SHERINGHAM DIARY No 80 - The Many Triumphs of Selfishness

I've returned to my usual weekly swimming pattern. Gradually increasing the number of lengths as my stamina rebuilds. The Reef which is my local pool, has become very popular. I keep having to try different times of the day as each one progressively gets busier. I guess everyone is like me in search of the quieter pool. Also as Easter approaches you get teachers swimming midday more.

Outside of holiday periods, during the day in the fast lane its usually a few regular ladies and the occasional man with flippers and a snorkel. A bad sign is when Snorkel Man is not alone. Joined by Hand Paddle Man or a gent with an energy drink, a timer and a brightly striped waffle thing he braces his testicles with whilst he swims. Sometimes its not even that eccentric, its just very stereotypically blokey. Half a dozen men, some wearing lycra swimsuits, in their late, bulging, middle age, warned by their GP about heart murmurs, intent on getting fitter come hell or high water. So they thrash about doing a rather stylistically flawed, but speedy, front crawl, up and down, cut you up, overtake you because they can't bear being behind anyone, and generally treat the swimming pool as a venue in which to entertain the selfish need of their ego for the self validation of an improved lap time. Yeh, last Friday's 1pm session was like that. I did my twenty four, then quietly left.

How does one know the shop, and my Hubhy, will not be having a good days takings? When you are walking home and hear a gaggle of old dears down for the day from Yorkshire, traveling on a coach trip, stand outside a local card shop.  

' These postcards are forty pee' ' 
  Ow much' 
' Forty pee'
 'I'm sure you'll find they're cheaper elsewhere'

Its after work last Wednesday. We're on our way to Tesco. As we are walking up Sheringham main street we notice there is a car stopped slap bang in the middle of the road. Station Road is one way and narrow. Usually parked solid on the left, its single file traffic down the right. So this car stopped in the right hand lane quickly becomes a bit of an issue. 

As we draw closer we see the drivers door is open, and the driver, a white haired older woman is faffing about in the back seat looking for something. She emerges with a greetings card. She walks over to a woman in a parked car on the left and gives the card to her. She doesn't ,however, quickly return to her car and drive off, but proceeds to engage the lady in the car in a far from brief conversation. Our jaws drop at how oblivious she appears to be to the build up of traffic behind her, that she alone is causing. Cars are quickly queuing all the way up Station Road and back as far as the roundabout right at the very top. The woman, is parked pretty much at the bottom end of the road. So its a not insignificant tail back.

By the time we've walked to the top of the street, the traffic is still being held up by the woman talking to the lady in the car. Most of the car drivers don't realise what the hold up is, they cannot see that far. Those that can are being, to my mind, far too accommodating. There are a few short paps, to no immediate response. We stand looking back down the street, unable to see for ourselves now what is going on. Somewhat aghast at the apparent blinkered nature of what we are witnessing.

Its been clear for a while that one of the aftermaths of the pandemic and its lockdowns, is that there has been an increasing incidence of self centred and abusive behaviour towards shop workers. Both the cafe and the off license, in the Courtyard, have had some very rude and angry customers. I read in the paper that its also put in an appearance in theatres and cinemas too. Where often drunken parties have had to be evicted for anti social behaviour, and have taken it out aggressively or assaulted, the often female attendants, just for telling them to be quiet.  

There have been a lot of unacknowledged consequences of the pandemic. Of how much people really struggled with feeling isolated and their mental states. The damage to peoples consideration of others maybe a continuing symptom of this. Now add in the current stresses of the cost of living crisis and you have a pretty potent situation, where some folk just crack and lash out, I guess. We already live in a fairly atomised and alienated society. When social cohesion is further weakened, whether by disease or economic circumstances, altruism and collective identity can also be undermined too. The triumphs of selfishness are never a good thing, but it is becoming noticeably more prevalent.

*********

LISTENING TO - Live at Bush Hall by Black Country, New Road

 

When the video of the Bush Hall concerts first appeared on You Tube, I was not the only one wondering what the hell this was. Other than a live album of material written in the immediate aftermath of Issac Woods departure, that is. When he left the band so unexpectedly before their 2nd album and tour were even started, that could have been the end of BCNR. No one would have blamed them if they'd called it a day. What they chose to do was hurriedly write a completely new set of songs and toured those for the rest of the year. The Bush Hall concerts appear to be an end of year shin dig to celebrate simply making it through that mess of a year.

What you are presented with is a band still in the midst of a process of change, throwing up a lot of half integrated ideas to see which ones best resemble a fruitful new direction. Its easy to yearn for the cohesive wired grist that Woods brought which seems ,by comparison, both tighter in musicality and psychology. But the songs here are clearly themed as a breakup and mend album. I do want to be wary about passing judgement prematurely here. Three of the band have taken up the responsibility for songwriting and lead vocalist, Tyler Hyde, Lewis Evans and May Kershaw. Triumvirates generally don't have a good track record for longevity in any sphere, so we will see what transpires with this collectivity.

The songs are variable in quality and ambition. Hyde is by far the most interesting songwriter and vocalist, with a fragile vocal style and song writing structure - Wont Always Love You, Laughing Song, Dancers and Up Song provide the strongest backbone to this album.  Evans contribution, Across The Pond Friend & The Wrong Trousers, are lovely genial songs but they don't quite set the place on fire, yet. The two songs written by Kershaw both have a folky tinge - The Boy - more so. After many listens I'm not sure yet if I even like this as song. It seems too fussy with its chapter headings, and meanders to no effect. Turbines/Pigs, however, is substantially different, it has a gentle waltz like lilt to it that erupts into a typically BCNR thunderous cacophony by the end of its nine minutes plus. It's an extension of that painterly vein in BCNR,'s soundscape of offbeat romanticism  If any of these songs makes it onto any future studio album then Turbine/Pigs, Wont Always Live You and Up Song should.

Ants From Up There was a triumphant high, but it proved to be the end of a particularly distinct sound and era. Any follow up album would almost inevitably struggle in the comparison. Live At Bush Hall whets your expectations for what this new format of BCNR might end up becoming, once they get over the shock and settle into it. There are tracks here that make one hopeful for their continued health and vitality. But overall Live at Bush Hall feels often as insubstantial as a cucumber sandwich. It doesn't as yet fully convince me this is going to work, even though I really want it too.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

MY OWN WALKING - Journal March 2023

When times are hard in whatever way, I've come to expect that it will cause ripples through my emotional equilibrium too. If only to rub it in that I remain human after all.  I don't, however, want to be completely consumed by worries or concerns, because that could easily lead to unclear thinking or acting less effectively in dealing with the practicalities of it all. A balance has to be struck here between awareness and distance from it, and that balance is in my experience, always a slightly wobbly one. 

Similar to being a tightrope walker. You hold yourself erect. Keep looking forward. Strongly aware of the actual experience beneath your feet. Sense where your balance is with every step forward you take. Stay alert to your emotional state and external changes, the wind and weather that might buffet you. Never allow yourself to look down, or be down. Its rarely much help to allow an internal emotional state to totally consume you. You are more likely to fall off the tightrope when you are so distracted. If you are in a bad state, its really not the right time to walk a tightrope. Know who to go to when you do need support in maintaining your balance. Try to keep the focus on where you are heading, and what the steps you will need to take in order to get there. If you do fall off balance (and you will ) know how to get back on track.

FILM CLUB - The Red Shoes

Powell & Pressburger Film - 1948 

The Red Shoes is still considered today as the finest film about dance made. It appears to be such a simple, yet tragic, tale about the conflict between the desire to dance and the desire for love. From the perspective of 2023 its easy to not realise quite how groundbreaking a movie The Red Shoes was. For a start, it created a whole sub genre of the psychological horror ballet story.  Black Swan from 2010, being the most recent reworked twist on this. 

Powell and Pressburger devotes the central chunk of this movie to the entire Red Shoes ballet, a seventeen minute long sequence. Choosing not to film it as though viewed through a proscenium arch, it employs a whole magic bag of visual tricks that are simultaneously interweaving cinematically the emotional conflicts of Vicky Page ( Moira Shearer ) into it. For this is the most metaphorical of all movies, multiple layers of allusions.

It opens at the premier of Heart of Fire, a new ballet. Julian Craster ( Marius Goering ) a music student, recognises the music as being his, that his tutor has lifted its musical themes completely.  He meets with Lermontov ( Anton Walbrook ) the company's svengali to expose the whole charade. He ends up employed to write music for a new ballet based on a Hans Christian Anderson story. The Red Shoes is about a shoe maker who makes a pair of scarlet red ballet shoes. These are enchanted and allow him to manipulate whoever wears them. Forcing them to dance and dance unto death. 

Reflecting this fantastically grim tale of obsessive control. Lermontov demands all his leading female dancers be completely devoted to a life of dance, only then can he assuredly form them into something truly great. For him dance is a religion. If a dancer deigns to get married, he sacks them. Lermontov is an archetype of the male who must have complete creative mastery over the feminine. Once he takes possession they must dance and dance and dance, for him alone. A sublimated love inhabits him. He needs Page to be entirely dependent upon him. 

When he discovers Craster and Page are in a relationship, he responds by attempting to ruin both their careers. He coerces Page, she has to choose, its either her dancing career or her lover, she cannot have both. This emotional division proves impossible to hold. She resolves it by throwing herself off a balcony onto the rail road beneath. Damaging her body and ability to dance beyond repair. The last we hear is Page's request to Craster to remove her bloodied red ballet shoes from her feet. An echo from the end of the ballet sequence.

This film fable fizzes with an intoxicated, and intoxicating, energy. Powell and Pressburger throw everything they've got at the screen. You can see the exuberance of their creativity spilling out. Its there in its endless jump cuts, overlays, swinging and swooping camera work. The style is expressionistic, all stretched shadows and exaggerated gestural movements of bodies and film. The richness of its sumptuous technicolour colour palette being mirrored in its musical score. In the way the visual image of ocean waves lapping and breaking over the stage become the audience's applause. Its romantic passion is undeniably written large across its mise en scene. 

Everyone else in the movie has scant realistic agency of their own, they are all to some extent pawns or cyphers for the underlying folklore. For as with most Powell and Pressburger movies, this is no sweet sickly form of romance, it is dark, with menacingly sharp edges. It's a morality tale with echoes of Greek mythology. For whenever humans act as if they are close to being gods, their fall back to earth is inevitable and fatal.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

WINDOW VIEWS - Regrets After Breakfast

They hadn't had a full blown argument for a while, though goodness knows last nights wasn't different in form or content to any they'd had previously. Vicious vitriol, intentionally coruscating and unforgiving. Whenever Fred had felt challenged by Donald over some perceived gross insensitivity, he was never defensive, or calmly explained himself, or ever ever acknowledged there might be some truth in it. He went straight onto the offensive and for the high moral jugular. Pointing out Donald's own failings in this or that area, which were ten times worse than his of course. Didn't know how he put up with it, or with him. By this morning over breakfast, both of them were hardly brain focused enough even to remember the specifics of last nights kick off, let alone resume the argument again. A bit frazzled, too delicate even, from the turbid mix of drink and lack of sleep. Their interactions over breakfast were a bit huffy, though there was no opportunistic rudeness, which was unusual. 

This difference in tone began to prey on Fred's conscience from the moment his husband of twenty plus years had left for work. Donald, had had an air about him of sadness and hurt. He was sure there was something he'd wanted to express, but couldn't quite bring himself to say it. The words, 'See ya later' being lightly tossed into the air as he left. Fred believed he was supposed to infer a whole lot more significance into them. More than the bare words alone were capable of communicating. There was love there, stirred with soured melancholy. Everything just felt off. And now Fred was alone at home all day, doing household chores, planning the weekly food shop for later. Busily distracting his emotions from eating him up from the inside with his guilt. The moment he stopped being active, everything returned - what he'd said last night - Donald's departure this morning. They loomed over him like a demonic presence. Stood over the sink doing the breakfast washing up, he paused to pensively gaze out of the kitchen window. Something was wrong, really wrong. No  this wasn't Fred's usual insecurity and paranoia speaking. Donald was going to leave him, he was, wasn't he? 

He stared absent minded at the lawn sprinkler outside casually flicking water hither and thither. And in its regular twisting and reversals of direction he read the dynamic pattern of his relationship with Donald. They were both tired with how they were with each other, but too resigned to it, to do the hard work restoring the easy camaraderie they once had. Instead they continued their routine bound relationship, familiar, yet stoically buttressed. Until frustrations erupted via an argument yet again. Donald's look this morning spoke volumes on how weighed down with weariness he was. Fred dwelled on things heavily, often for far too long. Regretfully and unproductively Donald would usually remonstrate. So for the umpteenth time that day he found himself keening in his mind, blankly looking through that damned kitchen window. It was now four thirty, and holding his desperation at bay, he hoped to goodness he'd see Donald driving into the Close soon. The sound of the kitchen clock ticking bore down loudly on his hearing. Internally struggling to put a kind appreciative sentence together with which to greet his husband, the moment he arrived. He settled once again on - Sorry - just sorry. - Yeh - and a prolonged hug - that was usually enough.

WHO WE SAY WE ARE - 4) Decisions and Consequences

Once you first accept anything in principle, there then follows a whole load of issues which will be the lived consequences of that decision. That was certainly so when I came out as gay. I've found it quite noticeable that the current manner in which the Trans issue is being talked about, is that the consequences are being gone over in a huge amount of detail, before the basic principle of trans peoples rights has really even been discussed, understood and fully accepted by society at large. It appears to have sprung fully formed out of nowhere as far as the general public are concerned. So the response has been alarm and resistance to radical change.

Homosexuality took many decades after decriminalisation to reach a level of understanding and acceptance. I'm not saying it has to be this way, but social changes in attitude do tend to move slowly, and shift with each succeeding generation.  So it is the 'inconvenient' consequences of trans legislation that seem to be being used as the reason to refuse to accept the basic principle. This impedes legislative progress, and it maybe that that is its intended purpose. To stir up great alarm and adopt defensive 'you shall not pass' positions. If you were to look back at the debates about decriminalising homosexuality it focused on it undermining family values and the corruption of youth. None of which proved to be concerns that were justified by what followed.

So there is a lot of scaremongering around at the moment. And it is hard to tell to what degree there is truth or veracity in some of the claims. About pedophiles masquerading as trans women in order to get closer access to children. Complaints that female safe spaces from men are being undermined by the presence of trans women. A fear that a trans women still with male genitalia will use access to female toilets to engage in rape. Trans women in female prisons being experienced as a disruptive force. Are any of these are a genuine risk? And if they do happen, to what degree?  But if these are genuine problems and not simply reactive concerns, they do not seem insurmountable. Workable solutions could be found, should everyone prove willing to find them. But there is a very vocal presence out there, who are simply not remotely trans sympathetic or pliable. Feet have been put down, and ideological barricades built.

I think its interesting that it is trans women that are being primarily picked on as the 'enemy within'. Trans men hardly appear to register. Do they meld into the general male background more easily, or are not considered significant enough even to mention? Though undoubtedly they have their own difficulties transitioning and living afterwards. We seldom hear about them. Or is it that its considered much more understandable, or perhaps less challenging to the status quo, if you want to become a trans man than a trans women? Is there a hybrid trans focused form of misogyny at root here?

I appreciate many women do have concerns regarding trans issues. Women are rattled by the thought of trans women entering their safe spaces. The men are protective of their space too, no doubt. Not only do you have trans men using your toilets, but if they don't get access to female toilets the trans women will be forced into using the men's. And even I can see that this cranks up the potential for conflict, for violent, if not murderous abuse, trans rape etc Its the women who appear to be being asked to be more open and tolerant, so the men don't have to. The toxicity of some men towards trans people, gays, lesbians or simply any women in general remains an under addressed consequence - well of quite a lot actually.

There are also consequences concerning personal history too, in the area of sports. That a trans woman who was previously a male athlete may have an unfair advantage in the women's game due to their past training and history with a man's physique. This is not an unreasonable or fictitious concern, but how you respond to it is unclear. Sports organisations appear to be burying their heads in the sand in the hope that either trans or the opposition to it, will go away in time. Afraid perhaps of drawing too firm a line and being called trans phobic, or too responsive and being accused of simply rolling over and capitulating. And let's be fair here, this is not an easy area to legislate for. And trans campaigners, sad to say, are not averse to reaching for the megaphone first, and name calling, instead of actively engaging in looking for a resolution.

It is not without an idea or two, but some maybe less palatable than others. And though trans athletes may not like being treated as a special case, because - who does? - maybe that is what has to happen. Trans women athletes, for example, could be given a competitive handicap in order to level the field. You develop trans athlete sports competitions within existing formats. Maybe you drop the separate male, female division in sports altogether. Develop an athlete ranking system so you compete in your own league, ascending or descending in them, like in football  Even as I am writing this I'm overwhelmed by how petty and ungenerous this level of detailed discussion can feel. As if trans issues have been reduced to being all about toilet usage and sports prowess. Instead of it being about freedom of choice, for individual people being able to live how they want.

And yet there has to be a legal framework to protect, define and balance everyone's rights when conflicting needs and consequences do emerge. People's views and concerns, whether real or imagined need to be heard. When to make it legal for trans people to self identify is another major consequence. When I hit my early teens this would not have been a good time to identify myself as gay. I was self aware enough to know I had these feelings, but not whether this was just a fleeting adolescent crush I was going through, or an early indication of who I was to be attracted to my whole life. Was this feeling here to stay or not? It was not conclusively clear to me until I started experimenting sexually, much later on, that I wasn't heterosexual or bisexual, I was definitely gay.

Finding out what is personally true for you, there is always a provisional journey of self exploration to be traveled beforehand. Whilst I wanted my parents acceptance of who I was, I wouldn't have wanted their active permission or active participation in the development of my sexual awareness. In ones teens there has simply to be enough room left for such self exploration, without any external adult pressure. A right to roam free of commitment, until you are ready to. I'd been confident I was gay for a number of years before I finally came out and declared it publicly. These things take time. Awareness of being trans I imagine is not that different.

I had a friend who struggled with themselves and who they were throughout all the time I knew them. They had a physical disability, and couldn't decide whether they was AC or DC. What they were sexually was unclear to them, and a bit scary. It all remained a bit theoretical. Over a few years they experimented with saying they were straight, gay, bisexual and eventually settled on being trans. But despite reaching that conclusion, this did not really resolve anything. Their worsening disability meant that personal truth might prove unattainable. As a lot of other things in their life had. Unfortunately they did later take their life. I'm not sure knowing what they were much earlier in life, would have helped avoid that end conclusion. It all felt and was quite tragic.

Personal circumstances, personal history and personal character can sometimes make achieving your personal truth, appear an overwhelming impossibility. As much as I enjoyed living in London, in Crouch End, a very bohemian tolerant area. My affairs 'sexualle' were few. Many were opportunistic encounters, where someone unexpectedly arose to get my end away with. One of the consequences of accepting I was gay, was I had to face up to my self esteem and confidence, of this not being as strong as I would have wished for. This meant I was never in danger of being thought a trollop. Finding someone I could have a stable long term loving relationship with, which was what I really wanted, took a while. But dear reader I married him.

Once you've declared who you really are, you then have to be prepared to act on that. And one major consequence of this is that life can still remain a hard struggle, even when you are sure who you are, and you've decided what you want to make of it. I mean, dam it man, is there no fairness, no justice?  Reality itself can feel like its against you, actively thwarting you, though actually it holds no opinion one way or the other. Coming out did not resolve everything for me, it was just the beginning of an entire new chapter of self learning and maturity.

What is sure is that nothing gets served up to you on a plate, that you haven't paid for many many times beforehand.

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 79 - Starving The Algorithm

Our Google Nest speaker just told us a fart joke. Normally when we ask it a question, she gives an answer. But lately, once she's done that,  she says I have more I can tell you on this subject and she gets so eager to tell us more she stops listening, and we have a devil of a job to get her to shut up. The joke, however, was a good one.

I've been writing this blog for many years now. It gets at most around 1,300 + views a month on average, which is modest. There are things one could do to increase visibility. But that goes against the amount of time investment I'm prepared to give it. I use it as a way of putting my writing out there, its an offshoot not a central existential focus. Its a small bit of creativity just for me, about me, by me, me, me. Sometimes the spelling or grammar mistakes are all my own, but quite often these days they are created through auto correct, when I'm not looking.

Then once you make it public there is the responsive algorithm. You might say something outrageous or extreme, and the algorithm picks up you've said something contentious and gives it more prominence. Bad things traveling faster than good. Even your insignificant extreme right wing activist, can suddenly find themselves with a huge profile and access to a means of disseminating their toxic views, unheard of previously. It also promotes and loves the mega loud mouths like Piers Morgan and Katie Hopkins, or low life's like Andrew Tate that garner far more attention than they ever deserve. They've learnt how they can feed that algorithm and their career flourishes through their notoriety. Its not that people have suddenly got worse, its that they are no longer ignorable. The algorithim loves bad people, because they're good for producing clickbait, attracting views, for keeping them awash in the endless supply of stuff, the empty headed, the bizzare, the shocking, the pop tarts of whatever gender. Reasoned debate is just not sexy enough.

I enjoy the process of writing. Inevitably I fictionalise to a varying degree any experience. Quite often through wishing to write something that is entertaining or witty. My Carrot Cake Reviews are perhaps where I venture into the made up frothing at the mouth extreme. I don't really get all that incensed and stroppy over a poorly made Carrot Cake, ( spoiler alert! ) its just enjoyable to pretend I do. So I can see the appeal in being outrageous just for the sake of it. Then there is the need to keep upping the ante. It could become addictive, to go still further, and further.

I keep a watchful eye on me and what I decide to put out there. And should I slip up Hubby may gently tap my shoulder and say - 'do you really want to put that out there.' You never know when you might find yourself going too far,and unwittingly triggering that algorithms less pleasant benefits. The blog can demand my attention. It eats up material from my pen. All this is within my purview to take control of. In recent years, since I changed the blog header to Cornucopia, I've adopted more of a magazine format and style to what I post. Social media is not a great place for longer form writing. Currently it's a practice to keep things relatively brief, parceling up longer form pieces into a shorter series of posts. So even I do find myself consciously feeding shorter attention spans.

The shop is showing early, but fitful signs, of things picking up. But it can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster, really good days followed by some of the worst we've had. After a bad day, staying optimistic can prove tricky, and after a good day, not becoming over intoxicated. This is the sort of territory we daily emotionally negotiate. We continue to share the day in the shop between us, doing mornings or afternoons. It does help keep it more manageable. Sleep has been shorter and more restless of late, never a good start on any day for remaining positive. Occasionally I slip up and disheartened turns into despairing. But then I remember a can of carbonated fruit juice I drank the other day, and its strap line encouraging you to - Feel a surge of sparkling fruitiness - then I chuckle and all is right with the world for one moment.

FILM CLUB - Black Narcissus

Powell & Pressburger Season - 1947

Black Narcissus is set in the Himalayas. A group of nuns are sent to transform an old palace into a school and dispensary, to minister to the needs of the local population. The only other English person is Mr Dean ( David Farrar ) an independent cynically minded man, who has seen this sort of endeavour before. He gives it til the rainy season before it all falls apart. Each of the nun's, though on the surface devout, has their own demons they struggle with. None more so than Sister Clodagh ( Deborah Kerr ) who from the moment she arrives remembers the pain of her early love life in Eniskillin. Are they each choosing to revel in their own inner world, or is it the mountain landscape itself that is bringing this to the surface. Is there something spiritually malevolent about this place?

So expertly do Powell & Pressburger conjure up their claustrophobic atmosphere, one completely forgets that this film was entirely shot in England, mostly at Pinewood Studios. The backgrounds are Matt shots of photos and paintings of the Himalayas. Fully embracing the limitations placed upon them, they turn them into a triumphant achievement. The richly coloured sensuousness of the cinematography by Jack Cardiff, The Archers regular cameraman ( he won an Oscar for it) and the heightened acting, lighting and music, transport this tale to an other worldly version of the Himalayas. One ungrounded and gasping for air. Black Narcissus exists in this archetypal interpretation within which its inhabitants live, breath and expire.

Powell & Pressburger called the way they made films 'composed cinema''. This never aimed to be realistic in either presentation or acting. It bears all the muscular expressive tropes of high melodrama and silent films, one might be tempted to call them overwrought and hammy. But that would be to entirely miss its point, and more importantly its effect. Everything is being presented in this heightened form because it reflects the nun's internal experience, of unruly emotions flourishing and running amok.  As though their drab monochrome existence has suddenly transformed itself into the most gloriously tempting technicolour. One sees, as much as feels, the religiously oppressed nature of their internal lives, being challenged by external reality. Revealing what they feel in their heart of hearts, and that this could be enough to drive anyone of them mad. This is fabulously potent cinema by anyone's book.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1971 - Charity Ball by Fanny

 

Fanny were probably the first all female out and out rock band to break through to commercial chart success. OK there had been all girl singing groups and significant rock drummers such as Maureen Tucker in The Velvet Underground, and rock session players such as Carol Kaye. But the touring hard rockin band was in the early seventies a quintessentially all male preserve. Until Fanny came along and broke into it.

Now, it has to be said that apart from their gender as a rock band, their is nothing particularly groundbreaking about their sound. Charity Ball is a very good example of the rollicking rocking American style honky tonk, it  neatly fits into this conventional rock genre. But it is a catchy old tune and one that builds nicely through its guitar riff breaks, and chanting exchanges.

In the UK they were unable to capitalise on Charity Ball's success, and even back in the US they only had two chart hits before disbanding in 1975. The significance of what they achieved should not,however, be underestimated. Nor their influence and encouragement to subsequent all female bands like the Go Go's, The Bangles and The Runaways, which was huge.

FINISHED READING - A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel

I readily devoured Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy. They satisfied the history nerds need to have someone put human flesh on the unfeeling dry bones of historical fact. I've never read any of her earlier novels, for which she was also much lauded. I found a second hand copy of A Change of Climate in the Blickling bookshop, and thought to give one a try. With no idea whether or not this was a good one to start with.

The book opens with a drama, being clearly remembered of a visitor to the house slitting their wrists. It took place in The Red House, where Ralph and Anna live. A couple who have spent their lives trying to do good, and to be if help to those in misfortune. Their relationship is loving, but there is an air of something in it that is stale. In these early chapters of the novel, there is a lot of foreshadowing of the past and the future. Ralph's sister Emma is in mourning, for her adulterous lover Felix has recently died. Ralph appears to be the only one not to have clocked this. Though it has been going on for nearly a lifetime. But then the Eldred family, Ralph and Anna in particular, have their own hidden secrets never talked of even amongst close family. One is left to wonder what exactly they are. They appear to be located in Ralph and Anna's time doing missionary work in South Africa. This is all we know.

The rest of the novel slowly reveals what the nature of that secret is. Why few know or are willing to talk of it. Only as another adulterous relationship forms and a sense of double betrayal erupts, does the corrosive nature of keeping that secret unveil itself. An incident over which there has never been any closure, just an enforced desiccated silence. This appears, on the surface at least, to be one of those novels set in a middle class milieu, with middle class concerns and preoccupations. Because the novel spends so much of its time pootling about in the Eldred families worthy dynamic, I did lose patience with it at times, to put a bit more grist to this tale soon. But once one reaches that point of revelation, it does this well, and leaves you, after it cascades towards its end, with an unravelled, open ended type of conclusion. A good, but not a great novel.

CARROT REVIEW - 4 /8

FILM CLUB - Peeping Tom

Powell & Pressburger Season - 1960

The much lauded director Michael Powell was one half of Powell & Pressburger. Producers of unusual, yet classic films, from 1939 to 1957/ Such as The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp. On the surface accessible and quintessentially English films, but always a strangeness to their structural form and artistic content,communicating that these are very far from as straightforward as they seem. Questioning conventions, they couldn't help but subtly deconstruct what they were encountering and examining. Whether that was war, patriotism, colonialism, love, fame, artistic expression, and ye olde England, they poked at them quizzically as if they were roadkill.

By 1960, Powell's successful partnership with Emeric Pressburger had dissolved, and he released a new film Peeping Tom.  Peeping Tom's heightened colour and subject matter was a style Powell knew well of old. Here used to portray masculine repression, voyeurism and the murder of women as a means to seek a psychological resolution, never found. This was too in your face in its implicit criticism of film making and the male gaze, causing immense critical outrage, about its alleged depravity. So much so, the film was pulled from cinema release. With Powell's reputation left so tarnished by it that his career never recovered from its release.This was the same year as Psycho came out, which fared better critically and reputationally, even though it was more graphic and less complex in its psychology. There was something about Peeping Tom's matter of factness, that just got under the skin more. It wasn't until Martin Scorcese and Brian de Palma began praising its cinematic bravery that it began to re-emerge from its damning obscurity. You'll find contemporary echoes in Scorcese's film Taxi Driver, for instance. Through Brian de Palma we have the far more shabby and less edifying genre of slasher movies.

Powell does not, however, spare your blushes. Peeping Tom, is deliberately vulgar, yet vividly coloured cinema. Accompanied, as it is, by a stereotypical soundtrack, mimicking the style of a Victorian penny dreadful or melodrama. The film opens as though shot through a camera, in a street scene straight out of an Edmund Hopper painting. A prostitute stands there in the street waiting for her next pick up. Mark ( Karlheinz Bohm) secretly films her as he follows her to her lodging, watches as she is getting undressed, as he moves in for a close up on her agonised face as he kills her. He also returns to film the police discovering her body, the crowds in the street, as if he is making a documentary about it. Back home in his flat he watches the rushes, but there is always something not quite right about them. He has to try again.

Into his secret world comes Helen (Anna Massey) immaculately spoken and dressed,  kind and understanding. She manages to break Mark free for an evening, from obsessively carrying his camera around everywhere with him. Helen, after this, will to be treated differently to any other women. She will be protected from his dark side, he cannot kill her, she might ultimately be his liberator. Only her blind Mother ( Maxine Audley ) appears to instinctively sense the dark undertow to Mark's psyche, and though unnerved by him, wants to find out more.

Peeping Tom, even now, is uncomfortable viewing, and way ahead of its time. Its subject matter, the male gaze, taken here to its extreme would be controversial even today. What is remarkable is how unsparing Powell has been in the making of this film, without it becoming gratuitous or grossly exploitative of anyone, including Mark. Its part genteel love story, part not so genteel snuff movie, part a psychological sketch. Why does Mark have to film everything? What was his experimental psychologist Father trying to do to him as a child? Is there anyway out of this that is good for Mark?  Where the power of this movie lies, is in how it makes us all implicit in Mark's film making. Though we may squirm, we do not look away.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

SCREEN SHOT - Dark City

Another in the occasional search for underappreciated, if not neglected sci -fi movies. We arrive at Dark City from 1998. In many ways part of that flourish of late nineties unrelentingly dystopian movies. This eventually climaxes in the ground breaking style of The Matrix in 1999. And if you think Dark City owes something to it, well its the other way round. Many sets from Dark City were reused by the Wachowski's. What both are stylistically indebted to, is The City of Lost Children from 1995 directed by Jeunet & Caro. But without any of its genial playful humour left in.

What we are presented with in Dark City is the bleakest of sci fi mixed with a very grubby and puzzle box of a black noir thriller. What is quite laudable in the direction of this movie, is that it is determined to stick doggedly to its vision and guns. However bizzare and unwieldy its heavy storyline and highly wrought style might become. It chooses not to soften its impact with sentimentality or clichéd ways out of its seemingly impossibly weighty confection.

A man (Rupert Sewell) awakens to find himself naked in a bath, in the corner of the room a chair with his cloths on. He gets dressed. He finds the body of a prostitute dead, covered in bloody red spirals scored into her skin. A phone rings, a man's voice claiming to be his Doctor ( Keifer Sutherland ) tells him he must run because they are about to arrive to capture him. And so he runs, but doesn't know why or what from. He remembers nothing about who he is, even his name eludes him. What has he done, was he responsible for that woman's murder? Are the cloths he's wearing even his?

Expertly crafted, the film feeds its information to you judiciously, in little parcels of significant detail. Not really revealing the truth till pretty much near the end.  A man in search of his identity in a hostile austere environment he can't quite understand, is quintessential Kafka. And Dark City's crowded urban landscape of ramshackle skyscrapers, is visceraly threatening. Sulphur lit in its strange perpetual night. This is a place where everyone's nightmares could live. 

A quite brilliant movie, probably even at the time quickly superseded by The Matrix's pseudo philosophical storyline and funky mind boggling set piece technical effects. Because of the way the subsequent Matrix films over extended and completely trashed its rationale, maybe it doesn't hold up as well as Dark City does now. Perhaps one movie was enough, saying all it needed to.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

WINDOW VIEWS - The Fourth Apartment

This was not his first, second nor third apartment, it was the fourth he'd inhabited in the last two years. Each time the windows had been shattered by explosions in the street, or had their entire frames blown out by 'rogue' drone activity. And once the window glass was broken to just a edging of shards, then snipers could then pick off with greater ease the merest shadow of the figures within. These were the type of ruins within which he'd incrementally lost all his close family. One by one, as the interior walls were strafed, the pain of it became carved into every pock marked wall and floor etched with blood. Staining the memory of his life in this sparsely furnished property, he'd barely had the time to consider home. Once the windows had their eyes blackened and the innards were opened up like a carcass, then the swirls of dust blew in and filled the space. What was there left of family, or for himself, to keep him here?

He thought he was battle hardened, but in reality coldly inert emotions had taken him over. Surviving by closing down more and more of his basic humanity. Would this be the last place he would ever say was his? He told himself he was fighting for territory, for the freedom to live how how he wished and where he wished. Once he had fought for his wife, his son and daughters, his parents, and his own future. But each time another one of them fell to the hail of a machine gun, or the pin point accuracy of a snipers shot, he became a further step removed from any honourable volition he'd had in continuing to fight. He picked off soldiers because he could, not because they endangered him, purely as an act of revenge. Rage fed him, blindly and implacably. He no longer liked who he was becoming.

The military incursions into rebel held areas around this apartment, were increasing in frequency and effectiveness. Very soon the rebel resistance could break completely and there'd be another mad messy scurrying to relocate and regroup in another misbegotten area of the city. Setting up camp there, until once again tanks and missiles would locate them. Inevitably this territory too would be fought tooth and nail over, and the self same sorry tale of resistance going unrewarded would proceed. How long would it be before there was nowhere else left to run to? He was exhausted by it, he dreamed of just walking away. But he didn't. Though he thought about leaving a lot. Making a new life, anywhere but here. Some country that didn't require constantly to be fought for. So stable that civil war was a history way beyond living memory. A place with a reputation for tolerance, kindness and peacefulness. A country willing to open its arms and welcome him in. Whilst peering through a bullet pitted window frame, engaging in a tit for tat gun battle, all of that dreaming felt improbable.

LISTENING TO - So Trendy by Sleaford Mods

If there is one thing you can say about the Sleaford Mods, its that they know what they think. Yeh, they might sound yobby, rough and in your face, but take a closer listen and you'll discover a much more sophisticated and thoughtful response to contemporary and recognisable issues. They are as honest and unpretentious as their class origins, but with a huge lot of aesthetic creative nous. Their lyrical expression is frequently superbly allied with the unerring sense of the catchy tune. So Trendy, joins the list of their many classics.

So Trendy - Lyrics

Flying cars
It's a jet pack man

Will I ever get the brace down there
Under the swivel sticks and stupid hair
Under the access code and the Face ID
There was minute where I had it yeah
Just as the lorry turned and left the air
Under the access code and the Face ID
I'm sick of looking at the windmill gear
A bag of flour and neck scarf 'ere
Under the access codes of the new ID

Chorus
So Trendy
So Trendy
So Trendy
You get seen and you wanna stick to it
So Trendy
So Trendy
So Trendy
You get seen and you wanna stick to it

Hey it's back and bicep day
Check out all my squiggly veins
I got 57 screenshots in one hour just in case
I appeal to random peeps
Through a filter they know me
Think I’ll wear a mushroom haircut and
A cross earring
Wait it's the jet pack man
The mysterious jet pack man
Flying over LAX I wonder where he's off too next

Chorus

You get seen and you wanna stick too it
And I don't need no jet
And fashion suicide
Ya got ya top gun glasses upside down
You goose, ya snide

Ya know they don't chase you
They always chase we
'cos everybody wants a piece
We’re so trendy

 Repeat

Who We Say We Are - 3) Personal History and Personal Truth

I was born in Halifax, Yorkshire in 1957 and the world I was born into was still in post war mode, not yet shifting up a gear that it did once the sixties kicked in. Whilst I've not lived in Halifax since 1969, I would still say that is where I am from. Even though I've lived the majority of my adult life in the south of England. This has not changed my sense of being from the north, even though the vestiges of my Yorkshire accent are a trifle thin and vowel sounds only these days. I've lived longer in East Anglia, my adopted home, than anywhere else. Though it will never be where I am from.

When my family moved from Halifax I was on the cusp of my teenage years. Already recognising the early hints of my sexual orientation awakening. I did not initially know then what to call that. When I did come across the word homosexual, I had to look up a dictionary explanation. I recognised that this bald definition was meant to describe me, but at the same time it didn't. For in my experience a homosexual was Larry Grayson or John Inman, which I did not feel I was at all like. This was only a few years after homosexuality was decriminalised. The prejudices in my village had not yet caught up, in fact the entire country hadn't. A homosexual was still viewed as an intrinsically bad person, which I knew I simply was not.

From the moment we are born emotional impressions of ourselves and the world that surrounds us are formed. And those impressions are never really erased, providing the nascent template from which everything we subsequently encounter is interpreted. Spending the rest of our lives trying to understand, unpick, better manage or get around these habitual reactions to ourselves and the world. And you know some days this can be a job of work for me and on others I don't buy into it at all. Everything can all feel too hardwired to change.

This self biased history of me and my experience exists whether I like it or not. Forming the raw unruly foundation for who I currently am. A strange mix of impressions and aspirations some from myself, some from my parents and society. Disquietingly, as I grow older I find recognisibly parental views and habits now seeping embarrassingly into my language and behaviour. Much as I might want to see myself as not being like that, there it is.

You cannot totally erase your personal history however you have experienced it, whether negatively or positively. It nevertheless played its part in forming you. One might wish to retrospectively rewrite it with better outcomes and snappier repartee. Memories being largely emotionally based, this makes the details of your life as remembered rarely how it actually was. Our past, however partial and uncomfortable to recollect, remains influential upon who you are now, and what you will become. To paraphrase the psychologist James Hillman - even through our childhood traumas and difficulties something fundamental to us is struggling to get out and be made manifest. From something soured a thing of altogether sweeter beauty may emerge.

If you do uncover and manifest the personal truth of who you really are, you can never unlearn that. My biology and gender at birth and my personal history have remained the same, because I never required them to change. The repercussions of realising I was gay, however, did profoundly affect my aspirations for myself. I clocked early on the path my life would now take. It was unlikely to be a conventional one. It wouldn't involve bringing up children. I never envisaged then that I'd ever be married to a man I loved. I emotionally signed off from a lot, and filed them under The Things That Will Not Now Happen. Whatever my life was going to be about, if it wasn't going to be a house, a wife and 2.4 children, puzzled me for some time. Until I became a Buddhist. But that's a whole other story of truth and transformation..

I would imagine that at some point if you are trans, your biology and personal history would dramatically diverge from personal truth. Things no longer feeling like they are traveling together in the same direction, if they ever were. Progressing down the path of transition, the focus maybe on the personal truth of who you feel yourself to really be, and making that a lived reality. I can understand why one might want to leave behind, rewrite or ignore ones personal history, even ones essential biology. But despite the fundamentals of surgery and the effects of medication, the basic body being transformed will remain the male or a female one you were born with. Whatever the person you create from it, its previous history is preserved in its bones and muscles. This cannot be imaginatively wished away, or brushed under the carpet, however much one might feel you want it to be gone, and gone for good. There is a uniqueness inherent to being a trans woman or man, and its in the alchemy born from an imaginative transformation, and the perspective this brings to a life. It is rare that people are born this way, they have the full and lived knowledge of being self created.

At some point though, there is a peace to be made with the person they were born as, and that early history in the wrong gender they've fought to make right. Personal truth is unable to revise all of that, but maybe to transcend it is now feasible. The journey a transcending person takes to living as the gender of their desire, is different to that of a person born into that gender. Its a radically different form of femininity or masculinity being given form here.  As I've said before, Feelings, not facts, require finding modes of expression. Its exemplified by the plethora of pronouns and specificly invented names to describe one persons individual sense of themselves. This is not unique to trans, but a manifestation of a much broader trend in our culture , paraded on Instagram and its like, of a self preoccupied narcissistic individualism. In love with a selfie. To make ourselves unique and special.

There were times when I wanted to put my own Yorkshire upbringing behind me. Not denying it, but it felt limiting, so I wanted to go beyond it. I could find myself forever internally grumbling about the 'professional ' northerner, living in the south, but laying the accent on thick for their television and radio appearances etc etc. It became for a while a personal  bete noire, something I did not want to be. 

To be honest, I have come a long way from my northern origins. A lot of that was deliberate on my part. I needed to create space in which to discover who I was, and how I was going to live life as a gay man. So there was a career move to London. There is often a need to put distance between ones personal history, in pursuit of personal truth. I don't want to forget my origins. Having moved about a bit, since 1981 I've lived in London, Diss, Ipswich, Cambridge and now Sheringham, I can see that maybe this sketches a picture of a lifetime spent in search of a new home for myself. And that would not be far wrong.

We were on holiday in Malton in North Yorkshire, a few years ago. Right in the heart of what many Yorkshiremen proudly boast is 'God's Own Country'. I cannot stand the conceited arrogance of this phrase. Don't get me wrong, I love the Yorkshire countryside and coast dearly. But I don't need it to give it the stamp and approval of a deity. There's a lot about  the Yorkshire countryside that evokes childhood memories of Halifax. It feels like home ground, even though I left this for good when I was eleven. I find myself resisting the cultivation of any type of sentimental mythology around my Yorkshireness. And I find its the same with my gayness too. 

Perhaps one always has mixed feelings about where we have come from. Linked in, as it often is, with uncomfortable memories of that unformed naive gaucheness which was your younger self. Someone we dearly hope we've grown out of being. Like an unfortunate friend you no longer wish to acknowledge having known. And it maybe that one's personal history never sits easy with the aspirations inherent to the pursuit of one's personal truth, of whatever it is you wanted to be. On the other hand, maybe there is something lurking behind my Yorkshire upbringing, or something in who I like to believe I am now, that I don't want to fully acknowledge, that I find hard to transcend the need for.

LISTENING TO - Up Song by Black Country New Road

2022 wasn't your ideal year for BCNR. A new album of material released to great acclaim. Then the planned tour to promote it completely trashed by Issac Woods their main lyricist and singer leaving the band the week the tour was due to start. So the band pulled out of everything and started to rethink and work on new material. They toured during the summer and autumn previewing the first fruits of the band, sans Woods  

Now bearing the songwriting  and singing duties across the band. They're still recognisably BCNR but judging by the material recorded at the end of last year on the Live at Bush Hall gigs, its a more wide ranging, eclectic and romantic sound. The Bush Hall recording appears to be an attempt to capture this early material before they move on. Never a band to think their recorded output was the definitive version of anything. It will be interesting to see if any of this material from 2022 makes it through to 2023. 

Of this 2022 material Up Song is a favourite, bouncy, positive and yes definitely Up. It appears to be a rallying cry to themselves and their fans to value and celebrate what they've achieved together both with and without Woods. Its a little gem featuring the fascinatingly fractured vocal style of bassist Tyler Hyde. It is deservedly the opener on the Live at Bush Hall recording.

' Look at what we did together, BCNR, friends for ever.'

SCREEN SHOT - The Andromeda Strain

We appear to be looking out for sci- fi movie, somewhat overlooked. This old movie, was first released in 1971, when I was in my early teens. I never saw it at the time. It's directed by Robert Wise who made many hugely successful films during the 60's and 70's. The Andromeda Strain is a slow paced and carefully meticulous film that takes you through the process by which an alien disease strain brought to earth via an exploratory satellite is dealt with.

The film exists in those few years between Kubrick's 2001 in 1968 and the first Star Wars movie in 1977, before high tech CGI began to make anything possible in a sci-fi film. In many ways The Andromeda Strain's aesthetic is indebted primarily to 2001. Its stylish sets and tech are sparingly used and kept intentionally basic. This helps in preventing it now look dated or simply laughable. For the process through which they deal with the potential of this rogue alien virus going AWOL on Earth, is realistically treated.  It sets its own time signature and doggedly sticks to it, for how this story will unfold.  The Andromeda Strain created the template on which all future films on this subject would be compared., or influenced. And it stands up to comparison well. In style and length Tarkovsky's immense film Solaris released the following year is its nearest progeny. Well worth another view.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 78 - Passing Through The Ides Of March

The Ides of March can be a murderous time to be a retailer in a seaside town. Still not completely escaped the clutches of winter, and neither have you had a whiff of the first soft spring footsteps of the season beginning. At the best of times March can feel like one long tease, a cruel form of tortuous expectation. As though we are hanging off a ledge on increasingly strained fingertips. Constantly just letting go of those pesky expectations, imaginings and aspirations as being 'well premature'. Still feeling like its a long way up or down from here. 

 

The other day a retired couple came into our shop and stood looking around simply amazed. They kept pointing at stock we'd made, seemingly the ones using a fabric called Bergen in a Mustard colour way. She momentarily looked self conscious realising there might be a need to explain herself. 'It's just that's our fabric isn't it' looking towards her husband for confirmation and moral support. 'We have curtains made up in it' And she went twittering on and on about it, as they'd never expected to see their fabric anywhere else, as they both shuffled out the shop. With a last look over their shoulder just to check this wasn't a mirage, this astonishing revelation. What surprised me most was that a mass produced fabric, that is one of our best selling designs in anything we use it on, they still nonetheless thought of as 'being theirs'.

Interior Design Challenge has started its new series. Hurrah! The usual band of amateur hopefuls. So far, there isn't much sign of egotistical self deceit, of over claiming the extent of their talented genius, or simply unforgivably bad interior design or execution. Its already clear a couple of these contestants already have the chops to win. 

The ability of the professionals to come up with a memorable phrase continues. The word 'shonky' has long since entered the lexicon of our regular parlance to describe something that is not just badly designed, not just badly made, but has no rationale or reason to exist at all. The professional judge this week uttered a classic phrase with which to describe what was lacking one contestant's efforts - 'It's the playful punctuation I am missing'. Oh, so was I, so was I.

Sheringham Community Noticeboard is just one of out local Facebook pages. Enjoy Sheringham More, is another. Both are the regular haunts of the passive aggressive post and uninformed biased prejudgements about what is going on. Alongside the pleas for information regarding where the local Chinese takeaways are, or the best manicurist in town. It says something when so many posts begin by saying - I don't know whether this is allowed, but....

Yesterday it had this, from someone who, on further investigation, is quite a regular Nosey Parker about the goings on in their environs:-

'I'm sure lots of armchair commentators will take offence at my daring to question what is going on in my environs. But does anybody know why Holway Road and Common Lane are no go right now (8am Wednesday) Asking for a friend'

Holway Road was being resurfaced that day was the quick answer to that one. But.

There is, as that person indicated, no shortage of armchair experts who suddenly discover they have a lifetimes experience in the laying of tarmac on roads to draw on, and an abiding problem with authority formed in comprehensive school, now bordering on seething loathing of the local council and its perfidious liberal witchcraft.

'Unlike every other authority in the country that would close only one side of a major road at a time for resurfacing. North Norfolk wants to close both!'

To which another person who I'm sure sincerely wanted to use their comment to express a more positive aspect to the road being closed, nevertheless fell into the gaping hole of their own well worn particular beef at the end.

'And for those of us who live on Holway Road, its lovely not to have all those cars whizzing passed at 40+ mph!'

Ah, bless them all.

Snow, snow quick quick snow, sleet, snow, mizzle, drizzle, sleet, snow slip. Today it did all of these various manifestations of unpleasant weather to be out in, all day. Unsurprisingly, after a morning in the shop of the till not even coming near opening, we closed the shop and headed for home.

I had a letter from the Department of Works and Pensions this week asking me to - Get your State Pension. Never knew I had to fill out a form. I can do it online, pretty basic stuff they want to know. As usual I'm surprised they don't have all of this already on their records, somewhere. Anyway the moment I officially become pensionable draws ever closer.

All through the night and into this morning it has been blowing a full on gale. I arose this morning to a less than cosy front room. This cold snap is certainly determined to go out with a huge bag of wind. This maybe another day sans customers in the shop if ,as forecast, this keeps up till midday. The afternoon ran through rapid cycles of clear blue skies, followed by horizontal snow, swirling blizzard, rain sleet, blue skies turning to hail. Unstable weather front anyone? We closed early. One good customer made it through our door today. All hail the good customer!

Sue Ellen's policy to repel the boat people by creating an almighty stink, takes a tragic mess and gives it an even crueler consequence. One unlikely to solve the crisis because all the previous attempts to draw such a harsh line by this government have demonstrably failed. This has now caused Mr Nice Guy, Gary Lineker , the countries most decent warm hearted ex footballer, to make a Twitter comment on said policy. The BBC threw itself ,once again, on its own blunt sword. Creating a chaotic situation when it didn't, then did, decide to suspend him. One suspects they were leaned on to change their decision. And now all his Match of the Day colleagues pull out in support. 

The way the BBC's is using impartiality restrictions is partisan and arbitrary, its a bizarre form of self inflicted punishment. The rest of the right wing media never gets pulled to account for the lies, half truths and damned lies they perpetrate. Giving the BBC a kicking is a sport to them. Does the BBC and its impartiality have a future? Should it have a future? Would the BBC indeed be better off free of it and just be completely independent of political interference and control? A much valued channel for establishing and upholding whatever the truth is. And now even David Attenborough gets cancelled out of fear of a right wing backlash. What the f... is going on here? This is not good, not good at all.

Meanwhile the governments plans to torch thousands of EU laws without parliamentary oversight to check what they are, or planning what or if they will replace them with UK legislation.  This pursuit of legislation purified of EU taint, is entirely ideologically driven, not practical or considered governance. Its just a mindless wrecking ball. Much as I find the whole thing ludicrous and deeply concerning. There is a part of me thinks, just let them do it, because if any policy is going to come back and bite you severely further down the line, this one surely will.

Beginning to realise that I'm primarily drawn to the feminine in Catholic imagery. I'm not hugely interested in crucified male figures and the like. At present, besides Our Lady of Walsingham, I'm currently thrilled by the melodramatic iconography of Our Lady of the Sorrows.

When is a bus pass suitable to use as voter ID or not? If you are a pensioner your bus pass is fine, if you are a student your travel pass is not. There is no logic to this.  Other than which section of society our government wants to encourage to vote and the ones they don't. Who is more likely to vote for the Tory party and who isn't .

Don't allow this devious governments slight of hand to impede your ability to vote. Sort out what you need to do and do it now. If you haven't any of the photo ID required or can't afford it, you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate, which can be used instead. But you'll need to get cracking as there is an application cut off date before the May Local Elections - 25th April.

For more info click on The Electoral Commission Site https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk or the governments own site https://www. gov.uk