QUOTATION MARKS - Martin Shaw - Myth as a Shield

"To look too frequently into the abyss
can do savage things to you
A myth is when you use
the story as a shield
where you can gaze on the reflection
of the monster without being drawn
endlessly into the pitiless depths
of its face."

"Myths have served 
as a kind of shield
so you gaze on the horror of life
without it obliterating you
in the process.

To do that is not artful
to be skillful,
to have what the greek's call 'metis'
that's something that involves
a reflection, and myth stories.

Martin Shaw - Storyteller & Mythologist

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 103 - The Consequent Decline Of Comfort Eating.

19th January 2024

Today my husband, being playfully teasing, accused me of putting on my outdoor shoes in a passive aggressive manner. A little bit of context is perhaps required here. This was after he'd suggested earlier we take a day off and go out for a jolly. He remained in post shower mode, which I refer to as 'Towel Man' ( a large grey toweling skirt with co ordinated white and grey striped matching towel shoulder wrap ) and he'd been like that for well over an hour. Still idly scrolling through Twitter, with no sign yet of any preparation to 'go out'. So I put on my outdoor shoes merely as an preliminary indicator that I was ready. Just saying.

20th January 2024

I could hardly not overhear one conversation when we visited Stiffkey Stores yesterday. Stiffkey Stores, as you may know, is a favourite haunt of ours. Even though it is the natural home of the achingly self conscious middle class. There were two women in similar barbour coats, knee boots and the dramatic swathe of a brightly coloured signature scarf-wrap. Both in their mid thirties, they were talking loudly and all too clearly about encouraging their, no doubt truly lovely, sprogs to swim. One woman appeared the more experienced and confident, and was advising the other. I wish I could have recorded the conversation, it was a hoot. The following are just the bits I, no doubt imperfectly, remember, just to give a flavour.

'Golly, I've only just got him to put his head down under the bath water. How I encourage him to want to learn to swim defeats me'

'Talk to Rachel she teaches basic swimming - she's a fiercesomely impressive woman - intimidating - but rea...lly good. Get him to do lessons with her for now, and book an intensive course with Jacob during Summer hols'

'Yeah, though that sounds super, but I guess on a basic level, I just really need to up my game though. Get Bruno out the bath, so Lily can have her bubble time'

The conversation moved on to cooking to entertain some, seemingly, scary acquaintances, and the more confident one was describing how to make a sweet marinade for tofu.

'I just mix some white wine vinegar, maple syrup with chilli and roll them in it till their all covered, and leave it overnight if need be, before roasting.'

'Oh, but gosh -  I really don't know tofu '

'Maybe it's better you dont do it then'

2nd January 2024
Husband stoically ( yes, I think that's the best way to describe it ) got to the end of completing our tax return. After weeks of both of us imputing data into Quickbooks, there came the moment for number crunching and account reconciling. Though this is only 22/23, not that long ago, its interesting how much you forget just how financially bad it was. As it turns out there was a significant short fall in income overall, that if we'd clocked it soon enough, we might have called an end to the shop right then and there. But at that point we were still expecting Christmas sales to hold up, which they most certainly did not. By the arrival of the dearth of trade that is the Winter months, it was too late, for effectively wrapping up the shop. When it comes to the future 23/24's accounts, we confidently expect to see a similarly spectacular short fall. 

Generally we limit ourselves to a couple of hours max computer screen work, But getting things to the submitting point of our self -assessment took Hubby four hours, by which time he was well and truly wired. So we took off in the car to Blakeney for a cuppa and pastry in the Two Magpies, and a short but very windy walk as the sun set and the tide came in. I watched with a level of interest, bordering on schadenfreude, as water lapped ever closer to the car park.

23rd January 2024

Hubby pointed me in the direction of this great shop name. Its an Italian restaurant entitled

BACCHANALDI

So called because it is at the Back of Aldi.

24th January 2024
It being Veganuary, Hubby has been trying out veganism for the month. One advantage of being vegan these days, is that if you don't mind heavily processed food, nay totally vegan versions of junk food, then being a vegan is now the life style choice made especially for you. Most really cheap food doesn't contain any dairy or eggs in them these days. Not out of any ethical or ecological concern, but because dairy is expensive, plant based is considerably cheaper and virtuously also extends the shelf life of products. Hubby has, hence, been merrily experimenting and finding all sorts of stuff he can now substitute for vegetarian staples like eggs and cheese. 

Myself, I've been experimenting with being low to no processed sugar. For a Lumb, I'm doing heroically well with the not eating cakes or confectionery bit. I'm not being particularly ultra purist about this. So I still allow myself tomato ketchup on chips, and marmalade or jam occasionally. I deal with my post savoury sweet craving mostly by eating fresh or dried fruit. 

Both of us are finding, that in quite a lot of North Norfolk cafes, vegan or savoury offerings are a little thin on the ground or non existent. Frequently, when asked, they've 'just that minute run out' of' their vegan or savoury option. Which I think is short hand for - oops. we totally forgot.

So far I've not encountered any major kickback or sugar withdrawal symptoms. I intend to carry on post January. As does Hubby with being vegan. We are both finding we are currently sleeping longer and more soundly. Which may in part come from our diets, but also from not having the shop on our minds any more. And the consequent decline of comfort eating.

25th January 2024
One of the joys of not having a shop, and the pressures on making are reduced for now, is that you can consider making something just for oneself. In my rooting around in the garage I encountered a half completed furniture project I was upcycling, an old free standing sewing box. As we are unlikely to be selling large items anymore, I've been consigning many of them to the wood pile. Then it dawned on me that this one was rather special, and I really wanted to finish it for my use. I'm really pleased with the way it came out. And its already got me thinking about starting a knitting project for myself, if my husband doesn't bag first dibs.

QUOTATION MARKS - Happiness Is A Side Effect

"Happiness is fine as a side effect....

It's something you may or may not acquire, 

in terms of luck. 

But I think it's a cruel demand. 

It may even be a covert form of sadism.
Everyone feels themselves prone
to feelings and desires and thoughts 

that disturb them.
And we're being persuaded 

that by acts of choice, 

we can dispense with these thoughts. 

Its a version of fundamentalism."

Adam Phillips - taken from 

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life.
Published by Penguin. 2013.

SCREEN SHOT - Poor Things

Godwin, or 'God' for short, ( WIlliam Dafoe) is a monstrously deformed surgeon, having been experimentally operated on by his own father as a boy. A pregnant woman takes her life, throwing herself off a bridge into the Thames. He rescues the woman's body and decides to implant the living brain of the unborn baby into its mother's lifeless cadaver. Then bring her back to life, and she becomes Bella ( Emma Stone)

Though a fully grown woman, Bella has the mind of a child who has to learn how to speak and what life is about. Every man who encounters her falls, in someway, under the spell of her vibrant uninhibited nature. But each man, in the end, wants to contain, control and imprison her so she'll remain with them. The dastardly Duncan Wedderburn, begins by exploiting her naivete, but then falls in love with her and whisks her off to explore Europe together. Through out this adventure, Bella continues to learn about who she is, how to protect herself and maintain a sense of agency over her unfolding life.

This matter of fact recounting of the storyline of Poor Things, barely scratches the surface of the exotic and brilliantly imaginative delights contained within this movie, and the fundamental profundity concerning gender and fulfillment that underlies its storyline. it is unusual these days for a Hollywood film to be filmed entirely on a physical constructed set. And what surreal and elaborately constructed sets they are. Stylistically they're Victorian steam-punkish, but they offer up so much more that is unexpected, and goes beyond the cliche. It owes a cinematic debt to Juno's Amelie crossed with Children of God, and Fassbinder's Querelle. 

Bella does not recognise sexual norms. She simply does what she wants, rather than what others think she should do. There is a delightful and knowing cameo from Hanna Schygulla, Fassbinder's muse, which holds all the echoes of that film makers own transgressive agenda. 

Poor Things is outrageously funny. Emma Stone should win every award available for this performance, it is quite astonishing how absorbed she is in it. From set design, to costumes, this is big and lavish. Yorgos Lanthimos makes great use of black and white, fish eye lens and long zooms to amplify Bella's cut off alienated state. Whereas the colours in Europe are more sensual and sumptuous, whilst the rooms her ex husband inhabits are blood red and wet looking, There is a lot of sex, none of it quite as wild or as graphic as some reviewers seem to think. Basically you see more male penises and flabby pumping bottoms, than you might be used to. Don't be put off by that, There is so much more to enjoy here than that

The word 'masterpiece' has been bandied about this film and I think I must concur. It is a superbly wrought example of Powell & Pressburger's concept of 'composed cinema'. Where you create your own self contained world with its own particular aesthetic and rationale, into which you are magically drawn.

CARROT REVIEW  - 8/8

QUOTATION MARKS - Limitations

" The idea that there are no limits

to our ability is not always true, kind or helpful.

Sometimes accepting 

that we cannot be the best of the best

is precisely what allows us 

to be the best we can be."

Jonathan Rowson - taken from

The Moves That Matter 

Bloomsbury Publishing. 2019

SHERRINGHAM DIARY No 102 - Keep The Future Shtum

Fabulous word combination of the moment.

BALLISTIC NYLON

I'm not even going to explain. Let's just leave it there for you to imaginatively play with what the hell that could be.

2nd January 2024

The first time writing 2024 - there - that went OK. The opening days of the new year have been OK too, quite gentle and at ease. No pressure. Simultaneously working on the garage and data entry for our tax accounts. By the end of 2023 the garage is pretty stuffed, needs storage shelves erecting, rubbish removing, generally a third sweep through what is there, chucking out anything unworthy. I think in the end it will be fine, but it's gonna take a while yet before its fully workable. Particularly as our attention is so bifurcated at present.

Our garage is actually pretty dry, because it has a damp course under its floor. However, its at the end of a row, so has two external walls. Over the years there's been a build up of muck and dumped detritus down one side of it. This has meant the ground level is now above the damp course, so damp is beginning to infiltrate the bricks. I have, at some point to rectify this, my back and weather permitting.  I'm hoping this won't turn into a Herculean endeavour.

7th January 2024

Got back today mid afternoon from a visit to Hubby's family in Nottingham, which was a very enjoyable couple of days away from data entry, the garage, and future plans.

Nottingham's roads are, I have to say, in a truly terrible condition, worse than anywhere else I know in the country. They have never been good, but are now entering a different degree of degradation. You regularly encounter huge deep constellations of potholes, not just along the gutters but across the middle of a road, and pretty much every district that you go through. With surfaces so badly pitted, all it needs is a deluge of water with a pronounced frosty cold spell and you'd reach down to the19th century cobbles. Well - Hello! - here comes Winter 2024!

In Arnold someone thought it helpful to outline in white or yellow the edges of them. Though this is considerate, you can hardly miss seeing them. But you can imagine if they got filled with water you would have no idea how deep they might be. A halo might help. Nevertheless axles do get broken. I'm writing about Nottingham's roads at such length because they really are in a chronic state of decay. It's no wonder areas feel left behind and abandoned. I was truly shocked and appalled of North Norfolk.

Nottingham Council has recently gone bankrupt, so nothing is going to happen to rectify this urban decay anytime soon. It is another sign of how, in this country, we are fast becoming a failed state. One that cannot manage even to maintain its infrastructure, let alone improve it.

8th January 2024

Hubby starts his new part time job at a local haberdashers today, which he is quite looking forward to. He knows, likes, and gets on with the people who run it. So that does help make it feel an easier thing to adjust to.

At some point I need to think about how to restructure my daily routine, now I'm ever so partially retired. For the present, there are still many demand led post shop things to help in the sorting out of. Not the space for anything else as yet. There are, however, truly burning issues like - when will I go swimming this week? Previously I worked these around my shift in our shop. Going swimming either before or after that, pool timetable permitting. Now the choice of 'when' is all mine, it feels like this unwanted decision has now heavily fallen into my lap.

10th January 2023

Well, Hubby is absolutely loving his new job. Already feels on top of it after a couple of days, and has fixed their till. Nothing surprising there then. Me? Today I achieved going swimming for the first time this year, and put a draught excluder on our front door. Slightly wonky and slightly off centre, but it is there keeping the cold gales at bay. ( I had to reposition it anyway because the flap wasn't opening easily )

Meanwhile, data entry is entering its easiest phase, post the busier Summer months. I wouldn't say I'm sailing through them, but I've definitely found my input rhythm. Each year I get into this, and have every intention of carrying on and keeping up this year, and then something comes between me and my great passion.  Every time!  So, this year I'm not going to say anything. Keep shtum and see what the future brings. 

HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK - Mahler 2nd 'Resurrection' Symphony

In 1973 the BBC broadcast a series of Norton Lectures by Leonard Bernstein entitled The Unanswered Question. In them he investigates the origins and universality of music. They were broad ranging lectures, incorporating Chomsky, the historical development of music and the human condition and zeitgeist of their time, as represented through musical forms.

My encounter with these lectures, I didn't realise at the time quite how much they'd influenced my thinking and beliefs about the role of music in general. Bernstein lectures also introduced to me pieces by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Charles Ives, and most importantly, through his lecture largely about the 9th Symphony - to Gustav Mahler. It is one of the boons of the internet, that this material is being made available.

Mahler 'Resurrection' Symphony - Claudio Abbado

This week I watched a video concert in Lucerne from 2003, conducted by Claudio Abbado of Mahler's 2nd ' Resurrection' Symphony - it is a masterly interpretation. Though it's been many years since I first listened to this Symphony, it was like becoming reacquainted with an old friend. With many past exhilarating experiences arising from it. 

In the1980's I lived in London, and attended numerous Prom performances. An early concert was of Mahler's 2nd, with the sublime soprano Jessye Norman. As the symphony reached its final climax, there was a huge orchestra, a huge choir and the huge Albert Hall organ all belting out full pelt, and on this ocassion Norman's beautiful voice softly soaring with an effortless intensity rising up, to hover like a small bird over this climactic cacophony. I found this so utterly thrilling, I experienced an explosion of bliss that shot through and around my body.

Listening to the 2nd Symphony again this week I was struck by this experience once again. The 'Resurrection' is the apotheosis of the late Romantic symphonies. A quality embedded in a Mahler symphony is the depth of emotional range it contains in its dramatic panoramas, textures and tones. Within the waves and frequency of its passionate upswellings and fluctuations, there is ultimately something gloriously transcendent waiting to burst out of it at any moment. And just occasionally this can strike you full on. 

My personal preference for the 2nd Symphony

Mahler creates a context for this sort of emergence through his symphonies, as much via the subtlety of the orchestration, as its furious intensity. He conjures a place where emotional resonance can 'resurrect' your own connection with, however you configure it,  something universal or ultimate, that is locked within us. Mahler's music, on these occasions, acts as a key to unlock a lived experience of re-connection.

FINISHED READING - A Bone of Contention by Susanna Gregory

The story opens with a brief retelling of the supposed martyrdom of Simon D'Ambrey. Twenty five years later bits of bones start to be found in the Kings'Ditch near the Hall of Valance Marie. Though Matthew Bartholemew can see instantly that these are not what people claim them to be, he is powerless to stop the college claiming them as the relics of  D'Ambrey. This discovery is quickly followed by the murder of a young student, who was recently involved in a town brawl. 

The division between town and gown, whether the relics are fake or real, quickly becomes a potential powder keg. This eventually explodes into widespread rioting in the streets of Cambridge. Matthew suspects that the finding of these so called 'relics' and the murder of the student are somehow linked. That even the riots themselves seem to be co-ordinated. A complex web of past and present misdeeds, rapes and murder unfolds, which once again Matthew finds himself in the middle of trying to unravel.

This third novel in the Matthew Bartholemew Chronicles begins in classic whodunit manner with 'the significant flashback.' Again the almost interminable college rivalries gets mixed into the dramatic soup, along with the perpetual tension between town and gown in Cambridge, that exists to this day. This novel certainly begins with a great deal of energy, demonstrating how easily people are drawn into and duped by the ardent pursuit of religious relics. 

The narrative develops a degree of complexity as Matthew and his monk friend Micheal, are trying to understand what is going on. So they develop a number of potential hypotheses to explain what is happening. Nothing comprehensively adds up at all. The portrait Susanna Gregory paints of medieval Cambridge is expertly researched in detail. Its both colourful and richly rendered. The riots, murders and attacks are evocatively and skillfully described. A Bone of Contention, hence maintains a high degree of narrative thrust throughout its five hundred pages. Yep, its a page turner, no doubt. 

However, having generated and conjectured so many possible explanations and individual motivations  to explain certain events, it does find itself completely and oppressively weighed down by them by the end. In its final chapter Matthew and Micheal sit down together, going though all their previous hypotheses tying up all the loose ends. Composing before your very eyes how all these strands of story line fit together. 

Then they are attacked and held captive by the mastermind of the whole thing. Playing for time till the Sherriff arrives to rescue them, they ask him leading questions. Such as -  Cecily told us that Dominica killed Radbeche. Is that true? - But why wait twenty four years? Each time he provides them with a lengthy and fulsome explanation.  Both of these devices are a somewhat clunky way of resolving things, which for most of its fifty pages dragged the whole narrative to a screaming halt. 

So finishing a novel satisfactorily. with fluidity, style and panache, still appears fitfully to elude her. As she persists in wanting to cross every one of her own T's. Nevertheless, this novel, as a whole, is a vast improvement on the first two parts of this Chronicle series.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

STORAGE SOLUTIONS - Babies

WHATEVER YOU DO 

DO NOT PUT YOUR BABY INTO STORAGE

IN A PLASTIC BOX.

QUOTATION MARKS - Fragmented Knowing

"The essence of our thinking challenge today

is that the world's problems  

are profoundly interconnected

but our ways of knowing are fragmented

partly because we are not trained 

to think of how things connect

from a young age."

Jonathan Rowson - taken from

The Moves That Matter

Bloomsbury Publishing. 2019.