a lively party situation quicker than having some would-be Oscar Wilde constantly trying to top everyone else's jokes or feeble pleasantries. Look, it doesn't matter how damned witty you are, Oscar, after a while this becomes as aggressive as offering to arm-wrestle everyone in the room, and about as attractive. (Um, please don't ask me how I know this). The art of art, like the art of conversation, is precisely not spilling the contents of your subconscious over everyone at every opportunity, but knowing when to speak, when to at least pretend to listen, and above all when to shut up. Which is what I'm going to do now.

1. "Fresh figs! I've never eaten 'em before..."
2. Oh, come on, don't say the similarities have never struck you...
3. Look at the sheer perverse creative inventiveness that goes into most fraud, for example. Somebody should give those guys a useful problem to work on, or some paints.
4. That is, "right" as defined by the subconscious, which can be embarrassingly like having a speech bubble over your head saying what you really think.

New Morning

We live in a street lined with typically English semi-detached houses on both sides [1], built in the 1930s, with the odd interruption of the original sequence due to bomb damage from WW2. Our house is oriented roughly NNE by SSW, with the front facing ESE, so there comes a point early in the year when the rising sun starts to appear over the opposite rooftops, and shines directly into our bathroom window at an angle that turns the pebbled glass into a jewelled backdrop, and transforms the mundane spectacle of drying clothes hanging over the bath into a graphic spectacle worth dropping your toothbrush for, and running downstairs for a camera. It only lasts a couple of minutes, then the magic is gone.

Following the latest round of installations of uPVC windows, I think it is safe to say that we are now the sole remaining house in the entire street with the original, wood-framed, single-glazed, lead-lighted windows left intact. We like them, and don't mind the draughts or the need to have them regularly repainted. But, if we're not careful, we're going to end up living in a listed building: "the last authentic 1930s semi in Southampton"... Dammit, we've even got the original iron plumbing – can you believe anyone would even think of installing iron water-pipes? – now so clogged with decades of limescale and rust that it takes forever to run a bath. I wash in cold water, an odd habit I acquired from my father, but as I am generally the first out of bed, if I turn on the hot tap when I enter the bathroom the trickle of water that emerges will be hot enough for a normal person to wash by the time I'm finished. From these things a family routine is built...

1. As a builder once said to me, "In England we make a perfectly serviceable family house, then divide it into two..."

Young Americans

Surprisingly, perhaps, the majority of the readers of this blog tend to be American (can you tend to be American? Are American!) so I will need to think carefully about what I have to say here. We British have the false impression that our language is becoming the lingua franca of the entire world. Not so: American English, for obvious reasons, is now the world-language of aspiration and education – you have only to listen to some bright youngster who has never left her dusty third-world village quacking like a rilly Californian, like, Valley Girl to realise this – and this linguistic hegemony is making itself felt here in Britain as well. Not surprisingly, this is not always welcome.

Although I must admit to experiencing a little buzz of annoyance whenever a fashionable Americanism supplants a perfectly serviceable British English equivalent [1] – things like the use of the absurd "pinkie" for "little finger", or "reach out to" for "get in touch with" – I generally suppress this feeling, as it is clearly one of the early symptoms of the onset of age-related pedantry, an incurable and unattractive condition. After all, as a young person I used plenty of Americanisms myself, consciously and unconsciously, simply because they were part of the US-dominated youth culture I had willingly embraced (or had been embraced by). More recently, I can even pretend indifference when I hear young people ask, briskly, "Can I get a small latte?" rather than "Could I have a bucket of perfectly ordinary coffee with milk, please?" It still sounds affected and ill-mannered to me, but there's something going on there that clearly works for the young, and which I am now too out of touch to find "relatable". However, certain imported expressions do grate, because what makes them work is their cultural hinterland; if this is missing, then the expression is not so much meaningless as lacking any meaningful referent.

I have a particular dislike for "stepping up to the plate", for example, so beloved of our politicians and political commentators. Now, I don't mind a useful cliché, so long as the people who use it have a clear image in mind. Anyone who has had children at primary school knows only too well, for example, what it means to go through something with a "fine-tooth comb", and you don't have to have served as a Napoleonic Era soldier to understand why you should keep your powder dry or avoid things going off half-cocked, either. Clearly, "stepping up to the plate" meets a felt need for an expression meaning "it's time to stop thinking and criticising and to act, to show what you're capable of, to take the initiative"; to put up or shut up, as you might say. But, come on, it's a baseball metaphor! No-one plays or understands baseball in Britain, and no British sport or activity involves a "plate", up to which one must eventually step. You can step up to the crease in cricket, or to the penalty spot in football, and even the oche (ocky) in darts. But "the plate"? What sort of plate do people imagine – a dinner plate? a commemorative plaque? – and what do they expect you to do, having stepped up to it?

Obviously, a lot of people do use language incuriously, chucking around linguistic small change as mere tokens of meaning. They may think, vaguely, if they think at all, that there is such a thing as a rather nice "tooth-comb", or that powder of any variety benefits from being kept dry, which is true enough, but there's more to it than that. I suspect there's a sort of inherent machismo to many American metaphors – especially military and sporting ones, things like "slam dunk", "knock it out of the park", etc. – which is absent from our native equivalents, and which makes them irresistible to the wannabe rhetorical tough-guy, even if the actual meaning of, say, "the whole nine yards" is entirely opaque, even to Americans. But, like a pair of ironed Levi's on a Prime Minister, however good they may feel to wear, the effect is ridiculous.

More insidious, though, is the gradual adoption by the young of American speaking styles. I don't mean the well-established differences in pronunciation: you say "tomato" and I say "route", and all that. Differences are fine; we enjoy difference. Although, let's be honest, some American pronunciations are risible: 'erbs for "herbs"? Please! And "primmer" as the "correct" pronunciation of "primer" is just, ah, dim and dimer, especially in the land of that renowned librarian and spelling reformer Melvil Dewey [2]. No, what is seeping into British English, presumably via the rich diet of US TV and film being consumed via Netflix and the like, is the sort of systemic stuff which affects the rhythm and music of speech. Things like that American habit of emphasising the adjective rather than the noun, as in "Red Bull" rather than "Red Bull" ("Can I get a can of Red Bull?"). And there's that teen-talk insistence on turning every statement into a question? Called "uptalk"? As if I must pretend to need constant reassurance about things I know to be perfectly true? Which may even be Australian, but nobody's sure? Yes, that. And let's not even get started on the infectious, faux-sophisticated idea in the American art-world that the word "cliché" is emphasised on the final syllable and is an adjective.

The linguistic traffic can still be a little two-way, of course. I am surprised how many "Britishisms" seem to have made it into American speech in recent years. Mainly vulgar stuff, it's true (well, it's what we do best): I'm pretty sure words like "bloody", "bugger", "bloke", "geezer", or even "wanker" were never as widely used in America as they seem to be now. Hey, you're welcome! But sometimes things are sailing under false flags. I was deeply baffled, some years ago, by one commenter's reference to a "bumbershoot". A what? Apparently he, like many Americans, was under the impression that this is British slang for an umbrella. No, sorry, Mary Poppins: never heard of it. Brolly, yes; but bumbershoot, no. Like the so-called English muffin (about to make the most out of a toaster, "I'd ease myself down, Comin' up brown!") it's a wholly American invention that, no doubt and nonetheless, we'll eventually be obliged to adopt as our own.

It goes without saying that there are many "Americans", just as there are many "Englishes". The intersections of region, social class, race, education, and gender all generate recognisable sub-dialects, right down to the level of the individual, what linguists call an "idiolect". My own speech is quite different from the written "voice" you probably hear as you read these words, in the same way the actual face of a radio presenter can never supplant the one their voice conjures in your mind [3]. In Britain, regional accents can be particularly finely-tuned. My mother came from Pirton, a tiny village in North Hertfordshire. Across a couple of fields, you could see another tiny village, Shillington, situated in Bedfordshire. Apparently, at social occasions like village-hall dances, you could tell Shillington from Pirton "gels" because of their quite distinct accent; at least, you could if you'd grown up in Pirton. I get the impression that American dialects are more broad-brush, but there's no question that the version of "American" that gets exported to the world via TV, film, and music is a blunt instrument that ignores all the important subtleties that enable one American to despise another (it surely can't just be us that do that, can it? [4]).

But, [heads up, guys] now look here, you young fellows! The day crisps become "chips" and biscuits become "cookies" in Britain is the day (expressed as DD/MM/YY) that age-related pedantry tips over into age-related patriotism, and us old codgers [light out for the Territory] take to the hills, packing the OED, Erskine May, and a complete backrun of The Beano into the boot of the car, along with plenty of petrol and, for those that way inclined, a good supply of fags. Ooo-err, missus! And not just for a fortnight, either. Understood, [kiddo] Sonny Jim? [Outstanding] Splendid! Anyone for a cuppa?

1.  I say "equivalent", rather than "original", because establishing precedence can be tricky. A lot of "Americanisms" actually turn out to be survivals of an even older British English.
2. "Buoy" is a curious one. I say "boy", you say "boowie". So do Americans feel "boowied up" by good news, or assess the "boowieyancy" of boats (or maybe it's their beyoncé)? I suspect not.
3. As it happens, it's an unlovely mash-up of London and North Hertfordshire, with top notes of higher-ed, and subcultural undertones. When I was at school, my teachers would actually mimic my pronunciation, presumably in an attempt to get me to change it, and I'll never forget being asked to repeat my reply, several times, to a question in my Oxford entrance interview ("I'm so sorry, I can't quite understand what you're saying... Could you repeat it once more?"). It was just as well he couldn't hear my sotto voce reply.
4. "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him" (according to an Irishman, George Bernard Shaw, preface to Pygmalion).

NYD 2019

Dawn over the Avon Gorge, 1/1/2019

(as seen from our Bristol HQ)

It is something of a custom around here – and never one of those "more honoured in the breach than in the observance" – to get outside on New Year's Day, no matter what the weather, and grab a few lungfuls of New Year's Air, not to mention a few photographs to prove it. As we were in Bristol, we headed out to the seaside town of Clevedon on the Bristol Channel, which has the multiple advantages of a classy Victorian pier, a community second-hand bookshop, and numerous cafes, all of which are open on the 1st January.

By buying a plaque, you help keep the pier in good order.

Many are mawkish, some are hilarious, mainly unintentionally

 (we spotted one this year that is like a TripAdvisor review)

Looks like Goldsworthy is in town

For once, New Year's Day in the West of England was not cold and rainy – see previous NYD entries – and occasionally a bright low sun broke through the cloud cover. People were out in force, too: I've never seen so many about at this time of year, or had such difficulty parking before. So much so, I wondered whether there might have been a feature on Clevedon on the TV or in one of the tabloids; it's generally the only sort of stimulus that motivates my compatriots to do an outdoorsy thing en masse. Whatever, I think it's unlikely they got the idea from reading this blog.

Have I wished you a Happy New Year? If not, I don't think it's too late, so consider yourself so wished, individually and collectively. Strangely, I find myself looking forward to this year with some real anticipation. I don't suppose it will last.

Apologia Pro Ryvita Sua

What, New Year's Eve already? Yes, indeed: Christmas is done and dusted – very nice, thanks – our children have gone back to their real lives in London, and, having returned from Dorset to Southampton briefly to re-up our clothing, we now find ourselves in the Bristol Winter Palace for New Year. It does feel a little bit like being royalty, this seasonally-adjusted, peripatetic life, except royals have no clue where clean underwear comes from, don't drive themselves across several counties in fog and rain, and certainly don't stand fuming in the supermarket queue on New Year's Eve with a modest wire basket of provisions, stuck behind a log-jam of trolley-pushers, all apparently under the impression that no shops will be opening in 2019. Mind you, the way things are going, they could be on to something. It seems HMV is to be the latest vacant space on the High Street. Sad, but unsurprising: the days of flipping through racks of vinyl LPs seem as remote, now, as my father's stories of following the milkman's horse with a bucket to collect up dung for the garden. So what was a shop, grandad?

As for 2018, it has been a good, productive, and at times exciting year for me, even if it has involved rather more travelling than I'd ideally have chosen to do. Anyone who says it is the journey, not the destination that matters has never been delayed sine die and sans snacks in an airport departure "lounge". I suppose the only real disappointments have been not getting any of my truly amazing entries into either the RA Summer Show this year (may your pots explode in the kiln, Grayson Perry, you ████!) or the final hang of the RWA Open. That, and the ongoing decline in reader numbers of this blog, and the sparseness of your comments. I miss the sparky dialogue of earlier times. What is the sound of one bloke blogging?

December 2017

(no frost this year, just fog..)

It occurred to me, as I scoffed the last remaining mince pie, that New Year's resolutions are really a form of self-cancelling confession-plus-absolution package. I'm too lazy: I will join a gym. I'm too self-absorbed: I will make more of the few friends I have left. I'm fat: I will eat nothing but rye crispbread. I'm ignorant: I will find a suitable evening class. The potentially active component of these packages, though, is not the self-prescribed solution – no-one sticks to those – but the recognition and admission of a personal shortcoming. That counts for something. It may be self-knowledge of a painful sort, but can also feel good, especially after a week or two wallowing in greedy materiality. Confession is, however, potentially addictive. The problem is that the illusory sense of a new start – like most addictive things – lasts only long enough for you to crave a fresh hit. But then there are so many potential confessions to make! Especially if you set the bar for fault-finding and guilt sufficiently low. The organized churches have been in this racket for centuries. Does the Catholic Church charge for confession? I have no idea, but I expect the first few are free, at any rate, just to get you hooked.

So, racking my brain to think of some personal shortcoming to admit to and possibly even remedy in 2019 – I must have some left – I decided that I had two contradictory tendencies that could do with some attention. On the one hand, most of my life I have tended to go with the flow. If there was an easy route to take that didn't require too much by way of effort or navigation, that was the way I went. As a natural loner with a mistrust of self-appointed leaders, this has inevitably meant spending a lot of time going round in circles. On the other hand, whenever some important opportunity has been presented to me – a chance to break out of whatever circular holding pattern I was in at the time – I have usually backed away, like a fox sensing a trap. In the immortal words of Groucho Marx, "Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". This is hardly revelatory stuff, however: I recently found my old school report book, and it's full of repeated warnings along the lines of "he's quite clever, but not as clever as he thinks he is, and very, very lazy. I'm concerned he will never fulfil his real potential". Yes, well, you had me pegged, guys, at 17 in '71 (now that was a year!), and I don't suppose 2019 will be any different. Apart from the salutary fact that you're all dead, now, and I'm not: there may still be enough time to do something about it! Perhaps this year?

The wonderful thing about New Year is that, for a day or two at least, we can persuade ourselves that all options are now open, all bets are off, and all psychic laws and constants are in abeyance. Anything is possible in the coming year: review, restart, reset, reboot! Of course, the same possibilities of renewal exist at every other time of year, it's just that this little liminal pause, however illusory, is like stepping through a threshold bearing the opposite inscription to that over Dante's entrance to Hell: All hope is to be found beyond this doorway.  It's always worth a gamble, isn't it, another throw of the dice? As that very wise man William James put it:

For practical life at any rate, the chance of salvation is enough. No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference, as Edmund Gurney says, between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.
Afterword to The Varieties of Religious Experience

As we step serially through that threshold in our different time zones, let us all hope for more hope in 2019! We're going to need it...

Look It Up

It is arguable that Christmas Tree gangs should be banned

from attending the Edinburgh Christmas Fair

Don't look now, but Christmas is coming. Help! It's the same every year, though, isn't it? An entirely predictable, non-wobbly calendrical event (unlike that big tease, Easter) that somehow always manages to take you by surprise, as if somehow, if only you ignored it with sufficient conviction, this year it might not happen. Because, however you look at it, and whether you "celebrate" it or not, Christmas is always  a bit of a challenge, unless you're seven years old or the sort of adult male whose seasonal domestic contribution is restricted to keeping out of the way and staggering home late more often than usual. I recall the frustration of our many overseas students, for example, paying substantial fees and yet locked out of all university facilities from Christmas Eve until after New Year. So much for the Wise Men from the East... Sorry, guys, we're closed. Put the gold through the letterbox, but leave the frankincense and myrrh on the step [1].

In the Days of Analogue, one way of alleviating the tedium of those long, dark nights confined with your extended family was to play games. Ever had to chase cut-out paper fish across the living-room carpet with a rolled up newspaper, or tried to play hide-and-seek in a house with no hiding places worthy of the name? Only then can you fully appreciate the pure solitary joy of reading a book or, as an adult, quietly getting drunk and pretending to be unconscious. Of course, as well as the more lively, physical games there were also board games, ranging from the moronic to the baroque in their demands on your intellectual faculties. But there is really only one reason for most board games to exist at Christmas, and that is to corral hysterically over-excited young relatives, unfamiliar with the festive domestic layout, into a single location where the damage to furniture and fittings can be minimised. Mind that tree, you little ... cousins!

Personally, I've never really been turned on by games or puzzles. Even as a child, the idea of a round of Monopoly or snakes and ladders was never my idea of a fun way to spend the evening. I was always rather more interested in the look of the board and the gaming pieces than the game itself, and have certainly spent rather more time admiring the curves, planes, and moulding of chessmen than actually playing chess, which, frankly, I found and still find utterly baffling. The very idea of thinking several moves ahead, including the anticipation of your opponent's counter-moves, stimulates some part of my brain that, far from exciting me, gives me a profound headache. It's not something I'm proud of, I simply know my limits. Oh, look, you win again: I'll put the kettle on. Do we have any paracetamol?

I have attempted to master a few card games which are more complex than snap (difficult enough, if your attention is constantly snagged by the elegance and intricacies of playing card design). Poker and bridge, for example, simply because it seems antisocial to spoil the fun of others by refusing to play, however badly, and, naturally, there's nothing a decent card player enjoys more than to point out the idiotic way you have just lost a winning hand to their fistful of rubbish. You're welcome! I spent one memorable holiday in the late 1970s touring France and Spain trapped in a car with three keen bridge players. Rarely has anyone filled the role of "dummy" so well. Listen, you play out the hand, I'll get the drinks in [2].

Solitary games don't hit the spot for me, either. Sudoku? Forget about it! And the challenge of, say, a crossword has never been one to which I have felt the need to rise. Although, recently, I have taken a reluctant interest in the full-on cryptic crossword, which – with its traditions, explicit and implicit rules, and austere satisfactions – is a peculiarly British institution, not unlike our unwritten constitution, or the game of cricket. The civil servant who can finish the Times crossword during the morning commute, casually leaving the paper with its pencilled-in solutions on the train seat, is a figure of legend. But, as with chess, the mindset required to solve a cryptic clue is deeply alien to me. I love language: truly, madly, deeply. To regard words as assemblages of letters, to be chopped up and re-arranged to form other words, is like regarding a person as a fascinating but interchangeable assemblage of organs. Which, I suppose, is precisely how a surgeon must come to see people: in Eliot's memorable words, he sees the skull beneath the skin.

Which, dammit, now sounds to me like a moderately cryptic clue... A spider sees the skull beneath the skin (7 letters). Why? Because recently an old friend who is a crossword enthusiast has inveigled me into helping him out with some of the clues in the Times Literary Supplement crossword, under the mistaken impression that I have advanced knowledge of literary matters. Whereas I am, in reality, a retired professional metadata surfer. As Samuel Johnson said, "Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries." [3] Well, I suppose I do have a little literary knowledge, but what I really know is where and how to look for more.

Sometimes these TLS clues are not so much cryptic as oblique: it's just a question of spotting the allusion. For example: "Clergyman's legendary pseudonym (9)". Answer: INGOLDSBY. Now, I doubt that even very well-read people, these days, would get that one unaided by Google. Who today, for heaven's sake, has read The Ingoldsby Legends? Or is aware that "Thomas Ingoldsby" was the pseudonym of a clergyman, Richard Harris Barham? It reeks of a stuffy kind of literariness – all pipe smoke and tweed jackets – that was already obsolete by the 1960s. But, as a clue, it's still little more than a look-up job: the most challenging clues are those that deploy a fiendish ingenuity that rips language apart and stitches it back together into a Frankensteinian simulacrum.

Consider this recent TLS clue: "Service area crossed by Follett's drunken agent (6)". Now, as a sentence, it makes superficial sense. We know what a "service area" is, we can guess that thriller writer Ken Follett is being invoked, and that one of his books may well include an agent who is a drinker. Much googling ensues, but with little result. There are no obvious Follett novels with an alcoholic protagonist, no useful synonyms for "service area". But the experienced solver will have been alerted by the words "crossed by". Such innocent formulations often indicate a mashup of some kind; an anagram, a concatenation, a topping and tailing, or some other piece of word butchery.

So, now consider the answer: it is ... KERNAN. Your considered response to this may be WTF?, as was mine. But here's how it works:

"service" = RN (abbreviation for the Royal Navy, the Senior Service);
"area" = A (a standard algebraic abbreviation);
"Follett" = KEN.
Now apply scissors and paste.

"Kernan", as you may or may not recall, is the drunk who falls down the stairs in "Grace", one of the short stories in James Joyce's Dubliners, and who also features in Ulysses. He is a salesman, thus an "agent"; well, kinda sorta, maybe. So it seems there is no "service area", and the "agent" is not Ken Follett's at all. [4] Which I find less than satisfying. Indeed, what baffles me most about this kind of puzzle is that the treasure chest, after all that map-reading and all that strenuous digging, is often empty. To successfully reverse-engineer the clue may reveal absolutely nothing at all about anything: it has merely demonstrated that your ingenuity is commensurate with that of the setter. Unless of course you managed to get there without resort to the Web or a decent reference shelf, smugly pencilling in KERNAN as the train pulled into Waterloo station, in which case what it reveals is that you have an improbably well-stocked mind as well as quite possibly some kind of personality disorder.

Which, as a retired professional metadata surfer, leads me to some melancholy thoughts on the decline of the printed reference book. If retail shops are struggling in the face of the competition from online shopping, the traditional, well-researched and authoritative work of reference has all but vanished beneath the wheels of the Web juggernaut. Where once there were shelves of atlases, dictionaries, concordances, bibliographies, companions, and encyclopaedias to accompany fields of study as broad as "everything" or as narrow as "Frisian folklore", now there is simply a blinking cursor in the box marked "Search". Which is fine – more than fine, it's fantastic – apart from the fact that it might as well be labelled "Pot Luck", given that most people have no idea how to frame a question which will deliver the answer they need, and must settle for the first few answers that a search engine's algorithms push to the top of an impossibly long and unsorted list of vaguely relevant results. Worse, the popular search engines discourage enquirers from applying any rigour to their search, as offered by the use of filters, wildcard characters, stemming, and the like. You press the button, we do the rest; trust us! Google, for example, doesn't exactly encourage the use of its "advanced search" (try finding it, for a start) or conventional search logic: yes, Google does offer Boolean-style operators, if you know how to use them.

One of my most treasured Christmas presents was a large dictionary, given by an uncle when I was about twelve. I hadn't asked for one, but it turned out to be just what I needed at just the right time. I sat poring over it for hours, finding it as hard to put down as any page-turning thriller. Rather like the multi-volume encyclopaedia I had begun to accumulate on my eighth birthday, it set out, in a systematic and authoritative way, an entire field of knowledge. I didn't need to know every word in it, I simply needed to know how to use it and, above all, when to use it, which meant activating those invaluable twin faculties: the desire to know – curiosity – and the willingness to acknowledge my ignorance.

Now, you, like me, will often have presumed to know something – the meaning of a word, say – and passed over it often enough subsequently for that presumption to have solidified into "knowledge". We are, understandably, not always curious or willing enough to question our own easily-won certainties. There's a nice passage in Aldous Huxley's first novel, Crome Yellow, in which a poet at a 1920s house party explains his misunderstanding of the word "carminative":

"It's a word I've treasured from my earliest infancy," said Denis, "treasured and loved. They used to give me cinnamon when I had a cold–quite useless, but not disagreeable. One poured it drop by drop out of narrow bottles, a golden liquor, fierce and fiery. On the label was a list of its virtues, and among other things it was described as being in the highest degree carminative. I adored the word. 'Isn't it carminative?' I used to say to myself when I'd taken my dose. It seemed so wonderfully to describe that sensation of internal warmth, that glow, that–what shall I call it?–physical self-satisfaction which followed the drinking of cinnamon. Later, when I discovered alcohol, 'carminative' described for me that similar, but nobler, more spiritual glow which wine evokes not only in the body but in the soul as well. 

But then, having used the word in a poem ("And passion carminative as wine...") he decides finally to look it up. Only to discover it actually means "makes you fart" (or, "a small English-German dictionary" having been the only reference source readily to hand, Windtreibend).

It happens. I'm fond of asking people what colour they think a "livid scar" is (go on, look it up), not least because I myself felt betrayed by that word when I finally had cause to look it up. But, once you have recovered from your embarrassment – and assuming you are not that strangely well-informed man on the morning train to Waterloo – such epiphanies are an opportunity to acknowledge, if not necessarily achieve, the sort of humility before the Unknown that is the hallmark of the great enquiring minds. In the famous words attributed to Isaac Newton (not a man noted for his humility in everyday life):

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Or, as that other far-from-humble man, Samuel Johnson, responded, when asked how on earth he could have defined "pastern", wrongly, as "the KNEE of a horse" in his dictionary: "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance."

I am shortly to depart for our own little house party in Dorset over Christmas, where the carminative properties of various traditional festive consumables, not excluding wine, will doubtless be thoroughly tested. Games may well be played, too (my son is unaccountably keen on board games), so I may yet have to pretend to be unconscious, or at least too absorbed in a book to be worth disturbing. It is unlikely that I will not be posting again before the New Year but nonetheless possible, rural Wi-Fi being what it is. A lot also depends on how unconscious or absorbed I become. So, just in case, allow me to wish you a very enjoyable [insert Solstice Celebration of choice] and many good things to look forward to in 2019! Here in Brexit-bound Britain, sadly, Things can only get more Interesting... I'm afraid April 1st could be a very strange and very foolish day indeed, this coming year.

A reminder of winters past...

A Hind's Daughter, by Sir James Guthrie (1883)

Scottish National Gallery

1. Equally predictably, every year some comedian will demand, rhetorically, "But what the hell is myrrh, anyway?" Really? So why not ask Santa for a dictionary next year, dimwit?
2. A task I enjoyed, as a large part of that holiday was spent in the Basque Country, where I often found – to my unaccustomed delight – that I was the tallest man in the bar.
3. That quotation (from Boswell's Life)  has an oddly anachronistic feel, as if Johnson is talking about popping into the local public library and scanning the summaries and blurbs printed on the back of the books, but of course by "back" he means "spine" and by "library" he means either someone's personal collection of books or that of some private institution like a club.
4. Here is an expert's account: The surface of  this clue suggests a story about the author Ken Follett and his inebriated (and/or hopefully non-litigious) literary agent on a motorway journey, perhaps. Cryptically, however, it is a charade within a container, with the clear definition, "drunken agent" – a reference to Joyce's character, KERNAN, the answer. The charade is RN = Royal Navy ("service") + A ("area" -- maths) and that is contained within KEN, the author Follett's forename. The containment is indicated by the word "crossed". RNA is 'crossed' by KEN. The "'s" at the end of Follet is the link word between wordplay and definition. Cryptically, it stands for 'is': [this wordplay] is (the same thing as) [this clear definition], while in the surface it is a possessive marker. So the structure of this clue is: contained charade / link word / definition.

Embra

North Bridge from Calton Hill

Brown Street and Salisbury Crags from The Pleasance

Edinburgh, like any sizeable city, has many faces. As well as the Festival, the Scottish Parliament, the galleries and museums, and the upmarket shops of Princes Street, it is also the city of Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus crime novels, and of course the film Trainspotting. In between those extremes there is the usual acreage of suburban streets, with no doubt the usual accompanying vanities of small differences. So, a long weekend visit is not going to yield any more insight than, at best, some of the basic geography of the city centre: and even so I'm still confused about which is the Old Town and which is the New Town.

I do feel a slightly tenuous connection with the place, as my paternal ancestors lived in Edinburgh for several generations during the 19th century: they were "pocket-book makers", a sort of low-level bookbinding trade, having left behind a life of shepherding in the Borders in the early 1800s. However, my great grandparents moved the family down to London's Elephant and Castle in the 1890s, where my grandfather was born and grew up. Quite why is unknown. Their last Edinburgh address was a tenement on South Bridge, then a warren of artisans and tradesmen's families crowded into single rooms. But their accommodation in London was, by the look of it in the 1891 Census, far worse. Certainly, two of their five children died in Camberwell in 1891: hardly the best start to a new life. My father recalled his Scottish grandmother as a stern, humourless woman, with an impenetrable accent and vocabulary. He clearly had far fonder memories of his Hertfordshire-born gran. So, apart from some genetic material and possibly a few inherited behavioural traits, I'm about as Scottish as a Toronto resident descended from a family evicted and transported in the Highland Clearances. Indeed, I have a surprising number of Canadian namesakes: politicians, ice-hockey players, businessmen, you name it. It's them, I suppose, and the thousands like them around the world who keep the tartan regalia shops of Princes Street in business, when they eventually make the journey back to the ancestral "home".

Rather than offer any startling insights into a city I barely know, here is a little gallery of things that caught my eye. I must say I did like the place very much, and hope to be back. Although I was rather shocked by the number of homeless people sitting at intervals on most city centre pavements, listlessly begging in the cold and damp. There is a nation-wide homelessness problem, clearly, but it seems so much more acute when you imagine having to spend your nights on the streets of Edinburgh in winter, as the wealthy tourists pass by, heading for their hotels.

Waverley Station from Market Street

View towards the Castle from Salisbury Crags

Ramsay Lane

Christmas Fair from the Mound

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Cockburn Street

How About Over There?

 Scottish National Gallery

(in front of a large Chisholm canvas)

To portray John Byrne and Tilda Swinton standing in front of a bland cafe counter seemed somehow inadequate, so, in the best traditions of portraiture, they have been encouraged to pose for me, virtually, in some more congenial surroundings.

 Milne's Court steps grafitti

Scottish National Portrait Gallery library

(in front of scary dead white men)

Tam Lin, Starstruck

North Bridge, Edinburgh

from The Scotsman's Steps

My partner had academic gigs in Scotland either side of the weekend, so I flew up to Edinburgh (in a plane, obvs: I am not really a crow) so we could spend a long weekend there. I expect I'll post a little about that lovely city in due course, with a gallery of photographs, but first I have a story to tell.

On Saturday we had enjoyed a visit to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which is truly an amazing collection set within an extraordinarily beautiful building. As well as classic Ramsays and Raeburns, there's a good selection of contemporary work, too, from the chilling "Three Oncologists" by Ken Currie to engagingly quirky portraits by John Byrne, among which I was pleased to see his sketchy and unglamorous pastel portrait of Tilda Swinton, which I've admired for some time, but only ever seen on the Web. On Monday, the Prof had departed for Glasgow, and I had a morning to kill before flying back to Southampton (in a plane, etc.).

It was a beautiful, sunny-but-brisk morning, so I went for a walk up onto Calton Hill, where I admired the views over the city, took a few touristy photos, and inspected the police cordon around the spot where a body had been found over the weekend. Coming back down onto Princes Street, I remembered seeing a poster for a John Byrne exhibition in the Royal Scottish Academy, so, having had that recent reminder of his work, decided to head there, battling through the crowds thronging the Christmas market and fairground that has been installed in the gardens around the Scott Memorial, and which seem to have attracted half the population of Europe.

You may not be aware of John Byrne. British readers of a certain age are likely to be aware of him, even if unknowingly. He was part of that post-War Glasgow working-class eruption of talent that included Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty. In fact, Byrne painted the distinctive LP covers for Connolly and Rafferty's band, the Humblebums, and for all of Rafferty's subsequent albums. He also wrote the outstanding TV dramas Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin' Heart, and had a long relationship with the young star of the latter, Tilda Swinton. You can get a good flavour of the man from this BBC feature. I like his painting, not least because of his dogged, contrarian pursuit of a decorative, street-level figurative art, against all prevailing fashions: Peter Blake might be a useful point of comparison.

Anyway, I went to the Academy, and had a look round the show. I was astonished to see the prices – £12,000 for a small painting, £6,000 for a print – and by the fact that nonetheless every single item had a red dot on it, indicating a sale. Even allowing for the gallery cut, I calculated that Byrne must have cleared roughly the value of a semi-detached house in Southampton – our house! – from a single show. At which point, I became aware of a growly smoker's voice emanating from a tall, bearded, bushily-mustachioed elderly fellow in a long overcoat, talking confidingly with the woman behind the desk. Yes, it was John Byrne himself.

Now, I am not one to be intimidated by celebrity, but I'm reluctant to presume upon a man's time and patience. This was not the opening of the show, after all, which would have been back in November, where he could expect to be interrogated, glad-handed, and selfied by all and sundry: presumably he'd just dropped by to see how things were going and count the red dots. So I simply kept an eye on him, and waited for an opportunity to grab a snap. Which came when he moved to look at one enormous painting, where he was joined by a very tall, elegant woman. As she turned her head to speak I realised it was, unmistakably, Tilda Swinton. A full-on art-world paparazzo moment if ever there was one.

So, having got a couple of pictures, I went off happily to the Academy's cafe for a coffee, still with an hour to spare before I'd need to catch the bus out to the airport. I managed to find myself a table, and sat there nursing an Americano, collecting my thoughts about the weekend, and watching the Christmas market action outside the window. I then became aware of that rumbling voice again, behind me. I turned, and there were Byrne and Swinton, standing in the queue for coffee. He's an old man now, and she was clearly looking for somewhere to sit him down. So I did the obvious thing: I caught her eye, and offered them my table, for the small price of a photograph.

Call me naive, but I don't expect to see the likes of Tilda Swinton standing in a gallery cafe queue, in full public view, simply to buy a paper cup of coffee. I also didn't expect her to look so pleased to be offered a table, or to engage me so readily in conversation – I said how much I'd enjoyed The Seasons in Quincy, her video portrait of John Berger – or to end up warmly shaking hands all round after they'd posed for me. It may be that I had succumbed to the magic dust of celebrity, after all, but I truly felt as if I, wee Tam Lin, had had an encounter with the undisputed Queen of the Fair Folk. If nothing else, it was the perfect seal to set on a fine weekend away.

Taken with the Fuji X-20...

Shame to use the B-list camera on an A-list subject!

Conkers

The reference in the previous post to unharvested mistletoe reminded me of something I'd meant to mention earlier in the autumn, but somehow forgot: all the uncollected conkers. For non-Brits I should probably explain: "conkers" are the seeds of the horse chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum); large, as glossy brown as a polished shoe, irresistibly tactile, yet strictly inedible, unlike those of their distant cousins the sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) of which there are a limited supply in this country [1]. When I was a boy – in the middle of the last century! – conkers were much sought after. Large horse chestnut trees are widely found in British suburban avenues, city parks, and on many village greens, and on autumn days these trees would be constantly attended by children gathering up the conkers. If the pickings were sparse, the bigger kids would throw heavy sticks into the branches to bring more conkers down, still freshly-packaged in their spiky, spongy capsules. If you didn't keep your wits about you, one of those heavy sticks could easily bring you down, instead.

Why? Because we used to play a game with them, also known as "conkers". This involved boring a hole through a conker, and threading it onto a knotted string. You would then take turns in whacking your opponent's conker with yours – not as easy as it sounds – until one or other was sufficiently damaged to fly off its string in pieces. Some rogues would attempt to harden their conkers by various alchemical techniques – typically, soaking or boiling in vinegar – but, if detected, this was denounced as despicable cheating. Some conkers which had grown as twins within a single capsule would have one flat side with an acute edge, not unlike a fat axe. These were known as "cheesecutters", and prized by some as particularly effective conker-smashers: a false theory with its origins in sympathetic magic, rather than empirical observation. The game, taken seriously, had various arcane rules which I can't be bothered to recall or explain ("stringsies", "stampsies", and so on). If nothing else, it gave a certain seasonal excitement to the playground.

However, the game has now fallen by the cultural wayside, not least because many schools have banned it from the playground on safety grounds. The main legitimate risk was getting a hard knock on the knuckles as you held your conker dangling at arm's length, but it was also not unknown to get sneakily "conkered" on the head from behind. Which really fucking hurts, I can tell you. I suppose a lot of playground energy did seem to go into finding ways of injuring each other, it's true, but what a shame it is when such only very slightly risky links with the past get thrown into the same bin as cock-fighting and bear-baiting. Even if they're not actually as ancient and venerable as we imagine: according to Iona and Peter Opie, those historians of the playground, the first reference to such a game using horse chestnuts was in 1848. Like so many "traditions", it may well be a Victorian invention.

The result, of course, is large quantities of uncollected conkers lying unregarded in the grass and gutters beneath every horse chestnut tree surrounded by the remains of their protective capsules, which seem to biodegrade incredibly rapidly from a tough, green, spiked, alien jewel-case into mere wind-blown brown dust. Sic transit gloria aesculorum... I may be 64, but I can never resist picking out a few prize specimens to keep in my coat pockets. They can stay there for years, polished by my fingers into increasingly knobbly "touch pieces" as they dry out, until the outer shell finally separates from the kernel, and starts to disintegrate into sharp little bits of conker shrapnel.

Talking of unregarded treasures, I'm surprised to discover that I also forgot to write about some photos I found residing in the same "October 2018" folder as the conker shots. I suppose the blog's tenth anniversary and my various publications did turn October into a bit of a meta-month [2]. Anyway, a few years ago I posted some photographs of the Moscow State Circus, which was taking place on Bristol's Clifton Downs. This year, as if to restore the geo-political balance, the Downs were hosting Circus Vegas, of which every available square foot was plastered with the Stars and Stripes or some other icon of popular Americana, up to and including Elvis Presley. It was giddily, hyperventilatingly American, positively Trumpian in its vulgarity.

Although quite how American "Circus Vegas" actually is may be questionable, despite all the hoo-hah and flag-waving, as the name appears to be under license to the distinctly un-American sounding European Entertainment Corporation Ltd. I suppose "American", in this most reductive sense, is more a state of mind – one composed entirely of faux-chauvinistic show-biz clichés – than any actual nationality. Which, if I were American, I would find more than a little annoying; it's as if a particularly gaudy Texas rodeo had elbowed its way to become, in effect, the purest summation of my great and diverse national culture. I wonder if anywhere has a British Circus, where the big top is a gigantic bowler hat plastered with the Union Jack? And the clowns are endlessly bumping into inanimate objects and saying "sorry"? Somehow I doubt it. We may be many culpable things, we British, and may have lost touch with much of our conkering heritage, but at least we've kept a reasonably firm grip on our brand.

1. Those of you who recognise "sativa" from certain other plant names may not realise it is a common botanical designation, meaning "cultivated". The phrases "distant cousins" and "limited supply" may also have prompted some of you to wonder, like me, whether conkers are the original big-eyed beans from Venus... Certainly, in America the equivalent Aesculus "nuts" are known as "buckeyes".
2. The blog is still in a bit of a meta-sulk about the surprising lack of acknowledgement of its significant birthday. No, no: too late now! It has been slightly cheered by a recent uptick in readers, though.

Strange Fruit

I was walking near a large block of flats in Shirley, Southampton, when I noticed there was something odd about one of the trees along the side of the road. Hanging from the branches were a dozen or more pairs of shoes, presumably tied together by their laces and flung up there by passing schoolkids, either as a bit of bullying or perhaps as some kind of ritual to mark the end of the school year, or some such occasion.

Curiously, the trees in the streets around those flats are also very susceptible to mistletoe: I've never seen so much of the stuff in so many trees in such a small area. I took the photo below in February this year, just before a massive hailstorm. Why nobody "harvests" it I don't know, but it's clearly been there, untouched, for a very long time. Perhaps the shoes and the mistletoe indicate the survival of some atavistic druidic cult in Shirley? Perhaps not.