The Public House, by Wiggia

The demise of the public house, one of the cornerstones of the British way of life, has been going on for some time now. In some ways it is inevitable: with so many other ways of entertaining available and the price differential for beers between pubs and supermarkets, there was always going to be a fall-out.

The more far-sighted of the breweries and the publicans saw the writing on the wall way back and started to cater for a larger clientele by offering food at a standard a long way from the sweaty cheese roll under a plastic dome that many pubs exhibited as their only food option, apart from pork scratchings and crisps. Many of these have thrived but position and investment are crucial to success: many pubs still fail as the footfall does not rise owing to the pub's poor location.

Since 2000 10,500 pubs have closed and the closure rate is currently running at roughly two a day, but the rate is slowing as the number of pubs that will never make a profit in the modern age dwindles.

The days of the public bar, the saloon bar and the snug may be no more, which is shame as those clandestine meetings in the quiet of the upmarket saloon bar were part of the life in those not so far off days; a lot of business was also carried out in those surroundings as well.

All that has gone, fortunately despite some sad closures most of the old coaching inns remain, maybe not in their original form but they remain nonetheless.

A wonderful example of the coaching inn is the George Inn in Borough High Street, Southwark. It is owned by the NT - I have no idea if that is a good thing for a pub - but it is run by Greene King and very successfully. It is Grade 1 listed, hence the NT involvement no doubt, and boasts the only galleried frontage on a pub in London, used in the past by players to entertain.

The list even today of historic watering-holes in London runs to a lot more than be encompassed here so I will just select a few that I have visited personally, even if it was a while back.

The Prospect of Whitby was built in the 1520s on the Thames in Wapping. It is now a trendy waterside area: Sir David Owen - of the Gang of Four fame! - lives a few doors away. I was taken there by my father originally when it had a curiosity factor but was not on the tourist trail and the view from the back terrace showed cranes and wharves; a very different scene now.

Pubs like the above would fill a book even today. Other areas have seen a decline for other reasons. When I left school, Fleet Street where I worked was awash with pubs: it seemed everyone connected with the Press spent most of their time in the myriad of pubs that existed there' Just round the corner at Smithfield market was an all-night pub so you could slake your thirst twenty-four hours a day - that one still exists, The Hope - but even Smithfield has changed. The Hope is no longer twenty-four hours and the other pubs are struggling, impacted by the way the market is run and by drink-drive laws. The death knell for the Fleet Street pubs sounded when Murdoch moved to Wapping and the rest of the papers followed.

I always liked The Red Lion in Crown Passage, St James. It is old, simple and in reality hasn’t a lot going for it: it does no food to speak of, the beer is and always has been average. It is the classic suits-at-lunchtime pub, a standing-room-only real pub in a fantastic location. It also has the advantage for those that imbibe of being round the corner from another institute, Berry Bros and Rudd the wine merchants, whose own premises are worth a look.

A good example of the work-related pub was the Kings Head. What was unusual about this place was not the rather boring building but its location in the middle of the giant Lathams wood yard on the River Lea, not far from where I lived as a youngster at the time. Lathams was a huge place. The barges would deliver great logs from the Thames ships that brought them here, and they would be planked on site; no more, though the yard is still there. To get to the pub you would walk through the giant sheds and avoid the cranes and fork lifts on the way. It closed in the nineties and was demolished for housing, along with some of the yard.

Other work-related pubs were slightly different, such as the Coach and Horses in Greek Street, Soho. This pub had the same landlord for 63 years, Norman Balon, and he revelled in the title of “the rudest landlord”, though the pub's fame in later years came from the almost permanent incumbent Jeffrey Bernard, Private Eye and Spectator columnist and permanently drunk - his life was immortalised by Peter O’Toole in the play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell. Balon's memoirs “You're Barred, You Bastards” followed. The place has now added "Normans" to its name and has a vegetarian and vegan menu !

The Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden used to be a favourite watering-hole for the market workers and previously Dickens and John Dryden but of course the market has moved so along with its rival pub the Cross Keys they cater for a very different clientele now with the revitalisation of the area. All markets had their own pubs not just in London but across the country. Many of the best pubs were associated with the markets they served.

The Black Friar pub was always a favourite of mine, simply because of the art nouveau interior In Queen Victoria Street the place itself has a strange wedge-shaped exterior backing onto the railway viaduct. In the sixties it faced demolition  but a campaign led by Sir John Betjeman quite rightly saved the place. The sixties may have been a wonderful era to live through but it was an appalling era for the destruction of notable buildings.

There is no way I could include all my favourites, this is just a random dip into nostalgia. For London I will finish with one of the iconic pubs of North London, the Spaniards Inn in Hampstead. The area boasts a number of pubs frequented by artists, actors and the like, but the Spaniards is hard to miss as the road pinches into a bottleneck as you approach, as the old toll booth on the other side of the road deliberately restricts the traffic. There were attempts to demolish the toll house in the sixties, again, but fortunately it was resisted.

The pub has had famous clients such as Joshua Reynolds, Byron and Keats and famously Dick Turpin the highwayman. This area with the toll booth was a favourite place for highwaymen to hold up coaches and the tree from which those caught were hanged was only a couple of hundred yards from the Spaniards.

For many years my frequenting of pubs waned, I really didn’t visit many, and only when we moved to Long Melford in Suffolk did my interest perk up again. For reasons unknown and unexplained Melford is inundated with pubs, when we lived there nine existed and they still do, and there had been five more. How these were supported by a large village I have no idea but they were. Today the tourist industry keeps them going in the summer months as Melford is a big local attraction, but in the winter the lights are on but few people are buying. The Bull is the main pub, more like a hotel, and with its studded exterior it looks the part in this type of village - a village that has the presence of two stately homes on different sides of the green, another rare occurrence.

Though the Bull Hotel largely caters for the hotel side and weddings you are hardly short of alternatives in the village. The Black Lion can be seen here with the wonderful Holy Trinity church in the background.

The area is rich with pubs of all types. I will finish with one of those places everyone who comes across goes into. Up the road a few miles from Long Melford, Bury St Edmunds boasts what is reputed to be (and according to the Guinness Book of Records is, depending how you measure these things) the smallest pub in Britain, The Nutshell, with an interior of 15’x 7’. It is a tight squeeze for more than ten people. Its survival is almost guaranteed by its position, you can’t miss it, and the footfall is constant.

Whilst in Bury I cannot leave there and finish this without a mention of not a pub but the bar at the Theatre Royal. This theatre is the sole surviving playhouse from the Regency era and has again been saved and renovated. A wonderful place, much visited when we lived down the road. Amazingly the old bar which creaked under load and was so tight you had to order in advance has been replaced by Greene King who run the place and the NT who own this Grade 1 listed building. How the hell they got permission to put in this modern bar in such a historic building I have no idea, so I finish with something that has lost a historic bar but not its wonderful interior.

The public house may be going through a difficult time, more will be lost but I am sure the historic and the weird and wonderful will survive for a good few decades at least, and hopefully longer, so that future generations can come to appreciate a very important part of their social history.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Jim White, by JD

One of the comments beneath the first video here (Alabama Chrome) describes Jim White's music as "outsider art, bluegrass style" and that sounds to me like a very good assessment  although it is not all bluegrass, there is a lot more to it than that.

His first album, released in 1997, had the strange title of "The Mysterious Tale of How I Shouted Wrong Eyed Jesus." A title like that is enough to make everyone sit up and take notice and some details of the effect the album had is explained lower down the page before the final video, 'Christmas Day' which is from the film and was also on the album No Such Place.

I first came across his music in 2001 when I bought the album "No Such Place." Can't remember how or why it came to my attention but I'm glad it did because the music is very different as well as being very good. The difficulty with choosing these songs was wondering what to leave out!

http://jimwhite.net/#section-home



















In 2003 the BBC commissioned a documentary based on the 'Wrong Eyed Jesus' album. Why the BBC and not an American producer is a mystery. The film is currently on the BBC iPlayer (I think it is still available) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074qfn If not then it can be found on YouTube and it is worth watching.

"Searching for The Wrong-Eyed Jesus" is a captivating and compelling road trip through the creative spirit of the Southern U.S. Director Andrew Douglas's film follows "Alt Country" singer Jim White through a gritty terrain of churches, prisons, truck stops, biker bars and coal mines. This is a journey through a very real contemporary Southern U.S., a world of marginalised white people and their unique and home-made society. Along the way are road-side encounters with modern musical mavericks including The Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd, 16 Horsepower and David Johansen; old time banjo player Lee sexton; rockabilly and mountain Gospel churches - and novelist Harry Crews telling grisly stories down a dirt track.

It is a collage of stories and testimonies, almost invariably of sudden death, sin and redemption: Heaven and Hell, with no middle ground. And all the while a strange Southern Jesus looms in the background. Jim White reflects upon what it is about this baffling place that inspires musicians and writers, or as he puts it "trying to find the gold tooth in God's crooked smile."

It is an elegy to and a requiem for a world we have all lost.

Alderney: secret WWII Channel Island nerve gas launching base?

Former London Times journalist Guy Walters' thriller "The Occupation" (2004) describes the development by the Nazis of missile launching batteries on the island of Alderney, which was just a few miles off the coast of NW France. According to the plot, when fully ready the site would be capable of saturation-bombing London at the rate of 300 rockets an hour.

The Daily Mail published an article on the Alderney fortress last year - "Hitler's British Death Island", 5 May 2017 - reporting that at least 40,000 imported slaves were killed in the process of constructing the site, which according to former military officers Richard Kemp and John Weigold was to target the southwestern coast of Britain from Weymouth to Plymouth with sarin-filled warheads.

However the newspaper's claims were swiftly contradicted by the Aldernese historian Trevor Davenport. Even the Mail's story admits that such a project would have been against the Germans' policy regarding V1 emplacements, as being more vulnerable to naval gunfire and commando raids than mainland installations.

The real underground tunnels can be seen here:

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/a/alderney/water_lane_ho5/index.shtml

Curiouser and Curiouser, by Wiggia

I have for reasons unknown other than a curious mind been drawn to items - buildings, whatever - that are out of the ordinary or have a strange fascination. Items like follies that are built for no other reason than they can, relics of the past in all forms and downright peculiar and baffling. Most apart from the follies have history of value or purpose for when they were built and some still fulfil or could the original function.

The industrial revolution has left many engineering marvels that are still with us and some still working. Anyone who has travelled on the canals will have come across the likes of the Anderton Lift or the remains of the Foxton Inclined Plane, a method of boat lift that did away with slow and cumbersome locks - the story is seen here:



The Foxton Inclined plane was a prototype for many similar examples, many of which are still in operation elsewhere in Europe, and modern versions of boatlifts using the same ballast principle are also working on the big canals in Belgium, for example.

On a more basic level I was taken by my uncle when visiting with my cousin to see the strange Trinity three-way bridge at Crowland in the Fens. Now stuck on a traffic island, it originally spanned the river Welland and a tributary that was later re-routed, leaving this very curious structure from the 1300s just, well, sitting there. It was an ingenious way of spanning the rivers and saved building three separate bridges and provided much joy to me as a child rushing up and down the different exits and entrances.

Trinity Bridge, Crowland, Lincolnshire

I have written before about some of these oddities but always as individual items.

Another is the almshouses in Clapton, east London that had the smallest (claimed) consecrated chapel in the country. Sadly the almshouses have now been sold off and turned into small houses, including the chapel. I lived nearby and this was always a place to stop and wonder at. No one I know ever got in to see the chapel which was a shame, but it was there. My great grandfather lived in the house the other side of the road behind the chapel, so I saw a lot of the place.

http://davehill.typepad.com/claptonian/2014/09/what-will-take-the-almshouses-place.html

During the mid seventies/early eighties we lived in Essex not far from Billericay. It was brought to my attention that there was a rather special hospital out near the village of East Hanningfield: it was a leper hospital. Hard to believe that something like that would exist in the UK but there it was, a few miles up the road. The hospital itself was just a series of low buildings, many of the prefabricated variety. The hospital still functioned up to ‘86 and although there was nothing remarkable about the place it did have its sad side: there existed on the other side of the road its own graveyard. Its history was quite interesting.The second part of this account is the best description I have found of the place.

http://www.ezitis.myzen.co.uk/jordan.html

Severalls Hospital had a reputation for being haunted. As a mental institution it was a rather foreboding place on the outskirts of Colchester. Despite being a mental hospital it did have some general wards and other facilities, and for better or worse I was sent there by my GP for a review of something I have now forgotten. I had no idea what the primary purpose of the place was but later when it closed all was revealed. Later after many years of dereliction, part was demolished and housing built on the site but certainly until recently - and maybe still - it was a decaying memorial to another age, and became the haunted relic of old. Many photographers have found a way in and many photographs have been taken of the eerie place, as examples show here.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415036/Severalls-Hospital-Edwardian-mental-asylum-Colchester-patients-held-50-years-demolished.html

The last place of interest in one that I came across on the south coast near Brighton just a couple of years back. Pure chance meant that someone had told me of a well that was very deep in the area, there is little to see other than capped top but the history is very interesting. The Woodingdean Well is the deepest hand dug well in the world, a quite astonishing achievement: the six-foot-wide well finished up deeper than the height of the Empire state building. It is difficult to believe that humans could dig something like that, and all initially to save money and employ people at the local workhouse: no benefits without work, it was that simple. So old young men and women, all with candles for light, embarked on this amazing project. It didn’t have the desired effect of saving money but they carried on regardless.

Woodingdean Well, Brighton and Hove, East Sussex

https://www.wellmasters.co.uk/well-history/woodingdean-well/

Depth and geological layers, Woodingdean Well

Humans of course are a rich source of the odd eccentric and downright loony. When I was in my late teens / early twenties I used to travel to work in central London by bus and tube. The tube I caught was Manor House station near Finsbury Park, and it was here that I saw what appeared to be a hoax. At first I laughed and forgot about it but the man involved was not indulging in a hoax, this was the real thing. As regular as clockwork with all the other commuters he would turn up on the platform dressed in a double-breasted raincoat, shirt and tie, hair slicked back and was to all intents and purposes a toned-down version of Arthur English (the post war comedian, if anyone can remember).

But there was a difference: in the middle of his forehead on a suction cup he had a kitchen tap - I do not make it up - and as he appeared every morning on the platform he would shout the words “Everyone is on the tap!” a reference in cockney to the phrase "tapped up" i.e. wanting something, usually for nothing. I have never found out what he was about but there he was, as regular as clockwork, getting on the tube with his tap on his forehead. He must have been going somewhere, perhaps to work, who knows? He may have been a plumber. The mystery was never solved.

Ras Prince Monolulu was an institution from the thirties on, a racing tipster who would not only frequent the tracks with his cry “I Got an 'Orse!” but also attended Petticoat Lane market on Sunday mornings in full regalia and shouting his lines as in this video:



and here with Groucho Marx on "You Bet Your Life" (from 15:56 on):



They don’t make em like that anymore…………...

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tuba Skinny, by JD

This week's music comes from the streets of New Orleans with Tuba Skinny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuba_Skinny

Their leader, unofficially but musically everything seems to revolve around her, is cornet player Shaye Cohn. She also plays piano and violin among other things. She is also the granddaughter of Al Cohn who was one of a quartet of tenor sax players in the Woody Herman band. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Cohn



















Like? More here! -

http://www.nourishingobscurity.com/2014/09/tuba-skinny/

World War One: two snippets

From Phil Baker's biography of Dennis Wheatley:

"The RFC [Royal Flying Corps] was still in its infancy, having only just got past the stage of using hand-held revolvers in aeroplanes, but it was now rapidly expanding. In May 1915 it comprised only 166 planes in total, but within eighteen months it was losing fifty planes a week. Parachutes were not issued; senior Army staff believed pilots would try harder without them." (p.100)

"The man who commanded Wheatley's division, General Sir Oliver Nugent, had boasted that a double decker London omnibus would hold all the men he intended to bring home alive." (p.139)

Lest we forget.

Boxed in: BoJo opposes burqa ban, gets hounded by bien-pensants!

The controversy continues...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/05/denmark-has-got-wrong-yes-burka-oppressive-ridiculous-still/

“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.” 
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

"Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it."
 ― Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides

FRIDAY MUSIC: Two Sisters (Ravi's Daughters), by JD

The late Ravi Shankar is remembered as one of the best-known proponents of the sitar in the second half of the 20th century and he influenced many other musicians throughout the world. He was also the father of two daughters who have also been successful in their very different musical careers:

Norah Jones was born in 1979 and became a jazz singer and pianist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norah_Jones

Anoushka Shankar was born in 1981 and followed her father in learning to play the sitar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoushka_Shankar

I suppose it was inevitable that these two half-sisters would eventually record together and with their father so here is a selection of their music, both individually and together.

A "finest hour": Operation Pedestal

Mortally wounded, the Ohio staggers into Valletta

August 1942: Malta remained a thorn in the side of the enemy, who had been besieging the island since June 1940. Rommel had said in 1941 that unless Malta fell, North Africa would be lost to the Axis.

Disastrously, in September 1941 the US Embassy in Cairo had been secretly burgled by the Italians, who copied the code book; and the "Black Code" had also been cracked by the Germans soon after, so the enemy were reading translations of the American reports within hours of transmission.

In June 1942 two British supply convoys had been sent - Operations Vigorous and Harpoon - and owing in part to the intelligence intercepts were successfully attacked, with heavy losses to our side.

By the August, then, the situation in Malta was desperate, and another large convoy was put together under Operation Pedestal. As well as food and - crucially - fuel, the flotilla carried a squadron of Spitfires that took off once past Gibraltar and headed for the island via a circuitous route to evade trouble. These planes would be key not only to the defence of Malta but to future attacks on Axis forces in North Africa and Sicily.

Young Battle of Britain veteran and Pedestal participant Geoffrey Wellum noted that because of the need to carry extra fuel for the long flight, the Spitfires' ammunition was removed and replaced with rations of cigarettes - good for the defenders' morale!

The squadron got safely to Malta, and waited.

West of them in the Mediterranean, fourteen merchant ships and thirty-eight ships of war including four aircraft carriers came under an intense air and submarine attack that had begun even as the Spitfires were taking off. The Navy lost a carrier (the Eagle), two light cruisers and a destroyer, and nine merchant ships went down also.

But the Ohio* got through, carrying 10,000 tons of fuel oil and saving the island's capacity to defend itself. She only just managed to get into the Grand Harbour, severely damaged and with a destroyer lashed to either side of her, sinking even as her cargo was being pumped out, subsequently breaking into two and having to be towed out to sea and scuttled by naval gunfire.

Fourteen ships sunk, thirty-four aircraft destroyed, hundreds dead. But a gamble that paid off.
_____________________

*Requisitioned from her resentful US owners after reaching the Clyde in Scotland. She had arrived there on 21 June 1942, only three days after the C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet, looking at the recent failures of Operations Vigorous and Harpoon, had cabled Churchill to advise against another attempt to breach the Malta blockade.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tiddely-Prom, by JD

More from the BBC Proms:

This evening, 3rd August, on BBC4 it is the folk music of these islands which is the focus of attention. So a preview of some of the artists taking part, all of them first rate. No doubt there will be others but that is the great joy of the Proms, they always deliver delightful surprises and excellent music.

Starting again

In December 1933, an 18-year-old decided to change his life. He'd been thrown out of school before taking his examinations, was pointed in the direction of the Army but didn't have the money to keep up the expected lifestyle, tried door to door selling half-heartedly, faced the prospect of an office job that would have withered his artistic and inquisitive nature, was getting into bouts of drink and depression, and was toyed with by bohemians and bored upper-class women at London parties.

He set himself a challenge: to walk across Europe to Istanbul.

On the Channel crossing, he couldn't sleep. "It was," says his biographer*, "as if he were sloughing off the skin of his old self."

His name was Patrick "Paddy" Leigh Fermor; but for the next sixteen months he called himself by his middle name, Michael. And now we have all heard of him.

So what had he done? He had changed his social environment, getting away from family and friends  who "knew" him; and he changed himself, breaking out of the accumulating crust of life experience and habits that gradually suffocate one's growth.

________________________

*Artemis Cooper, "Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure", John Murray, 2012

Here comes Mary Jane

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/26/medicinal-cannabis-how-two-heartbreaking-cases-helped-change-law

https://herb.co/marijuana/news/richard-branson-smoke-weed/

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, by Wiggia

The extremes of temperature, because they are so rare in this country, bring out the weird, the eccentric and the downright baffling.

We have all seen the wonderful world of the clothing innovator who manages to convey a sense of the sea in winter trudging the aisles of the local supermarket in full fisherman's regalia, sou'wester and all, and the inventive shorts, hats, sandals and socks - no British white male would wear sandals without socks such as those louche Europeans of questionable stock do, or effete actors. Some years back in Africa a tourist appeared for dinner wearing shorts, an open neck white shirt and a Tweed jacket; only a Brit could have carried it off in 90 degree heat.

Of course this hot weather is a positive boon for the tattooed, all manner of sleeveless, legless and worse garments appear, allowing the inked areas to show in all their awfulness, and the pink people come out - they have no choice of course having burnt themselves the first time they laid in the sun and now can’t bear to have anything on the skin apart from calamine lotion.

On the road open top cars with blonde sunglassed drivers are everywhere trying to give the impression they always drive around like this; a sort of Promenade des Anglais in Peckham. In a normal year you could be forgiven for thinking no one buys convertibles, but we are wrong, it is simply that in a normal year, nine out of ten, no one drives them: they remain tucked up for this very occasion.

Camper vans and caravans abound, seemingly reproducing en route as there are so many of them making a bee line for the same field somewhere on the coast. Today either of these is not enough, many have bicycles, motorbikes attached as well, canoes on the roof and for real oneupmanship you have all that and a small car on a trailer behind, or a yacht or powerboat, in all taking up about sixty foot of our small roads.

I am biased: I have never seen the attraction past the formative years when it was a cheap way to see the world of spending huge sums to sit in a field with others of the same persuasion. There was a motor home show last weekend on the showground near us; not content with looking at the latest models they all came in their motor homes for the weekend and sat in a field - the conversation must have been riveting - and then all went home !

I have a cousin who owns a motor home: his wife puts photos up on Facebook of him having a cup of tea by a pond or feeding ducks or sitting in a deckchair with an inane grin and a glass of wine - does anyone care ?

How do I know? Well I joined Facebook under pressure for a local community page but after three months being asked to be friends with people I had no interest in and having rows with “community members I deleted my account. Facebook has a strange pull for those who like to post gurning photos of themselves and family members all telling each other how wonderful they are, but I digress.

The Met Office is in full flow with yellow and amber warnings, localised flooding, power cuts and travel disruption all included in these warnings, I have been keeping a record of these over the last four weeks and we have had eight; all have disappeared as the moment of doom approaches, or moved to a later time and then deleted. Result, absolutely nothing: clear blue sky and skorchio all the way. Not a single drop since the heat started in June, yet still they persist with the warnings; like a stopped clock, one will eventually be right.

As a finale to all this last, with the windows and doors open the sound, loud, of a man's voice wafted in from the direction of the park alongside our garden. They have now and again a local band that uses the hall and at first I thought that it was them, an aspiring rapper perhaps, but there was little in the way of music to accompany this voice. Where the hell was it coming from? My curiosity got the better of me and as I approached the boundary hedge I could see a few figures the other side and the voice got louder. It was only when I put my head through a hole in the hedge that  the truth dawned: it was the fitness class. They had debunked from the center because of the heat inside and had come over to this side of the field as my tree boundary provides shade. The voice of course was the instructor using his amplifier for his instructions and the accompanying musical beat.

At that moment I should have retreated but the large contingent of ladies of varying ages and shapes were in their tights, shorts, leotards about to spring into action or were supposed to. It has to be said I was getting a rear view of all this and in different circumstances could have been accused of voyeurism or worse, so I slowly retreated to the safety of my garden with the rear view of multiple ladies' bottoms contorting in the heat. The last words I heard from the instructor were "One, two, three, four, you can do it!" - they probably could.

FRIDAY MUSIC: John Martyn, by JD

Music from John Martyn (1948 - 2009) with some help from a few friends.

"In a world that lacks compassion, John Martyn and his music, is a breath of fresh air. John was an incurable romantic who sang from his heart; no other artist sang with such commitment and emotion. People have fallen in and out of love listening to the most enduring and magical songs of deep sensitivity that have been sung over his forty year plus career. A truly progressive artist John never stayed with a tried and trusted sound, preferring to explore, experiment and break new ground. His trade mark melodies and lyrics are in a class of their own and his voice which is steeped in pleasure and pain, joy and fear and love and hate, expresses emotion like no other and can reduce even the strongest of men to tears."
http://www.johnmartyn.com/biography/

Seismic changes in the Conservative Party

Britain is witnessing the birth of a new political party, according to commentators on the Internet.

Insiders working in the remote Tunbridge Wells region of the UK say Brexit will eventually split the Conservative Party in two, though it will take about 10 years.

Used to understanding changes in Parliament on timescales of decades, the international team of commentators have seen amazing changes in the Tory party in the past few years, where the “natural party of Government” is cracking open, quite literally underneath their feet.

Hot, molten fury from deep within the membership is trickling to the surface and creating the split.

Underground eruptions are still continuing and, ultimately, the free-trading but patriotic elements of Conservatism will fall away and a new political party will form.

More here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10415877

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWuaTs45fq4

FRIDAY MUSIC: Ibeyi, by JD

More Afro-Cuban music, this time from a younger generation. Twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Naomi Diaz record together under the name Ibeyi which is the word for twins in the Yoruba language of West Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibeyi

Where older artists had been more 'showbiz' and entertainers, these two sisters have gone deeper into the roots of their music to produce a more soulful, spiritual sound mixed with a touch of modern 'electronica' and they have beautiful voices. So here is a varied selection of their music and the final video features their mother, Venezuelan singer Maya Dagnino, with a song about their late father, Miguel "Angá" Díaz who was part of the Buena Vista Social Club.

JD: The fake wisdom of the elite

Responding to yesterday's post about doomster-prepper billionaires, JD says:

On 6th June 1968 (fifty years ago) John Lennon sat in a press conference at the National Theatre in London to talk about a new play based on his book "In His Own Write" As is the way of these things the conversation drifted into other topics. This is what Lennon had to say about the Government, all Governments:



Looking at the world of 2018, it appears that governments have become ever more remote from the citizenry who all, if only subliminally, agree that our leaders are even more insane than they were fifty years ago. Voters around the world have been rejecting the established political parties and have turned to alternatives. I am reminded of Chesterton's aphorism “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”  and that choice is also what our political 'leaders' have given us. We no longer believe in them and are casting around searching for something, anything which is not "more of the same."

It is not just politicians who are insane, our technological 'wizards' are also insane: "Men like Thiel (Paypal founder) or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have invested millions in immortality projects; meanwhile Yudkowsky, the MIRI theorist, thinks anyone who doesn’t sign their children up for cryogenic freezing is a “lousy parent.” In that quest for an immortal soul, two things stand in the way: death and a revolt of the underclass. AI threatens to combine both—semiotically and, just perhaps, literally."
http://www.documentjournal.com/2018/04/the-existential-paranoia-fueling-elon-musks-fear-of-ai/

I have already made some observations on that subject in the second part of this post - https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/tv-from-sublime-to-ridiculous-by-jd.html
You have continued the theme in your recent post about the pessimism of the 'elite' They are not pessimistic, they are insane or, at the very least, they are lacking in imagination (something which also applies to the aforementioned 'techie geniuses', they have no practical expertise in or experience of anything) http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-pessimism-of-elite.html

John Cleese was right when he said in a lecture recently “If I can persuade you this evening to abandon this hope, you will find yourself a lot more relaxed, you'll worry less and laugh more.  I promise you that.”
http://consciousnessunbound.blogspot.com/2018/04/hilarious-hopelessness-wisdom-of-john.html

The pessimism of the elite

http://miriadna.com/preview/postapocalyptic-art-by-rolf-bertz

"When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now.

"They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars."

https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1

These people are successful in a particular context. In a different one, maybe not.

Why China Will Never Rule The World

For a different take on China it is worth reading Troy Parfitt’s book - Why China Will Never Rule The World: Travels in the Two Chinas . This is not a book about facts and figures and neither is it a hymn to Chinese economic success. As the blurb tells us, the book is mostly travelogue told from an outsider's perspective, albeit an outsider who lived in Taiwan for ten years and who speaks Mandarin.

Three quotes may give a flavour of the writer’s standpoint. 

China is a nation of much fakery; there’s fake sushi, fake steak, fake gravy, fake music, fake goods, fake pharmaceuticals, fake news, fake weather reports, fake education, fake rights, fake laws, fake courts, fake judges, a fake congress, a fake constitution….

Unambiguous but not unconsidered. Parfitt thinks there are profound influences behind the fakery – a deep-rooted preference for appearances over reality. The second quote concerns a China Central Television (CCTV) show the writer watched from one of his hotel rooms.

That night on CCTV, a panel of Chinese scientists was explaining how the Americans had never landed on the moon. Not only were the lunar missions faked, they said, but the Apollo program itself was largely a matter of science fiction. The shadows were all wrong. Where were the craters? And just look at that ridiculous flag – not moving even with solar winds. Their tone was both mocking and disdainful, as if even having to explain why this was the biggest fraud of all time insulted their very intelligence.

CCTV is the main state broadcaster in China. The third quote is taken from a conversation with a taxi driver.

“Food in China is packed with shit – shit that will make you sick and kill you. I have a daughter, you know. I’m worried about what she eats. But what am I supposed to do? Complain? Yeah, right. The government would say, ‘Well, that’s very interesting, sir. Why don’t we take a walk and talk about it? Please, tell us whatever it is that’s on your mind.’ And then they’d shoot me in the back of the neck. Bang! And that would be the end of that.”

Obviously an entire country cannot be dismissed on the basis of a single taxi driver's complaints, however chilling they are. However there are many more examples highlighting what Parfitt sees as endemic weaknesses in Chinese culture. For example he sees Confucianism as a significant cultural problem with its emphasis on obedience and harmony.

The book is easy to read and although Parfitt can come across as someone who simply does not like China and the Chinese, he tells us quite clearly why that is. In so doing he provides an interesting and accessible cultural alternative to the usual facts, figures and technology.

FRIDAY THE 13TH MUSIC: Proms and Prokofiev (plus a swan), by JD

It's Friday the thirteenth! Unlucky for some, as the saying goes but it is also the First Night of the Proms. Everyone knows the Last Night of the Proms and everyone likes to sing along with the usual favourite tunes. However, the First Night is always more interesting and tonight it is an all British programme of music by Holst, Vaughan Williams and Anna Meredith.

Herewith a selection from those composers, plus an inquisitive swan who is lulled to sleep by a harp (video courtesy of Mr Sackerson who found it and sent it to me) and the final piece here is not British but is by Prokofiev by way of a consolation for the England team who didn't quite win their own 'battle on the ice' (yes, I know it is summer but suspend disbelief for the duration and for artistic licence!)

Postwar Europe - secret struggles

Fascinating. Lord Walsingham (92 last year) is in his anecdotage - and none the worse for that, in his case - but some startling things jump out of the flow.

He worked for a time in 1950 in the German Department of the Foreign Office, and explains how the French and German governments were still secretly Nazi but were being used to hold back the threat of Communism (both within Western European nations and also of course from the Soviet Union, which had started the Berlin blockade in 1949.)

And he tells how MI6 discovered there were secret parts of the 1951 Coal and Steel agreement relating to mutual support by France and Germany of each other's industries, designed to weaken Britain's capacity for self-defence.

The UK Labour Government's Attlee and Bevin spotted the threat to Anglo-style democratic self-government and kept out of this "community".

http://campaignforanindependentbritain.org.uk/witness-to-history/

Real life: does it really reflect dreams? - by Wiggia

I had one of those days when all seemed quite normal. I had an appointment at the optician's for a hearing test - that is not a mistake, as many do both now in this competitive world.

What was strange was the way the day panned out: a simple visit to town for a bog-standard test and the appointment ended up being a carbon copy of one of those dreams we have.

You know the ones, those where we can’t find the car, the station, the way home, all ending up in blind panic, what started out as a perfectly normal journey or day out ending in total chaos of the mind as every effort to find the car, the station, the way home, becomes ever more barred by having completely lost the plot.

Or the ones where you are trying to communicate with someone who can’t hear you and you are being pulled ever further away.

Many of these dreams are recurring in theme, the desperately lost being the most common, well for me anyway. And then this is usually compounded by finding that you have no money to pay for a train fare and the car is totally lost to you. Sometimes you cannot even get to the right area to find the car or station whatever as ever more obstructions are put in your way. Of course you rarely ever have a final ending to these dreams as you wake up before the finale, or that is how it seems.

One of those great changemaker films of cinema was based on those sorts of dreams: Federico Fellinis  8½. I include the great opening sequence and other snippets, partly as an excuse to see the wonderful Sandra Milo - she is briefly in the opening sequence; I lusted after her then and she always remains a symbol of the unattainable.

As with the dreams everything started well, with plenty of time to take into account the extra traffic in town, and as I came off the ring road I was grateful (though if I had known the future I would have taken it as a portent of things to come), as there was a traffic incident on ring road ahead of the turnoff and the vehicles were at a standstill. Lucky me, I thought.

On I went into the city center with no further hint of problems and as I arrived near to my destination I made the fatal mistake of changing my normal plan. The car park I use for the optician's is not a big one. Being the nearest to the city centre it is the most expensive and at the back of my mind that may have had an influence on what I did next.

As I approached the roundabout leading to the road with the car park I noticed one of those signs that inform of the spaces left. The number indicated for the one I wanted to use was very low so I thought rather than enter, not be able to park and end up having to exit and start again, with the chance I would be late for the appointment, I would instead go to the other car park that is a similar distance from my destination.

No problem getting in: a huge below-the-shopping-mall labyrinth of a place on several levels, all below ground. I parked the car got out and looked for the exit. 

It all started there at that moment. I have never used this car park so had no idea about the exits. After walking around a bit there appeared to be no direct way to the outside. In fact there wasn’t; the only way out was up by the lift or escalator into the mall itself. I had asked a couple of people if there was an alternative but needless to say they were new to the area and had no more idea than I did.

Once in the mall, which is huge, there still didn’t seem to be any signs for an exit, so I went to the inquiry desk, stated where I wanted to go and asked which was the best exit. Having been given what seemed like simple instructions I strode out in the direction given only to end up, well nowhere. Still no exits, and time was running against me as I had now lost all idea as to where I was in relation to my destination. I asked another person who gave me a similar simple route out, only to find myself then back where I started. So I nabbed a passing security guard, gave him the story again and he did indeed direct me to the exit, but it must have been getting to half a mile from that position.

At last the exit hove into view. By now time was running out and I had left my phone in the car so I could not call the opticians to let them know of my predicament. Once out of the exit I discovered I was in the main shopping road and a mile from my destination; it transpired later there are no exits at the other end, only the car park entrance - and that has no pedestrian exit.

Nothing else for it but to right turn up to the junction then right again back to the original roundabout, all this with sciatica setting in on a stinking hot day. I followed the small parallel road until I got to my starting point, the car park entrance, and then went on along a wide grass verge by the old Roman wall. 8½ again: all was going well until the path ran out and I had then to cross a dual carriageway. What next? I asked myself. Fortunately the road has traffic lights and gaps there to cross in safety, which I did and continued to the first roundabout, then on to my destination.

Arriving dripping with sweat and having still no inkling as to the time I went in and presented myself. "Oh dear," said the receptionist. "We had given up on you. I will go and see if they can fit you in." Luckily they did and I sat under the air con the very nice lady put on for me whilst she checked my ears. All done, I made to leave but asked the receptionist having explained my dilemma if there was an entrance nearer than the one I had left by at the mall. She said yes and came down the road with me to direct. "Follow that road and take the next right and it will take you to the entrance." The road I was to follow seemed endless and skirted a small park where a fun fair was being erected for the week end; the music that was emanating from the fair reminded me of the dream circus sequence from Fellini's 8½. On I pressed, on, tired, sweating and with sore toes from the new shoes I had on and the sciatica (though that had numbed to a background nuisance by now.)

The end of the road beckoned: still no entrance but I recognised I was back at the car park entrance. No way in there, cars only, dark and too dangerous to try. There was eventually another entrance but it was so near my original exit that I had almost retraced my steps. In I went, found a way down to the car park and I had remembered the area number where I had parked - but no car! Wrong floor. Down another one; and then I saw that the area numbers are repeated on each floor; found the car, got in, started it and put the air con  on full blast and coldest setting and went home.

The wife's first words were, “That didn’t take long but what’s happened to you? You look knackered.”

"Well no the examination was very quick but the rest….". and all I could hear was her laughter, no bloody sympathy at all; so life can match dreams!

FRIDAY MUSIC: Jack White and the White Stripes, by JD

Currently popular among football supporters (and Jeremy Corbyn fans) is the 'hook' line from Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Nation_Army#Popularity

But there is more to Jack White than a fairly simple pop song. He is something of a musicologist with an interest in the roots and history of American music which is probably why he is a board member of the Library of Congress' National Recording Preservation Foundation. He also records a lot of that music as can be seen in some of the videos in this selection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_White

FRIDAY MUSIC: Alice Coltrane, by JD

You might like this, you might not. Perhaps too 'far out' even for modern jazz, but there is something about Alice Coltrane's music which appeals to me. I don't know why but it does.

“…Sometimes people put themselves so deeply into sound - so deep into it that they give up everything. It’s like they renounce everything at that moment just to live those moments of music…” - Alice Coltrane (1937 - 2007)
https://www.alicecoltrane.com/life

Epilepsy and cannabis, by JD

The cases of Billy Caldwell and Alfie Dingley and the use of cannabis oil to relieve symptoms of epilepsy has had a lot of coverage in the news this past week. Their cases seem to have been turned into a political football with a great deal of heat but very little light being generated by those who oppose illegal drugs and those who advocate legalising such drugs.

Trying to establish some clarity is not easy because journalists, as usual, don't bother to present the facts but concentrate instead on the 'sensational' aspects of the story.

And because of all the fuss the Government has decided to rush through a 'review' of the medicinal benefits, if any, of the use of cannabinoids.
https://www.epilepsy.org.uk/news/news/uk-government-review-use-medicinal-cannabis-68465

Here is a summary of the various types of cannabis oil currently on the market -
https://www.dutch-headshop.eu/blog/difference-between-thc-oil-cannabis-oil-cbd-oil-marijuana-oil

I can offer my own experiences on this subject because I have epilepsy (since 2011) although I have no desire nor need to use cannabis. This is what I wrote in 2012 about my epilepsy.
http://www.nourishingobscurity.com/2012/03/some-thoughts-on-epilepsy/

My first question to the neurologist in the hospital was the obvious one: what is the cause of epilepsy? The answer is that nobody knows. Doctors can tell us what can trigger a seizure, the best known to most people is the strobe effect in lighting. "Contains flash photography" is a familiar phrase in news bulletins. But what they cannot establish is the cause of epilepsy.

My medication is Leviteracetam and when I asked how it worked, nobody knows how it works. All they know is that it works. A further question to the epilepsy specialist in the hospital was "What would the effect be of taking this medication if I no longer need to take it?" Not known or not ever thought about, was the reply. The dosage I take has been reduced and there is a possibility that I may be able to reduce it further.

So that looks like three 'unknowns' so far. A further unknown is that the effects of any drug will not be consistent among all patients. As an example, I had an adverse reaction to one particular brand of Leviteracetam and the pharmacist knows not to give me that brand. All others have been fine so far.

So the use of a cannabis oil to alleviate the symptoms of epilepsy may well be effective in some patients and not in others; it may well be effective for severe cases of epilepsy but not for other types of epilepsy and there are many different types as listed here-
https://www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/seizures-explained

There has been the usual knee-jerk reaction to that word cannabis from those who think it should remain illegal and those on the opposite side who think it should be legalised. The former believe that only scientifically researched and proven remedies should be used; the latter group are the libertarians who believe it should be available as a medication (but in reality they are thinking only of their own indulgences.)

Both camps are wrong of course. Because something is illegal, that does not make it wrong and conversely if something is legal, that does not make it right. The law is by and large a matter of opinion and the law, any law, is constantly amended and modified by judges. The law is whatever a Judge says it is; until there be a subseqent challenge to that law.

Ironically a lot of what are now 'dangerous' illegal drugs were once perfectly legal and were available with or without prescription in chemists or elsewhere. Often such things were prescribed by doctors: morphine, cocaine and cannabis were included in a medication known as the Brompton Cocktail as described here by Professor Bruce Charlton-
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-brompton-cocktail-and-decline-of.html

So, once upon a time 'illegal' drugs were deemed to be beneficial which is what Paracelsus said almost 500 years ago - "Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy." (Paracelsus (1493-1541) is generally regarded as the 'father of modern medicine')

It should be remembered that care of those who are ill is not a science. It is an art and is described as such in the Hippocratic Oath -"With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hippocratic-oath

And Paracelsus again in what is more or less a distillation of the Hippocratic Oath-
"Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided."
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paracelsus

Note that phrase 'the very processes of life' - the body heals itself, all it needs is guidance from the physician.

Science plus the art of healing by a sympathetic physician with the old fashioned 'bedside manner' are the best medicine of all.

I suppose it is too much to hope for an outbreak of common sense to allow the use of the clearly effective cannabis oil which will let Billy Caldwell and Alfie Dingley  and others like them lead a normal life.

Uruguay, now Canada - who's next?     (Image)

... and for whose benefit? (Image)

"You wanted it...", by Wiggia

There is a trend nationally to “suggest” that you, the public have asked for something you really haven’t.

The latest is the increased taxes for the NHS. It was suggested that people would be willing to pay more for the NHS back in the annual winter crisis when the usual "there is not enough money" cries first went up. Somehow this poll, which was never as far as I know named, had surveyed a number of the populace with the magic words “would you be prepared...?” and the answer came back yes.
Whether there was anything else asked is not revealed, but if you ask at a time of crisis with all the attendant headlines of death and despair you would likely get an unthinking response if the questioning was put a certain way that would confirm the result.

The government must have either secretly paid to have this poll done or else could not believe their luck and soon rumblings of tax-raising for the NHS were heard and indecently quickly a promise was made to do just that; the Brexit extraction of monies is at this stage wishful thinking.

This did two things: (1) it gave the government the pretended right to raise taxes as if it was the will of the people, without ever asking them; and (2) it made them look caring. After all, successive governments have thrown money at the NHS when it was appropriate to do so, not necessarily when it was needed and never with any quid pro quo such as the total overhaul of the NHS which is desperately needed.

So no way do the government have to get their hands dirty and the people are happy, they asked to pay more and the real problems are once more kicked down the road.

But enough of the NHS, reams of paper are not enough to describe its many shortcomings; though I will highlight just one from this week, one could highlight one every week but this will do. It is a classic, a “senior lead” (whatever that is) defending diversity:

 “NHS wastes £46million on spin doctors, diversity advisors and a third sector environmental lead”.

The opening paragraph reads, “We can reveal that the NHS wasted over £46 million last year on 1,129 unnecessary jobs.”

The words that held my attention were "diversity advisors" and "unnecessary.”

Only diversity advisors are defended. She then goes on to say that the £41k-plus they get is entirely reasonable. Well she would because without them she would be out of a better paid job. The answer to all this nonsense is simply to employ the best people of whatever colour creed or religion apply but you can’t have that today and you end up with this nonsense.

A couple weeks ago I got a phone call from Anglian Water my supplier of water - well it was actually on behalf of Anglian Water. When told it was a survey I said no, but something about their business model being discussed and an Amazon voucher for ten minutes of questions intrigued me. Needless to say it was around thirty minutes in the end but that was partly because I started asking questions and surprisingly whoever was doing the questioning was in sympathy with what I said and took my my answers at face value, or seemed to.

In effect once the opening “how satisfied are you?” questions were dealt with the survey was about Anglian Water's business model for the next ten or so years. Anglian Water despite the very English name is now owned by a consortium of mainly Australian and Canadian pension funds and investment vehicles.

The survey continued and it became obvious quite early that the questions were asking me the customer about how I would be paying for the upgrading of facilities in the short medium and long term. It all seemed reasonable until the penny dropped that what was being asked was how much you were prepared to pay over what time for new facilities to be built.

There were flaws in the questions such as the longer term suggestions did not take in inflation or rising costs; somehow I think that was deliberate as once implemented the company could simply blame outside influences.

I also pointed out that Anglian Water has spent bugger-all since 2008 when the consortium took over despite a rising population, and the fact that unlike other water companies their infrastructure is less than those others as they rely largely on aquifers not reservoirs. All was said to be duly noted !

The bottom line on all this is that Anglian Water is a private company yet they are asking how you the customer would like to pay for their upgrading of facilities and infrastructure. The last time I looked private companies raised funds in the market and from shareholders for that but not any more: we are being asked would you like to pay now and which way and when the light comes on and people realise they have been conned the company can say well we asked you what you wanted and you said yes.

Up the road from me we have a reverse example, an imposed fee for a private enterprise that is not very popular and has had a dampening effect on the business, and quite rightly. Norwich airport imposes a £10 development fee on every passenger taking a flight from there. No one was asked and no one if they have a choice - and they do - pays it: they use Stansted or another airport. Norwich doesn’t go anywhere and is unlikely to in the near future, a private company charging the public for their expansion with - no other word for it - extortion.

We are starting to see a whole new way of extracting money from the public. Will they see through all this? No, unless someone starts calling out these practices in deception; and no one has yet.
It brings a whole new slant to interest free loans - or gifts, in this case.

Will we, the little people, fight back?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Cécile Corbel, by JD

Whenever my musical soul needs 're-grooving' I go back to my roots and revisit the music of my heritage. Here is Cécile Corbel who is an excellent Breton singer/composer who also plays the Celtic harp.

The harp is possibly one of the oldest musical instruments dating back to 3599BC and probably earlier. It features in many musical traditions around the world. The modern Celtic harp, as used by Cécile Corbel, began to appear in the early 19th century in Ireland, contemporary with the dying-out of earlier forms of Gaelic harp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harp