FINISHED READING - Non-Things by Byung-Chul Han

'History and memory are characterised by a narrative continuity that stretches across long periods of time. Meaning and coherence are founded on narration. The digital, that is, numerical, order is free of history and memory. Thus, it fragments life.'*

Though a couple of pages short of a hundred, this short book hits hard. In it, Byung-Chul Han outlines the reasons why the nature of new technology, has altered how we interact and relate with the world, though more importantly with ourselves. The sense of social, political instability, increased anxiety, panic attacks and decline in mental health, that has increased hugely since the arrival of the IPhone in 2007, is only one consequence.

'Information by itself does not illuminate the world. It can even have the opposite effect. From a certain point onwards, information does not inform - it deforms...Information  now circulates in a hyper-real space, without any reference to reality.'*

I cannot be alone in wondering, quite why the simple move from analogue to increasingly digital lifestyles should have had such a profound, and largely detrimental effect on the stability of human civilisation. Well. Byung-Chul Han, in this book, gets closest to the nub of why. Why irrationality, stupidity, denial of the facts, and the perpetration of falsehoods, has become so gleefully widespread these days?

'Truth is a part of the terrestrial order. It gives human life stability. The digital order puts an end to the age of truth and introduces the post factual information society. The post-factual regime of information elevates itself above fact-based truth. In its post-factual form, information is thing-fleeting. Where nothing is arrestable, all stability is lost.'*

For a large part of human existence we have been tool makers, to improve the qualities of our lives. Tools we could handle, pass them down to our children and transfer the skills in the use of them. A tool is one part of a whole world of things which we develop a personal relationship with. They have history and memories invested in them by us. Whether that be a hammer, textiles, writing, music, wall painting or a carving of a god. This is the world of analogue, that the book, record player, art, craft, cameras, or theatre were further developments of. Tools can become personal possessions, extensions of our being, our intermediary and emotional entanglement with the world. Tools mean much more to us than their utility alone, through them we share our experiences, thoughts, responses, they are our reliable companions through the vicissitudes of life. We cease thinking about their usefulness and wear them, allow them to inhabit our being. Non-Things, by comparison are neutered objects, they introduce to our world technology a castrated level of feeling. It makes eunuchs of our engagement with life.

'Understood abstractly, experiencing means consuming information. Today, we prefer experiencing to possessing, being to having. Experiencing is a form of being.....we now live in a society of experiencing and communicating that prefers being to having. The old maxim of having - the more I have, the more I am - no longer holds. The new maxim of experiencing is: the more I experience, the more I am.....

The memories stored in things have suddenly lost all value; they have to give way to new experience. It seems that people are no longer able to dwell with things or to imbue them with life and make them their faithful companions'*

A smart phone has many uses, it is a phone, a camera, a portable office, a reminder, a letter writer, a film maker, music player,  day planner, time keeper, to name but a few.  It is a conduit for multiple forms of information, data and experiences. If it cannot be defined by just the one thing, but a multiplicity, it is in this sense a no-thing. And it's no-thingness imprisons our attention, but resists us developing any deeper personal relationship with it. When it breaks, or a new model comes along, we simply replace it. The 'thingness' of an object is related to the task we execute through using it. Scrolling through information, however distracts and dispels focus. It is, something we lose our sense of self in, rather then find it through. The information might be a thousand years old, but sans wrinkles, sans yellowing, it has no visible or sensory sign of its age.

'Non-Things are perhaps the food of the ghosts.'*

A kindle, may give us access to the entirety of all human book output from all over the world, but you will find it difficult to generate a personal relationship with it, to love it like you would a physical book. A book that you have sensory ownership of, that you feel between our fingers, turn it's pages, fondle it's unique cover, smell the papery newness of, and the whiff of it's ink. On a sensory level alone a kindle is a no-thing, it sits smoothly, blandly, passively and always feels exactly the same immutable object in our hands. It's hard to fall completely in love with a kindle, like you would do a favourite book. It's a means of reading, not a sensual part of the reading experience itself.

'Being connected is not the same as being in a relation.'*

We once owned actual physical photographs, photographs that however imperfect, captured a moment or a person, that somehow came to embody that person or moment. We kept it by our bed or near our heart. How often do you get a photo print done from a smart phone camera?  I'll bet not at all. Because the camera on a smart phone worships only the moment of its taking a snap, we do selfies with their uncomfortably posed faces and grimaces. And once that moment has passed and we've posted it on Instagram, it is entirely forgotten. Memories require is to return to them, to remember, to recollect and not delete to release more storage.

'Digital time disintegrates into a mere sequence of point like presences. It has no narrative continuity. It thus transforms life itself into something fleeting. Digital objects do not permit any lingering. In this way they differ from things.'*

We have access to a huge range of music, and can listen to it only via a specific music platform. It comes free, if you don't mind the repeated interruptions of adverts. But you can purchase a premium subscription to be rid of them. You don't even have to buy a tangible thing anymore. Even if you do purchase a download, that merely provides you with regular access. You don't actually own it. You cannot hold it in your hand, you only play it just so long as you can access to it online. And if the streaming platform wanted to introduce a Paywall, between you and it, then it could easily do so. Your music is not fully in your possession anymore, like a physical vinyl record, tape or CD are, it's more like a conditional temporary loan from a library. At any moment your ownership could be removed, your right to hear it can expire.

'The smart phone is hard, it is not a digital teddy bear. Rather, it is a narcissistic, autistic object through which we feel, most of all ourselves. It thus also destroys empathy.'*

The essential no-thingness of how we relate to these various temples and conduits of information, is why prolonged scrolling becomes so draining and leaves you feeling depressed and purposeless. This takes our attention and give us very little back for it. The internet is a place of the 24/7 informational download. It's a place where data is mined, our time is robbed, and personal initiative is sapped  It doesn't matter what the information is, whether that is true or false, wise or foolish, interesting or dull. It treats all information as though it were morally or ethically neutral. It makes no judgement about its worth or value, it is just information. Which is why a president can talk about alternative facts, and what were previously unacceptable pernicious opinions or actions, are treated as though they are just another view to pick from many equal views. This emptiness, this moral void that it exists in, diminishes the value of history and remembering the lessons that often need to be drawn from it. Unanchored from memory we drift in a morass of contextless information.

'There is no fundamental difference between being reachable at all times and being enslaved.'*

This book reads like one long hit on the head, concerning what we attend to, and what a deeper sense of engagement might be.  How all that is being hijacked by the technology we use daily. Slowly changing what it is to be human and to interact with others.  AI is simply a further extension of this data seeking, data sucking, information pumping and extraction process. This world that is being thrust upon us, lacks 'thingness', it lacks conscience, moral judgement, and wisdom. These are just a few of its notable absences, that make our future look increasingly impoverished and hence treacherous for our future survival. Every page of Non-Things had something pointed and pithy to say about our entropic malaise. That it speaks of our time, makes this essential reading.

'Non-things block out things, pollute them. Junk information and communication destroy the silent landscape, the discreet language of things.'*

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

* Extracts from Non-Things by Byung-Chul Han, Published by Polity,2022.

LIFE AS PILGRIMAGE - 5 - The Secular Search For Fulfillment

There is a fundamental flaw when we attempt to build a whole philosophy and system of self belief, that is all about the personal fulfilment of every individual need of one's Self. And the flaw is essentially, that it runs counter to what reality is actually like. Reality is not there purely to service our needs. It remains neutral towards whatever our desires and aspirations might be. The whole concept of personal fulfillment, puts an incredible amount of pressure and stress on you, as an individual to be your own fount of wisdom. You have to work things out, how you are personally going to attain that perfectly satisfying life. The possibility of failure becomes unconscionable, and has strenuously to be resisted. 

Today, social media has only made holding this ideal of personal perfection worse. We are currently all living through an era of semi-paralysing anxiety as a result. And even if, theoretically, we were for one moment to achieve that perfect level of fulfillment, there would be no guarantee it would stay that way. Conditions and circumstances change, they run out of our control. You lose your job, people die, you die, wars happen, climate catastrophe arises, cultures and civilizations collapse. The world is an inherently unstable and insecure place. 

But all of this, was only just beginning to dawn on me, whilst I was living in London in the 1980's. I was this unconfident introvert, that somehow would occasionally make bold intuited changes in life direction. And when these petered out or dried up, I'd move on to something else to aim for, to make my life about. I always appeared to return to the stable point of my own creativity as the point of departure. I had then, as I do now, a wide ranging interest in 'the arts'. I can see in retrospect, that this was a time in my life where the current lifestyle and aspirations I had for myself, was rapidly running out of road to travel on. Creatively and personally, relationships were just not happening. My self esteem and confidence, never that robust, seriously wobbled, and I felt a huge amount of insecurity welling up within myself. Life in general was becoming troublingly   meaningless, and lacking in purpose.

I was wandering quite aimlessly around Camden Town, on a day off.  I popped into a bookshop, that I think might have been called East-West. I'd been in it a few times before, it stocked all sorts of books, about alternative lifestyles,psychology, politics, cooking, art and spirituality in its broadest sense. I was scanning round the shelves, when one book title grabbed my attention - The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. The paradox of juxtaposing wisdom alongside insecurity, made me intensely curious. And once I'd bought and started to read it, the book started to feel like it was written especially for me. It directly addressed my turbulent state of being at that time. 

The Wisdom of Insecurity is a quite basic exploration of the teachings of Lao Tsu,  the mythical founder of Taoism. It also has occasional side references to Buddhism, as both are non-theistic distant third cousins. On rereading it a few years ago, I was struck by how Watt's unhelpfully universalised every spiritual idea he touched upon. He was undoubtedly an inspired communicator, but one who unwarrantedly affected a guru like persona. Nevertheless, this book was responsible for opening my eyes to another way of seeing and interpreting the world, life, and upending the secular ideal of personal purpose. 

I remember avidly reading it during my lunch break. It was a beautiful bright sunny day. I was sitting on a bench near the clock tower in Crouch End.  And one particular sentence just leapt out and resonated with me so strongly, that I had a momentary experience of bliss. I'd had a deep realisation that I could simply let go of seeing insecurity as being a problem I needed to overcome or find a fix for.  Instead I could just relax and be more accepting of it. Embrace insecurity as just the way life can often be. Fundamentally you align yourself to the way realty really is, and cease trying to make it conform to what you would prefer it to be. If you can do this, however briefly and transiently, believe me it becomes a huge relief. 

Consequently I read more by Watts, but eventually found him a bit too much of a generalist. I craved more depth. I avidly read Lao Tsu's, Tao Te Ching, then Chuang Tzu, broached the more esoteric and dense teachings of Taoist Alchemy and the cultivation of Chi. I even had a phase of exploring microbiotics as a result of reading this book. The problem for me in 1980's UK was there appeared to be no living Taoist tradition or practitioners to be taught by, to learn from, or plug into. I read Taoist texts in translation, which, I can assure you, are the very personification of mystical spiritual ellipsis. It was all as clear as mud what you were actually supposed to do, on the level of personal spiritual practice. I learnt a few basic Chi circulation meditation techniques from books, and then felt that I'd got all I could then access. These days, in the age of the internet, finding a way forward would've been a whole lot easier.

Not entirely unconnected to this spiritual experience, I subsequently decided, after nine years of being the lone culture vulture in the ultra busy hub of a newly 24/7 London, I'd had enough of it. I was done with metropolitan life. I wanted to leave the city and it's manic psychology of keep moving quickly so you don't notice the purposelessness of it all. After a few recent summer holidays staying with a friend in Wells Next the Sea, I'd fallen in love with the place, and felt I needed to moved to North Norfolk. What actually happened was that I got as close as I could, by relocating to South Norfolk, to the small quiet market town of Diss on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Where I got a job managing an art shop and stationers. My aim, in moving there was to start my life completely afresh, 

FAVE RAVE - Refashioned Hippie

Nowadays, if Hubby asks me why I'm giggling to myself in the morning, it is more often the latest You Tube short from this wonderful women. Maggie Weber, known online, as Refashioned Hippie. This is only one of a number of series of shorts she runs, but it is the one which regularly stimulates my chuckle muscles - Rich People's Shit Us Poors Haven't Heard Of. Here she trawls the internet for the most expensive stuff only rich folk could even think of buying, and still you are left to wonder how much Ketamine they must be on. She shares her most withering sarcastic reviews for stuff that is as ordinary as a waste bin or a baby's comforter. Her delivery is so dry it could incinerate you at twenty paces, often with a killer line or two to demonstrates just how scathing she can be. Oh, and if you watch her enough you'll realise just how much she dislikes anything that Balenciaga ever makes, for whom she holds a very special loathing. Refashioned Hippie cheers my mornings. Here are a few links to try.

Balenciaga

Socks

Pencils

Sofas

FAVE RAVE - Lucy Darling

Lucy Darling is the alter ego of Clarisa Hendricks, creating her to combine with her magic show. Initially she was just one of many characters she thought up. Lucy Darling was influenced by a few Hollywood Golden Era ballsy dames, obviously Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck etc. A more left field influence is John De Lancie, who if you are a Trekkie, is the actor who plays Q in many a series. Once you know this, you can see how this might feed into Lucy Darling's derision and frankness. Slowly over the years her magic show has developed so there is now quite a substantial amount of crowdwork.It's probably what most people come for. For as you will see, Lucy Darling, is very quick witted, and insults and plays her audience perfectly. Lucy Darling is one of my favourites things to tap into whenever I need cheering up.

Gigalo

Geeks

Evan The Waiter

Miller

ART N AB ART - Cliff Edge - Cromer Artspace Exhibition

As the North Norfolk exhibition season nears it's end, Cromer Artspace pulls off it's second great gallery show of the year. North Norfolk, is perhaps unusually blessed with a broad range of artists using textile as their primary medium. And the Cliff Edge displays this in it's full diversity. From embroidered blocks, to a worn nurses apron barely held together with stitches, salt encrusted funnels of cloth, large quilted hangings, a crocheted Ronald McDonald monkey, beautiful felted embroidered and expressive shapes, figures made out of onion net fabric,  

Both large scale and small scale works. It covers a huge range of styles and approaches to working with fabric as a medium. This exhibition certainly showed you what was possible. From purely aesthetic explorations to more polemical political works. As composite exhibitions go, this was one of the best.

MY OWN WALKING - October Journal 2026

In a recent interview Tyler Staton, talked about how important a place of waiting was in the process of realisation in his faith, which Christian theologians referred to as a state of 'already, not yet'. And whilst the context within which that is framed is different to Buddhist practice, we are, nonetheless, also in a position of waiting as we practice of 'already, not yet'. All that is different, is what we are actively waiting for. What crops up in my mind is - what happens if that actively waiting, becomes passively waiting? And is that what really matters? 

It's as though we are stood by a bus stop waiting for the next bus home, and it's just starting to bucket it down, you're getting completely soaked, but the longer you stand there you find yourself waivering, then digging deeper into your commitment to wait for the bus. You could take back the initiative and decide to walk home, you're already drenched, so what does it matter if you get even wetter? Then at least you'd be doing something constructive to finally get yourself home. What purpose does all this doggedly waiting by the bus stop in the rain serve? What if the bus fails to turn up and you die of exposure? 

One has to ask if there is an overarching purpose behind waiting? And all the stuff about staying actively engaged, commited and purposeful, is that simply a manifestation of our impatience? Of feeling we need to be doing something, not just standing there, getting soaked, looking like a twerp. Where's your initiative man? For Tyler Staton, he is in someway waiting for God to turn up, and though God might seem fickle, his actions unknowable, the waiting itself becomes an exercise in humility, that our egoic humanity tends to rail against. But the term 'already, not yet' tells you something else about the state of waiting. Whatever it is we are waiting to manifest, it's already here, but we cannot presently see, feel or know that. And we cannot see,feel or know that because we persist in perceiving the state of waiting from an individualistic perspective. We wrestle with ourselves whilst we feel the force to 'just wait.'

I am frequently aware of a tendency to take full possession of what I experience in body, speech and mind. I preface everything with an expression of ownership - My this. My that. Everything becomes filtered through the opaquely glazed window of My - My suffering. My desires, My Joy, My practice. My perspective. My awareness. My view. My answer. My integrity. My waiting. My Buddha Nature. My My My My My can we not help ourselves. And whilst we persist in doing this, what is 'already' here, stays resolutely 'not yet'. What is already complete and immaculate, remains seen as incomplete and impure.  There is only one thing bridging between these two viewpoints and that it is the state of waiting. We don't want to wait for anything these days. We want things immediately, or not at all. Nothing, it seems, can be worth waiting for. But waiting requires us to exercise patience, humility and faith. I'd be the first to admit humility is not a strong point, undoubtedly a legacy from years of poor self esteem. I find humility uncomfortable because it feels like you are erasing oneself, and that seems painful. But, here we wait, standing upon the ground of our faith, however infirm that may feel, for Buddha Nature to arise into awareness. We are waiting because there is a need for us to fully mature as spiritual practitioners. And this is our primary struggle, an ongoing tussle with ourselves to let go of insecurity, and likewise the need to be in control of everything. It is though we understand what all the right ingredients for an effective practice are, but can't quite agree on what the recipe is yet. So we are still doing a bit of experimental cooking. Maybe I'll use less salt next time.

It's as though we are pursuing this long distance love affair. Lots of expressions from the heart, of fully felt ardour written down, and posted in romantic letters, asking when the two of you might finally meet up. To which the distant love object sends a selfie, replying coyly - not yet. 

FINISHED READING - The Life Of A Counterfeiter by Yasushi Inoue

An unnamed writer is commissioned to write the biography of a famous Japanese painter who has recently died. This requires him to collect a huge amount of background information, but once started he realises he can't quite bring himself to actually get down to writing it. The war interrupts his research and the project as a whole, after it ends he reluctantly resumes his task. But as he tours the country visiting owners of works by the famous painter, he discovers a significant percentage of them are fakes. And he knows who the counterfeiter was. He becomes increasingly more interested in, and drawn towards, finding out more about the strange obscure life of the counterfeiter, than the famous painter.

The Life of a Counterfeiter, is an immaculately written story, with an underlying air of mystery. Inoue's style of writing has an elegance and a deceptive clarity in it's vision, as though this story was written with no apparently effort at all. But it is, actually, a beautifully detailed, well crafted short story, that I found an immensely enjoyable thing to read. The two accompanying stories, Reeds and Mr Geoffrey's Gloves, are linked thematically to the title story, as they are both about distinctive individuals who are not understood or even derided by those who knew them, but are intreging and loved by the narrator of the story. Inoue appears, judging from these stories, to have had a liking for the underdogs in Japanese society, who often inhabit unfulfilling lives, where silent desperation and rebelliousness sit side by side.

I've not come across Yasushi Inoue before, but I would certainly be up for reading more. He is almost yourJapanese stylist par excellence, with a deft ightness of touch and an interest in life's eccentrics and misfits.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - Monster ( 2023 )

The story opens with a fire in an apartment block. It's a brothel and the fire appears to be the work of an unknown arsonist. Minato ( Soya Kurokawa ) and his Mother ( Sakura Ando ) from their apartment up the hill observe it, and the fireman at work. She is a mum who works in laundry, and is doing her best to bring up her sensitive son, single-handedly. But all doesn't feel right with him, he is increasingly moody, has unexplained cuts and bruise, and one day he wildly cuts his hair in the bathroom. She manages to get some sort of a story out of him, and it accuses one of his teachers, Hori (Eita Nagayama ), of abusing and ridiculing him. She takes these accusations up with his school, but they simply offer formal apologies all the time, no action appears to be being taken against Hori. And the abuse appears to continue and get worse. Eventually, through her persistence they have no option but to sack him. After all he was the monster

Then we return to the night of the apartment fire, and we see the story we have just seen, but this time from the perspective of the teacher Hori. And throughout the movie we keep returning to the night of that fire, each time seeing events from the perspective of -  the head of the school, - the children at the centre of it. Who is the monster here, keeps shifting around. And you realise that everyone involved is operating on the basis of assumptions, as though they know what is going on here, who is the monster, and ultimately responsible for what happened. It's a real trickster of a tale they are weaving here.

This film won best screenplay at the Cannes festival in 2024, and it does have a real psychological power to it, as it leads you to believe one thing, then another. And is upturning your viewpoint even to it's very end. The director Kore-eda -Hirokazu, films and edits with a clean deceptive simplicity. It has a visual style that appears very matter of fact, as though he was actually filming a documentary. It also benefits from a sparse, but classic soundtrack from Ryuichi Sakamoto, his last film score. He died two months before the film was released. All the actors in this film are superb, particularly the two leads playing Minato and Yuri ( Hinata Hilragi ). They all have to play their roles from so many different perspectives. That this ends up being a moving film about deep childhood friendships and love, is another of its emotional surprises.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

Currently on IPlayer, but worth seeking out on other platforms.

LIFE AS PILGRIMAGE - 4 - The Discomforts Of Agnosticism

No longer going to Chapel every Sunday, was a recognition I'd reached the age where I was allowed to make my own decisions about what I did or did not do. About what my beliefs were, or more precisely, it appeared mostly about what they were not. What followed was a vague period of neglectful agnosticism, which is never a place for a fully worked out belief system. It's more a holding position, whilst you decide. Though I may have sat there in a mellow vat of cynicism stewing, I never reached, or saw, the logical point of atheism. Atheism is a position of reactivity, subsequently rationalised into a point of principle. My leaving of one established religious institution was purely a reaction to disenchantment, I don't think I could have told you at the time exactly why in any great detail. Hence why this was followed by such a long period of uncertainty, of not knowing, and if I'm truly being honest, not caring to know. 

This state of spiritual prevarication lasted a good ten years or more. Set against a background of leaving home and going to art college, in the time of punk. As practical real life experiences began to forge my character into adulthood. I returned to a non conformist Chapel during this period on a couple of occasions as a student, when I was lonely and personally struggling, and needed a place where I thought I'd be unquestioningly welcomed in a congregation. And that search for a place to comfortably belong might be a more accurate reason for staying agnostic.

From my early teens I'd worked out my sexual orientation was a gay one. So I understood my journey from immature teenager to a grown adult, was in 1970's England, not going to be a straightforward one. Though this was certainly a cause of anxiety for me, I understood quite clearly that the problem wasn't with me. I wasn't the one who was deluded, wrong headed or morally dubious. Whether Christianity's attitude towards homosexuality was a factor in my disenchantment with that religion, my recollection remains curiously blank. I was at that time, not that worldly aware of anything more than the need to stay schtum about it.  Today, at the age of sixty nine, I'm very happily married to a man I love. I think you can safely say any 'gay phase' endured and prospered, despite anyone's expectations or condemnations otherwise.

If I'd stayed in my village,  I think the pace of these self realisations would've been - much slower. College life thrusts you into a context with a wider range of people, viewpoints, experiences, and ways of living. It's also an opportunity to reinvent oneself, to break free of accumulated assumptions from your childhood, about who you are, what you can be. Which I did begin to do. But the first thing I encountered was a personal difficulty - how painfully self conscious and shy I could be, how self limiting that emotional state was, how it clouded the horizons of my ambition.  I may have had aspirations to be consistently extrovert, but found more often I was this painfully introverted young man who lived uncomfortably and frustratedly with it  This was a futile tug of war I fought with myself, for a lot longer than I like to remember it being.

Any search for spiritual self knowledge would have to be read between the lines of one exercise book, where I'd decided in 1973 to write down all the books I read. Little knowing I'd keep this practice up all my life. But these days I find these note books a good corrective to the inaccuracies of memory concerning time and sequence. In amongst the Sci Fi worlds of utopias and dystopia's, and numerous Micheal Moorcock sword and sorcery fantasies, you'll find a scattering of psychology books, many by R D Laing, and the almost inevitable period of a young adult's enthusiasm for Nietzsche. It was during this period I certainly developed into an enquiring and self motivated reader. I followed up on my enthusiasms, for writers or investigating particular subject matters, picking up on new lines of interest and enquiry as I went along. Some of it was driven by me trying to make sense of who I was, and why, and asking similar questions of the world. Though it was simultaneously the simple enjoyment of being open to new ideas, experiences and ways of looking at life and reality.

I'd started writing poetry. Decided I'd become an artist, then a graphic designer. So there were numerous books about art and artists, design and designers. A similar pattern persisted when later on I became enthusiastic for theatre and started acting in amateur drama, eventually taking up performance art. I read books about these subjects voraciously. All of them became a way to explore who I could be, what my potential was, for making something good out of my life. A future that would personally be both satisfying and introduce something beautiful into the world. Having shelved the idea of a creator God, the perception of beauty through art or nature assumed an elevated sensory divinity. This was a spiritual search to locate the meaning and purpose of life, but relocated into a secular context.  

However, when myself or reality failed to meet my aspirations and expectations, the suffering that resulted inevitably became a more insistent spiritual prompt. A world without a Godhead can assume an impoverished desultory demeanor. Turning everyday reality into this dreary indifferent mechanism, and my mind towards the dead end that is nihilism. Discovering one specific book introduced me to a new way of looking at reality and my experience of it, that would provide the catalyst to set me off in a fresh, more positive direction.

Next - No 5 - Fulfilment & Insecurity

STATELY HOMOS IN ENGLAND - Dalemain House

Positioned a few miles out from Penrith, Dalemain has the cliche circuitous driveway that ensures you get 'the surprise' of the house coming into view. The house, looked at from the front is a nicely proportioned classical 18th century facade. Unlike Sizbergh which had all its later developments honestly laid out in a row in front of you, Dalemain's classical facade is actually only one one room deep, behind which it conceals a much more ramshackle drab building. Including another 14th century Peel Tower, and numerous period add ons from all the centuries subsequent. Dalemain is hence Grade 1 listed, because similar to Sizbergh, it's that rare survival of a building that contain all these periods intact within it. This listing extends to include the extensive cobbled courtyard at the back of the house, which is also unique.

Dalemain has its splendid wrought iron gates, which would once have allowed access to only the right sort of people. Servants and tradesmen and women, would have all gone round the back, which is where we drive and where we park our car. The Reception, where we booked our place on the guided house tour, is also situated in the cafe, which is in a large airy barn or old stable, with a trip hazard of an uneven floor. It has the genial air of the improvised. The staff though friendly and approachable seemed a bit flustered. Quickly overwhelmed by actual people arriving wanting refreshments. One got the impression that perhaps the organisation here is understaffed and a tad shambolic, as if its not entirely settled on how it wants to operate as a visitor destination. This maybe a result of it fundamentally being a privately owned stately home, that opens to the public as a side hustle. We may, of course, have simply arrived on a really bad day.

We booked our house tour for an hour after we arrived. Leaving us time to unwind, have a coffee and cake, to wander around Dalemain's gardens, which are extensive and actually rather splendid. With their beautiful constructed landscape vistas, walled gardens, arched walkways, seated grottos, shell paths and a staggering piece of topiary formed into the shape of a Dragon. The gardens have an informal casualness that though subtle, are frequently quite enchanting.

The guided 'house tour', so we were told, was three quarters of an hour to an hour in length, which seemed worryingly more than we required. That this ended up being near an hour and a half, proved interminable. Being trapped with a guide who couldn't stop babbling about portraiture, eventually became an unwanted imposition. The owners of the house still live here, and understandably don't want you wandering unguided around their home taking your selfies for Instagram in their front room. After all you could be people casing the joint. The 'house tour' just went into far too much detail for even the most nosey and enquiring of antiquarian. 

The rooms at the front of the house look elegant and distinguished, they certainly appear well cared for, because, one must assume, they are regularly lived in. The older elements of the house, the medieval through to 17th century, that exist behind, seem maintained to a poorer level. Having once lived in a 16th century manor house, such rooms can be draughty, lack effective insulation, and can be cold at any time of the year. Basically, really old houses eat money simply through day after day efforts to keep them warm and intact. I bet they don't spend time living in parts of this house. Hence its slightly frayed around the edges state. None of this part of the house appeared to me to be particularly notable, and you really couldn't get any real sense of its overall layout.

However, what Dalemain has become known for in recent years, since Covid and lockdown, is now The World Marmalade Festival, which has become literally huge, particularly with the Japanese. There is a slightly shambolic exhibition of marmalades in jars, shelved in a room the size of a broom closet, of previous distinguished entrants in the competition. And there is also a slowly fading around the edges photo board of past winners and royal visitors in the cafe. It also seems proud of its ancient orchard of apples and bee hives, and hosts its own celebratory Apple Day in September.

Because of the poor organisation it generally appears hamfisted, Dalemain tends to fail in showing off its most attractive selling points. I guess, because its primarily a working house and estate. Developing it's visitor offering further, can come well down your list. Though if you look at Holkham Hall in North Norfolk, they've really fully embraced themselves as a visitor destination. Now, admittedly, they are a much larger wealthier estate with perhaps greater resources to call upon. But it can be done smaller scale. and they probably didn't arrive where they are today overnight.

Anyway, after escaping the over informative clutches of our energy vampire of a 'guide' I needed retail therapy. So I bought myself a jar of Dalemain's Apple and Brandy Marmalade, as a personal treat, then quickly exited before I was drained of all my will to live. The marmalade turned out to have a light taste of apple with only a background suggestion of alcohol, but it's recipe was based essentially on grapefruit and lemon, without which, this would've be one very small step away from being a jam.

STATELY HOMOS IN ENGLAND - Sizergh House

Now, I don't know about you, but we love a good romp around a stately home. Yes, it may have been obscene they had so much money, but just look what they did with it. Mainly we visit National Trust properties, but we are not averse to a privately owned one, if it's well set up. Whilst in the Westmoreland border country of the North West ,Sizergh was one of only a few National Trust managed stately homes in the area. It is a great example of a particular style of stately house - The Rambling Old Pile. Sizergh is situated outside Kendal. Though once idyllically placed in the rolling countryside, today it's just off an extremely busy 'A' road. But as you enter up its winding drive it is as though you are slowly being drawn into another place and time entirely. And though the 'A' road thunders away less than a mile away, Sizergh is remarkably muffled from it by the dense woodland that envelopes it. 

The problem you immediately encounter as you approach the house, is the insufficient amount of car parking space. They are currently in the process of repairing one section of the car park that has been badly affected by flooding. But even when this is returned to use, in busy periods parking spaces can be quite scarce here. So your time of arrival might be crucial. Best avoid the peak periods. Your smart phone, if you have one, should tell you when the less busy times are. But, rest assured, dear hungry aesthete's, Sizergh is certainly worth all your efforts to get there.

Sizergh is built around a Peel or Pele tower. These were once stand alone towers which you could retreat to when marauding Scots were in the vicinity. Over the years this crenellated tower has had further developments phases, extending along the raised ground the original tower was built upon. The outside of this higgledy piggledy house, though uniformly rendered in a grey stone, is surrounded by a colourfully rich assortment of lush trees and shrubs that wrap around and embrace the house like a stole. The wide expanse of a stone staircase cascades down the slope from the house to a semi circular platform, were you can view the 'mirror' lake beneath. This is just one of the garden's beautifully contrived aspects. The gardens at Sizergh are that classic English style of an informal appearance disguising a tightly structured formality. They are one of its chief delights anytime of the year, and they are endlessly receptive to a improvised wander through is topiary arcades, convoluted winding pathways and moss bedraggled rock gardens.

One of the qualities that strike you about the interiors of Sizergh, is that so many of its rooms are lined in gorgeous 16th century panelling,. Each with their own detailed fire surrounds and mantles richly carved in the darkest of dark wood. It is remarkable that they have remained untouched by later flourishes of fashion. There are also some exquisite plasterwork ceilings too. It appears that in the Westmorland borders of the Lake District,  money was never that flush to stretch to completely demolishing and rebuilding a stately home in a more contemporary style. This has hence preserved  rooms pretty much as they were originally conceived. Sizergh's uniqueness, is a veritable treasure trove of the odd and the gob smacking, which is one of the things I really loved about it. As you venture through it's tumble of rooms, just tucked on a side table in a quiet corner or upon it's many shelves and mantelpieces, you'll find really examples from Sizergh's fine collection of ceramics, and other truly expensive object d'art.

Towards the end of touring the house, you progress ever upwards inside the Tower block. Eventually finding yourself at the top of the tower where you're faced with another astonishing Sizergh survival, a medieval hall with it's gallery intact. Sizergh is simply one of those houses packed with the unexpected. 

As a National Trust run property, there are all the obligatory supporting infrastructure you expect them to provide, cafe, loos, gift shop etc. It also had, on this visit an installation. Now National Trust installations, can often be truly naff, or terminally underwhelming. But Sizergh, given its own superlative ceramic collection, actually had a rather interesting and relevant installation on a long entrance table. It was a series of place settings, with ceramic plate designs and freestanding candelabra, using the forms of worms, insects and soil microbiome. This thematically also linked it with another imaginative exhibition in a barn close by, about soil and conservation in a time of climate change. So on this visit there was lots here to explore, to leave us clapping our hands like delighted barking seals.

FINISHED READING -Akenfield by Ronald Blythe

During the last war, there was a drive to document the lives of ordinary folk in the conditions of war. Home Front Diaries created for the Oral History unit, paint a less mythical and more truthful picture of what the war was actually like in the UK.  In the sixties the work of Studs Terkel in the US, and Tony Parker in the UK captured in book form the day to day experiences of working folk, living quite ordinary working lives. These were often edited down from hours of interviews. Painting a personal and affecting portrait of lives and experiences, different to those that more mainstream history books document.  

Akenfield, published at the end of the sixties, certainly chimes with the spirit of oral history, though Blythe has chosen to adopt a noticeably more literary form. Oral history testimonies, tend to let the person being interviewed communicate with a reduced editorial role given to any authorial presence. Akenfield, however, is undoubtedly based on people Blythe knew quite well and interviews he must have conducted.  All of it lovingly sewn together with Blythe's own livid experience and remembrance of how Suffolk village life had changed even during his own lifetime, over the twentieth century. Sometimes the changes in rural life were for the good. Though Blythe is unafraid to lament also what has been lost, the sense of cohesion, of a shared understanding and lifestyle. Akenfield is an evocation of how the structure of rural life changed and how that much romanticised bucolic and picturesque unity fractured and vanished.

There is a huge amount of meticulous but hidden research behind its unassuming presentation. These are not just literary ciphers, but real individuals whose lives he has used as the basis for the people he portrays here. Men and women he encountered daily, or are a composite of a particular type of individual. Because he has chosen to fictionalise how he presents these people, one is uncertain quite where verisimilitude ends and artifice begins. Is this more an evocation than a historical document? His feeling and ear for the significant telling detail in a monologue, however, is acute, as they recounts specific jobs and lifestyles and how they've modernised since the war. Everything is pointed and given greater vivacity because it comes through his mind and pen. All sorts of local worthies, midwives, sexton, shepherds, teachers, blacksmith, the old and the young, they are all here. Each presenting their view of life in a late sixties Suffolk village. And how the arrival of the middle class incomers from the towns is changing the village, with their immaculately curated homes and an idealised view of village life.

The war turned out to be the final break in the traditional cohesion. The men who returned damaged psychologically or physically, often did not want to return to the drudgery of their old life and its limited prospects. And so a way of being that had existed for centuries, went into decline. Blythe captures the post war zeitgeist, of being caught between two forms of rural society, the ancient and the modern. The divisive pull between a collective localised unity with its sense of belonging and the individual independence of thought and self motivated action. Blythe scrupulously refuses to rose tint or overly sentimentalise the past.  Though there is undoubtedly a strong vein of melancholy present, over a way of life that has simply slipped away or faded beyond recognition. There is a grief here, a real feeling for loss. Yet, one has to ask, was this not inevitable faced with the changes economic, technological and political that rolled out after the war ended?

However, the end of the unearned social deference to a class based hierarchy, was a good thing. The way farmers once treated their tenant farm workers was reprehensible, coercive and frequently cruel. That they were paid so poorly, did eventually drive young people away to towns and cities where better prospects lay. Education is now seen as opening up opportunities. Previously education had enforced a conformist and particular view of your role in society, administered in a very paternalistic, rigid manner, that depended upon the mindless rote recitation of facts and ideas. Drilling information into young minds, that most found of little use to them in the semi-indentured life that followed. Life may be more humane and self motivated these days. But there was inevitably a cost to that, which ends up being paid in social isolation, increased loneliness and lack of a sense of human connection and belonging to a society that we form together. All the things that we bemoan the loss of today, but know not quite how to recreate. 

If only it was as simple as turning the clock back. Though I doubt we would really want that. I for one, would certainly find myself rebelling against the stifling restrictive nature of the old style of village life  Blythe in Akenfield documents the moment just before the memory of it finally flickered out. Over sixty years later the gentrification of the rural village is pretty much complete, with only a few faint glimmers left of what a tight knit insular working village could actually be like. And whilst I understand, and have resonated to an extent, with the sense of regret and cultural bereavement portrayed, I remain unsure what one could constructively do with that now, other than just hold that knowledge and feel it's contemporary reverberations. Without letting it descend into some nostalgia soaked archetype.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

POEM - Alone But Beset

As clocks clocked

and doom loomed

when all around me

felt shrill with fear

little flurries of meaning

trickled like a half forgotten stream

silent yet reproachful

beneath my sockless feet

across the marble contrivance

of linoleum in a bathroom

immaculately conceived

I stepped into the shower

and from that one moment 

could believe it was raining

divinity upon my sleepy lethargy

a body finally awoken

to an unminted morning

before the coffee percolated

perhaps I should stay here

bricked in like an anchorite

behind a crystal clear screen

hermetically sealed

in this damply insufficient realm

that I call home 

alone but beset 

by one niggling question

Did I love them 

enough?

Stephen Lumb

Written October 2026

CHURCH LARKING - Appleby in Westmorland Parish Church

Built in local red sandstone St Lawrence's appears like many churches in this district to be excessively worn. The stone seems not sufficiently durable enough for the weather it encounters. And the finesse of the carving of its porches and window tracery is a little lumpen and solidly executed.  It's not the sort of stone you would normally make a church out of. It is rather poor in quality. But if it's the best you've got available, then here it is. It is not then unexpected that St Lawrence's has had repeated restorations and revamps over it's nine hundred years history.

It sits squat and low in the valley. It has a clerestory and tower, both heavily crenellated. The tower is the oldest part of the church, it's lower level dates back to the late 12th Century. The majority of its nave and chancel were rebuilt in the 14th and 15th Century.  With some late perpendicular window insertions. In 1655 the ubiquitous Lady Anne Clifford, very fond of splashing her wealth around this district, spent money on restoring the church. 

The Victorians had two further goes at improving it's interior. In the 1830's when the unusual, and very fine plasterwork ceiling was installed in the nave by Christopher Hodgson. Further restorations were made in the 1860's that included the insertions of some rather splendid stained glass windows by Heaton, Butler & Bayne or William Wailes, both Gothic revival specialists. There was extensive restoration work done in the 1960's and again in 2015 after severe flooding from the River Eden that snakes around the back of the land the church rests on.

The interior is largely decorated in style, It has a quiet and humble appearance with little sense of architectural loftiness to its nave. The most notable object in the nave is the beautifully carved organ with its cherub heads and dramatic three turrets for its pipes. This is sited against the west wall and seems enormous and far too dominating for a church of this size. It was originally a gift to the church from Carlisle Cathedral by its dean in the 17th century.

The chapel in the north east is dedicated to the Clifford family, and you'll find there funeral monuments to Lady Anne Clifford. A black marble plaque with an extensive display of her lineage displayed in heraldry shields. For someone whose inheritance was seriously curtailed by this lineage You can't help thinking that even in death she was not above labouring the point. Her monument is accompanied by the effigy in alabaster of her mother Lady Margaret.

Generally St Lawrence's is architecturally modest, but is nevertheless a warmly welcoming medieval church, worth a visit.