LISTENING TO - Working Men's Club

Hailing from West Yorkshire this band is the conception of its lead vocalist and songwriter Sydney- Minsky-Sargent. One of those bands who came to wider attention during the pandemic. They've been through a few line up changes, and style shifts, since its founding. Each time abandoning, then further expanding, the number of band members. Currently it is a four piece. This is still young Syd's creation. Though there are rumours he might be a trifle exacting control freak. Who would have thunk it?

Their sound draws on a wide gamut of influences, a heftly wadge of post punk, with a mish mash of electro, acid house and techno stylings. Plus the monotone dreary drawl of vocal from Syd, cut straight from the veins of Ian Curtis, Jarvis Cocker or Mark E Smith. Throw in a discordent jangle or two borrowed from the second incarnation Caberet Voltaire, and you have quite a northern pedigree. And though far from your usual club fare, this is really danceable too.

Syd, lyrically, comes across as a bit of a laconic wit. Who would never break a smile on camera. Though he certainly has a vision for what he's doing, however miserables and bleak it is. The musical blend is both retro yet contemporary. They could unfairly be likened to New Order, but they were rarely this characterful, hard and physical. What is presented here on the track Valleys, is the misery of modern day teen life in a Pennine town.

'Trapped inside a town

Inside my mind

Stuck with no ideas

I'm running out of time

There's no quick escape

So many mistakes

I'll play the long game

Winter is a curse

And this valley is hearse

When will it take me to my grave?

Here we also have an honourable salute to the Bard of Salford, with one or two borrowed lines from JCC. And then follow that with the track Teeth, which is far more sharply cut, the beats hit Pennine granite. Its an uncompromising jagged edged boot stomp. Working Men's Club don't attempt to make this one remotely daytime radio friendly. 

Already two albums into their career, there seems still a lot of mileage and potential yet to evolve here. Just keep an eye out for them. They may quickly flip from indie outliers to mainstream players, or vanish into the mist of a Pennine moor.

LISTENING TO - O Monolith by Squid

It took me a couple of years to really appreciate how good Squid's debut album Bright Green Fields was. Densely woven, complex rhythmically, with tracks suddenly and dramatically veering off at extreme oblique tangents. It was exhilarating to listen to, yet at the same time demanding to keep up with. It was music you definitely needed to devote time to. This was not remotely casual listening, or something you'd have on ambient in the background. Drummer and singer Ollie Judge still remains central to their sound. His rough hewn vocal style, part shout, part rough falling cliff face, was in your face a lot on the debut. It is an acquired taste. Though here on O Monolith it has moments that feel softer and more modulated, less abrasive, reflective even.

The Squid style at its most fluid and refined is present on O Monolith, on (Swing) In A Dream and Undergrowth. Post punk, musically exploratory and experimental, its hard to discern exactly what any of this is about lyrically. If anything. I'm not sure their lyrics are that message driven, they seem too imaginatively oblique for that. There is a palpable feeling on O Monolith of a band wanting to flex n stretch its boundaries outside the confines of those recognisable Squid-like musical structures. At times they sound less post punk and more 'progressive' rock. Then, as on The Blades, they have moments of Post Rock and ape the simple grandiosity of Godspeed You Black Emperor. Do an abrupt about face and its off somewhere else, and we are left once again playing catch up.

Not everything on O Monolith strikes me as successful. Devils Den reminds me of a seventies Italian Prog Rock band PFM I was into in my teens. And there is a little too much on this album that does have a similar style of over-straining musical cleverness and showing off, that can be a wee bit tiresome. Goodness, though, they are a tight tight band now, almost completely arse clenched, but impressively so. Either their third album will definitively nail the whole thing, or they'll descend into completely abstract noodling, or decide they've already done enough, reached a dead end, then split. O Monolith has the aura of an album that falls unsatisfactorily between two stools, moving away from one style toward an as yet not fully formed evolution. In the process not convincing anyone fully. It has moments of sheer joy followed by a rather flatulent let down.  This is just half of a great album.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8 ( currently )

FINISHED READING - Royal Books & Holy Bones by Eamon Duffy

 

This collection of Essays In Medieval Christianity explores the frequently esoteric aspects of Medieval England's practice of the Christian faith. And how the focus of these adapts to the iconoclastic sweep of the Reformation.

A compilation of previously published essays, talks, reviews and articles, could so easily become a rag bag of themes. Each one running off in a different direction. It is, fortunately held together by Eamon Duffy's genial authorial tone and evident desire to be really really thorough. Mirroring the effects of his breakthrough revisionist  books The Stripping of the Altars and The Voices of Morebath, in correcting Protestant Reformation propaganda about the true state of personal faith in late medieval English society. 

In Royal Books & Holy Bones he delves, once again, deep into the faith and practices of ordinary people, in villages and towns outside of London. Uncovering those long forgotten oddities of the rural backwaters the local Saint. St Wulstan or St Erkenwald both figures surviving from the late Anglo Saxon era to become martyrs and destinations for pilgrimage. Though neither become international figures in the devotions they prompted, because they are too parochial. Local saints are to be considered as parallel developments to the regional visions and variations of the Virgin Mary. From Walsingham to Woolpit.

Henry 6th, though considered a weak king as viewed by history, became, as many assassinated figures did, this proto Saint in the aftermath of his death. With campaigns to have him canonised well advanced, which dwindle away to nothing by the time of the Tudors. Duffy expertly describes the rise and fall of his popularity, that was essentially a grass roots movement originating in the spiritual feelings and responses of ordinary people.

There are many other minor rich seams here. Difficult relations between Crowland Abbey and its surrounding population. The effects the Reformation had on imagery and forms of representation in churches. How the Rosary and its accompanying rituals and recitations was developed. The popularity of The Four Latin Doctors in painted screens and stained glass.The effect of plague upon faith and how that sets the foundations for movements to reform the church. All fascinating small gems of information that enrich the picture we have of the medieval zeitgeist.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

FAVE RAVE - Professor Ronald Hutton

Regular Time Team addicts, such as myself, may already be quite familiar with Professor Ronald Hutton. Often being wheeled in to give an authoritative view on what pre-medieval life and beliefs actually were like.  Hutton's dress sense, is all tweed jackets, beautiful waistcoats, misshapen collars and cravats. This might lead one to think he is a fanciful historical lightweight. This could not be further from the truth.

I've recently begun enjoying the energising delights of lectures posted on You Tube, originally given at Gresham College in London. Of these, there is a sequence of themes exploring paganism, religious beliefs and practices in pre historical times, given by said Professor Hutton. Having him back to speak frequently because he is worth it. I've watched most of his lectures now, and my appreciation for his breadth and depth of  learning, communication skills and sense of humour has grown. 

So, there is a lot of playfulness and wit in evidence here, as Prof Hutton, with great understanding, kindly, but methodically, pieces together what it is reasonable to assume and what is not at all credible. Along the way he debunks many myths about paganism, witchcraft and pre Christian society, by showing you exactly where and when some of our ideas about this subject came into common knowledge. Their origins being often a lot more recent than we might prefer to believe. 

Here is an excellent representative example, entitled - How Pagan Was Medieval Britain?

VISIBLY QUEER - Pharaoh Neferkare & General Sasenet

What Ancient Egyptians thought about 'queer' goings on in their society?  Well, this is unclear. When it comes to written accounts, visual representations, the interpretations we make of what we believe they meant to the Ancient Egyptians, these could be way off. This civilisation was very different from our own, so making parallels is tricky. But, at the same time, we are dealing with human nature and that hasn't changed much. So its hard to believe a 'queer' sensibility would be completely absent. It would show in some way, whether it be via positive or negative remarks or portrayals.

Ancient Egyptians had expressions for three genders - male, female, and eunuchs. The latter did not necessarily imply any physical castration, it was more a designation for a sexual orientation that was without possibility of progeny. There is little evidence of disapproval or punishment of eunuchs for being eunuchs.

Two Royal 'Manicurists'

There are many Ancient Egyptian archaeological artifacts that indicate a 'queer' interpretation might be appropriate - wall paintings of two men kissing - statuary of two women side by side in a traditional marriage pose. If one looks at these with a 'queer eye' they point towards a society that could well have been relatively open and tolerant to a degree. If not, then you would still have to interpret these examples as indicating an unusually close filial loyalty or platonic friendship. So nothing to see here. 

Women in marriage pose

There does appear to be a tendency in historical circles, to dismiss a 'queer' interpretation as more inherently fanciful than a heterosexually orthodox one. The latter becomes the assumed default position, with an automatically conferred validity. Nonetheless the 'queer' viewpoint can be an equally viable way to perceive the meaning of these suggestive artifacts from history.

One piece of documentation survives in the form of a story, with surprising details. As in all the recent Visibly Queer posts, this story concerns a historical royal figure in relationship with someone from a lower class or position. The discrepancy in status and power, as ever, making it worthy of documenting. Such stories do not indicate how ordinary people in an everyday 'queer' relationship might have been perceived and treated.

The story originally comes from the 6th Century BC in the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Significantly, it is a story retold in succeeding eras, it becomes almost a folk tale. It originates with a commoner called Teti son of Hanet. Most likely a slave within the Pharaoh's own palace entourage. In the fragmentary document the beginning of the story is missing. We enter it where Teti recounts seeing the affection the Pharaoh Neferkare expresses whenever he is left alone with General Sasanet, without his wives or harem present. The Egyptian word for love is strongly indicated about this assignation.

Teti's role as major snoop makes you wonder whether he did this entirely off his own bat, or was he asked to collect evidence by someone else? To observe and report back. We will probably never know if there was someone commissioning his surveillance. Though it is worth asking what did they, or Teti himself, hope to do with this information? Why did they waste papyrus on this?

The story continues, it was observed Pharaoh Neferkare would leave the palace late in the evening - to just to go for a walk - and did so regularly. Concerned questions began to be asked about where he walked too when 'he went forth in the night'. Teti playing private detective decides to follow him one evening, to see exactly where he ventures. Surprise surprise, he is seen arriving at the house of General Sasenet. He throws a stone up at a window and stamps his foot, then a ladder is cast down. 

He arrives in the fourth hour of the night ( 10pm) and left four hours later. Teti insinuates that this was, ' when the divine person had done what he wanted with the general he returned to the palace'. Whether Teti saw anything of what the Pharaoh had 'done' with the General is not clear, but what had happened is certainly being implied - there'd been some sexual activity going on. Nevertheless this clandestine behaviour suggests some form of public censure or gossip might be being avoided. Though this may not primarily be concerning its homosexual nature. What makes this potentially so scandalous, is that it is The Pharaoh who is embroiled in it.

A Pharoah's divine right to rule was largely carried through a matrilineal line of succession. It was important who his Mother had been and who the Mother of his children was. Also, one of the Pharoah's central duties, as the semi- divine god and spiritual  intermediary, was to ensure the continuing fertility cycle of the Nile valley. So him spilling his sacred seed into what was essentially a 'eunuch' relationship might have been perceived as imperiling not just the royal line, but, more importantly, this vital sacred fertility. If this became common knowledge it could seriously undermine public confidence in his rule.

Neferkare

Neferkare does not have a good reputation in Egyptian documents of his time, nor in subsequent periods. He was, if the reports are to be believed, an extremely bad and neglectful ruler. We do not know, but could conjecture about this particularly slanderous story. This may have originally been information gathered on a known wayward Pharaoh, whose behaviour threatened, not just the fertility of its relationship with its pantheon of gods, but also the famed economic stability of the whole country. 

Amun Ra in the underworld

The historically orthodox spin on this story is that it is all an allegory. A story confected to present this Pharaoh as the God Amun Ra descending into the underworld (General Sasenet?) to ensure the sun rises the next day. This does not really seem that credible. There are all those unnecessary little details in the story of the stone being thrown, the stamping of the foot and ladder being let down. These strike me as being more like the verbatim transcript of an actual observation. If the archetypal transit of the sun in Egyptian  mythology is being at all alluded to here, it could just as easily be as a scabrous bit of Ancient Egyptian satire. Sending up the extent that this particularly ineffective Pharaoh might go to, to ensure the stability of the heavens and relations with the gods. I find this amusing, as I do the modern attempts to explain away the surface appearance of its 'queerness'.

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 87 - Getting Art & Ab Art

As I predicted last month, the blog's claim to being Big In Singapore has now reached its expiry date. So the halcyon days of hundreds of views has ceased. There has been a small, yet poignant, readjustment of expectations to be gone through. The cloak of humbleness settling once more over my shoulders. 

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After years of thinking North Norfolk had nothing interesting to offer in the area of contemporary art, I've suddenly been to two really fine exhibitions in the space of a week.

Karen Turner

The first was the latest exhibition at Artspace in Cromer. A diverse show The New Face of Portraiture, each providing a different perspective on what the word 'portrait' might mean, either in subject matter or presentation. It ranged from conventional yet confrontational painted portraits of faces, to documentary photos, and mixed media performance assemblages. So, something for all the family.

There were two stand out artists for me. One were beautifully executed. colourful saturated representations of large women. Challenging both ones sense of what beauty is, and who can possess it. The other highlights were small items of clothing, one held together with very rusty safety pins, the other pinned with thorns and decorated with pearlescent beads and seashells. The latter looking like both an ornamented jacket and a view of the coastline. Each piece of clothing with a small label like photo pinned into its collar. Brilliant stuff.

On our penultimate Sunday off together before the shop goes into full seven day seasonal open mode, we went to Salthouse just a few miles along the coast from us. We often drive through Salthouse on our way to some where else. See, there is an art exhibition on, assume it will be the usual bland watercolours and continue on. But today we chose to stop, have a fine coffee and cake in The Salthouse Stores. Before going up the hill to the church. Where an exhibition called Salthouse Revisited by a group of artists called Anglia Textile Works, was being held.

Niki Chandler

Again this proved to be a bit of an eye opener. Here was a broad and exploratory range of approaches to how you could make art from textiles. Some using traditional applique, others collages of dyed rags and stitches in cloth, or exploring the geometric layering of coloured gauze as a thing in itself and as a printing medium. 

Hannah Rae

Now I'm fully operational with the bus pass. I'm beginning to venture further afield. I made a solo journey to Walsingham the other day. When I arrived, it was half closed, but at least this proved it was feasible. It felt odd Hubby not being with me. I've got accustomed to conversation and exchange of opinions. I guess I will become used to that the more I do it. I'm thinking of doing a bit more 'church larking' which is something I used to enjoy back when I holidayed alone.

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Perhaps we were pushing our luck, but we went to see an Art Exhibition at the Cley Marshes Visitor Centre, entitled Paint & Pixels, this had two exhibitors, who I must say deserved each other.

Exhibitor One, produced half competent paintings copied from photos, of birds or animals. Sometimes suspended on a blank shit brown coloured background, perhaps thrust uncomfortably into a contrived natural context, or attempted to create a novel three dimensionality by sticking said painted bird to the glass.

Exhibitor Two, took photographs of the Norfolk countryside. Nothing wrong in that you might think, and neither does he. Proudly boasting that he doesn't use any photo shop image management. But, so he says, merely highlights the colours already present. Which is not what he is doing really. What he means by that is that he wacks the contrast to the max, the colour likewise, and saturates the living hell out of it. Producing luridly coloured landscapes delivered out of some drug induced fever dream.

Combined, they provided simply the worst exhibition of art we have seen this year on the North Norfolk coast. Which is saying something, as the competition for that particular epithet is hotly contested in this and almost every year.

FILM CLUB - Gone To Earth

Powell & Pressburger Season - 1950

Hazel (Jennifer Jones) is a wild unworldly young woman, more attuned to nature than she is to humankind. Carrying around with her constantly a pet fox cub called Foxy. Her Father is the local jack of all trades, who also plays the harp for village fairs, at which Hazel usually sings. Hazel appears on the surface to be a charmingly innocent simple hearted waif. She holds on to notebooks her deceased Mother wrote. These contain spells and invocations, and she listens to see if she can hear the responses of fairies. But whenever she hears the sound of Squire Reddin ( David Farrar) on his horse, she fearfully hides herself away. For though also a force of nature, he is a malevolent one.

One day she swears to the spirits on Gods Mountain and to her Father, that the first man she encounters that day she will marry. That person turns out to be the parson Edward (Cyril Cusack) . Squire Reddin turns up after their wedding day and its clear he has 'known' Hazel intimately before. She is both scared of him, but cannot refuse him, when he insists she comes away to live with him.

This film forms part of the neo romantic movement in British films that burgeoned in the immediate post war years. One which Powell and Pressburger were a central, if eccentric part of. The underpinning of Gone to Earth is derived from Mary Webb's original novel, but given technicolour lusciousness and an Archers script. The story is hugely indebted to every novel ever written by the Brontes, but now transposed to Shropshire. Where a free spirited Kathy is faced with a brooding sexually rapacious rotter version of Mr Rochester. It is ridden with such novelistic clichés. The heroine is bound to die tragically at the end, which she duly does. Falling down an old mine shaft. So, symbolism alert, she is literally gone to earth.

The Shropshire countryside is beautifully filmed by Powell. Its rare to see the English landscape captured quite so dramatically and with such a magical wildness to it. If someone had said it was really filmed in the Carpathian mountains, because England was closed, I could well have believed them. It also captures a more mythically inclined rustic culture, in tune with the seasons, but on the point of becoming embroiled in the modern world. Having won the war, films began harking back to an even older national identity, one in touch with the spirit of  ancient Albion. A world where folklore and tradition were still paramount.

Gone to Earth is not one of my favourite Archers movies. It neither earns nor gains your emotional engagement. The story line, these days, creaks, and Powell & Pressburger don't quite do enough to lift it visually out of its hackneyed genre origins. Seven years away from their partnership dissolving, this feels like an early indication of the gradual post war decline in the quality and inventiveness of their films. Returning to themes, but carrying them off with less verve or success. 

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

Screen Shot - The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The film opens with a movie clip of Nicholas Cage saying ' I could cut my hair if you think that would make it better'. Thus is the tone of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent set. Its a film with its tongue very much in its cheek. And of course Cage is central to its multi layered conceit. Because it is the history and reputation of his movies, and the eccentricity and waywardness of his talent as an actor, that is being lampooned here. That Cage is more than willing to embrace this modus operandi, is to my mind so admirable that it has actually transformed my view of him. Yes, he has become a bit of a spendthrift with his career. Often in the unfettered pursuit of money. All of this is up for becoming the subject matter in this film. As he says in response to the repeated assertion through out, that this film might be considered a comeback - ' not that I ever went away'.

So Nicholas Cage, playing Nick Cage, goes to an island to meet an apparently mafia movie mogul Ravi, who wants to talk to him about making a movie together. Ravi, played with bright eyed besottedness by Pedro Pascal, just loves Nicholas Cage, he is a huge huge fan. The CIA, also on the island, believes Ravi is holding a woman hostage as part of a Mafia political sting. When their own spying network fails to show up, the CIA recruit Cage to investigate Ravi for them. Cage's friendship with Ravi grows, they go on long fantasy car journeys working out possible story lines, into which Cage clumsily introduces the real idea of a kidnap victim.

But the conventions of this narrative trail doesn't quite capture the real intoxicating delight the movie has in playing around with the reality that you are perceiving. Cage and Ravi go on a ride in a car brainstorming ideas whilst they are off their heads on LSD. Boundaries are transgressed or constantly blurred. Cage when drunk will often meet his younger self, back when he was supposedly 'a better actor'. This younger self mocks and taunts him, so it will always end up in a fight with this fantasy version of himself from the past. At the film's end we are unexpectedly thrust into another realm, a fictionalised portrayal of a fictionalised portrayal, where his wife is now being played by Demi Moore. Its the final shoot of the movie he's now made of the script he and Ravi wrote, the meta filmic fiction is given another twist.

The first experience of this movie its perplexing, a seeming mess of ideas, that somehow holds itself together around Cage and Pascal's evident enjoyment of creating this riot of disorder. I think a second view might reveal more hidden delights, once you are not taken off guard by the bamboozling of its hokum. 

Buoyed up by a new found respect for Cage, we watched a recent horror movie of his Willy's Wonderland. In it he does not speak a single word whilst he destroys a succession of demonically possessed automata. Its bizzare, low budget, its trash and a complete waste of our time and his. But every now and then, just when you think you can write Cage off, he'll pull something out of really unpromising subject matter. Willy's Wonderland wasn't one of those, but it could have been. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, however bonkers it is, its a true gem.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

LISTENING TO - The Trench Coat Museum by Yard Act

After that fine debut album The Overload in 2022. it was difficult to discern where Yard Act could go too next. Their sound seem to emerge so fully rounded and polished. Quick witted and satirical with it's own cast of characters acting as foils and barbs in their snapshots from a northern melodrama.

Well, here we are with a track from a 'something' that might be referred to as a  'forth coming'. This is an eight minute epic about the sartorial history of the trenchcoat. It is also a wonderful melange of words, sound and groove. And what a joyous guitar grind it is, one to set the dance halls ablaze I think.

VISIBLY QUEER - Antinous

The Master - Slave divide has rarely been more pronounced than in Ancient Rome. Asserting power, not just to enslave, but frequently extending into casual sexual services. Yes, it was exploitative, an abuse of status and power, but that was very much the norm across Roman society. No one would have considered it worthy of calling to account.

Its hard for us to think of this now as being acceptable behaviour, but that was how it was seen in the age of Emperor's. Neither is it that implausible for someone who was a slave to knowingly use a close relationship with a Master or Emperor to their advantage, to accrue money to enable them eventually to buy their own freedom. For what was true in Roman times, was also true in later Medieval England in the time of Edward 2 and Galveston. Close intimacy with a royal ruler gave you immense leverage to further enhance your own and your families status. 

Whether Antinous was made a child slave of the Emperor Hadrian is an inference hotly debated. He is thought to have arrived to become part of the Emperor Hadrian's retinue when he was a teenager, around thirteen years old. Though he was immediately sent off for higher education back in Rome. A Roman Emperor would usually only educate a slave if they had them in mind to execute a particular task, as a future administrator, estate manager or accountant.

Antinous may have come from landowning, but low status gentry. Lacking resources or circumstances to fully educate their son. Maybe that was part of the deal being struck - to educate him, with the aim eventually of becoming part of the Emperor's travelling retinue later on. Antinous did indeed return from his schooling to join the Emporer's retinue in 128, when he was seventeen.

From what we know about Hadrian, during his twenty one year reign as Emperor, he traveled a huge amount. He visited almost every province of his Empire. This was pretty much without precedent. He personally oversaw projects, across Italy, Rome, Egypt and his famous Wall here in Britain, for instance. Going everywhere within the Emperor's entourage would have been an exciting experience, a worldly education in itself. 

An Emperor's marriage, like that of Hadrian to Vibia Sabina, was most often a politically strategic one. His children set a stabler foundation for the future of the dynasty and an advantageous marriage secured his titular position. Particularly as he was away from Rome for so many significant periods of time. 

Hadrian was widely known to be homosexual. Men were more than just a useful sexual outlet for when he was away on tour. He genuinely loved some of them, and that love occasionally was returned. One cannot always assume that because it would be difficult to refuse an Emperor's advances, that these affairs and liaisons could not be consensual or that there was no genuine love within such relationships. Yet falling out of love and favour, might be more traumatic, even fatal.

Rome's cultural mores also held a different view of the role of an elder to a younger man, to that of today. Echoing that of the Spartans. The elder man could be responsible for worldly tutoring, mentoring and bringing a youth into full adulthood. This could include building confidence in themselves sexually. A period of so called 'Greek Love' of homosexual activity, might precede the expression of the heterosexual.

There was an age difference of twenty five years between Hadrian and Antinous. When the latter returned to Hadrian's court he fast became the Emporer's 'favourite'. Itself an ambiguous term, this suggests a wide range of possibilities for what the nature of his royal 'favour' was. It could be a mixture of advisor, confidante, intermediary, companion, valet, as well as being his lover.

But then something truly weird and unique in Roman history happens. Whilst Hadrian and Antinous were luxuriously travelling down the Nile, exploring Egypt together, Antinous was tragically found drowned. There was speculation then, and now, whether this was entirely accidental, was it suicide? was it murder, a political assassination? was it some sort of ritualised killing? Though he'd only been in an affair with Antinous for two years, Hadrian was distraught with grief.

Hadrian founded a temple complex in the place where he died, called Antinopolis. Dedicated to Antinous as the god -  Osiris-Antinous - erecting statues to him and worshipping them. But rather than this remaining a minor personal obsession of Hadrian's, a dramatic and active cult of Antinous grew up and spread in popularity across the Roman Empire 

This once beautiful young man, with a life cut short in his physical and mental prime, appears to have struck some sort of chord on a more archetypal devotional level. Osiris was an ancient Egyptian god of the dead, fertility and resurrection, whose complex mythology centred around the Nile's powers to rejuvenate. Combined with the circumstances surrounding Antinous's death, this provided ample grounds for the cultivation of meaningful symbolism in those cross references.

The cult of Antinous continued through subsequent eras, and even after the fall of Rome. The most significant revival happening during the Renaissance, when the obsession with all things Greek or Roman reached new heights. This later fed into Oscar Wilde becoming an advocate for the classical noble love between Hadrian and Antinous, using it to defend the contentious nature of his own liaison's with much younger rent boys. 

Antinous over time became the archetypal poster boy for homosexual affection within classical Western culture. Providing a lineage of visual imagery linking the statuary of Antinous with some modern day clichés of male gay identity. 

SHOPPING AROUND - Customer Interactions

In daily retail life, you encounter odd views of what sort of shop the customer actually thinks you are. Some of it surfaces through unsolicited advice, pointing out some perceived presentation error or tragic omission on your part, in your stock or merchandising.

One lady the other week came into the shop and purposefully stood by the counter in order to inform me of the following:-

'I love your glass cards, but you know what you really need to do to make them a must purchase for me? A little dragonfly in one corner. Just a little dragonfly. Do that, and instantly get a sale, from me?'

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We both tend to be making stock items when we are in the shop. Most of the time I am glueing fabric onto something, be it a box, a frame, a piece of card. Children will stop and stare. But on this occasion it was a small woman,late middle aged, portly. After a while of standing by watching, she said.

'What do you use to glue the fabric?'

'I use PVA'

'I use pintail book binders glue on all the fabric covered items that I make'

As I didn't really respond much. I thought for a moment she might be about to try selling me something she'd made. Opening her shopping bag and pull something fabric covered and horrendous from it. Instead she launched into full promotional mode. 

'You should use them they're so much better for that kind of job I find. Pintail bookbinders glue, its the best. Pintail bookbinders glue. Look it up, its really good.

It was almost a song, a sales jingle. Maybe I should have risen above my indifference and manufactured a level of interest and my fakery might have curtailed all this. But once I've taken against being receptive to unsolicited advice there is no going back. I ended up with my 'gruntle" being very 'dissed', and she no doubt left feeling unheard, which she was. 

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Some customers arrive on a mission. They have this imagined product in their mind that they are in desperate search of. Everywhere they find things that are never quite it, they're either the wrong colour, pattern, shape or proportion. Shopping? It's tough.

So it was the other day. Hubby makes a small key ring coin purse out of cork fabric, which sell quite well. Great for keeping small amounts of change and the odd doggy poo bag in. But this customer had something else, another entire unspoken usage in mind, so she asked:-

'Do you make a purse exactly like this, but a fraction bigger.'

The answer to this was plain, and I would have thought quite glaringly obvious. If the purse was a fraction bigger it would not be exactly like this. If we did make one a fraction bigger, then it would be out on the display. How much exactly would a fraction bigger be anyway? What did she want it to be a faction bigger for? Rather than go into all the specifics of my queries and linguistic knit picking, I just said; 

'No, I'm sorry we don't' 

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You never can account for peoples unvoiced prejudices. How do people who come into the courtyard respond when they see a man knitting or using a sewing machine in our shop? Just occasionally you catch a hostile look from outside, perhaps a burly midlander with a long suffering bedraggled wife, a pram, several stroppy kids and a mangey dog. You get the picture?

But then some folk can take you completely unawares. Hubby was in the shop recently and a couple seemed to be looking keenly over our shelves of wax melts outside. Then in a highly offended tone, sternly declared:-

'Ugh they're bloody vegan' 

And walked off.

It was as though they'd been forced to handle excrement, or were for once making a principled stance of only buying wax melts made from natural organic animal tallow. There is literally no pleasing some folk.

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Sometimes people are just insensitive, they don't realise until they've said it. A couple of quite well heeled women spent time quietly wandering around the shop. As they left one said to the other:- 

Maybe you, you could find something in Covent Garden? 

Then over her shoulder as though offering me a morsel of praise, said:-

'Nice shop you have here.'

Yet whatever it is we are, we are not up to Covent Garden standard, apparently.

********

Most of the time our customers are quite sweet and you can enjoy a bit of light badinage with them. Sometimes the wit comes from them. We sell a range of natural soaps, and they are one of our most popular lines. We offer a deal of three for £12 which is a small saving of £1.50 on the full RRP.  Some people, despite the signs, don't quite pick up on the deal, so we may remind them of it at the counter. A local lady, originally from Germany, came to the counter with two soaps.

'Just these, danker'

You get these for twelve pounds if you buy three. Responding with.....

'Oh, no dear,  I won't be living that long.'

FINISHED READING - Life Ceremony by Sakaya Murata

I had mixed feelings about approaching a collection of short stories by Sakaya Murata. I truly loved Convenience Store Woman, but absolutely loathed its successor Earthlings. Which side would this collection of short stories fall on?

The first thing that is apparent is that Murata's stories, whether short or long in form, possess a similar underlying theme. Her characters all live outside of a conventional lifestyle, culture or social expectation. They proceed through the story to achieve some sort of acknowledgement or resolve concerning their 'outsider' status. There are a handful of stories in Life Ceremony that hold a uniquely perverted, if not grotesque world view at their centre. In these two senses Life Ceremony forms a thematic link between Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings. The former held its unconventionality in check, whereas Earthlings did not.

Life Ceremony begins with a disconcerting story about Nana, who is about to marry her banker fiance Naoki. They live in a world where everything is recycled and put to good use, including the dead human body. Its made into furniture, fabric or accessories and this is considered by everyone else to be perfectly normal. Its become a beautiful thing to do. But Naoki believes it to be vulgar and barbaric and will have none of it. Socially this could be disastrous, so Nana is uncertain about her own decision to marry him.

This story forms a precedent for the central story in this compendium - Life Ceremony. Here the conceit is that at a funeral the recently deceased is cooked in a hot pot that everyone eats from. Once the feasting on the dear departed is over, all those attending go out, find a sexual partner and inseminate them. The end of one life and the beginning of a new one, become inseparably linked.

Other stories are not quite as gross in their subject matter, and are more whimsical. In the story Puzzle, the central character Sanae, everyone thinks is so serenely calm and unruffled. In fact she is quite alienated from her own emotions and body. As the story progresses this distancing from her own body, thoughts and feelings expands to take in the body, thoughts and feelings of anyone she has a close encounter with. Until finally they are completely absorbed into her.

These sort of incremental twists in the story from mildly neurotic into something altogether more puzzling, and worryingly bizzare, is a structural story device she overuses within this collection. It works well when you have not yet recognised the pattern. But once you do, you are left waiting for each story to turn on your expectations of it. One has to question whether with all the grotesquerie of her story lines, she has anything more to say than this? Convenience Store Woman was so touching because it had a real humanity to it, drawn as it was partly from her own personal experience. Once she takes a step away from this she ventures onto trickier territory as a writer. Its ok to use these clever inversions of social norms, but somehow they need to acquire more depth, they tend to stay self satisfied within the parameters of their particular conceit. There is a lack of real heart behind all this novelty.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 86 - Feathered Friends

My good friend Saddharaja came to stay with us mid June. I've known him for well over thirty five years, and understands me better than most folk. We had a very relaxing enjoyable time together,  sharing news, tales of old acquaintances and plans for the future. He has a very positive, encouraging, cheerfilled disposition, and it does rub off on you. Both of us had a week or so afterwards of feeling our mood was more uplifted, optimistic and confident than we have been for a while. It is one effect of feeling you are really being met and understood. Mostly with the people we know and interact with here in North Norfolk, one is made more aware of the limitations to good communication.

This blog Cornocopia, occasionally hits a new height in terms of its reach. I've had in the past, increased flurries of interest from France and from the US. Where for a brief time the blog gets thousands of views a week rather than a month. At the moment the blog appears to be Big In Singapore. Garnering viewing rates of 500+ per day, which ti me feels freaky. Apart from a mild increase in viewing of one particular blog post, it appears to be uniformly spread across the entire history of the blog. 

What I suspect may be happening based on previous flurries of interest, is that the blog is being shared within a group and that group then trawls across it. How big that contact group is, or whether it escapes that group into a wider pool dictates quite how long any particular wave of interest lasts. The Singapore wave, is however, lasting a lot longer than previous ones and at its height last week reached 900 hits in one day.

As previous peaks in interest have had their moment then everything quietens down to what I consider more normal, in and around 1500 hits a month, I am prepared for the same to happen here. The number is dropping now week on week from 500 a day, to 300-400, to 100-200 this week. It is interesting how caught up in what today's figure is I can find myself becoming, so there is some self identification going on here. That aside, I think I can allow myself a brief moment of chuffness.

And so, onto that most significant date of - 66 on 26/06/23, I have arrived at being pensionable. Yes, I am now eligible to collect it. Officially, at least, on the retirement bench. Though this is of course not what is really happening whilst Cottonwood Home is still in existence. What will happen in the longer term? We know not yet.

I am though, now the proud owner of a Bus Pass and gave myself an inaugural run on my birthday, with a mornings trip five miles away to Cromer. There is an art collective in Cromer that has taken on running a gallery on the promenade in a modernist seaside building. This is their second summer season, and so far the exhibitions we've seen have all been good. Not one wishy washy watercolour landscape or hare rampant sculpture to be seen, thankfully.

This week's exhibition was excellent, I caught it on its last day, and the artist Marion Piper, was present. She made the work specificly to fill the length of the ArtSpace gallery. With sixty acrylic and gouache paintings with common elements, but each one differently composed. Her working method had a grid, a range of lines, curves and limited pallete. It took her four months to complete, and she found the limitations of the method meant she had to be more inventive in response  to it. It reminded me a little of Sol Le Witt's working method. Though perhaps not so strenuous in the boundaries it set.

The Sunday before my birthday, as a celebratory treat, we drove down to Southwold for the day. A favourite alternative seaside place to visit. But do it only when the season has finished, or in this case before it gets into full swing. 

We tend to do the same list of things whenever we go - walk up and down the main street looking in our favourite shops - visiting The Cornish Bakery for coffee and a favourite cake they make - perusing Lift for funky stationery or home ware - looking round The Craft Co gallery - buying a beach lunch to eat on the front from the superb Deli - Olives. And on this occasion purchasing a couple of books and replenishing my sock drawer. 

In our back garden we have a bird feeder. Most of the year it hangs there not attracting much bird attention. When the new seasons fledglings first take to wing we then get besieged. They particularly like strips of fat with meal worms in them. At its height we get eight or nine thin birds which we then proceed to fatten up. This year its been mostly blue tits, and a group of grey green birds which we've variously dubbed European Siskin, Willow Warbler and have now settled with little real certainty on Chiff Chaff's. One morning recently two chiff chaff's were hopping about on the top of the iron framework of the bird feeder, just checking and rechecking the garden 360 degrees over and over. Now, chiff chaffs seem jittery birds at the best of times, but this was unusual. Then I noticed, partially hidden behind the lavender was a neighbours tabby cat, nonchalantly sat there inspecting and cleaning its paws and giving the impression of paying no heed to the bird feeder at all. I cleared the mischievous little blighter off.

I've finally finished making my new shrine, which I'm very pleased with how its turned out. I've begun meditating again, which is encouraging I guess. We'll see how it goes.

POEM - Divination

In one long

continuous applause

a babbling stream

converses with itself

in a flurry to reach

the river, and on with

it's daemon, towards absorption

into the thinness of a vanishing horizon

far far away, seeping into

my imagination

a sense for the journey I am on

for the gabbling of my mind

and its self congratulatory

applause, that monologue 

with an interior realm, its

prim neatness and plague

is a continuous prayer

beseeching time

to call out the name

to form the place

to design its decor

to present a divination

for my own 

point of demise.

Stephen Lumb

written in June 2023