LISTENING TO - Trying Times by James Blake

James Blake's seventh album, marks a significant shift on many levels for him. Two years ago he took a major gamble, left his record label, dropped his agent, and launched himself as an independent artist with his own label. On a practical level he was taking full charge of the direction of his career and how its marketed. Enjoying having a much more direct connection with his fan base. He distrusted the widely used streaming model of record companies, that wasn't demonstrably lucrative for the artist, nor an effective way of promoting and selling your work, as it has often being made out to be. So, the last two years since Playing Robots Into Heaven have proved to be a steep learning curve. But out the other end of all this comes Trying Times, which is probably James Blake's most musically and thematically coherent album, he has made so far.

Trying Times, is on the surface a simple sequence of love songs, often distant and imaginary, fracturing or malformed by modern troubles in maintaining any sort of loving relationship. But, like the song The Death of Love, it is also a comment on this particular moment in our culture, where our tech mediated lives are funneled into increasingly divisive and hate filled dead ends. Where we find tolerating differences, any lack of convention, or merely an alternative opinion, increasingly tricky territory. 

The soundscape on Trying Times is recognisably James Blake's, but it is more organically sparse and sparing in its arrangements, with the keyboard and Blake's voice often clearly placed right up front and unfiltered, than previously. He is less inclined to throw everything bar the kitchen sink at a track, and if all else fails drown it in echo, of voice modulation. Quite often, he starts from a melodic line borrowed from another person's music, whether it's a choral line from Cohen or a 50's doo wop, it sets the scene for the song that is to follow. The idyllic opening of I Had A Dream She Took My Hand, demonstrates the fantasy world that this lilting waltz time song exists within. 

The album opens with Walk Out Music, with a vocal exchange between two voices chiming in with 'Your no good, to anyone...anyone...to anyone....dead, dead, dead ' Blake uses this device of two voices intertwining and sharing a sentence to manifest an internalised dialogue. Which here drops in other words as reminders, that also there's 'trust' and 'opportunity' present as you walk out into a new world. It's an immaculately simple song about reticence and embracing whatever is currently present. And in the songs which follow :- The Death of Love - I had a dream she took my hand  and Trying Times, we find him laying out some of the best songs of the album.

The song Trying Times is undoubtedly the pivotal heart of this album, arriving with 'You know I'm shredded by the time I'm home' and how though ' I'm an eyesore, your a sight for sore eyes'. How our close relationships with others constantly saves us from being swallowed up by our self preoccupations. Our lack of external loves and friendships being a danger to us all. The video has Blake sat beneath a triangle of spinning plates, that one after another fall down during the song. A cogent metaphor for modern life requiring us to do so many things at once, we cannot help but feel we fail to attend properly to all aspects of our life. 

Blake's career has been fortunate in that he has become the much sought after producer and collaborator with a wide range of top level artists, from Rosalia and Beyonce, to here on the track Doesn't Just Happen, with the distinctive authorial tones of Dave - 'If being a man was easy I'd still be me cah I do shit the hard way'  he declares. That he understands 'I know you want to make it to heaven, but it doesn't just happen'. There is a very catchy walking keyboard refrain that ambles cyclically across the background throughout this track, concerning the day to day travails of a man just trying to do good, in the face of adverse conditions. It's one of the many highlights of the album. Others well worth catching, are - The Rest of Your Life  - Through The High Wire. The album winds up with Just A Little Higher. Which concludes the album with one of its most telling lines of lyric- 'Adjust your sights, Cos they're playing us, From a great height'

Like many of Blake's albums, Trying Times has a longish running time of forty seven minutes. Whilst he does alway give you value for money, I do think a judicious cut of a couple of tracks might have been of benefit to the impact of the album, as a whole. A problem when you are your own boss is, who tells you when further editing is required? There is a danger that you are too close to the thing you are creating, and understandably love, to stand back far enough to perceive what it really needs.  

That said, I'd say Trying Times does sustain its length better than some of his previous albums. You are carried along by the all enveloping soundscape he has placed the songs within. There are no overly dramatic lurches away from its languid and often rhapsodic orchestrations. These minor reservations aside, Trying Times gets a big thumbs up from me, I absolutely love it.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

FINISHED READING - Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura

Imagine you can meet someone from your past ife, with whom you had a strong connection. It could be a lover, a friend or a relative. And even though they are now dead, you can arrange to meet them between dusk and dawn during a full moon. To perhaps resolve some long burning question, ask their advice or help with an issue, or simply just to spend time with them once more. You can only do this once in your life, so chose carefully.  If you chose to do so, you have to contact a 'go between' who asks you who you need to see and why, and then dialogues with the deceased about whether they wish to meet this person or not. If they do, they go ahead and make all the arrangements for a meeting in a hotel room. This is the basic story set up of Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon. 

And so we meet Manami Hirase, a young woman whose lived a life which she feels is of no significance to anyone. She feels internally in constant despair. The one highlight of her life was encountering Saori Mizushiro, a TV celebrity, when she was excessively drunk,, hyperventilating in the street, and Saori had calmly helped her in a peak moment of distress. Saori has recently died unexpectedly, and Manami wishes to talk to her again as she feels her life no longer has any point.

Another 'go between' client, Koichi Tsuchiya is a successful and very busy businessman. He starts a relationship with Kirari Himukai, all goes well, they fall in love, she moves in with him. But then one day she appears to pack her things and leave never to be heard of again. Seven years later, a tortured and embittered man, Koichi is wondering whether to have her legally declared dead, so he can finally draw a line on this relationship. But then he hears about the 'go between' and has to consider whether knowing she was alive or dead would really help.

These are just two of the often complex life stories touched on in this sensitively written book. All the clients the 'go between' helps are living lives that in someway cannot move on because of an issue that has stubbornly remained an obstacle. Each time Tsujimura describes the background of her characters life dilemmas and how they discover the 'go between'. These meetings with the dead may resolve the central issue, but not always in the way the client expected or desired. Some feel released to live their lives more fully, others remain haunted by something reprehensible they did, which their meeting with the deceased still fails to resolve. 

Tsujimura's writing style ( as translated ) is composed quite simply and plainly. In very grounded real terms the messiness of emotions and issues at play in any single life, are revealed. It deftly avoids stepping into sugary sentiment, which given the subject matter is often laced with tragedy, it could so easily do. The lives she describes come across as universally relatable, filled as they are with quite ordinary guilt, envy, love, loss and remorse, everything is here.

The final chapter about the 'go between' we've see appearing throughout the book, provides a satisfying twist at the end of the book. Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon was a huge success in Japan when first published, and has subsequently been adapted into a movie. It does, in many ways mine a recurring vein in Japanese fiction, of the closeness of ancestors, being able to meet and dialogue with the ghosts of your relatives, crops up incidentally quite a lot. This novel also has the recognisable tone of gentle quirkiness which a lot of mainstream Japanese fiction employs. It's not an earth shatteringly original book, but it is very well written and I for one found it a really engaging and satisfying novel to read.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

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INSIGNIFICANT MOMENTS IN THE FOLDS OF TIME - Keeping A Float

And so he'd become a student. A point in anyone's life when escaping home suddenly revealed a whole new level of disconcerting decision-making, one's he'd never really wanted. He could now, within reason and capability, do anything. His life could assume whatever colour he chose, take on any smell or taste he desired it to have. The internal friction between the risk taking and the risk averse, combined with the financial impoverishment accompanying being an inexperienced sophomore, almost paralysed  him. These constraints of life weighed heavier upon him than you might expect. Why wasn't he more devil may care and fancy free? He couldn't afford to be.

Money proscribed the amount of insouciance you possessed, abundance was liberating, any lack felt imprisoning. Today he was painfully aware that the sparse wafers of cash in his wallet were being drawn from a rapidly diminishing bank account. And it was only mid term. Christmas, and the financial relief of living off his parents income, well, that was more weeks away than there was the money for. He'd never had to manage his own money before. Paid his landlady rent, feed himself, decide when he could afford a special treat? These concerns unsettled him. He'd yet to learnt how to efficiently manage the surges of anxiety. Still in a semi improvised phase, money could indeed suddenly run short without him fully understanding how. Living abstemiously off bread and butter, until the next munificent grant cheque arrived. That, or quick return home to check the parents were still alive, and be well fed for a weekend or more if he could swing it.

In the meantime, he'd make the most of subsidised meals served in the college canteen, and plugged any remaining pangs of hunger with anything readily and cheaply available in his local Spar. This was consistently bags of crisps (cheese and onion, not plain), doughnuts ( with, not without jam ) and a ubiquitous saccharin filled cola ( bottled, not canned). Cos he did have standards. Cola had long been his late teenage drink of choice, a sugary drug rush he craved with it's sweet caramel fizz. It was bad for his acne, and as a consequence his self confidence. He looked at his puny eighteen year old body in the mirror, saw the small tire of fatty doughy settling around his waist, and sighed with a hopeless shrug. This would only continue expanding, until he took control of his sugar and fat consumption. But you can't fight your genetic inheritance. Anyway, this sort of life shaping decision felt, as yet, completely beyond him. He proudly wore the badge of blind but youthful optimism, convincing himself it took decades for waistlines to turn obesely flabby, anyway. There was oodles of time left to self indulge, before the outward preservation of a deceptively lithe youthful appearance would suddenly enter a more noticeable phase of shameful decline.

Today, he was spending his remaining lunchtime, doing what he often chose to do, wander aimlessly around the semi-rundown, punched out windows of wharf buildings by the old docks. The desultory ruins of an industry broken to smithereens by fishing quotas and adversarial wars over trawling rights, now totally abandoned to historic sentiment. As was his want, he stopped on a favoured wrought iron bridge, once the pride of this municipal trading city. The malnourished bones of which now stuck out like a flicked V sign. Manifesting decay in the sickly flow of its streams that fed into the estuary. There were days when the water seen hurtling down from this bridge, would be a bright scarlet red, or a fluorescent yellow, occasionally pure turquoise blue. Whatever the dye wash the works upstream needed to dump. On this occasion the stream was an unusually normal piddle of shit colour. 

Taking a short cut over rubble and wire infested scrubland. Squeezing between the rotting wood skeletons of dilapidated semi-industrial sheds, he reluctantly ambled back in the general direction of college. The one beacon of bright modernity nestled, as it was, beneath the venerable soot blackened statue of a Victorian anti slavery campaigner, perched atop a pillar like Simeon Stylites. Whose watchful eyes missed nothing. Nope, he wasn't ready to return to the over peopled thrum of college campus yet. He veered off down a cute, narrow, almost Dickensian, alley peopled by single roomed solicitors offices and the smallest pub in the town. He knew exactly where he was headed, the large sprawling family run department store he'd recently discovered. Where he'd found nectar of pure gold. Welcomed smoothly in through revolving doors, swerving passed the perfume counters, he clambered in increasingly excited expectation up the slow moving escalators. Quickly negotiating his way around the complex layout of the men's clothing department, then haberdashery, then interiors, then gardening, til he reached his top floor nirvana, the department store cafe.

Calling it a cafe, was a bit of a misnomer. It was more a perfunctory adaption of a series of changing rooms into a wall bar and a gaggle of stools. It's dreary terracotta paintwork, much scuffed with disconcerting major dents in its walls, as if it had suffered the consequences of a pensioner bar brawl or two. This cafe was tightly squeezed into one corner of the retail trading floor. With not one window to look out from, through which to view the grey mist shrouded suicidal world beyond. If you were a troubled introvert seeking the rejuvenating solace of being truly alone, and not just with your thoughts, this was the one, the only place. It was his secret pleasure, one not to be shared with anyone else, ever. Because this cafe served him his new obsession, a highlight of this or any other day - the ginger beer float.

 

WATCHED - The Importance of Being Ernest

You are currently able, for the next month only, to watch this National Theatre production of the Oscar Wilde classic for free on You Tube. It's definitely worth a watch. It takes a quite radically new approach to the presentation of Wilde. It's colourful, camp and makes some bold casting choices. The sort that will get a right wing anti-woke homophobe foaming from all their inflamed orifices. Which has to be a good thing in a free society. It's the second time I've seen it, and whilst it is an engaging production, a repeat viewing does double underline it's weaknesses. The things that are lost due to this style of production. And the expressive limitations of some of its actors. 

Wilde, as a playwright is always deceptively light on the surface. So much so, that modern audiences do not read some of the queer code he wrote into a play like The Importance Of Being Ernest. That the Victorian gentlemen in particular might disconcertingly recognise. The living of a double life where a respectable home life, wife and children, is kept separate from an alternative lifestyle that inhabits a darker, clubby, more sexually deviant lifestyle. Wilde knew all about this from personal experience, of course. And this play was the highpoint of his West End success, literally months before scandal and the infamous trials erupted. Some people didn't like the way he lampooned and exposed the moral hypocrisy of his era. So were more than happy to put an additional boot in.

There is always a character in his plays that is the main cypher for the Wildean viewpoint on society. Here it is Algernon ( Ncuti Gatwa ) the free living batchelor with a conveniently ill friend Bunberry. Who he has to visit at short notice whenever he wants to disappear from town. He is flamboyant and devil may care, and tries to influence his friend Ernest (Hugh Skinner) to be likewise. But Ernest is in fact far too ernest in his concern for status and respectability, But finds he cannot marry Gwendolyn (Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́ ) because her mother Lady Bracknell ( Sharon D Clarke ) in examining his background found it wanting. Though he is not without money or property, he was adopted, and doesn't know who his parents were. His alter ego, when he is in the country is called Jack, and he is the guardian of his 'little cousin' Cecile ( Eliza Scanlen ) The ludicrous extent to which he is willing to go to maintain this deception, is where the main farcical thrust comes from. Everyone is trying to be something they are not.

The production opens with Algernon appearing in a vivid pink gauzy froo froo dress, playing a piano in a gentleman's club. It all turns a bit transgressive and raunchy, then we are suddenly back in a respectable elegant turn of the century drawing room. This sets the general approach of this production. It's full of big broad camp infused gestures, and an almost Carry On level of winking and nudging to the audience. Ncuti Gatwa undoubtedly has charm, and self evident charisma by the bucket load and plays his character's flamboyant knowingness well. He crowd pleases, with plenty breaking of the fourth wall. I have yet to observe in anything I've seen him in so far, whether there is any more to him as an actor than this well honed affable quality. 

This directorial approach works only because it is prepared to sacrifice nuance to nudge nudge comedy. Wilde's satirical wit is playful, and this is often hidden in an elegant turn of phrase that requires pointing out by the actor. The problem with this production is that it is frequently tone deaf to these, and walks over subtleties needing emphasis in its rush for an easy guffaw. This broadness of tone, however, is consistently adopted by everyone in this production from Lady Bracknell to Gwendolyn to Ernest to Cecile. Though Cecilia is supposed to be a naive fanciful ingenue, inexperienced in worldly matters. She is played here as someone who is somewhat emotionally retarded for her age, which is far from what is required. 

The production doesn't hang about. Thankfully, it keeps a brisk pace, and performs an enjoyable romp. Though on my second viewing, by the interval I'd begun to find its constant titivating of your chuckle muscles with a feather boa, somewhat tiresome. Though it makes nods towards there being a subtext, they are just nods. Sometimes in order to amuse, you have to take comedy with great seriousness. This play does not benefit, ultimately, from being presented as though it's an end of the pier / drag revue. It's an absolute riot to watch once, but twice just reveals how little more it can offer you.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Locke ( 2013 )

Ivan Locke ( Tom Hardy ) is driving his car along a busy motorway.  His journey is being punctuated by a range of phone calls, pulling his attention, often in opposing directions. He's an extremely  competent man working for a firm managing the practical logistics of constructing a huge new development. 

Tomorrow a huge pour of concrete will mark an important foundational stage in this job, and Ivan has, out of character, just announced he is not going to be there to supervise it. His immediate superior goes completely ballistic over the phone. Ivan is evasive at first, as to why he won't be there to oversee it. He's not going to be back home in time to watch the match with his family either. It turns out that he is on his way to support a woman who is about to give birth to his baby. A one off casual shag nine months ago, has now become this moral obligation that means he needs to be there. Potentially threatening both his career and previously happily contented lifestyle. 

Written and directed by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) this is a tautly written one hander. One forgets just how brilliant Hardy can be as an actor, when given a superlative script to work with. That this is gripping stuff, packed with emotional tensions, explosive anger and edge of the seat frustrations, is down to Hardy's ability to communicate the essentially self deluded goodness of Ivan. The turmoil going on in his heart and mind is visible, as he tries in vain to not let taking responsibility for his one reckless mistake, completely ruin everything else.

You only ever hear voices on the other end of the phone. But they are recognisably those from a list of top notch English actors - Andrew Scott, Olivia Coleman, Ruth Wilson, Tom Holland, Ben Daniels, Alice Lowe. They vividly paint in sound the picture of confusion, despair and fury about why Ivan has chosen to do this. Why? Well its something to do with not wanting to behave irresponsibly like his father did. Which is communicated via Ivan occasionally having a conversation with his Father as though he were sitting in the car's backseat. This movie as a whole is nail bitingly believable, but this was one point where I felt its sure footedness nearly tripped over itself. Hardy makes it credible, but only just.

Locke is like watching a masterclass in subtly nuanced acting from Tom Hardy aided by skilled direction from Knights.  Apparently Hardy performed the script, filmed in a car on a motorway, twelve times. The best bits being then edited into this final film. I found myself unexpectedly deeply gripped, by what seemed at first an unpromising premise.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

POEM - Collating Pebbles

I hear popular 

invidious distinctions 

made on the pages
of books and rhymes

reformulating history

as though belonging

a sense of place were a matter 

of the purity of its ingredients 

cooked in a mythic ancestral soup

selecting only the whitest pebbles 

from a beach of mixed aggregates 

wilfully ignoring the continental drift

the gravelled tides 

that brought everyone to an island

you really have to want to get too

our shingled beaches 

ever shifting in their formation

with each lunar cycle 

carry whatever flotsam 

the waves throw up

for we remain 

as ever we were

a resolutely mongrel nation 
our noble destiny our right of birth 

is to be cross bred 

via our estuaries and ecstasies 

by glorious virtue of evolutionary jism

with Neanderthal pebbles, 

Celtic pebbles, 

Roman pebbles, 

Scandinavian pebbles, 

Angle, Saxon and Jute pebbles, 

Norman French, Dutch and Andalucian

and any other exotic gene pebble 

we might pocket through our travails

through the gravel 

of this washed up lineage we have

absorbed cultures 

with the insatiableness of blotting paper

adventuring across seas

migrated seeking fortunes in 

foreign climes, 

conquered, quelled and capitalised

on the achievements of countless

civilisations whilst

we forged then forgot an Empire

that we ethnically cleansed 

of our sins and repainted beneficent 

should you chose to

though why ever should you 

define our nation by the narrowest alley 

travelled between one street and the next

then we all become foreigners, immigrants and refugees 

by virtue of crossing a road

become prey for territorial street gangs

lurking on the other side of an

invisible boundary line

someone thought up

on the back of a fag packet

we are all in a world wild search 

for a destination sublime

to find whatever our true home is 

and wherever we choose to land

humankind makes that 

into the flesh and bones of a nation

collated out of the inconspicuous ruins 

of our collective vagrancy 

our primary homelessness

we wander arrive

we settle 

and conjure

a less muddied destiny for ourselves 

with whoever we are with 

wherever it is that we are

nothing about a nation is eternal

nor sacrosanct 

we briefly share genetic time

together on a river

that floats us downstream

into a vast encompassing sea

into which we all become 

indistinguishable 

from water

in the end.

Written by Stephen Lumb February/March 2026

FINISHED READING - The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker by Annie Gray

Annie Gray begins the story of the High Street in the 1300's is in the aftermath of plague and famine, England is recovering economically, a whole host of new towns, or burgh's created a century before have been given the right to hold weekly markets. The market town is being born. Markets had of course existed prior to this time, held within monastic precincts, or more informally as trading fares in towns. The royal charters that gave a town the right to hold markets overseen by the local authority. These markets were a lot more chaotic and insanitary then we'd find acceptable today. Even in their time, people were unsure they were a good idea. They easily became places where criminality and prostitution happened. These markets were not just to sell food produce, but for more specialist trades such as haberdashery or bookselling. Overtime, those stalls that proved most popular would forsake their weekly market stall and open a permanent local shop. These were often nothing more than an open window or doorway onto the street, which may have produce hung around it. Product merchandising was in its infancy. People learned first hand what worked and what didn't.

Once you've opened a shop, things have not substantially changed in centuries. You always have to work hard to tempt people to cross your threshold. Giving good customer service has been a reliable way to create customer loyalty. Word quickly getting around through recommendation, as does a reputation for poor service or workmanship. One of the themes over the centuries has been for shops to become stockists or a mixture of products from across a wide spectrum of sectors. Any shop could develop into a place where you could find literally anything you might need. Hence the Bazaars, Emporiums, Hardware Stores. Department Stores, Shopping Malls, even the online retailers such as Amazon or Temu continue to trade on this. The one stop shop that becomes a timesaver. 

Post the Second World War, a lot of traditional High Street properties were destroyed during the bombing of cities, so small independent initiatives, began taking over properties off the main street.  Often dark damp cellars selling trendy clothes to a youth market that they knew would seek them out. These boutiques had their own unique counter cultural ambiance which more mainstream shops soon began to mimic. A good retailer has to be attentive to what is happening on the street, and be responsive to that. And the entrepreneurial pop up or start up store is one way to test the water and begin to make your mark.

Annie Gray, describes this broad sweep of several hundred years of development in the British High Street. She has a wonderful sense for the colours and smells of retailing as it develops into the highly competitive market place of today. Talking us for a stroll down a High Streets of York. London, Leeds or Brighton in different eras, to demonstrate the various trends in that period, and why they have emerged. Each new innovation appearing to provoke renewed consternation about the moral decline it might instigate, or the deleterious effect new more vigorous fashions might have upon more staid traditional retailing. Beneath a panoply of local initiatives such as Market Halls, Bazaars, Shopping Arcades, Victorian Covered Indoor Markets, Department Stores. Boutiques, Superstores, Supermarkets, Shopping Malls and out of town retail parks, we find the social and cultural trends that caused them to be created. Not all of them stood the test of time. 

Some shops changed their target market, a toyshop, for instance, was once a shop solely for adults where you could discover all sorts of eccentric frippery, gadgets and other useless ephemera, only later does a toyshop become specifically aimed at children. Tentatively self service starts to be introduced, into an industry that had previously built and prided itself on offering personal attentive service. Modern customers, increasingly want to be left alone to buy without being hassled by sales assistants. Undoubtedly self service check outs in supermarkets has been driven more by the cost effectiveness of requiring less staff, than personal choice, and the jury is out on whether this impersonal way of processing purchasing will last. It maybe our alienated individualism will simply increase, until we find the nature of human interactions too taxing, and so avoid the cashier aisle altogether.

People have been calling the death knell of the High Street for decades. And certainly some once giant retail behemoths have fallen, but that could be to do with their slowness in adapting. Even in our internet age, some retail sectors remain remarkably resilient, where people still prefer to have a more hands on touchy feely relationship with what they buy. Retail has always gone through quite dramatic shifts that can be appear quite unpredictable. Who knows their maybe a revolt against the impersonal data reaping nature of online purchasing. The rise of the artisan and craft based shops maybe one symptom of our desire for the bespoke and unique returning. To live in a less mass produced, less monitored world. 

Annie Gray's book provides an excellent and enjoyable overview of how shopping and the High Street has changed. How it both creates and follows the social trends of their times to this day.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

FEATURE - A Day In The Life Of An Enshitificator

I recently came across this video by the Norwegian Consumer Council, which I rather love. It somehow manages to be endearing about a subject matter that is actually really concerning.

SHERINGHAM DIARY NO 138 - Everyday Horariums

On the Park n Ride bus travelling in to Norwich centre, a little boy, was perched on his Father's lap. He'd been told to look out for the Castle, and was excitedly trying to be the first to spot it. Without really knowing, apparently, exactly what the castle, or any castle for that matter, looked like. So every grand looking building we passed he'd yell ' there's the castle', to which his Dad said ' No, that's not the castle' and the boy asked what was it then, and his Dad somewhat befuddled blurted out ' Oh, I don't know, but that's not the castle.'  And this went around the exact same cycle of call and response several times, before the bus eventually pulled up right beneath the castle bailey.

Copyright - Paul Bommer

We were in Norwich on a few errands, including a far from necessary visit for me to Book Hive. I came away with two books, so I was restrained. But also we came to see bits of The Queer Fest events. A market of LGBT+ craft makers in The Forum, felt a bit like time travelling back to the 1970's with slogans, badges and lots of agit prop ephemera, rainbows on everything, ever so slightly naughty, horny and amateurishly homespun. Baggy mohair jumpers, dungarees, lurid hair colours, you get the picture. This tacky alternative culture, felt slightly disappointing, in that we are still doing this type of stuff.  The Queer Fest exhibition at the Anteros Gallery in Bridge Street was much better. The best thing was Paul Bommer's painted ceramic plates etc, executed in the style of delftware, but the subject matter was more explicit than traditional. My favourite was entitled A Gay Drop In Centaur, which portrayed exactly that. Such wit and irreverence, is really in short supply these days. He's well worth searching out you'll find his website here - Paul Bommer

A friend recently loaned me a book by Ronald Blythe. In it I came across a term that I think could prove useful, it's called 'ground truthing'. It originally comes from modern cartography, 'ground truthing' is the need to cross check remotely sensed technological data, ariel or satellite imagery, with the actual physical circumstances on the ground. It''s become a general term used for whenever you need to test an abstract theory against the practical reality. It struck me as being what the Buddha asked his followers to do with his teachings, to test the truth of them in the ground of their own experience.  'Ground truthing' feels even more important these days, with our AI bedraggled information servers, faked imagery, algorithmic beset world. Where everything is delivered to us via a suspect and manipulated technological intermediary. When your computer just serves you what it thinks you want to see, hear or already believe, identifying where the truth of a matter lies has become extraordinarily valuable, not that this is easy to establish.  So, ground truth the hell out of it, I say.

I was sat at table in Cornish Bakery, whilst Hubby placed and collected our order. For me, the usual Cornish Pudding with a side of Oat Latte. It was extremely busy, so bagsying your table before ordering proved essential. Two, thirty something women, one American, one English, did likewise and plonked themselves on a table just by ours.  Their animated discussion came around to what they should order. The English woman piped up, brightly bushy eyed, like a hyper active puppy ' Have you tried a Chai Latte. Mmmm, It's a must have.'

In Iran we have the unprincipled executing the unspeakable. I mean what the world needs now is two wannabee autocratic western dictators bombing the hell out of a middle eastern autocratic regime, and doing so in order to help democracy along.  No one is mentioning weapons of mass destruction this time, cos, it has unpleasant associations of the last time the US thought it could sort out the world, and made it worse instead. They will leave Iran in a huge mess, throw them a dust pan and brush, and say 'here make yourself a democracy out of streets of rubble- Bye!'

As many regular readers of this blog will know, I have an erratic sleep pattern. I know I am not alone in this. I could waste a paragraph or two here, listing all the numerous factors that may cause me to have a restless night. But take it for granted you have better things to do than listen to a catalogue of my moans and self justifications. For a number of years I've been attempting to cultivate a more equanimous relationship with insomnia. This is how it is, and being in a state of frustrated anxiety around it, though perfectly understandable, really doesn't appear to help. Staying relatively calm and not getting too fraught, is better. Hostility helps no one, so I've stopped doom scrolling the self help cures for insomnia tips. Turned a deaf ear to the unhelpful information about it shortening your life. Chilled out about whatever unspeakable time in the morning it was. This is not to imply I don't have my bad mornings, when I feel as though I'm dragging myself around like a half drowned rat. I do, dear reader, I do. But these pass, just so long as I can leave them alone, and don't stoke the embers of 'poor me' self pity too much.

A bit of medieval bedtime reading

Recently it dawned on me that my sleep routine has more than a passing resemblance to a monastic horarium. A sequence of stages in the night, where a monk would rise to pray or perform a devotional ritual. One of those, Lauds, happens between 2 and 3 am, a common time of awakening. This coincides with the actually rhythm of the sleep cycle we have, Apparently we naturally lift out of deep sleep around this time. The thing to note here, is that it's not freakish nor unhelpful necessarily to be awake at this time of night. After many years of filling my early risings with internet scrolling and binge watching detective series. I decided this was not a great set up for my general mental state, so I put a stop to all that. Now what I do is I have breakfast, write in a Study Journal, read the dharma, meditate and round it all off with a session of Tai Chi. 

I have been known to take a nap after this, and can, if the winds are favourable, attain an additional one or two hours sleep. So on a good night, I may have combined around seven to eight hours sleep, without making too big a fuss about it. A long unbroken period of sleep can indeed be really satisfying. But it's a mistake to turn that into an ideal. Aiming for unbroken sleep is, I've found, not necessarily the most helpful thing to expect of yourself, when insomnia is an issue. I am finding it personally more useful to lean in to what is actually happening, in as unforced and kindly way as possible. 

Whilst waiting in a queue in the Norwich branch of Sostrene Green, an elderly couple standing next to us were having a bit of an argy bargy. He was all gruff vocal noises grinding away incessantly wittering in her ear. The subject matter of this conversation remained incoherent to me. But when she struck up in reply, it rang out emphatically and crystal clear - ' I cannot fathom why you would say such a thing, I am so, NOT in denial'

The kitchen revamp, slash repaint, continues to make slow progress. The decorating part of it has dragged on far far longer than expected, similar to a conversation with someone who doesn't pick up on the visual signs that you want to leave. I've had nearly a dozen cupboard doors to repaint. Initially this meant heat gunning the vinyl shell off, priming and then four coats of heavy duty paint. But the cupboard paint proved to be not that durable to even the most minor of knocks. So I had to start spray varnishing them, which has added yet another time consuming level to the already lengthy process. This has, I'll admit, turned it into one long and somewhat tedious task. I have had days, when I've felt trapped in a relentless production line. Emotional struggles aside, the end is in sight, but curiously its always at this point where time appears to be most dragging it's heels. Maintaining engagement and managing my energy have become my two guiding practices. It's a slow steady process, be slow and steady alongside it, not wishing for it to be quicker, when it won't be.

As we left town travelling back to the Park n Ride, we passed a very familiar junction called The Boundary. A strange little island around which traffic circulates, even though it's not really a roundabout. Plonked in the middle is a huge Indian Curry Restaurant, that has been there for decades and decades. Though this has been through at least three different iterations and names in the eight years we've been here. The current owner has chosen to rename it - JOYS SPICE.  I am, however, still awaiting an apostrophe or something to indicate exactly how I am supposed to interpret what that means.

FAVE RAVE - Small Prophets

Micheal Sleep (Pearce Quigley) is a man living a life half awake to the world outside it. Half working in a DIY store where he actively spreads misinformation about buckets having gone out of use. Half waiting, seven years after her unexplained disappearance, for his wife Claire to return. Everything in his home is left in a state of suspension. His Father ( Micheal Palin) who is in a care home, suggests to his son that he dig out an old folder about homunculi that he once grew in jars. These small prophetic emanations, maybe able to tell him whether Claire is still alive, let alone whether she still loves him. And so he starts cultivating them in his dilapidated garage.

Small Prophets is a beautifully conceived piece of eccentric whimsy written by Mackenzie Crook. Like in Detectorists, his previous cult hit, he manages to capture the essence and lonely obsessiveness of the modern single man. Who becomes consumed by one idea or activity to the point of loosing touch with ordinary reality.  Existing inside this sub-realm hermetically sealed off from other, apparently more sane, people.  Over its six episodes, Small Prophets slowly captures your imagination and your devotion.

It's filled with lovely details in its script. Michael's house and garden is a wildly unkempt mess, that his nosey parker neighbour's are simultaneously both intrigued and incensed by.  The teenage boy who is shown repeatedly cycling around and around the close. Michael's ineffectual manager at the DIY store, (Mackenzie Crook) constantly strokes his long pony tail behind his back, whilst having no real control over his workforce, and is obsessed with them 'taking their breaks'. The way Micheal adopts his Father's emphatic insistence that the beings in the jars are not little people ' they are homunculi '. The locked room in the house where Micheal has preserved a detailed recreation of a 1970's Christmas for his absent wife to come back to.

The premise sounds distinctly odd when written down, but this series has ooodles of charm and a lightly salted satirical humour, that does really grow on you. With these occasionally deeply touching moments that just pop out at you out of the blue. Like all Mackenzie Crook's writing Small Prophets has a warm gently beating heart at the centre of it, that we can all identify with.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY NO 137 - Them Philistines They Fight Pretty Dirty

Imagine, if you will, you want to build an extension onto your house. You draw up your planning application and all goes smoothly until you actually start digging the footings. Your neighbour suddenly objects to you removing a tree that is partially on their property. After some discussion you agree on a mutually agreeable way forward. What you would never expect would be that the way forward agreed upon would be to cut the tree vertically in half.

Well, we reluctantly return to the denouement of the democratically shabby tale of the Sheringham Bus Shelter. Norfolk County Council pulled out of the Transport Hub development in a fit of pique before Christmas. Since then there has been virtual radio silence. Only the shocking revelation that the public consultation had actually shown widespread public dislike of the whole project, not the wholehearted endorsement the NCC portrayed it as. Our Town Council has, in the meantime, been attempting to find a way forward with the NCC that does take into account the protesters concerns. Suddenly a planning proposal was likely. Though there was an air of sheepishness and a disconcerting lack of confidence in what they'd come up with. When the proposal was published, I was stunned and incensed. They wanted to incorporate the old 1950's Bus Shelter by cutting off the front half of it. The protesters understandably shouted 'Betrayal'.

Which incandescently insensitive and stupid individual came up with this idea, we shall probably never know. What was, however, very recognisable, was the same old NCC trait of attempting to draw a firm line under this proposals, as being the only viable option. Yet another fait accompli delivered. Well, viability depends upon how you chose to frame the criteria. There is a genuine, relatively minor inconvenience, with the old bus stop, that in the summer season the pavement becomes clogged with waiting people and people getting off buses, so casual pedestrians who just wants to pass by cannot easily get through. Widening the pavement would however entail the removal of the old bus shelter, that was the offending part of the previous proposal.

You might think, like many before me, that the ideal solution would be to move and relocate the old bus shelter further back. But like everyone in this country who offers an opinion about the financing of local infrastructure projects, none of us have a clue how much these ideas actually cost to carry out, and are universally appalled when we are told. You can hear the gammons now, declaiming - Couldn't this be better spent on the NHS?  The cost of moving the bus shelter, according to the NCC, is estimated at an additional £100,000, which they say they do not have. But what they mean by this, is that they are not willing to look for how that money might be found. Were the bus shelter already a listed building, they could apply for funding to help with it's preservation. But it's not, so you can literally do anything you want to it, demolish it, or cut it in half apparently.

If one were of a conspiratorial mindset, one might be left suspecting that cutting it in half is actually another manifestation of spitefulness. They literally went halfway to meet the protestors demands. This now festering conservative administration currently in the last month's of running Norfolk County Council, before they are resoundingly turfed out in May. To be replaced, no doubt, by the uniquely 'bull in a china shop' incompetence of a Reform party surge. So I hold out no hope for a more responsive administration. 

What happened here, in my opinion, was a planning authority attempting to use stipulations meant to judge new build applications, being insensitively applied to an older building. So we have pavement ease of access issues, wheelchair access issues. But all of these issues are already being addressed by the spanking new bus shelter that is still going to be built a few yards along from the old bus shelter. So why couldn't the old bus shelter just be left as it is, with all its accessibility inconsistencies. Because the planning department are inflexible and insist on compliance to strictures, that cannot be realistically fully achieved other than by the removal or a bastardised compromise, of the offending building. The Town Council met and discussed whether to approve this new plan. Which they duly did, so they did not hold their nerve and swallowed their integrity, which is pretty much in tatters anyway over their flip flopping. The NCC are pretty much hated and distrusted around here now all the more. So I wish them luck the next time they submit plans for public consultation.  

Bus Shelter already boxed up just in case

Is half an old bus shelter really better than none? Has this contentiousness over a undistinguished little bus shelter, really been worth of all this effort? What does it say about the ability of local government to take local concerns seriously? Was this upset a disproportionate and overly sentimental response in the first place? Is there a way through and beyond disagreements, that does not result in vilifying one side in opposition to the supposed virtuousness of another? Was something unhealthy formed out of the misappropriation of righteousness? I have to now let that go, to let it be whatever it will now be. The time for everyone involved to move on has arrived.

2026 PLAYLIST - No 6 - I Had A Dream She Took My Hand by James Blake

James Blake - I had a dream she took my hand

The second track to be released from James Blake's upcoming album Trying Times, I Had A Dream She Took My Hand, is on the surface, one ravishingly simple song. With its fifties doo wop style backing singers shimmying deeply within the mix. It is, nonetheless, infused with Blake's characteristic plaintive vocals, and fish tank orchestrations. This has the feel of something that is both contemporary and the evocation of some dreamy nostalgia that exists only in the post modern imagination. Following on after The Death of Love, this bodes well for the album, that he himself is already trumpeting as his best.  

I Had A Dream She took My Hand, takes place in this imaginative fantasy of a love affair that may or may not yet be happening in reality.  But given it's literal musical echoes of both past and present swirling around in its pool of yearning, this song luxuriates entirely in its internalised state of cultivated intoxication, which visualises a love requited. In the hands of a less sensitive artist, it might these days appear unconsciously creepy. But Blake's pure vocal lines maintain a healthy line of dreamy innocence, of an uncomplicated love seeking a hand to hold. 

2026 PLAYLIST - Beam Down by Scientist (1981)

This is such a fine piece of Dub, from its 80's golden era. I've been rather addictively playing it all week. Taken from the album Meets The Space Invaders, Beam Down opens the proceedings. Scientist was a true innovator in a very crowded field of Dubsters, in that he was prepared to go that little bit further than everyone else would. On Bean Down, it has this ambling almost gently walking rhythm over which the hardest most explosive dub is being executed. At points you are just hearing the dub, the tune has gone, completely buried under the riotous cacophony. Almost pure noise for noises sake, avant garde dub of a peerless variety. In amongst my more contemporary pieces, this three minutes plus stands the test of time. Dub is ageless.

FINISHED READING - The Private Lives of the Saints by Janina Ramirez

Janina Ramirez opens the book with a question - What was a saint in Anglo Saxon England? Whilst today we might envisage a saint as someone extremely holy, pious and a moral exemplar. To the post Roman world of England, a saint could actually be quite a controversial person, exhibiting a troubling mix of behaviours, both good and bad. Who became a saint was dependent upon, and indeed bequeathed by, their belonging to an elite class. Not necessarily by any reputational standing in the wider society. There were many reasons for someone to be declared a saint. Broadly they'd achieved something which changed and reformed the direction their society took, in a significant way. And this may or may not have been solely a matter of religious practice.

The Private Lives of the Saints, as a title is slightly misleading, because what is written here is not really about revealing their intimate private lives. It's what is known, the stuff that was out in the public arena at the time, whatever survived to be noted in documentary, historical or archeological form. Because this is the era of the Anglo-Saxons we are talking about here, that is notoriously thin on written history and leaves few traces in the ground. Much of what they created was bio-degradable by nature. They were also not a widely literate society. 

From 450 through to 1066 there was a gradual emergence from this informational black hole, but it was slow. Ramirez has hence chosen her saints carefully, as examples of how the very concept of sainthood adjusted during this period. They mark significant points in both the development of sainthood and the broader society. And as we advance through, who they were and what they actually did, becomes less a matter of dissecting the myth or hagiography looking for something that maybe verifiably true. Until it becomes an examinable history and a legacy one can have more of an informed opinion about.

So the first saints on her list, St Alban and St Brigid presented as actual living figures, are seemingly semi mythical archetypes. St Alban, as England's first martyr and saint, emerges from the chaos of a Roman Empire in decline, about to retreat from the British Isles altogether. St Alban performs the archytypal saintmaking act, of dying for his faith. And yet that Christian faith appears to have been inflected with elements that were pagan or Roman in origin. We are still in an era where Christianity could still go through periods of persecution. And martyrdom on the basis of your faith, remained a realistic cross for you to die on and become a saint through. St Brigid, however, though reported to have founded institutions and influenced the development of Celtic Christian monasticism, is also very clearly a cross fertilised construct. A hybrid of a Christian saint with a preexisting pagan goddess. Both figures highlight a period where conversions were made by forging imaginative bridges between pagan and Christian beliefs.

It became the essential path for Christian proselytising, that on entering a foreign culture, you attempted to convert the tribal nobility, kings or queens first. For then the general populace was more likely to follow. This was also where the money was too, if you wanted patronage to found a church or monastery. This was also a more secure longer term investment, personal land could be taken away, but put your money and a relative into a religious foundation you still have influence over, that was insurance. And it's clear that it was solely individuals of Anglo Saxon noble stock, who were the ones who became the Abbots, Abbesses, Bishops and Archbishops of these new religious foundations. Often running both secular and spiritual institutions. And so you find St Columba and St Cuthbert who both appear to have awkwardly straddled these two differing worlds and pressures of responsibilities. In comparison to the lives of the Anglo Saxon peasant, the life of a nun say in Whitby Abbey during the time of Abbess Hilda, was refined rather than ascetic, and lacked none of the basic essentials of life. Monastic standards of living were high relative to the general population. To a degree, austerities became a fashionable trend, mostly it was for real, but in some it was a significant affectation. Almost always assuring you of sainthood after your death.

The Viking attack upon Lindisfarne in 793 AD, shifted the entire focus of the Anglo-Saxon world in England. The relatively calmer period of saints and semi-isolated monastic piety ended, and the emphasis became the role of kings in defending Christian values against the advancing pagan hoards. And so we find the kingly martyr St Edmund and more importantly Alfred, who though undoubtedly saintly, was postumously given the epithet The Great. He almost singlehandedly created the role model for the saintly king, that any future ruler must aspire too. This is also the period of Bede, a hugely significant figure, as the first historical chronicler of English history. Again not a saint, but given the epithet The Venerable, in recognition of the national and  international consequences of his work. By the time we reach Edward the Confessor, who was a phenomenally pious ruler, he was made into the quintessential Saint of England by history, despite actually making a bit of a mess of his kingship. But by then the age of the Anglo Saxon saint king was already waining. England had already been ruled by Viking kings, so the country was up for grabs. If you had the power and military force, like the Norman's had. And who were the Normans anyway, but Scandinavians by another name. So by the time of 1066 and William the Conqueror's invasion, the age of the Anglo Saxon saint or saint king had already well and truly passed.

This book is a really captivating gem, full of snippets of information I'd never heard of before. I didn't know, for instance, that Abbess Hild was responsible for making the Anglo Saxon Cross  such a widely used and recognised symbol in the English landscape. Unlike Alice Robert's Domination, who approached this period from the angle of the development and expansion of Roman Catholicism, post Constantine, which I read recently. Ramirez keeps her skeptical interpretations on a much tighter rein, and does her best to present simply and plainly the known facts about a saint or king. Leaving you to judge, from the often limited information available, what has most likely been the case. How much you are willing to give these much lauded saints the benefit of the doubt. 

These saints do strike you as hugely admirable pioneers  nonetheless. When you consider the tricky situations and power dynamics they must have found themselves in. What treacherous paths to clinching a conversion they trod, when a tribal nobleman might take against you at any moment. But because they came from the same echelons of Anglo-Saxon society, they had a much better idea of what diplomatic levers they could pull in order to reach their ultimate aim. This was such a transitional time in the history of England, often shrouded behind the heavy fog or being called the dark ages, ro which this book brings some much needed illumination.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8