I've been rather remiss about this blog. Again. Every month I religiously update my Walkingthefield's Books blog, but then forget that there is this one to work on. So sorry to anyone out there who has been looking forward to words of wisdom (or otherwise).
OK. So today is Father's Day as well as being Trinity Sunday. I've had two cards and a hug box of nine packets of different coffees, each from a separate country. And three other emails and messages. I am informed by one of my children that she forgot to give me my card and present last weekend when we were with them at South Weald Country Park. So I shall just have to make do with her electronic message and wait for something concrete to arrive later.
I've been writing several small groups of stories that might end up as a collection. One of them is about my experiences in a Day Treatment Centre in a mental hospital. It was quite hard to write and yet, now that I look it over, I'm quite pleased with the end result. The reader will certainly be able to envisage being there. Another group of stories is about working as a volunteer in a huge mental hospital (really a lunatic asylum) in the late 1960s.
And I've been writing some poetry. www.wordaid.org published an anthology of poetry to raise money for Children in Need. This year the aim is to raise money for Shelterbox which helps people in emergencies wherever they are in the world. My wife has approved the two poems I've written on the theme of survival - which does not include any reference to natural or other disasters. One is about a marriage and the other is about a church.
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Monday, 9 May 2011
Dengie Peninsula, Essex
We spent Easter weekend at Latchingdon in Essex. Essex has a bad name for the people who live there and the idea that it's really an extension of East London. But once you get away from Dagenham you encounter the most beautiful countryside. OK. There are one or two blots on the horizon, like South Woodham Ferrers, which is where all the superstores seem to have gathered at the centre of the town together with a ginormous carpark in a conspiracy to annihilate what must once have been a pretty village.
We stayed at the Crouch Valley Lodge which is attached to the Blue Toad Restaurant. This is all in an out-of-the-way place, but the food is extraordinarily good. The staff are always smiling at whatever time of day you see them.
The Blue Toad sign outside the restaurant.
On Easter Saturday we had a mainly church day. First of all we went to Bradwell-on-Sea which is right on the coast. Well, perhaps a mile inland. Right in the middle of the village is a 14th century church (St Thomas) that has a gorgeous gallery at the west end of the nave which leads to a modern parish room in the tower. The stained glass is pretty good, though 19th century. There are a few 17th century memorials fixed to the chancel wall. It's a cheerful place, one you feel the congregation really cares about. The south side of the churchyard is smothered in maturish trees. On a hot summer's day they will provide welcome cool shade.
St Thomas Church, Bradwell-on-Sea
Further away from the village and right on the coast, literally less than 50 metres from High Water Mark, is the other church for which Bradwell is famous. It is constructed on the remains of the 3rd century Saxon Shore Fort built by the Romans to defend their province. By the mid 7th century, when the church was built, the west gateway was obviously out of use, because that is where the church is sited. It's about 5 metres wide and 10 metres long. It once had an apsidal east end and a porticus. At some point it has been left to fall to ruin and later has been substantially repaired
St Peter's Church, Bradwell-on-Sea
And then we took the windy road all the way to Maldon where we saw a magnificent early 18th century Library which replaced the nave and chancel of a High Street church. The tower alone remains.
I was up at dawn on Easter Sunday. I don't know why. But I was really taken with the rising sun and setting moon.
Rising Sun on Easter Sunday.
After breakfast we made our leisurely way home. On the way we discovered that South Woodham Ferrers doesn't live up to its name. We turned south there and kept going until we came to the top of the Thames bank, dropped down to almost river level and drove across Canvey Island. We both of us had some idea about this island but couldn't think why. Its very flat, as you might expect an island surrounded by mudflats to be, and you can see all the channels cutting it off from the mainland. We carried on as far as we could go and were forced to park beside an amusement park beside a rather well-designed municipal garden. We climbed the bank to a concrete walkway, about 5 metres above HWM, following the Thames and then went towards the sea for about half a mile. On the way we watched parents and children trying to catch things in rock pools and larger pools, some people bravely sitting out in the sun on tiny scraps of beaches and then we bought ourselves an ice cream.
Fishing on Canvey Island
The final visit of our day was to Tilbury Fort right next to the old Ferry Crossing over the Thames. It's an amazing place to walk round, climbing up the defensive earthworks (whatever they're called) and peering over the top ramparts at the extensive defensive water works. The Powder Magazines really caught my attention. Built of brick, the thick walls are buttressed at frequent intervals. Each of the two buildings could hold about 200 tons of gunpowder in 100lb barrels. When you look at the boards in the floor, you realise that these were really cut and laid by soldiers who couldn't care less how the job got done, so long as it was done. The powder magazines are surrounded by an outer blast wall.
Interior of one of the powder magazines
Bronze cladding of the powder magazine doors
For me, the best part of the whole Fort was the magnificent 1682 entrance gateway.
1682 Gateway into Tilbury Fort
We stayed at the Crouch Valley Lodge which is attached to the Blue Toad Restaurant. This is all in an out-of-the-way place, but the food is extraordinarily good. The staff are always smiling at whatever time of day you see them.
The Blue Toad sign outside the restaurant.
On Easter Saturday we had a mainly church day. First of all we went to Bradwell-on-Sea which is right on the coast. Well, perhaps a mile inland. Right in the middle of the village is a 14th century church (St Thomas) that has a gorgeous gallery at the west end of the nave which leads to a modern parish room in the tower. The stained glass is pretty good, though 19th century. There are a few 17th century memorials fixed to the chancel wall. It's a cheerful place, one you feel the congregation really cares about. The south side of the churchyard is smothered in maturish trees. On a hot summer's day they will provide welcome cool shade.
St Thomas Church, Bradwell-on-Sea
Further away from the village and right on the coast, literally less than 50 metres from High Water Mark, is the other church for which Bradwell is famous. It is constructed on the remains of the 3rd century Saxon Shore Fort built by the Romans to defend their province. By the mid 7th century, when the church was built, the west gateway was obviously out of use, because that is where the church is sited. It's about 5 metres wide and 10 metres long. It once had an apsidal east end and a porticus. At some point it has been left to fall to ruin and later has been substantially repaired
And then we took the windy road all the way to Maldon where we saw a magnificent early 18th century Library which replaced the nave and chancel of a High Street church. The tower alone remains.
I was up at dawn on Easter Sunday. I don't know why. But I was really taken with the rising sun and setting moon.
After breakfast we made our leisurely way home. On the way we discovered that South Woodham Ferrers doesn't live up to its name. We turned south there and kept going until we came to the top of the Thames bank, dropped down to almost river level and drove across Canvey Island. We both of us had some idea about this island but couldn't think why. Its very flat, as you might expect an island surrounded by mudflats to be, and you can see all the channels cutting it off from the mainland. We carried on as far as we could go and were forced to park beside an amusement park beside a rather well-designed municipal garden. We climbed the bank to a concrete walkway, about 5 metres above HWM, following the Thames and then went towards the sea for about half a mile. On the way we watched parents and children trying to catch things in rock pools and larger pools, some people bravely sitting out in the sun on tiny scraps of beaches and then we bought ourselves an ice cream.
The final visit of our day was to Tilbury Fort right next to the old Ferry Crossing over the Thames. It's an amazing place to walk round, climbing up the defensive earthworks (whatever they're called) and peering over the top ramparts at the extensive defensive water works. The Powder Magazines really caught my attention. Built of brick, the thick walls are buttressed at frequent intervals. Each of the two buildings could hold about 200 tons of gunpowder in 100lb barrels. When you look at the boards in the floor, you realise that these were really cut and laid by soldiers who couldn't care less how the job got done, so long as it was done. The powder magazines are surrounded by an outer blast wall.
For me, the best part of the whole Fort was the magnificent 1682 entrance gateway.
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Martin Sheen
I was listening to Martin Sheen on Desert Island Discs the other day. He had lots of things to say about his life, career and, in passing, his family. What really got my attention was that he said he loved Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. This is an amazing book. It really has everything about all aspects of life in it, from birth to death via religion and murder. But it also focuses hard on ethics and religious belief. Martin Sheen told us that it was reading this book that made him think hard about Christianity and led him, ultimately, to join the Roman Catholic Church.
Teaching the Reformation to A-Level students, who have little idea what Christianity is about, had much the same effect on me. I had to teach them what Catholics believed in and what Martin Luther didn't like about Catholicism and how he and other Protestant leaders developed their ideas about what really mattered in Christian belief. By the time I had done that, I found that I had regained my previously lost Christian faith. Of course, all my students avoided answering questions about the Reformation in the exam because 'it was too hard to explain', they said. They preferred straight politics or economics.
I think if I were ever to be on Desert Island Discs my eight records would be:
- Benjamin Britten's Michelangelo Sonnets for tenor and piano.
- Schubert's Schwanengesang
- Shostakovitch's Symphony No 13 (Baby Yar)
- Beethoven's Grosse Fugue. I first heard this sitting in the South Transept of Newcastle upon Tyne Cathedral many years ago and was utterly spellbound.
- JS Bach Partita for solo violin. I heard Yehudi Menuhin play this in Coventry Cathedral. I cannot bear to hear it played by anyone else.
- Saint-Saens The Swan from The Carnival of the Animals because it is such an incredibly graceful piece demonstrating most of the capabilities of the cello. If I can't have the Swan I'd have to have the Pianists remembering the time my brother and I hogged a pair of pianos on separate floors of the music block at school and played it with great gusto and not much accuracy.
- Mozart Piano Concerto No 21. This is the concerto my paino teacher played in Cape Town shortly before he left for London to study and teach at the Royal Academy.
- Elvis Presley Heartbreak Hotel.
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| This delightful fountain stands in the middle of a small square in Calahonda, near Malaga, in South Spain. I am really pleased at the way that the cascading water shows so clearly. |
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| Outside the apartment in Calahonda there is a lemon tree that my father and stepmother planted twenty years ago. When we were there in March it was heavily loaded with lemons. 99.9% of the lemons were perfectly ordinary - nothing to write home about. But hidden within the foliage was this one shaped a bit like female genitalia. I'm afraid I couldn't resist picking and photographing it. |
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| This huge bronze sculpture stands in the middle of a roundabout on the main street through Fuengirola. It's not quite right to call it a torso because it includes the top half of the legs. But the first time you see it, you do get a bit of a surprise. There are several other brilliant sculptures in the town that are all worth looking at. |
Saturday, 9 April 2011
Spring continues apace
Spring continues apace. Pear blossom opened in less than twenty-four hours last weekend. And today I saw that the apple blossom buds are swollen to bursting point. This will keep the bumble bees round here busy. There have been quite a few around, including half a dozen which have flown in through our open kitchen window. One or two have needed help to escape back outside.
Another sign of spring is that the groundsman has been working on the cricket pitch. First of all he put the heavy roller over the cricket square itself. He sat on the big machine and rolled backwards and forwards for about four hours in the sunshine. Then the day before yesterday he got out his brilliant sit-on mower and drove all round the outfield cutting the grass down to within half an inch of its life. Perhaps next week he'll start to mow the cricket square.
Yesterday I was amazed to hear about the grotesque scheme in America to incorporate unidentified remains of people killed in the Twin Towers disaster of 9/11 in a Memorial Museum being built on Ground Zero. When you think about soldiers who die on active service, they are buried in proper cemeteries, even when they are unidentified and 'only known to God'. There are separate memorials to them away from the cemeteries which never incorporate their remains. What are the Powers-That-Be thinking of in New York? I would have thought a separate, dignified memorial monument in front of the Memorial Museum would be the most appropriate way of remembering all the dead and injured from that disaster.
At the moment I am writing a group of stories called Bedlam. They describe one person's experience of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as several other stories about less stressful events. One is about a Protestant child attending a Catholic school who is told by a priest that not only is she a heathen/pagan but that she will go straight to HELL because she wasn't baptised as an infant. Oh dear!
Another sign of spring is that the groundsman has been working on the cricket pitch. First of all he put the heavy roller over the cricket square itself. He sat on the big machine and rolled backwards and forwards for about four hours in the sunshine. Then the day before yesterday he got out his brilliant sit-on mower and drove all round the outfield cutting the grass down to within half an inch of its life. Perhaps next week he'll start to mow the cricket square.
Yesterday I was amazed to hear about the grotesque scheme in America to incorporate unidentified remains of people killed in the Twin Towers disaster of 9/11 in a Memorial Museum being built on Ground Zero. When you think about soldiers who die on active service, they are buried in proper cemeteries, even when they are unidentified and 'only known to God'. There are separate memorials to them away from the cemeteries which never incorporate their remains. What are the Powers-That-Be thinking of in New York? I would have thought a separate, dignified memorial monument in front of the Memorial Museum would be the most appropriate way of remembering all the dead and injured from that disaster.
At the moment I am writing a group of stories called Bedlam. They describe one person's experience of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as several other stories about less stressful events. One is about a Protestant child attending a Catholic school who is told by a priest that not only is she a heathen/pagan but that she will go straight to HELL because she wasn't baptised as an infant. Oh dear!
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Spring is here
I know that Spring is here, not because of all the green shoots, daffodils in flower in sheets around the village, but from the fact that last Sunday morning my 3-year-old granddaughter stood up in her cot, pushed the curtains to one side and sang to the birds outside. So there you have it, the ultimate indicator of Spring having sprung.
I suppose all the other usual things have happened to show that our little part of the world is warming up, but they are nothing compared to my granddaughter's songs to the bird. I really wish I had had a tape recorder. Not having one, I will simply have to remember her songs.
There is one other sign of Spring that I think is amazingly beautiful. It's the appearance of white blossom smothering the multitude of dark, empty Blackthorn trees in so many hedgerows and roadsides. In six weeks' time it'll be the turn of Hawthorn to flirt with us using its white blossom dress over a soft green petticoat of unfurled leaves.
Meanwhile, let's just watch what happens in our gardens. Roses will grow fast; Winter Jasmine, now that it has finished flowering, is about to start it's Spring growth and Primulas are now at their very best showing clumps of brightly coloured petals. Oh, how wonderful it is to be alive in days like today!
I suppose all the other usual things have happened to show that our little part of the world is warming up, but they are nothing compared to my granddaughter's songs to the bird. I really wish I had had a tape recorder. Not having one, I will simply have to remember her songs.
There is one other sign of Spring that I think is amazingly beautiful. It's the appearance of white blossom smothering the multitude of dark, empty Blackthorn trees in so many hedgerows and roadsides. In six weeks' time it'll be the turn of Hawthorn to flirt with us using its white blossom dress over a soft green petticoat of unfurled leaves.
Meanwhile, let's just watch what happens in our gardens. Roses will grow fast; Winter Jasmine, now that it has finished flowering, is about to start it's Spring growth and Primulas are now at their very best showing clumps of brightly coloured petals. Oh, how wonderful it is to be alive in days like today!
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