CHURCH LARKING - Holkham Parish Church

St Withburga was a local East Anglian Saxon saint, one of four saintly sisters, including St Etheldreda who founded Ely Cathedral. First known as an anchoress, which traditionally meant you lived in isolation in a walled off enclosure. This she is said to have done whilst living in Holkham. She later moved to Dereham in order to found a monastery there. Remaining the Abbess of this until she died at the age of 90. 

When represented in imagery St Withburga is usually shown with a roe deer. It is said it was with the milk and cheese from roe deer that she kept her nunnery fed during a time of famine.There is a symbolic link then between St Withburga and the presence of deer in Holkham Hall's Park, which seems quite apt.

Though the situation of the present church might appear oddly contrived atop a steep sandy mound. This, apparently, is an entirely natural feature in direct alignment with what remains of an Iron Age Fort. This lies just across the other side of the present day coastal road. The church tower was frequently used to guide ships safely into harbour. Holkham means village in a hollow, though it was originally called Withburgstowe in honour of its famous Saintly resident.

During restoration work a Saxon tower"s foundations and indications of a small Norman Church were discovered. A good half of the present church is Early English ( 13th century) in style and origin  it has later additions from both Decorated (14th ) and late Perpendicular (15th-16th) So the church was added to over a period spanning four or five centuries.

However, what you see today does not look that old, it's so pristine and neat. This church, like many across the North Norfolk coast fell into dilapidation during the 17th-18th century. The Coke family, who owned the hall. adopted and made it their estate church in 1767, effectively saving it from ruin. The Countess Dowager of Leicester provided £1,000 of her own money for repairs, in 1767- 68. And £9,000 was spent on further restoration by Juliana the wife of the 2nd Earl Leicester, who died the year this work was completed, in 1870. Her marble memorial lies in the church, though initially this was placed in its own purpose built mausoleum, still visible in the churchyard.

Serious amounts of money were put into the church by the Coke family. and this is why it is adorned with beautiful wood and stone work. Most Victorian restoration simply made workable repairs, replaced leaky roofs and neatened up the crumbling interiors of churches. More often than not removing a lot of the history and character of a building in the process. At St Withburga's this is not the case. 

Patronage has always been important to the maintenance and flourishing of any local church. Here you see what can be done when there is money available to do it well. What you see here is a well kept little church, with lovely decorative flourishes. The elaborate hinges of the entrance door. The colonnaded staircase to the tower above. The rood screen to the side Chapel. The decorated pew ends. All these are executed with delicacy and finesse. 

Yes, you will find it hard to discern what is original, what is restored, and what is entirely new. But when the end result is so appropriate and charming, I for one will not quibble.

SECULAR BELIEFS - It's Certainty Or Bust.

On social media, on any day, probably at this very minute whilst you're struggling to read this on a train, people will be being attacked, often quite crudely and cruelly, by someone online who they don't know, for something they have posted or allegedly publicly said or done. 

It may say 'Comment' at the bottom, but boy do some folk go way way beyond that. Whether its left field or right field, it's still a field that someone stands in the middle of and bellows like a prize bull. It's hard to say how widespread intolerance of other people's opinions or behaviour has become. The voices, though assertive and loud, may actually be few in number. 

Harsh vitriol I tend to interpret as coming from a contemporary strain of puritanical, knee jerk authoritarian impulses. Its almost the default social media mode. These people sound murderous in there intensity. Though the individual writer might not think this is how they are being. They probably believe they're just saying it how it is. Being brutely honest. 

Though the volume or the honesty with which an opinion is expressed, does not necessarily make it true or right. They sound as if they are extremely certain about it, and about what needs to happen. That this person is wrong, they are the secular equivalent of the anti-christ and should die a horrible prolonged death. At the very least should have their entire career petulantly snatched away from them.

This demonstrates the modern penchant for a type of rough justice. A desire, in some at least, for moral and ethical lines to be harder, firmer, clearer, more black and white. They sense a moral vacuum and want it filled, leaving no wiggle room. With the degeneration of religious or political authority, it can be difficult to know how to respond to the apparent vague messiness of relativism and liberal permissive ethics. Instinctively folk reach for the clarity and security of holding firm to values and beliefs, drawing sharper lines and high defendable boundaries. 

However illusory those lines and that certainty may actually be, there is still no room for one scintilla of doubt. For if you doubt yourself, why this is so important to you, what your motivation is, why on earth does it matter, are you even exemplary in this area? Then the evangelical purity of your quest is fundamemtally undermined. 

The consequences of not pausing to doubt, are extremely unforgiving of human failings in others, conjuring the most prejudicial judgement about people they don't know personally.  Because this immovable strength of belief, so they feel, is what is required to put the world to rights. Beliefs have to be cast, not in iron, but stainless steel. Nothing must be allowed to rust, let alone be subject to doubt.

This messianic need for inflexible conviction has also infected our political sphere. Where everything from Brexit to the major fuck up that was the Truss government, are presented with an undeserved degree of certainty about what needed to happen. One that brooks no debate or disagreement, it demands ideology on steroids. There will be pain, but it will now be our pain, and hence will be good for us.

Beliefs then are, paradoxically, in our secular era, well, are not to be lightly or provisionally held. They have to be swung around with great zeal. Anything else is weakness. Execute with complete conviction, wholeheartedly and perfectly, nothing else is acceptable. If life and the world cannot be made perfect. If religions, or democracy for that matter, haven't made the world a totally better place after millennia, well. maybe they never will.  Why bother with them?  Lets go totally freelance on belief shall we? 

G K Chesterton famously quipped - 'when a man chooses not to believe in God, he doesn't then believe in nothing, he'll believe anything.' And in these days of internet conspiracy theories and the rise of the 21st century secular puritan, that quip has come to seem, sadly, quite prophetic. People express belief in a wide variety of untruths, wishful thinking and rot. It's the zeitgeist, the more righteously unhinged it is the better. Its the unvarnished truth no one will let you say. You need to be totally defiant in the midst of your wrongheadedness.

Whilst we all can walk away from actively practicing Christianity as a faith. This doesn't mean we stop passively practicing it's values and beliefs. Whether I want them to be there or not, so many of my underlying values and beliefs are infused with veins of Christianity Lite; of fairness; equality; mutual respect; supporting the unfortunate and weak in society; tolerance; charity; turning the other cheek etc. And these are not necessarily a bad thing, not even for a non aligned Buddhist to tag along with. Unless you are Ayn Rand of course. 

In these turbulent uneasy times, we seem frequently caught between the extremes of nihilistic fundamentalism and eternalistic fundamentalism. And though it is true that the world today is in a bit of an all out ethical mess. Retreating to the lofty mountains of pristine ideals, or dismissively sweeping aside ideals as impractical daydreams, helps no one. In Buddhist practice you always start from where you are, not from where you imagine you might want to be. Though it is good to have some inkling of what the latter provisionally may be. Because it helps to have faith in a horizon to head for.

To have faith, is a very different thing to the possession of dogmatic belief.. The nearest Buddhist word to faith is sraddha, which can be translated as 'what you place your heart upon'. That is not the same as 'what you put your mind to' which is more the mode for beliefs. Religious beliefs are like specific instructions, faith an impulse that's heading toward the general direction of 'the good'. 

Whatever is missing from our secular society, and whether we need a renewed social agreement on 'common values and ethics' or not. No system of secular values or ethics will have the power to move us unless we have faith that we are being led by them towards 'the good'. The collapse of confidence and trust in our institutions, is in essence a collapse of faith in those institutions themselves as being vehicles capable of bringing what is good into existence. Still more fundamentally, it has become the collapse of faith, in faith itself.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a religious faith, just a simple optimistic faith in humanities future, willing to 'put your heart upon' making that future a better place for everyone. Just so long as we collectively all decide to do something about it - together.

FILM CLUB - The Elusive Pimpernel

Powell & Pressburger Season - 1950

Bloody hell what happened here? This film is one almighty mess. There are glimpses of the Powell flare, in filmed scenes shot through a screen or trees with things allowed to be fuzzy or obscured. Mont Saint Michel being surrounded by water. Those deep close ups on faces. But the rest of it is cardboard cut out melodrama, all a bit farcical. 

 

David Niven, who was pretty much launched into international stardom on the back of A Matter of Life and Death, returns. Cyril Cusack plays the main baddie. Jack Hawkins playing against type as George 4th. And starlet of the moment Margaret Leighton as the love interest. So a somewhat stellar cast, plus Archers regulars, to play with. On the surface what could go wrong? But with this film their golden run of surefire classy movies, was to all but cease.

Powell wanted to make The Elusive Pimpernel as a musical. He was told he couldn't by the films financiers Sam Goldwyn and Alexander Korda. Powell was not remotely interested in making the script as a light hearted drama. Both he and Niven wanted to back out. The threat of contract suspension meant both were compelled to make a film neither of them wanted involvement with.

The contentiousness continued after the films final cut was presented. Niven severed his contract with Goldwyn due to being forced to make the film. Goldwyn insisted on further changes and additions, the cost of which he refused to pay for. This left Korda footing the bill, who took Goldwyn to court over it. Because Goldwyn and Korda fell out the film didn't get a US distributor till three years later. UK box office revenue alone barely covered a third of its cost to make. It ended up being both a financial as well as creative catastrophe.

This sorry saga illustrates the entirely less accommodating nature of post war film making. The Archers really struggled to make even one film thereafter entirely to their own unique design. Powell being forced to make a film he had not a jot of interest or heart in, meant he produced a bonafide turkey. Not for the first time either. The Archers would cease their collaboration with I'll Met By Moonlight, another film Powell had no feeling for.

Pressburger made what he could from poor quality source material - Baroness Orcsy's cod romantic romp set during the French Revolution. Though the comedic tone of the film, though light, had never been P&P's strong point. Actors walk around delivering complex dialogue and exchanges without a scintilla of understanding of feeling or motive. It feels and looks amateurish, and it really didn't have to be. Contractual obligation, never a good motivation for anyone to produce their best work.

CARROT REVIEW - 2/8

FINISHED READING - An Unholy Alliance by Susanna Gregory

The second chronicle of Matthew Bartholemew is in slightly less of a hurry to impress than its predecessor - A Plague On All Your Houses. That was altogether a less confident slightly stilted piece of writing in comparison to this sequel. Having already established the personality of Matthew Bartholemew and his side kick Micheal, left Susanne Gregory time to put more flesh on the bones of them. So they feel more rounded figures than previously, and the narrative has an easier flow.

This time around we have a chest of documents in which the body of a dead monk is found. The mystery is how he got into both the locked room and the chest. There have already been a number of unexplained murders of prostitutes in Cambridge. Sheriff Tulyelt seems not to be doing his job in looking for the murderer in either case. Add in the recent appearance of two nefarious witch covens and you can see the story is already getting jam packed with incident, questions and possible red herrings.

Gregory's stories, at least what I've read so far, tend to be short on descriptive power or psychological depth of detail. With a writer like CJ Samson he vividly creates a sense of the time, its medieval smells and character evocatively written. As is his protagonists inner world. And this jumps off the page at you. One does not get much sense of that richly patinated detail with Gregory. There are a lot of clunky plot devices, too many concealed facts, and rather two dimensional characters.

In this story she has a supposedly dead body that goes missing. Were they really dead? If they were who has moved them? Which is a device she used in the first book. Then there are twists and reveals, such as one male character who turns out to disguise himself  by dressing in drag as a mysterious brothel madame. Which is the sort of thing that stretched my usually patient credulity far too far.

The Mathew Bartholemew Chronicles are workmanlike medievalism, modest affairs, not necessarily badly written, but certainly not engagingly written. After two novels in succession I already feel I've got the measure of her qualities and limitations as a writer. As there are over twenty novels in this series, I'll dip into them from time to time, but only when I need a lighter less demanding read.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

ART 'n' Ab ART - Vanity Monsters - Craig Visser Exhibition

 This exhibition really confused me. I looked, and looked, but could not quite grasp what it was he was trying to say. If anything. There are strong strident colour combinations going on here. Painted as though in a painting by numbers style of execution, with large pencil or black line drawings of flowers, or fuzzy pictures of interiors with a yellow line detail of a largely illegible still life detail layered over them. What were these conjunctions aiming to associatively conjure up or represent? I've since read the artist's statement about his creative intent and themes, and I have to say I am none the wiser. Lots of 'arty' conceptual buzz words signifying not a lot. I did not get a - now I understand moment.

What I see, and how I interpret what I see is some sort of attempt at parody, representing popular visual tropes in lurid heightened colour. The conjunctions, are just that, conjunctions. There is mostly no conversational interplay between the two. The painting surface has actually quite a sludgy finish where you can often see the layers of paint he had to apply to get colour density. Often doing a passable impression of being badly painted. Unless that was what he was aiming for. There is also something about scale here, these ought to be huge wall filling paintings. I can't help but feel the images could have benefited from a crisper style of execution such as with screen printing. The 'Pop Art' style references gesture towards what he may have being trying to convey. I found this a disappointing exhibition, the first of this second season I couldn't really connect with on some level. 

Simply combining two things together doesn't necessarily produce a resonance concerning intent. The only ones I thought that had something were the series of four minimalist back drop prints. Otherwise this exhibition felt a bit lacking in heart, ambition and substantial meaning.

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 90 - And The Hips Don't Lie

There are times that are a wake up call. Moments when what you were once blithely oblivious to, is now revealed to you in full colour - Oh, yes, its there, there it is. 

After much prompting from Hubby I booked myself in to have my hearing tested. And whilst there I thought, well, let's have a general Health Check Up while we are at it. And so I was measured, weighed, blood pressure checked, blood was sampled and tested for diabetes and cholesterol.

Somethings were fine. Blood pressure was good. No sign of diabetes. Breathing a sigh of relief that I had yet to inherit the latter from the matriarch of my family. Apparently at sometime over the last few decades or so I've also lost two inches in height. As my general body mass began to slump under gravitational pressure. 

Otherwise, generally a bit overweight and cholesterol too high. They flung around percentages like  22% more likely to have a heart attack in the next ten years. Whether that was meant to be alarming or reassuring was, and still is, unclear. They also recommend statins like they've heavily invested in pharmaceutical shares in a new wonder drug.

My knee jerk response was no. I don't want to end up rattling with a vast array of assorted pills like my Mother was. Statins have a bit of a muddied reputation, with some rare, but nevertheless. non too pleasant side effects. But generally are thought to be better than doing without these days. So I may be returning to that once I've calmed my over reaction down a bit. In the meantime I've got a diet to reconfigure.

That I've been overweight for some time, this was not news. Its the plague of the Lumbs, not to be able to turn down a cake or desert when offered one. I've been on and off a diet for years. At my age losing weight is a slow indefatigable process, and entails a very very long term strategy. It doesn't just fall off the moment I say no to cheese. Each time I get fed up with dieting, I end up trying to pretend a date slice has magically become one of my five a day. This never works. Cakes and pastries do nothing but rest like dough on my hips. And, as Shakira says, the hips don't lie.

As ever its a question of getting the balance right. Not cake everyday, and certainly not more than once a day, limited to a couple of times a week is probably better. The latest tactic is to only buy one cake to have with coffee and share between Hubby and I. Literally halving my complex carbohydrate consumption in one self satisfied cut of the knife. Now that wasn't at all hard was it?

The hearing test was on the NHS, but done through Specsavers. All the techy listening and button pressing in a sound cubicle, was quite fun. Producing these tell tale audio graphs showing the descent of high register sounds beneath the horizon of my ears to capture. It's the standard age related hearing decline, so nothing at all to write home about. Just another sign that my body is failing to maintain standards. But the hearing aids they cost me nowt. Hurrah for the NHS!  My being able to hear well is a valuable thing to preserve, to sustain my quality of life. I feel treasured.

I am now the proud owner of two champagne gold coloured 'crustaceans' that I assemble around my ears like jewellery every morning. Still a bit discomforting and itchy, but that's getting easier with each day. I don't have to ask Hubby to repeat himself because I missed, or only half heard, the subject or objective of a sentence. Its not about focus or attention, more the type of high register sounding consonants, where the beginnings and ends of sentences were missing.  Like everything it won't be long before being slightly deaf becomes second nature.

Crustaceans at rest

SECULAR VALUES - Where The Values Are

If we are not clear about what our ethics are, then we are also unclear what values* lie behind them, those you believe and instinctively uphold through your life. In these days when cynicism or apathy are our guiding stars - in what do we now put our faith?

The poet and thinker David Whyte believes there is a central dichotomy in modern society between two values, to be an independent individual and to belong. We want a sense of belonging to society, to families, to religions, to political or social groups. But find ourselves rebelling against any perceived restrictions, oppression, compromises and curtailing of individual liberty that belonging to any group may ask of us. Liberty and belonging are seen as in fundamental and oppositional loggerheads.

These days we lean towards individualism above collective loyalties, and tend to downplay the need for the latter. Once upon a time it was the reverse, that we valued the collective loyalties way above individual self expression to the point of actively suppressing the latter. Neither position seems to embody an entirely healthy or flexible attitude.

So, having turned partly away from devotedly adhering to our role as a dutiful civilian, we've turned them into a issue of personal choice. They are considered optional extras, or at least conditional ones, dependent upon whether they fulfill personal advantage or match our desires. The nobler task of committing oneself to higher ideals and values, ones that take us beyond solely feeding our personal benefit and gratification, are often being slandered as fruitless self denial. Individual liberty has been reinterpreted as the be all and end all of life in the pursuit of happiness.

If our society does require remedial work to restore the central strength of its ' common values and ethics' , what are they now? What is there left of our 'common values and ethics'? Can they be rebuilt or reformed?  Would we uphold them? Do we even recognise ourselves as having collective values? For values to be followed, we have to identify with them, aspire too them, on a personal, even instinctual, level. Once owned, values are not passive possessions, they need to be worn.

In the pursuit of values there is a fundamental question - What is good? And once having identified what is good, its followed by - how do I encourage what is good in myself and in others,? Religious teachers through out history, whatever their denomination, have essentially been asking that questions of us - What is good, and how do we encourage that in individuals and society at large? 

That there is a degree of ethical congruity across faiths indicates these values are broadly held in common across most human cultures, whether East or West. They are not just the sole preserve of one particular religion to define, uphold and impose. They are reflecting human values and basic needs for - liberty, loyalty, respect, tolerance, kindness, appreciation, the sanctity of life, etc.

There will always be people who will refuse to adhere to values for the common good, just because you can in a free society. Its what the law is for, to provide an ethical backstop for when people over step the mark. In general, I'd like to believe most people want to do good. Though we may often be mislead in the moment, by the strength our emotions, by the misjudgments we make and by pressures from aspects of society to act in a particular way, which may or may not be to the good. 

Values stimulate an ethical impulse in us to act, or not to act on them, to pursue them or abjure. But we do need to recognise we have them, that they're ingrained into the geology of our behaviour. The psychologist and philosopher Ian McGilchrist believes they emanate as a quality from the universe. All phenomena has intrinsic value, its not conferred upon phenomena by us.

Though the phrasing and emphasis might differ, religious ethics provide a context within which common themes of - what it is to do good - can be adopted. There can, however, be subtle differences in their purpose over - what is the doing good for? Lets look at a few examples around violence and killing. Its the primary precept in Buddhist ethics. This has both a negative and a positive version, what to discourage and what to encourage. It says:-

I undertake to abstain from taking life
With deeds of loving kindness, I purify my body.

In the Ten Commandments it says - Thou shall not kill, which is blunt and to the point. It doesn't sound very nuanced, but in actual practice it would have to be. Because the context within which something takes place is important; killing in war; killing under extreme duress; killing by accident; killing as a lesser but necessary form of good. Causes and volitions nuance the level of approbation, for where allowances would be made.

Buddhism asks you to consider ethics in relation to your thoughts, words and deeds. So its not just about bodily killing, its about the violence we do within our minds to ourselves and others, and what we say about ourselves and others. To work on transforming these into a loving and kinder response. Violence and anger do mutual damage to victim and perpetrator. So for Buddhism the purpose in our doing good, extends beyond a divine prohibition to not do anything bad. It is to purify and change ourselves so thoroughly that in a small incremental way we alter, not just our experience of reality, but reality itself. 

In Christianity it values not killing in order to prevent the suffering and hurt of another. Buddhism values 'abstaining from taking life' in order to prevent the suffering and hurt of both victim and perpetrator'. For in both, the not doing of something throws up huge challenges on an emotional and mental level. Not killing someone, no matter how murderous you are feeling, requires you to stop where you are, to adjust your perception, mind or feelings, and step away from wielding that axe. 

Hatred is a perception filter, a habit of an angry mind and stirred up emotion. So you have to tackle hatred on many levels. The Buddhist precepts provide a tool to cultivate 'loving kindness' towards yourself and the state you are in, and towards the person to whom you have ill feeling. It is not.necessarily, an easy or quick thing to turn around. So patience needs cultivating.

In both religions human life has intrinsic value, it is either God given and sacred, or a precious opportunity arising from fortunate circumstances that created your life, so it is wrong to rob anyone of it. All human and sentient life is inter-connected. Our inter-connectedness is a belief that has foundational importance in Buddhism. Though Christianity may not make interconnectedness that explicit, it is a quality arising from everything being of God's creation. We are doing good, but behind it lies a larger sacred purpose.

What is valued tends to be founded upon such underlying beliefs. Not taking life is a value, but we do so, because - we are all interconnected spiritually - are all Gods creations - all human life is sacred. These are foundational beliefs. For example - all life being interconnected underpins why not causing harm to others is deemed so vital. This is also a responsibility we hold not just individually, but collectively.

But there have been times when cultures don't value that interconnection. In many early ancient cultures where humankind was more stratified, prejudicial distinctions were made between the capabilities of men and women. Likewise different classes, slaves or races. It was considered of lesser consequence to kill a slave, because they"d already been bought and sold, and by virtue of being commodified were robbed of their humanity anyway. 

A similar thing happened to Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and people with mental problems. under the Nazis regime. Where it became OK to kill someone because they were considered dehumanised, subhuman, inferior or defective. This view is dependent upon holding a belief in your own superiority or that of your country, cast, race or gender. Then your values will emphasise your separateness and your inherent, even God given, sense of being superior. This meant even killing might be considered important for the greater good of mankind. Its not something I'd sign up for. But it demonstrates how the sort of values you hold can produce a different sense of what is right ethically, of what is to be considered good.  

The consequences of the first precept or commandment 'to not take life' roll out from them like a constantly evolving ethical river. Causing us to examine other forms of violence, through what we do, through what we say, through what we think, even through to what we eat. Murder is one hate filled action, it can take many forms, particularly in how we speak to ourselves and to others. If we hate ourselves then this tends to seep out in how we respond to the people we encounter in daily life. 

Values state an ideal, out of which emerges an ethical principle, but that ethical principle has to be acted upon if it is to have any value at all. Nothing theoretical has meaning or validity until its put to the test. We all hold a fundamental belief that these values, if they are put into action, would make the world a better place to live in, not just for yourself, but everyone.

That beliefs, values and ethics have previously been the sole preserve of religions, could make all this triumvirate of elements problematic. Because we want to see ourselves as moving beyond organised 'superstitious' religions. A secular form of ethics, however, cannot evolve out of nothing. Dissociating them from where they emerged first, doesn't necessarily help. 

Christianity's purpose has often been to act as societies conscience, the focus for social reform and ethical progress. We have to acknowledge, however begrudgingly, that we inherited a legacy from Christian ideals and ethics. Even though practicing Christians have not always been the best exemplars of them, for better or for worse.

If not our religious or political leaders, who else today will uphold our inheritance of these 'common values and ethics'? Who today has the authority to provide moral leadership?  Maybe it should not be down to one person or institution, not a top down dissemination, but an up-swelling from a grass roots desire for renewal.

* Values - underlying ideals, qualities and feelings we have given emotional investment to. Often referred to as core values, these feed into our ethics and the sort of society we aspire to have. Not, however to be confused with monetary values.

To follow

SECULAR BELIEFS - Its Certainty Or Bust

ART 'n' Ab ART - Look Out - Ruth Butler Exhibition

Exhibitions don't always immediately grab you. Sometimes you do have to give paintings or artworks sufficient time to speak to you, to tune into them. Impatience or a desire to get the gist and quickly move on, undermine one's receptivity and hence the depth of appreciation suffers. Its not always an easy thing to obtain a true grasp of where an artist is coming from. Length of time is important.

Ruth Butler's paintings do communicate themselves with a great and alluring immediacy, I felt I had an instinctive sense of them, almost as a living process taking place before your eyes. There on the canvas was a painting evolvong in a way that was as instinctive and in the moment as anyone can make it. She has had to give this time to mature, as does the viewer.

Her paintings are both loose yet controlled, geometric yet organic, solid yet fluid. Instinctual improvising takes time, and more importantly, a patient sensitivity. In order to uncover where a work is at, to tell where it needs to go next. Some paintings obviously begin with hand drawn patterning, but several layers later end up with a soft semi transparency and calligraphic natural references. Others appear to take exactly the opposite path, moving towards slabs of colour bestrided by erratic lines.

Using a broad range of mark making, and an alive vibrant colour sense. Her paintings in the end create a mood that I personally found exciting to visually engage with. The most obvious art historical reference points stylistically are Paul Klee, but the overall assault of pattern and form had strong associations for me is with that most outsider of artists, Friendesreich Hundertwasser.

Her instinctual layering approach I recognise in my own art process, but I've never quite had the courage, so far. to fully break out of a meticulously controlled execution mindset. However frustrating the devotion of time and discipline to that becomes. This exhibition has encouraged me to drop my long use of gouache paint, a medium so suited to flat colour that it almost insists on tight form and execution. I'm taking up exploring the qualities and possibilities of acrylics. Watch this space.

FEATURE - 'The Truth' Monologue

This monologue from The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp from 1943, contains so much pain and pathos within it.  Delivered with such simple yet effective power by Anton Walbrook, a brilliant actor, so often shamefully overlooked.  It gives voice, not just to a refugees plight, but their viewpoint on what its like to be a refugee in a country that can't quite accept that your reason for being here is genuine and not duplicitous. It speaks quite powerfully over seventy years later to those contemporary sour minds and ungenerous hearts, who wouldn't recognise empathy even if it slapped them across their increasingly smug faces.

 

FILM CLUB - The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp

Powell & Pressburger Season - 1943 

On the surface the character Colonel Clive Candy is derived from David Low's cartoon strip from 1934, lampooning the British establishments blindness to the threat of Hitler. However, Colonel Blimp for Powell & Pressburger was more an extension of an old soldier who'd appeared in an earlier film - One of our Aircraft is Missing - who constantly refers back with nostalgia to the old way of fighting a war. Underneath the satire Powell and Pressburger humanise the situational mind set, even though its wit is bent on being more pokey and subversive.

Churchill was appalled they were even considering releasing The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in the aftermath of an ignominious withdrawl from Europe, and a stalled plan a year away from the D Day landings, He tried to put a stop to it, but Arthur Rank insisted and the film became popular, because it did obtain such a wide distribution in the UK. 

It was severely re-edited for the US, essentially turning it into a linear narrative, by removing all the flashbacks and echoes to the past. It was not until the 1980's restoration that its full length and original editing was restored, along with digitising its deteriorating technicolour format.

Maybe for Churchill the character of Colonel Blimp did follow an uncomfortably similar parallel to his own self mythologised backstory. The central character Colonel Clive Candy's  ( Roger Livesey ) experience  of war, spans from the end of the Boar War, through the First World War, and ends with a Home Guard exercise during what was then still an ongoing war with Nazi Germany. Candy is a life long soldier, who has done nothing else but serve his country through the military. Though initially a bit of a rogue maverick, he settles into a life of dull respectability and conformity to a set viewpoint of war and his role in it. 

The film has multiple narrative strands running through it. At the beginning it shows us a British military that believes you fight a war fairly and is always appalled when other countries don't play fair too. They're always playing catch up. Blimp is the archetype of this particular mindset, often lauding that, though the German's played dirty, in the end we won. This viewpoint is slyly being satirised, but not without some affection too.

Because the Germans are spreading 'untrue' stories about there being British atrocities in South Africa ( some of these were actually true! )  He ends up going to Berlin and fighting a duel with Theo Kretschmar Schuldorff, ( Anton Walbrook ) over it. In the process he becomes Candy's life long friend. The changing nature of that friendship is a major thread throughout the movie. 

Theo, because he has to bare with the humiliation of his country being beaten in war, later accuses the British, that though they won the First World War they failed to learn anything from it. The most touching moments in this film are when Theo, once again, tells his old friend Candy exactly how things really are. That you can't ever expect the Nazi's to act according to the traditional playbook. He's had to leave Nazi Germany, having already lost his own children to a pernicious ideology. This time its not just a fight for territory but for the hearts and minds of Western democratic civilisation.

Another strand is unrequited love. Until Theo announces he is going to marry Edith Hunter ( Deborah Kerr ), Candy does not realise how much he was in love with her too. He goes out with her sister and other look a likes, eventually marrying one - Barbara, and in later scenes chooses a female driver Angela who looks like her too. All of them are played by Deborah Kerr. Its as though, even in love, he can't move on either. Edith has become this angelic ideal.

Both Livesey and Walbrook worked frequently with Powell and Pressburger and both give performances here that show them at the very top of their game. Walbrook in particular is so quietly mesmeric to watch, beautiful subtle acting, facial expressions, suggestive gestures, all telling of a man who has been broken and reforged himself, but not without some personal cost. 'The Truth' monologue in his immigration interview to be accepted as a refugee, is so heartbreaking. Starting as a wider angled shot of the whole room, it zooms in slowly on Walbrook's face, very closely monitoring its every suggestive flicker, and then when he's finished speaking zooms out to take to the same whole room stunned into silence. To have that happening all around you and hold your acting nerve is quite some feat. 

The character of Candy,  has much more broader cartoon like origins, and hence is a much harder part to play. Livesey manages to bring a touching humanity to the old bluffer over its three periods, and ages well. Candy is a well meaning kind person, a lot of fun to be around, even though he has these huge blind spots. Its only through his friendship with Theo, that he manages to grow any wiser. 

Though female characters in British movies of this period, can sometimes be a bit of a thankless role, here Deborah Kerr, brings immense skill and delineation to all her three characters, all of theme are feisty and assertive, though in entirely different ways.

I first saw this film in an art cinema during in the 1980's revival of interest in Powell & Pressburger.  You could say the whole idea of doing this series on The Archer's output, rests on my enduring enthusiasm for this one film. In this process I have discovered many other undiscovered beauties. I remember being completely blown away by Colonel Blimp at the time. It resonated with the tense contemporary atmosphere in the 80's surrounding The Falklands War, as the Churchill myth was being rolled out once again. 

Watching it again it is hard to fully take in all the various interweaving themes that it encompasses, certainly not in one viewing. In a career full of spectacular highlights, The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp is up there with the very best of Powell & Pressburger.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

CHURCH LARKING - Beeston Regis Parish Church

One of the joys to be had from 'church larking' is encountering the unexpected. Quite often an unpreposessing dull exterior can, as you lift the latch on the porch entrance door, reveal an interior full of character and unusual architectural flourishes. I usually arrive with standard questions in mind - when was this built and over what period? How has it come to be the way it is? Someone once described buildings as vertical archaeology. And its true that through analysis of minor visual elements you build up a rough historical timeline, of what led to what.

A question that crosses my mind every time I pass by Beeston Regis Parish Church is  - why is it so far from anywhere? The main village green and pond is actually half a mile away adjacent to the ruins of Beeston Priory. The distinctly medieval church is nearer to the most recently built part of Beeston, nudging onto the edges of West Runton. It's position stuck out on the edge of the sea cliff, sea erosion aside, is a bit of a mystery. One that I've yet to solve.

The Church from the Priory

It is a beautifully compact and well proportioned church, with internally quite a few unique details. Externally, you can see it has been largely remodeled in the 15th century. As is often the case the tower, though heavily renovated in 1951, is the oldest surviving part of the church. Probably 11th-12th century, its not round, so its an exception for this period in East Anglia.

The clerestory is a 14th century insertion, which as ever has required the remodeling of the roof. It has quite neat and even flushed flint work, so it looks newer, as does the crenelation of the top of the tower. The crispness of these is perhaps a sign of its many restorations since the 19th century.

But thankfully the interior has not suffered too detrimentally from well meaning restorers. The roof remains the original 15th century one. Not all the decorative corbels are of that date. The oldest have symbols of the Passion, the more recent emblems of saints. 

What instantly catches your eye is the rood screen. Which despite Reformation zeal has survived, minus its rood obviously, yet without vandalism to its medieval panels of saints. As the church is dedicated to All Saints, and they are all representations of biblical disciples, maybe this was deemed appropriate. Either that, or the rood was removed and hidden during the Commonwealth Republic. Nonetheless. it is a joy to find it still in situ. Not all of the screen is the original woodwork, it's upper part has been very sensitively restored. Reproducing the workmanship one might expect of a medieval woodworker, its quite a feat.

There are two characterful plinth heads either side of this rood screen. They appear to indicate they once supported something. Whether this was anything to do with the rood screen is hard to fathom.

Another features of note, are the two niches set in the side and adjacent wall of a window in the south aisle. I've not seen their like before. These may have once contained figures of the Virgin, or a figure adopted by a local medieval guild, who could have maintained a shrine in this corner of the church.

Another detail really worthy of doting over is the piscina and sedilia. It is utterly beautiful with a Perpendicular window set behind it. This window was once blocked off, but someone in more recent times had the brilliant idea to reopen it. So now the sunlight can beam through it and illumine its gorgeous stone tracery. It is thought this feature may have been brought here from the ruins of Beeston Priory, and that does seem right. There is something about it that is of an entirely different league of design to humble old Beeston.

Clear Glass Window with niches

It's a characteristic of Norfolk coastal churches to make the most of the low horizons, abundant sky and sunlight. It's rare to find more than a few fully stained glass windows. Most nave windows, as here, being clear glass or occasionally patterned Victorian insertions. As none has survived in Beeston we cannot know whether there was any original medieval stained glass. It maybe stained glass was too expensive and beyond the ability of a rural medieval church to afford. Only when glass manufacturing methods improved in the 19th century did it become feasible.

ART 'n' Ab ART - Post Petrochemical Practices Exhibition

Cromer Artspace continues through the summer and into the autumn, to bring an interesting mix of exhibitions. Some are solo artist shows, others are a group of artists gathered around a theme, creative focus or medium.

An interesting example of the latter was this exhibition called Post Petrochemical Practices. Though it sounds like some multi-national manufacturing initiative, it is a portmanteau exhibition that showcases a range of approaches to art making that avoids the use of materials derived specifically from petrochemicals.

What we have presented here are ecologically more sound, less polluting or invasive methods of expression. All the four artists in this exhibition use natural sourced mediums or effects.

Yelena Popova sources soil from radioactive areas and paints these into carefully controlled swirls of tone. 

Geoff Litherland makes use of the effects of mould and light to create in work on plaster.

Liz Mc Gowan uses found objects like shells and moss to create circles of texture. 

Sam Hodge uses an unfolded piece of packaging as printing templates utilising pigments made from soils, then layering them

The inventive diversity of approaches is what I found most interesting in this exhibition. Much of the work shown here owes a debt in form or medium to the late 20th century land artists, with elements of Cornelia Parker and abstract minimalism. 

Its probably something built into the nature of the mediums they choose to work in, that the effect of these works is quite subtle and often mimics effects you find in nature itself. Nothing in it did I find astounding or got my creative juices going, but it was a stimulating show that challenged ones preconceptions and assumptions about what you can create art from.

SECULAR ETHICS - Look at the State of It

The division of society into secular and religious, has a long history, and the separation has cultivated inconsistencies in the practices of both aspects. Secular life forms the ground for ethical practice ( spiritual or otherwise ) and ethical practice inevitably has its impact upon the secular functioning of society (spiritual or otherwise). But what is secular* ethics**?

The historian Tom Holland has suggested that 'the secular' as an idea originates from Christianity itself, created to demarcate the boundary between what was a priestly or a kingly domain of influence. Many democratic constitutions still erect such a boundary, at least in principle, in the hope of keeping religious and secular concerns fenced off.  And these still operate, in the US for example, as an excedingly leaky religious exclusion zone. The separation is an ideological one, and in everyday life and practice it does not really exist.

In the UK we live in a society that sees itself as predominantly secular. Religions exists as a choice, a private affair. Despite having an established church with a monarch who is the figurehead for both state and church. This is a formal symbolic deception. As the country at large operates outside any collectively held religious framework. Whenever an Archbishop pipes up about an unethical aspect of government policy, they are sternly told not to interfere in politics, to just hop back over the other side of the moral fence will you.

After millennia of top down religious impositions of godly power and disapproval. From the Reformation onward religious devotion, and ethical practice with it, has become more and more a private individuals concern. Though there has always been an understanding that society in general still held shared 'common values and ethics' that are Christianity Lite.  

Increased secularisation and individualism has left us with a Christian infused, but 'relative' form of values out of which some form of rough cut secular ethics flows. People now speak their 'truth', however contradictory that maybe to the facts of the matter or their ethical probity. Governments no longer uphold 'common values' nor hold themselves to a higher standard of ethics. Its all about what you can get away with, free of consequence. They say black is white, and say the exact opposite an hour later. Its all relative to place and who you are speaking to. To point out this ethical duplicity is mere nitpicking.

And into this secular ethical black hole has come a trenchant surge of secular puritanism, from both the left and the right, attempting to command the moral high ground, from where they can point the finger of shame. Social media is full to the brim with it.

I find myself dwelling on a question in the middle of this puritan rinse cycle -  is it actually possible to have 'common values and ethics' that are purely secular?  Isn't a prior historical religious context always lurking unacknowledged in the background? Ethics arise from values and values arise from core beliefs about human behaviour and metaphysics. Where else would the values for a secular ethics emerge from? Is simply to vaguely secularise our pre-existing Christian based values going to do? Because that appears to be what we are attempting. 

I started reflecting on this for three reasons. First, Five years ago I left a Buddhist Order. Since then I have remained Buddhist in essence with exploratory forays into the Christianity that in a sense had preceded it. My ethics have remained largely unchanged, still guided by the Ten Precepts that excited me early on in my spiritual life as a Buddhist. At the time I first heard them, they spoke deeply to my own innate ethical sense of the values I wanted my life to be guided and motivated by. Prior to that I'd had no conscious template, other than the Christian one I was brought up with, to frame that innate ethical sense within.

Why did I not feel the same about the ten commandments? Well they were commandments, from God, which were two large and problematic concepts for me. And I am not alone in finding them a troublesome obstacle. When we have values within such a context, we find ourselves framing our ethical views within a language of prohibitions. God's commandments are there to prevent us doing things, things we may still want to do, even though they are bad for us individually or for society. Commandments place hard boundaries to contain the worse instincts of our human nature, and assert compliance by anointing them with divine authority. That is one way to create 'common values and ethics' I guess.

The Ten Buddhist Precepts are couched in terms of being principles that you practice. There is no God punishing you to get you to practice them. When you inevitable fall short of them, the sense of shame you have arises from letting your better self down, that is seen as sufficient in itself. You move on, rededicate yourself to your continued,if faltering, practice. Buddhist ethical practice is always in the process of not quite becoming perfect. One's ethical sensitivity, at best, is constantly evolving and deepening over time. 

The second reason, was reading Tom Holland's book Dominion, in which he lays out a convincing case for Western Civilisation being entirely constructed on the revolutionary impact of values, ideals and ethics from Christianity. However secular we may try to be ethically, these remain fundamental underpinnings for how our society functions. They have their authority for existing, through there Christian origin and mindset, that they came from God. This raised the idea in my mind whether any ideal or ethical sense, cut off from the religious ethos that spawned them - well can that really work?

Third, I recalled a phrase from the late Buddhist teacher Sangharakshita, who being quite pragmatic, said that 'It was better to have a Christian sense of ethics, than no ethics at all'.  It's was a warning to Buddhists not be too partisan in their attitude to another religions ethical practice. Ethics from within a religious context, he considered were better than doing without. 

Though we all may have an individual ethical code, should that really be one we pick n mix to suit ourselves? There is a rigor in applying ourselves to an external code of ethics with a collective ethos behind it. This supports and brings confidence to the practitioner that they are applying themselves to doing the right thing. Is it important that an external spiritual framework exists behind any individual ethical practice, in order for it to be most effective? 

Can we trust ourselves not to be ethically self serving? There's always a public and a private face to our ethical practice. Ideally they ought to be the same, but they frequently are not. The tendency being to let ourselves off our ethical practice when we think we are not being seen. The 'ethics of the private moment' as the teacher Subhuti once called it. Its what feeds most scandals and moral outrages. People forget that social media is not a private moment, but a public one, and fall fowl of it being exposed.

When an apparently popular, even saintly, figure is revealed to have reprehensibly soiled feet. They may have performed a sin in private, and now its distasteful moral underbelly is there for all to see. We cannot bare the sight of other more famous people's moral flaws  inconsistencies and imperfections. This says a lot about how prudish we feel about our own. But also highlights how much our desire for moral exemplars still exists. But is our bar, in our secular age, always being set too high?

There is a sense still of there being a residual 'common values and ethics' but paradoxically, not ones entirely universally held. Nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum. So what we currently appear to have is the 21st century version of a witch trial, where social media platforms act as moral arbiters, like a modern, perhaps more rabid, version of the Inquisition. Virtually stoning, torturing and disemboweling the object of their opprobrium. It has all the ethical sensitivity and rectitude of a comic book superhero. There is little wisdom or compassion here. Just ethical cleansing.

Where do we go from here?

*   Secular - a part of society without overt religious affiliation. 

** Ethics - rules, codes of behaviour, ethos or principles by which one could live ones life.

To follow .

SECULAR VALUES - Where The Values Are