ARTICLE - Tidying Up The Workshop

In the Winter I rarely spend much time in my outside workshop. Its small, no windows, so no natural light. It can also be really really cold in there, and my bones just can't take that to the quite the same degree anymore. It's becomes this place where I dump stuff, to be sorted out, whenever. The sawdust gathering in ever larger golden drifts around my workbench. Evoking memories of playing in my Father's workshop, the pungent fresh smell of it, the sap and wood dust filled air. Some workshop tools I use were once my Father's. Though they never work in quite the same way in my hands. He was a very skilled joiner. I stand in his shadow, always feeling a bit the cack handed amateur. 

But come the Spring the time for tidying up the workshop arrives. The first milder days when I can happily work in there with the door wide open.  I've been planning quite vaguely in my mind a reorganisation. Adjusting the layout. Chucking away some of the stuff accrued, but never used in a month of Sundays. Because it is a tiny space, too tiny for surplus crap. Some of it I could relocate to the garage. But the current state of our garage? I can't bear to go in there anymore, either. That is for another time. First let's sort out the smallest room in Upper Sheringham.

I start working from top to bottom, just as my Mother taught me. Hoovering the cobwebs from the roof space and dust off the timbers. When I originally set the workshop up I made a small mezzanine type space out of planks. A place where I could store mount boards,paper and old portfolios. I was aware that the workshop had had some recent 'Winter guests'. It wasn't until I started to sort out the 'mezzanine' that I discovered quite how much damage these mice had caused. Plastic bags in shreads or with tattered edges, a foam garden knee rest chewed away like they were wood carving. Plus the usual black poo pellets scattered randomly like pepper corns. Yes, it was yuck bad.

Then I looked inside a corrugated plastic portfolio in which I'd kept some of my artwork, old art college work, some early primary school stuff. Unfortunately the tiny beings had also got in there too. Using it as their main chew, poo and pee palace. I never thought plastic could be that nutritious before. My heart slumped as I began teasing stuff out. So much if it ruined beyond keeping. I had to throw two black plastic bags of stuff away. What is left, I've just shoved in a large plastic board bag for now. I'll have to look through them again later, to see if they were really worth salvaging and preserving. Heart breaking? Yes it was.

Having uncovered this archival wreckage, I could only bear a morning of going through the pongy grimness of it. What more might there be to be discovered? By the end of the day I felt despondency settling upon me. Here was a bit of me, a bit of my experience and history already consigned to the dust bin. Its not that any of it was great art, but it had  value to me, I had made it. Nor is this entirely sentimental attachment to the finished work, its more attachment to the creativity that went into them. Creativity, unsurprisingly, is strongly bound up in my sense of who I am. 

The next morning I awoke even more struck by this. A few days before one of my Aunties, a favourite from my childhood, had died at the age of 98. An unspoken feeling of loss already hung over me. Of being just that bit more alone, as the surviving adults from my childhood years become yearly depleted, disappearing one by one. This appeared to be linked metaphorically with these mice nibbling away some of my creative history. Leaving only the regurgitated excrement of it behind. 

Time itself nibbles away at our presence. The transience of everything we ever do. I watch TV programmes like The Repair Shop, and you see how objects come to embody or represent people, keep them imaginatively alive. Objects, however, decay as much as people do, and there aren't always highly skilled crafts people there to restore what has been lost. Nor relatives to remember and tell the associated tales. Objects. with the loss of their owners or creators, eventually become divorced from their back story. In the same way we are lost when our body and mind is no longer present. In the meantime, we are frightened by the empty space one day we will leave behind us.

No one wants to be forgotten, but it happens.

SCREEN SHOT - Manchester by the Sea

Lee Chandler works as a maintenance man in Boston apartment blocks. He's a man quick to lose his temper, with a look of emotional deadness in his eyes. He gets a call. His older brother has died unexpectedly. Lee has to return to his hometown of Manchester by the Sea to sort things out. 

From the moment he returns its clear that he has a troubled history and reputation here. His brother leaves a teenage son Patrick on his own, his mother having long left for who knows where, lost her mind to alcohol dependency. Being back in his hometown stirs up painful memories from Lee's own life here. Ones he evaded facing by moving away. In the middle of all this he has to decide what is the best way to set up Patrick's future life, now he's on the cusp of adulthood.

This film is sad to its very core. A deep vein of melancholic unexpressed loss inhabits most of its characters. Life has dealt a rough deal to many in Manchester by the Sea, Lee is only one. Always trying to do the right thing, but it doesn't always come out that way. There are moments in this film when it is unbearably painful to watch. Containing such emotional truth that it punches you in the gut. I would question the need for the popular classical music, used in some scenes, it feels entirely superfluous, adding nothing to the mood. If anything it distracts your attention.

Cassey Affleck is utterly believable as this fundamentally broken man, with his drained expressionless face, prone to explosions in frustrated fist fights. An emotionally inarticulate man, if he can express himself at all it is clumsily. He does his best with Patrick, played with all the annoying knowingness and smart backchat of a young man by Lucas Hedges. Michelle Williams as Lee's estranged wife Randi, steals each of the handful of scenes she appears in. 

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

FINISHED READING - Three Books by Brother David Steindl-Rast

Gratefulness - The Heart of Prayer, was Brother David's first successful book published in 1984 .What is striking about his writing is that it is often so beautifully simple, the economy of its expression remarkable. Nothing about it unnecessary or flowery or surrounded by a theological mist or containing emphatic assertions that require further explanation, that never come. 

Like all spiritual teachers he has developed his own special emphasis through his own practice. His experience of it, and of teaching it, broadening its scope. His work with other faith traditions means he is perfectly aware that his is just one way of looking at spiritual life and practice, through a Christian lens. But he strives to make more generally applicable use of gratefulness, that doesn't just work for those of a Christian faith or any other religious disposition. We all could benefit from being more grateful, just for being alive.

The universality of his spiritual approach is grounded in lived experience. Nothing, not even the mystical, is for him, beyond being located somewhere in the life of here and now. Encouraging the development of a grateful attitude and response. And a particular interpretation of prayer, as an opening up to something other, a faith filled receptivity. As opposed to 'prayers' which are more intercessions, requests or expressions of a catechism. Faith has an intuitive connection with the mystical, whereas beliefs tend to rest upon doctrinal certainties and practices of a particular tradition. Brother David seems always to be more interested in excavating the mystical and faithful responses out from the dead weight of dogmatic assertion.

'Awakened by surprise, we can recognise that what we call a 'given' world is truly given. For we have not made it, earned it, or deserved it; chances are that we have not even fully approved of it. What confronts us is a given reality, and we recognise it as given. But only if we ackowledge this gift will our recognition lead to gratefulness. And acknowledging a gift may be far more difficult than recognising it.'

Whilst the book remained exploring the subject of gratefulness in this more universally applicable manner, I found it an easy inspiring read. As he began talking more from a specifically Christian perception, my connection with what he was communicating weakened. Early on he presents a way of perceiving what God is, as something we align ourselves with, or discover within ourselves, akin to a Way or Buddhahood. But then, for the second half of the book, proceeds to talk and refer to God as if it were something personified, an anthropomorphized deity. Something capable of beseeching and asking favours of. There seemed to be an inconsistency here.

The Way of Silence - Engaging the Sacred in Daily Life, was published in 2016. So over thirty years later. The difference in depth of understanding and presentation has noticeably progressed. The inconsistency in his earlier book barely present. His central idea here is our relationship with what we hold to be true. He uses the capitalised  term Word, though a Buddhist might use Dharma. He's again exploring our felt faith filled relationship with what is limitless yet hard to come into complete relationship with. There is a role here for the cultivation of Silence in deepening our understanding.

''We can quite readily distinguish between a mere exchange of words and a meaningful conversation. In a genuine conversation we share something that goes deeper than words. We allow the silence of the heart to come to word. In contrast to an exchange of words, a true dialogue between friends is rather an exchange of silence with silence by means of words.'

'Without understanding neither Word nor Silence have meaning. What then is understanding? We may think of it as a process, by which Silence comes to word and Word, by being understood, returns into Silence.'

'When Word deeply touches us, it takes us, sends us into action.'

He goes on to further expound the connection to gratefulness and through gratitude to the state of joy. Of the three books I've read by Brother David, this is by far the most rounded and complete presentation of his spiritual approach and practice. He is much more careful in his expression and aware not to let his own Christian faith obscure or get in the way, of what might be more universally helpful to all humanity.

Faith beyond Belief - Spirituality for Our Times, is an edited series of conversations from 2015 between Brother David and Brother Anselm Grun. Both have training in psychology, both Christians with a more open minded perspective on their faith. Brother Anselm tending to bring a more theological perspective than Brother David, who is more experiential in focus. One brings the absolute perspective to the relative, the other the relative perspective to the absolute. So there is something quite balanced about their conversations, as they each seek out a connection with what is fundamental to human experience, whilst also being tuned in to the larger mystery. 

Though they both are devoutly Christian, it is an inescapable thing in this dialogue, it is only a particular window through which they are viewing humanity. The focus remains on what it is to be human and the purpose of faith in our fully embodying that. So I still found much of it useful to read. There are glittering gems here, such as:~

Brother Anselm Grun.
'When I listen to music, I encounter the Mystery. When I go into Nature, I can experience it. Being able  to be astonished, being moved and seized by the Mystery - those would be the signs for me that someone believes. The fundamentalists separate other people into believers and non believers. But every one of us is believing and non-believing. Each of us has a godless side, and doubt is also part of faith. Doubt purifies faith'  

Brother David Steindl-Rast '
I'm a Christian, and I identify totally with that. But that only means that I express my humanity in a Christian way. What we are really talking about is not the Christian or the Buddhist thing but the human. I believe that the greatest glory of Christianity is that it really leads to what is human. The greatest glory of Buddhism is that it also leads to what is human. The human is greater and more important than the form in which we express it.'

Brother Anselm Grun
'We don't have to be grateful all the time. When suffering comes, I am not grateful - that would be too heroic a gesture. In the midst of suffering I experience pain. But I can still remember that I have not only experienced suffering and that I am not only pain. I may have people who stand by me so that I am not left alone, so that I am still alive. In the midst of suffering I will find something for which I can be grateful. It is like a handle to hold on to, so that I don't sink utterly into misery.' 

Brother David Steindl-Rast 
Personally, I see gratitude as the fundamental attitude here as well. Naturally - here I agree with you - I don't believe you can be grateful for everything. There are a great many things for which we can't be grateful. But: in every situation we can be grateful because every moment gives us opportunity. Even sickness and suffering often give us the opportunity to grow, or we learn something from them. Likewise, the situations of exploitation, war and corruption give us the opportunity to protest and oppose them. Doing something with the opportunities that are offered to us: for me that is the most important way to exercise gratitude. I concede that sometimes it can be very hard' 

Gratefulness - The Heart of Prayer -Brother David Steindl-Rast, Publisher Paulist Press  ~ ***

The Way of Silence - Brother David Steindl-Rast, Publisher Darton,Longman & Todd  ~ *****

Faith Beyond Belief - Brother's David Stendl-Rast & Anselm Grun, Publisher Liturgical Press ~ ****

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 59 - There's a Light in the Darkness of Everybodys Life

Some times in the deadliest murkiest part of the night our minds play tricks on us. Making much more of what it imagines than it should.  Falling prey to an obsession with some minutely insignificant event or encounter from our experience. It starts to bug us, frustrates us, makes us angry even. And just occasionally these thoughts in and around midnight seep into the reality of our daytime world. They become all that we can see.

Here is a small flavour of how one Sheringham resident was recently seeing their world. Posting on The Sheringham Noticeboard Facebook page, and including a photo just in case you didn't believe it was possible, the following:-

'This street light, at the top of the road has been on for 24 hours a day for at least a month. I don't know what it costs in electric. I do know it is seriously affecting my chances of doing astrophotography. I also don't know who I should report it to, unless of course it is alight all the time for a reason.'

So its not ruining their sleep, their love life, they're not raising concerns about the effect it might be having on other people in their community. Just that it ruins the possibility of them doing astrophotography. Presumably they do their astrophotography at night. So wouldn't that be when you'd expect the street light to be on anyway? 

But Stephen, perhaps you are not quite appreciating the full magnitude of the situation here. It maybe that they lay awake in the middle of the night, blinds and black out curtains drawn, fretting about this damned light that somewhere in their imagination is making their life an absolute bloody misery. This light is on all the time. All the time! A light! I've been there, I do understand. I'm not beyond finding myself at 3am in a heightened state of anxiety about whether or not I left the velux window in the shop open, and that its now raining.

What possible reason might one dream up for a street light to be on 24 hours a day ?  I suspect they were being a tad sarcastic, as am I when I say - lets invent a few. Its a means to counteract the high incidence of SAD in the area during Winter?  Its so frogs, foxes and drunks can better see their way home at any time, day or night? As a temporary lighthouse to guide the lobster fishermen home? Its a beacon for the second coming? A gathering point for the satanist chapter of an over sixties mobility scooter club. As a visible marker so novice RAF pilots can practice which bit of Sheringham to pretend to carpet bomb?

But I digress. Anyway this good person is being a conscientious citizen. They're keeping us, and the powers that be, informed. Maybe some kind person has told them who to talk to, to put their agitated mind at rest. But, seven days later they post, with a current photo to prove it is still recognisably there  :- 

'One week on from when I first reported it, this light is still on 24/7'.

So, someone is obviously not paying sufficient attention, someone is not doing their job. Someone, perhaps, does not quite give it the same degree of importance or urgency that our Facebook postee does. I feel for our postee, I really do, and probably more importantly their partner. If they have one. Or whoever it is, their friends, who have to listen to them  going on and on about the blessed street light, still being on. Wondering how quickly they can divert the topic of conversation. Imagine what it must be like if the first thing and the last thing you think about every day is whether a street light was still on.

In the comments stream they state :- 

'I've sent them the data. I can do no more'

They have sent them - the data. Not simply informed them - this street light, its on all the time - they've compiled and sent data. I see in my fevered imagination weeks of the stuff on a spread sheet. Every hour being monitored and catalogued, by this lonely individual sat at a Formica topped kitchen table unable to do anything else but tabulate - 1am, its still on.

Yet, this would not be an untypical form of human obsession. I have little foibles that irritate me, poor quality carrot cakes is only one that I post the odd cathartic post about. So I'm not immune to the public venting of frustrations, of the Why oh Why oh Why variety.  I try and be careful. To make a judgement call about what I put out there. Social media is not always your best friend, even if it does allow you to keep up a distant connection with past acquaintances. 

Social media is like a person who pretends to be your best buddy, who first takes up all your time, then defrauds you of your common sense and finally controls your entire life.  It does all this by creating a spurious sense of self importance and status. Becoming a forum for even quite ordinary folk to vent their favourite beef in public.  Social media exploits that we all have a need to be heard, and sadly often feel that we are not.

I believe, here, I'm just gently taking the mickey, but what if that isn't true?  What if what I write is painful to a person I don't even know. Is it actually good enough for me to say this is 'just a bit of fun'. One the subject of it is very unlikely to read?  I've not used their name or used their gender, to deliberately depersonalise and distance it a bit from the reality. Nonetheless I have written this and have had my fun. Other peoples responses might have got more personal and more resembling character assassination. But is that only quibbling over the degree or style of ridicule? Are some things just fair game? If so, what makes them fair? 

What this particular person posted does have the propensity to unwittingly amuse. I'm then further mining the scenario for the sake of, hopefully, a moderately humourous blog post. It long since ceased being about that original post. Its become a fantasy lampoon, one I've constructed upon selected details from that post. Through this, its become a vehicle for something else, a reflection of me and my concerns, and mine to take responsibility for. I have also to recognise that it is hard to keep your hands clean,when you've hit the paydirt of a good subject matter.

It appears I need my ideas, opinion, creativity or wit to be recognised as much as the next person.  I enjoy the process of writing for my blog. In some ways the Stephen you read is not the Stephen you meet everyday. I'm a bit more self conscious and shy, than this lightly exaggerated persona. I have my moments when I question why I write a blog at all. I do it to practice my writing skill and expression through words. To get better at it. But that is a process for my own enjoyment and amusement. The hope that others might like it too, is an add on

Both The Sheringham Noticeboard and Enjoy Sheringham More! - our local Facebook Pages, are frequently full to bursting with testy truculent posts. People who apparently have no reservations at all about loudly broadcasting their opinions online. Their tempers rapidly escalating into high dudgeon about dog poop, litter, parking charges, tourists, Covid 19 restrictions or the latest barmy thing the council has decided to do 'that is completely devoid of all common sense' .

It is those seemingly little inconsequential things, insignificant events, the broken threads in life's rich tapestry, that are often what get to aggravate the marrow in your bones. Perhaps it is harder to realise when you've completely lost the plot over an issue. But these days anyone, including myself, can bring their lost plot, their favourite pet hate, their irate obsessions, not just to the attention of the whole of Sheringham, but the whole damned world. 

So now, even you know.

Though I am still awaiting further news on the street light. 

Is it still on? or is it now off?

100,000 VIEWS

It's a Red Letter Day

100,000 VIEWS - HURRAH!

As of this moment my blog has 

reached 100,000 views.

That's since

2005 when I started it, 

so seventeen

years of its existence.

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1974 - Seven Deadly Finns by Brian Eno

In his post Roxy Music days, Brian Eno was still that exotically dressed person of somewhat indeterminate gender orientation. Hence on this single Seven Deadly Finns, he appears to be dressed as a musician attending a medieval tournament. Seven Deadly Finns bears all the stylistic quirks of early Eno, the imaginative nonsense lyric, and the unusual musical conjunctions - yodeling anyone? When I first heard it I was completely captivated and in love with it. But it came and went so quickly I couldn't get to buy a copy in 1970's Scunthorpe. Needless to say it never charted either. But it remains a rather eccentric gem.

Eno at around this point had half his lungs collapse, or something of the sort, and he gave up touring live performances. But as you can see from this rather dull and basic video, Eno didn't have much by way of performing skills anyway. This was never going to convert many folk to the Eno fan base. But the song got me, and I've been a loyal follower since. He is a person who's had a huge influence on my musical taste and love of the unconventional and experimental in music. Here are the lyrics, which have a curious logic to them, containing Eno's trademark clever word play and wit.

Oh oh the french girls with the string of pearls
Think it's such a fucking shame
That the local boys with their country joys
Never make them daisy chains
They're swapping disappointing incidents
While at the docks another ship pulls in
And suddenly the door breaks down (ooh la la)
It's the seven deadly finns

Oh oh oh soldiers and sailors
Have all been here before
Gigolos and governments
Have stumbled through that door
Because they need all those french girls with all their kiss curls
And powder in their guns
And the seven finns with their deadly grins
Tend to measure beauty in tuns.

The first is a freak with a masochistic streak
And the second is a kitten up a tree
The third is a flirt with an awful print skirt
And the fourth is pretending to be me
The fifth wears a mac and never turns his back
The sixth never shows his eyes
But the seventh deadly finn is so tall and slim
He should of never been with those guys

.
Although variety's the spice of life
A steady rhythm is the source
Simplicity's the crucial thing
Systemically of course 
So if those french girls say to you
Would you like your ashes piped?
You'll have to take their word for it
It's the only thing to take.

Brian Eno

EVERYDAY RITUALS - Making Sourdough Bread

Plan The Ritual Ahead of Time

If anyone wishes to make sourdough bread, planning the baking ritual is not an optional extra. Decide on the ritual programme the day before. When are you going to mix the dough, allow sufficient time for two proves, for how long etc. Plus fitting in whatever else you may need to do that day. You have to be willing to come to the service of the dough, to partly surrender your liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in order to nurture the holy holes of sourdough.

Ideal Conditions for at Ritual

Assemble the best ingredients for your sourdough making ritual. It is important to use organic unbleached flours, unrefined sea salt and sugar. This isn't just me being all middle class precious or ecologically minded.  For the sourdough process to work you need the already present natural 'yeasty substances' in the flour itself, to multiply. Ordinary mass produced highly refined plain flours, do not have these in anything like suffcient quantities, so they really will not work. You end up with a dense doughy result, the heaviest and most lifeless of breads. 

Along the way you might be tempted to take short cuts by adding yoghurt cultures to compensate for any deficit. But show some self respect, everyone knows what faking it is. Things go wrong with making sourdough even for experienced bakers, not just in the early days of misshapen mishaps. Its all part of the ongoing learning curve. What to do and not do. What works with one type of flour, for instance, may not work in quite the same manner with another. Baking sourdough bread is a lifetime of experimenting with conditionality. Decide to enjoy it, or give up right now. Break open that packet yeast and make ordinary bread.

Preparation Rituals

You need to prepare an active sourdough starter. If you don't have one, then you have a weeks worth of effort in the cultivating of one. Already have your starter? Then you'll be well practised at ensuring its vitality by feeding it daily. It can be testing of one's patiuence at times, but ultimately it is worth it. 

Every day throw half of your starter away.  Yes, just let it go. I know this seems wasteful, but get over it, or start donating jars of your sourdough starter to the entire neighbourhood. Weigh the half of the starter that remains, add the same weight in flour and enough water to make a gloopy batter. Use lukewarm water. Water that's too hot or cold will perform thermal shock on your 'yeasty substances'. No one wants that. Knocking back its effectiveness as a starter. Leave your starter alone on a shelf in your kitchen to breed. The night before you intend to make bread don't halve the starter, but add roughly an equal weight ratio in flour and enough water to produce the gloopy batter.

Ritual Recipe

If you wake in the morning to a starter container that's bubbled over during the night, then your starter's yeast is active enough to make bread. If not, examine what the hell you've been doing with your starter. Perhaps a change of ingredients or more time to mature. Its best to make your bread soon after the starter has reached maximum frothiness. Note how much time between feeding and maximum froth it takes. Probably around 4-6 hours. Then make urgent your need to cast the sourdough spell. 

The recipe I currently use is as follows: 500g strong white organic flour, 400g of starter, 3tsp of sea salt, 1 tsp unrefined sugar, one cup of lukewarm water. This will make either 2 small 400g loaves or one large. Alter the recipe quantities if need be, but roughly keep to these proportions.

The Ritual Order of Mixing

The order in which your mixing ritual proceeds is important. I learnt that adding salt and sugar to the flour before mixing in the sourdough starter is one of the things, along with water temperature, that kills yeasty substances. But mixing flour, starter and water roughly together first, and then adding the salt and sugar, does not. You may question the logic of why this simple reversal in the mixing ritual works when it's the same basic ingredients. I don't know, its something to do with chemistry. Don't ask why the sun rises in the morning, just be grateful it does.

The Kneading Ritual

Once you have formed a rudimentary dough. Prepare your work surface. Now some bakers lightly oil their work surface, others dust it with flour. Too much oil can make the dough super sticky. Too much flour can make it too dry. It depends on the particular qualities of your flour. You'll have to learn what that is through practice.  

The Kneading Ritual entails compressing and stretching the dough repeatedly with your hands. Encouraging cohesion within the dough, increased elasticity and air trapped within it. Depending on how vigorous you are able to knead ( oh youthful stamina where art though now? ) it can take anywhere from 10 to 20minutes for your dough to become as smooth as a baby's bottom. When a small bit of the dough can be stretched to a thin skin, that does not tear, holds firm and is semi translucent, you have achieved the much lauded 'window pane' effect. 

This is the ideal state for dough to be in by this stage in this preparation ritual. Though in reality, if after 20 minutes plus and the dough is proving a pain, and is still not a pane. I give you permission to give up, move on and abandon it to the gods of the 1st prove. With kneading, sometimes persistence triumphs.  But after a reasonable amount of time kneading has passed, in my experience you gain nothing from the endurance of extra time and effort. Consider why the kneading ritual hasn't proceeded quite as it should. It may be a small adjustment to the contents or form of the preparation ritual is required. Only change one thing at a time or you'll never know what does or does not work.

Leave A Ritual Alone to Prove Itself

Once a ritual is in full flow, you just have to allow it to roll on as per your original plan. Do not be tempted to fiddle with it during. Let the proving ritual prove itself, either for good or Ill.  Put your dough in a bowl, barely oiled and covered with a damp cloth. Leave it in a place where the temperature is unlikely to fluctuate, that is mildly warmish, but never sweltering hot. The 1st Prove should last approximately 3hrs. Don't hang around as if you arw waiting for a birth or a death. Go and do something else.

On your return the dough should have visibly risen. Even if it hasn't, still proceed with punching the dough flat and then folding the bread in on itself from the four directions, several times. 'Knocking it back' in this way helps improve the texture of the final bread. Your 2nd prove should take place  with the dough either in a banneton or a bread loaf tin. Heavily sieve flour over a banneton to deter it sticking.  For this 2nd Prove, cover and leave it for approximately 3hrs. Wash up, take a walk, fret not about what maybe happening. Treat this as if it were a magic trick. Ta Da!

Presenting The Dough Ritual

Gently upturn your banneton onto greaseproof paper on a tray . Out should pop, with a little bit of a shake perhaps, your uncooked sourdough. Hopefully, if the previous rituals have gone well you will have a springy air infused dough. Poke it gently with your finger and it should bounce back as though it were memory foam. Even if not, you may still have a perfectly acceptable, slightly dense, but flavoursome bread. Its amazing what miracles the final crucible ritual can perform.

Don't ever be disheartened if a sourdough ritual fails to meet your expectations. Let it be whatever it is, enjoy it however it has turned out. Try, as I've said before, to consider what might make it better next time. But for this time slash with a sharp knife along the top or in a cross formation, depending on the shape of your bread. This enables the dough to expand rapidly in the oven and the end result will look fabulous.

The Crucible of Ritual

An oven for sourdough is a hot 220 C. This crucible should kick start a phenomenal rise from your dough. Place a large tray in the bottom of the oven whilst its heating up. Before putting your sourdough in, pour a litre of cold water into the now super heated bottom tray. This will produce lots of steam to create a really fantastic crust on your loaf. Close the oven door. Set the timer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes turn the oven down to 200 C, and continue to bake for a further 10-15 minutes. This browns and firms up the crust further, but minimises the tendency for sourdoughs to burn.

Cooling The Bread

Open the oven door and remove your bread. Tap its base. It should sound hollow and be firm. Place the bread on a wire stand to fully cool. Don't leave it on its baking tray or bag it up too soon, or you will lose the crustiness you've worked so hard to create. Stand back and admire your efforts. Just see how long you can hold off from cutting yourself a slice.

Come to love the smell of toasted sourdough in the morning.

BROTHER DAVID ON - Speaking From The Heart

'There are wonderful words by St Augustine in which he says
'if you speak from the heart, it will touch hearts'
Heart speaks to heart.
The implication is that nothing else speaks to the heart,
but the heart.
You have to first find that inner most centre of your being which we call the heart.
You are truly one with your body
and mind,
and intellect
and will
and emotions
and its all one.
You find this centre,
and from this centre you make the full response to the gratuitously given moment.
Then you are at your heart,
and from that heart you can speak to any other heart.
It starts from your own heart,
radiates out from there,
and if you have peace within yourself
you will change the world.'

Brother David Steindl-Rast
taken from Every Moment is a Gift a You Tube video

ARTICLE - The Parish Magazine Arrives

I only know her as the lady with stick legs. Not a kind term I know, but an accurate description. She is small, with legs so spindly there can hardly be room left for muscle any more. I am used to seeing her brisk but hobbling walk, proceeding at a steady pace the mile down the road into town.  With colourful leggings, big dark sunglasses, the sort Anna Wintour would wear, a large canvas bag  rammed securely in her armpit, the handles resting floppy and helplessly on her shoulder, pink wool hat swamping her head, her appearance is, as always, presentable, neat.

For someone who appears so physically frail, her evidently spirited defiance, her determination to keep going, doing what she's doing, rings out loud and clear. This has always seemed so admirable and something for me to try to emulate. So prone to internal complaint as I am. Just keep on walking till you can no more. During the last week I've encountered her a couple of times on the narrow path venturing out of the village. As ever on her way into town, as I am on my way back. The path at points barely wide enough for two to pass easily, so one of us will have to step into the road. 

The Highway Code has it, that in such situations it is the person facing the direction of traffic that should walk in the road. But not many folk younger than I, appear to know or care to follow this anymore. And so it frequently becomes a game of chicken, of who will crack first. If it is myself, then I may get a 'thank you' or at least a 'good mornin' in acknowledgement. 

For some, however, the sense of embarrassed indebtedness to a stranger appears to freeze their basic politeness or humanity.  Not knowing how to respond to such considerateness, they appear to try pretending I'm not there and walk on by, briskly,. Face turned down or looking askance as if meaningfully distracted by the beauty of a yew hedge. Mostly these sorts of pedestrians are tourists. Either doing the circular walk back to town or returning from seeing the National Trust, Sheringham Park estate. 

My lady with the stick legs, she knows the form. But it doesn't feeI right for her to walk in the road, even though it is the done thing. In the end we simultaneously step into the road, and it then becomes a question of who will step back onto the path. It is I. She stays walking on the road up the hill. Remarking, 'I think it should be me' as she passes by. She wants no favours in deference to her age or relative infirmity.

I don't think I've seen her delivering the Parish Magazine before today. But then, we don't usually. Its quite often posted through our letter box when we are out. Link Up - The Weybourne Group of Parishes. February & March 2022. Its a well put together pamphlet. Pretty much your standard local village church magazine, full of adverts for chimney sweeps and funeral directors, church or village hall events, the days the mobile library is at the village well, jumble sales or car boots, an introductory page 'From Reverand Ian' the peripatetic vicar, as its opening frontispiece, a list of the services, where and when they are to be held printed inside the back cover. 

Because I saw it was her delivering it, I gave it more attention than I would normally. The front cover a stylised heart shaped tree made with words. What I was struck by, were those words among the branches. All those good qualities and virtuous natures to encourage in oneself. Peace - Joy - Cheerfulness - Hope - Humility - Kindness - Tolerance - Forgiveness - Wisdom - Love - Mercy - Patience - Faithfulness - Gentleness - Goodness - Self-control - Grace.  Active principles the 'stick legged lady' is no doubt still trying to put into regular daily practice. As she walks purposefully in and out of town. 

Its very common these days to sweepingly dismiss Christianity and established religious institutions to one side, as an irrelevant anachronism at best. To place too much weight on faults or failings in practice, rather than the ideals of the founding guiding principles. Yet so much happens in North Norfolk as a result of Christian practice. Local church goers provide a great deal of much needed practical help and support. The fabric of communities held together by the glue of those qualities and values displayed on the front of The Parish Magazine. Actively practiced and socially engaged.

SCREEN SHOT - Lamb - the brief film review

Marie and Ingvar run a sheep farm in an isolated wild and austere rural area of Iceland. Very little is spoken between them, they intuit more than they express. They get on with their daily routines, feeding the sheep, birthing lambs, meals together, they are affectionate. They spend most of their time living an almost semi monastic life. Something unsaid exists between them. A sense of loneliness inhabits their life together.

One day during lambing, a ewe gives birth to something that astonishes them both, a lamb/child. Marie instantly wants to adopt it, despite Ingvar's initial misgivings. They name the lamb/child Ada and it becomes an integral part of their lives. Until into their families rural idle Ingvar's brother arrives, and a decidedly unexpected turn of events takes place.

Lamb, though promoted as a horror movie, is really a film about grief and loss. Ingvar and Marie have previously lost their own daughter, also called Ada. So is this lamb/child they are seeing merely a collective delusion between them?  Marie sees it as a new beginning for their relationship, and will allow nothing, including the mother ewe or Ingvar's brother to get in the way of that. 

If you surrender yourself up to the conceit of this movie, like its characters you cease thinking of how weird it is. Its a fascinating folk tinged tale, earthy and grounded in its spirit and fantasy. Filmed with such beautiful crystal clear, almost documentary, realism. It could easily be viewed entirely in complete silence. Slow slow cinema.

Noomi Rapace is outstanding, and brings her usual full on inhabited performance, filled with grief, belief and conviction. She is what makes the films premise so utterly convincing. Though it is brilliantly executed and well worth watching, it is as emotionally chilled as the landscape it is set in.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

Currently available to stream on Mubi and Amazon Prime.

MY OWN WALKING - Journal 08/03/2022

In an effort to improve my sleep I've been trying CBD Gummies. Whilst I felt more physically relaxed, I found myself increasingly unsettled psychologically. I had a number of nights where I was definitely asleep or half slumbering, but distantly aware of my mind digging through stuff which was far from restful. It left me feeling a bit alienated, less resourceful and depleted the following day. Admittedly I have found some of the quietest days in the shop, personally, very challenging. Tipping toward a despairing self pitying state of mind. Along with the accompanying book of stories and views I tend to draw on when in such states.

This was useful from the point of view that 'its good to know'. That there is a part of me that is fretful, fed up and angry. In particularly with there being one major crisis in the world after another. I would like an uneventful period where we can quietly get on with things. Basically saying I want the world to be different to how it actually is. I'd like to be able to safely avert my gaze from it for a while. If only these things were not here, then I would not be silently suffering so abjectly.

There is a tendency, in my practice at least, to turn the Buddha's Noble Truth that 'life is unsatisfactory' into a mission statement - 'the practice of containment, management and eradication of suffering'. Basically the 4 Right Efforts**-  but on high dosage steroids. This is understandable, its painful, why put up with it. Identification with our own suffering can stimulate empathy and compassion for others in pain. So it does have something to commend it. Suffering is endemic, its hard wired, its everywhere, it affects everyone. Its universality being undoubtedly why the Buddha chose to focus on it in the first place. 

He highlighted suffering simply to be an example, it was not his central point. The focus was meant to be on our desire for things to be other than what they are. To be in full control of what enters in and out of our experience.  Suffering is then used as a red flag, alerting us to be mindful of any impulses that wish for what we are experiencing not to be there. That we want something else entirely, further amplifying the amount of pain present. Its our own salt we hold ready to rub into our own wounds.

I have a commonly held self delusion, that being fed up or bored with what is or is not happening, means its high time for it to move on. This time reality must conform to my will, it must do so now. A self pitying view associated with this is that "I never get what I want, I really have been hard done to by life'  Another is that 'for all the effort I put in I should reap beneficial rewards ' Plus one of a few merit reward viewpoints that Western capitalism inculcates in us from a young age. 'I've been good, I've been productive, where are my sweeties?'

A downside of these types of views is that if something does not succeed, its not the view or reality that is held to account, but yourself who is deficient, yourself who is at fault. You become a failure because your business failed, for instance.
'I never get what I want' - because I am fated not to,
'I never get what I want' - because failure is written in my DNA.
' I never get what I want' - because I am a uniquely bad person.
'I never get what I want' - because of bad karma from a previous life.
'I never get what I want' because I am being punished for even existing.
'I never get what I want' - because I'm completely useless at life.
 And so it goes on and on, digging deeper into the 'I am uniquely unworthy' viewpoint. There are other views to explore in relation to this such as what success is, what it looks like to you. But that's a tangent I'll not go down today. 

But lets just say - gratefulness - its helpful.

Usually if I worry, its about something going wrong and if it were to go wrong what the consequences might be. Mainly on a personal well being level. This type of predictive thinking is very loaded, conjuring all sorts of unfounded emotions and fears into being. It becomes difficult to separate the facts from the prejudicial biases, as they blend into one another. Its no longer about what actually happened anymore. The story you've constructed has become so paramount it alters your perceptions of the reality right before you. 

I know that the view that 'nothing ever goes right for me' has a back story.  Based on the emotional consequences of running, then closing, of my Art Shop, which I ran singlehandedly. But that was over thirty years ago. Yet any fearfulness I might hold over our current business surviving has its foundations in the latter years of the 1990's. Surrounded by a cluster of other incidents I call upon, should I want to make this story line conclusive. 

This colouring of my present perceptions, can manifest in feeling afraid of a quiet shop with nothing to do to keep me busy. Constantly thinking up things to do to keep myself occupied. I recognise I have been here before. The current lull in trade during the winter months in Cottonwood Home has on occasions triggered these old associations. I can mostly see them coming. Though its a bit like seeing a dust storm looming on the horizon, I'm not always able to get out of its way. There are days when I simply have to allow it to pass through me like a toxic ghost.

Reverend Leoma at the Zen Priory in Norwich always encouraged people to look beneath the surface current experience for what was underlying it. To keep asking at each level what is underneath this. So, if I start with my anxiety around a quiet shop, underneath that is a fear of something going wrong, underneath that is an old story surrounding the failure of my art business, underneath is the view that I am a failure, underneath that a fear of having wasted my life, underneath that is a fear of loosing my life too soon. Before I've done whatever it is I need to do.

Life's failures are like these little whispers of death, on the way to the big death drum roll at the end. These failures are often perceived as mortally wounding.  However, should I place the idea of my death alongside my present day anxieties, worries or concerns they instantly dwindle in power, influence and significance. Death is a much much bigger deal. Suddenly I feel much more open to being grateful for what I do have. After all I am still alive and still kicking. I run a little shop. I live in a beautiful village, Its sunny today. 

I should contemplate my death more often.

** The Four Right Efforts
1 - Letting go of unwholesome states of mind already present
2 - Resisting engaging with unwholesome states of mind.
3 - Cultivating a more wholesome state of mind
4 - Maintaining a wholesome state of mind.

BROTHER DAVID ON - Going With The Flow

When asked - How can I tell that I am advancing on the spiritual path?

'From my experience I would answer: when everything is flowing well, and things are happening by themselves; when I don't have to do very much. I am not driven from without but from within. 

As to flowing you have to distinguish: 

It is one thing when a fish in the river uses the current to swim, and another when a bit of wood is simply carried along by the river. 

The fish makes use of the flow of the water and can even swim against the current, while the piece of wood simply moves passively. 

So: going with the flow of life is not being driven by the current but an active response to it.'

Brother David Steindl-Rast
taken from Faith Beyond Belief - Spirituality for Our Times,
Publisher - Liturgical Press 2015

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1979 - Suffice To Say by Yachts

 

Yachts were one of the first batch of releases on Stiff Records in the late seventies, along with The Roogalator, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, The Damned, Elvis Costello and Ian Dury. They came like Deaf School the generation before them from Liverpool Art School  Likewise they never quite made it bigtime as other Stiff label mates did. But along the way they produced some witty pop ditties of which Suffice to Say is my personal favourite, but give Yachting Types and Look Back in Love ( Not in Anger ) and Mantovani's Hits a spin too. Henry Priestman was the main songwriter in The Yachts in collaboration with various band members.

The Yachts on Suffice to Say, are from the very start knowing, tongues firmly in cheeks and deliberately cheesy. The cheap organ sound and a lyric that plays with your expectations and sends up the musical convention of having a middle eight and an instrumental break. I have always found it a simple joy to listen too. Shame it never made the charts, because you missed hearing the fun in this lyric.

'I'm just a young romantic fool

I wrote this specially for you

Although the rhymings not that hot

Its quite a snappy little tune

I'm sure you'll like the chorus too

Its sharp sweet and to the point

It even says that I love you

Just after this.

Suffice to say you love me

Can't say that I blame you

Suffice to say I love you too.

SCREEN SHOT - The Power of the Dog - the brief film review

Phil and George run a family ranch. Phil refers to George as 'fatso' constantly, this is not a brotherly affectionate nickname. It is meant to belittle. Something about this filial relationship feels distinctly unhealthy. Sharing a bedroom, and often a bed. George, needs to distance himself in order to escape his brother's sphere of unpleasantness and influence. He starts secretly courting Rose a widow who runs a hotel, with the help of her son Peter. Without telling Phil, George marries her. She closes her business and moves to live on the isolated ranch. Rose immediately is made to feel unwelcome, intimidated and out of her depth - by Phil.

Yet there is a mystery at the heart of Phil, of who he really is. How did someone, once a highly talented academic student, top of his generation, end up as a filthy unwashed cowboy? Why does he still idolise Bronco Henry, a long dead cowboy who was his mentor as a teenager? His nasty bullying character has, so it seems, some much darker and deep seated origins than is immediately apparent. Then, to Rose's abject horror, Phil starts actively befriending her strange willowy son Peter.

Jane Campion's films frequently portray a central male character like Phil, one who is flawed, an unhinged monstrous bully. Yet Campion maintains a degree of compassionate understanding for how they've become who they are. No one is ever too starkly black and white. It's one of many unique qualities present in her filmmaking. As is the visual sensitivity towards the expansive drama of landscape itself, in wide screen backdrop or composed through windows and doors, human figures are lost and dwarfed in its vastness. She is the supreme cinematic poet of both personal and terrestrial horizons and story lines. 

Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee all give their finest most delicately nuanced performances. Each showing you much more than their dialogue alone informs you of. The film soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood, isn't just central to the overall mood of this film, it performs the role of an oracle or soothsayer. Filled with raw, edgy wariness and a palpable tone of fear filled foreboding. The Power of the Dog is simply stunning on every level you might look or encounter it on.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

Brother David On - Spiritual Exploration & Maps.

'You have a responsibility to follow your conscience.
You need not reinvent the wheel.
You have to look at the maps
that other spiritual explorers of the realm & god realm have drawn up.
But ultimately your experience
and your exploration
is more important than all the maps in the world.'

Brother David Steindl-Rast
taken from the You Tube video -Thinking Allowed with Dr Jeffrey Mishlove.

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 58 - In aTime of Sparse Lunches.

Its very easy to cruise along on the happy happy waves of busyness and good sales. The more testing times in retail are when the poor sale days arrive, as arrive they inevitably do. Having passed through the quieter months leading up to Christmas, post New Year, a three week break, then our reopening in mid February to the storms that battered our sales further into submission over half term. I've found the Winter months this year emotionally much more testing and tougher than previously. I think the pandemic has left me more mentally and emotionally fatigued than I realised.

So, here we are, at the beginning of March. Spring? Well, its not quite here, is it?. Though we are planning ahead for improving trade as we get nearer to Easter, and the official beginning of 'the tourist season'. It is a bit like waiting for a new dawn. Something that appears to move further and further away the more closely you observe the sky portents and read the runes of winter's embers. Anxiety, your name is expectation.

The Ides of March are here. Though these were not originally seen as ominous, that's a legacy of Shakespearean melodrama. The ides are fortuitous days leading up to the first full moon in a month. This March the first full moon falls on the 18th, two days before the Spring Equinox. Trade, however, at the beginning of March has been in a very palpable doldrum. The Courtyard is an eerily becalmed place, two thirds of its shops not open on some days. In three years of our business we've not yet had a full month of March sales. With everything else that's been going on, March still remains an unexplored retail continent. How it is now, well, maybe this is what March is normally like. 

But just to muddy the predictive waters. Out there in the surrounding cosmos there are the rough cut omens of tougher times. Fuel cost hikes, on the normally expensive anyway North Norfolk coast, are here. In Sheringham its at £153.9* and climbing, and already 155.9 in Holt and that's just this weeks price increases. Its harder to maintain optimism when the twin pincer movements of a huge cost of living squeeze and a Russian invasion on the eastern fringes of Europe goosestep over the horizon. Though Sheringham is unlikely ever to be under total siege bombardment, there is a feeling of folk hunkering down for one.

Over our first three years we have done exceptionally well establishing a business in the midst of some really dreadful unsupportive conditions. Plagued as we have been by a variety of external political, economic and health crises. Just as we get over one, here comes another we haven't yet tried - War. Lets just say that my flag at present is flying low and weary. 

After years of working in retail I've had to become better at the practice of maintaining a wider perspective. One day or weeks bad takings means nothing. If its happening to everyone, its not you that is doing something wrong. But any sense of balance I may try to hold has its limits. I am after all human, and a very restless insomniac. For at night is where the more troubled negative thought patterns, that I attempt to foreswear during the day, tend to leak out.

We have plans for the business for the year ahead. Ideas that the pandemic put on hold. So we're hoping to try out a few craft events and pop up shops during the summer. Jnanasalin has recently changed our website over to a different e-commerce provider. After that, there is a product photography update and a more streamlined online product range. A website is never a complete facsimile of its high street shop. Focused single product promotions appear to be how selling via the internet tends to operate. 

The challenge for us in 2022 will be in keeping the plates of shop, fairs and website spinning. The tendency in previous years with just the shop and website, has been for the website to drop to the bottom of the to do list. But in the coming year, it may be that a whole lot of effort on all these fronts may enable us to survive, even if we end up just standing still sale's wise. But this is getting far too far ahead of the curve of conditions. And into the realm of predictive texting. and you know how infuriatingly unhelpful that can be.  Let's just wait and see what actually happens shall we?

*5th March £154.9

BEST BEFORE DATE - 1981 - Go Go Go (This Is It) by Rip, Rig & Panic

Go Go Go (This Is It) was there first single released in 1981. That it never came near to appearing in the UK chart at all is not really worthy of comment.  Rip Rig & Panic were one of many bands who charted there own eccentric and belligerent musical course through the post punk era. Formed by Gareth Sager and Mark Springer, two former members of The Pop Group. They carried on through RR&P their unique cross fertilisation of dub, punk, funk, jazz, free improvisation - you name it. They were for a while in the early 1980's the definition of wild, exhilarating, boundary defying, uncontrolled music. 

From the moment I first heard Go Go Go (This Is It) I absolutely loved it. It features an early appearance in her late teens of Nene Cherry on vocals.  From its opening ascending nonsense chant, the drum rhythm and wailing saxophone, there is something eminently primal at work here. Into which Nene Cherry's vocals don't just interject but stab - free your soul. The lyrics mirror the music, with a series of statements and encouragements to live a life free of restrictions. Set against hard edged ejaculations of pop infused noise, an unrestrained eclectic joy. They are having the time of their lives. This is it. This is the sort of music you'd want to make forever. 

Rip Rig & Panic, however, could not, and imploded after three albums. The first two, God and I Am Cold, are stuffed to overflowing with a dazzlingly diverse range of musical styles. Too many perhaps. It is surprising they lasted as long as they did. By the third album Attitude, it was clear the innovative fire was already burned out. It wasn't that the centre could not hold, there was no centre, nothing but a vague feeling for the infinite range of musical possibilities. Once it became moulded into a recognisable style it was RIP to RR&P.