HOLIDAY SNAPS - Fully Slaked On History & Cake

After yesterdays 90 mile circular drive across and back from the coast via the moors, we stayed relatively local. Breakfast in Malton at The Pantry - Eggs Florentine for me, Veggie Breakie for Hubs -seeing as you asked. Then a wander around town, enviously taking in a few interiors shops, and purchasing locally roasted coffee beans from Roost. Moving on to Helmsley for a rather lovely coffee with biscotti and yummy patisserie outside of Mannion & Co, to prepare and fortify us for the further demanding exertion of gently ambing around a castle ruin.

My first recollection of visiting Helmsley was a Primary School field trip, when I was around eight or nine. So sixty years ago. Somewhere in my physical photo archive, I have some rather indistinct snaps of Helmsley Castle and of me stood in front of the Helmsley YHA, taken on a Box Brownie type camera I had. Already a history enthusiast, I absolutely loved the Castle and the later visit to Rievaulx Abbey. 

Would it now live up to my recollection of it?  Yes, of course it did. Helmsley Castle is one of those places that easily fires up one's imagination, whatever your age. The English Heritage audio guides are rather excellent. Though you do have to decide at some point quite how much depth of information you require, and what amount of thespian over acting you can tolerate. Plus, realising at six eight, that you can liberate yourself from anal tyranny, by not following the audio guide in number sequence. That was a revelation!

There is a La Trattoria in Helmsley, so we had to have their Arancini's in Napoli again, plus Penne Arrabiata for me, and Aubergine Parmigiana for Hubby. Happily stuffed, we cruised Hunters of Helmsley, the local Deli, desperate to buy more food provisions for later. Buying a pot Jam, a jar Sun Blushed Tomatoes in Balsamic and a bit of a Brie. And then, with out purchasing power now fully slaked for the day, we returned home to base camp.

HOLIDAY SNAPS - Curating Your Holiday

Today, being our thirteenth Wedding Anniversary, we took ourselves off 'n' over the bleak moors to Whitby for the day. A place we know well and love. So a visit is often about touching base with a few favourite haunts, and seeing what is gone and what new arrivals it has. 

As is our habit, much of the day was spent stopping off to drink and eat. Breakfast at Sanders Yard, Coffee & Cornish Pudding at The Cornish Bakery, and a fine lunch at a new eatery the Pescado Lounge. It was a clear blue sky, gloriously sunny day, and Whitby was looking at its best. It is, like everywhere, showing signs of its high street deteriorating, as well as some interesting larger developments which seem generally to be catering for the slightly more well off visitor. 

Having an Instagram moment

The day we were there, a group of Japanese tourists were enthusiastically wandering around Whitby. One woman in a fuschia overcoat having herself filmed on her phone by a friend, walking down the middle of the road pretending to look either side of her at the architecture of retail decay. That she almost brought the traffic to a screeching halt seemed not to bother her in the least. She needed to curate her foreign holiday with an Instagram/TickTok moment. We caught her doing the same thing with equal enthusiasm all over Whitby, it was utterly barmy and quite eccentrically charming simultaneously.  

We had time left in the afternoon to zip up to Saltburn on Sea, to check out how that was fairing. The original indulgence of a late Victorian entrepreneur who'd prospered locally from the Industrial Revolution.  Saltburn should by rights not still be surviving, with its archetypal pier and funicular railway, the parades of shops with their wrought iron canopies and balconies. Today, it is an uneasy mixture of kiss me quick seaside, with surf shops and high end restaurants, interiors and giftwares. And each time we visit, can see its retail fortunes are wildly fluctuating. This time it seemed on a downward curve, veering away from high end and had developed some very ugly gaps in its teeth. But Saltburn itself, the sea and the pier are doing just fine.

CHURCH LARKING - Pickering Parish Church

 

The Church of St Peter & St Paul with its spire settled atop a short squat tower, still pokes its little righteous finger up above the surrounding town. Perched as it is on the top of a hillock. The churchyard once you climb up the stairs to it, is a surprisingly quiet and intimate enshrouded space. The church being encased on all sides by the walls of houses and masked by the large overhang of trees. This makes it impossible to stand back and get a clear view of what the whole exterior layout of the church looks like. It struck me as having had an incremental, almost organic evolution to its construction.  

Anglo-Saxon Font

Its founding is lost somewhere in Anglo-Saxon times, the only survival being the much used simple rustic bowl of the front. The stolid round pillars of its nave and transepts inform you of its Norman replacement. The chancel being extended and widened by five feet at a much later date, that gives the crossing a slightly eccentric funnel like appearance. But the real surprise and delight of Pickering Parish Church is when you raise your eyes up. To gaze on the space above its pillars, right up to and framing the clerestory, where a rare survival of late medieval wall paintings covers the entire area, on both sides of the nave. The subject matter varies from paintings of saints, St George, St Christopher, Martyrdom of St Edmund, St Thomas, St Catherine, St John the Baptist, to The Virgin Mary, Christ's Descent into Hell, Passion & Resurrection, The Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy.

St George

Martyrdom of St Edmund

Commissioned in 1450, these paintings probably took another decade to be completed. Within a hundred years of that date they were whitewashed over, during the Protestant Reformation, and completely forgotten about. To be rediscovered in 1852. There was some contention at the time between the vicar and the Bishop of the diocese, concerning their religious value. So it was not until 1876 that renovation and conservation could be carried out. Quite how extensively they were 'restored' by the Victorians is unclear, but they do have a remarkably clear and sharp appearance. Which must, to a degree, be due to their good fortune at being concealed untouched for nigh on three hundred years.

Roucliffe Chapel Effigies

The rest of the church is quite typical for churches in this area of Yorkshire. Solid honey coloured sandstone grit gives it a lot of warmth, but bequeaths it little by way of lofty elegance. It sits on its sacred ground with a self conscious air, as if all too aware of its squat weightiness, the simplicity of its presence. There are some fine pieces of carved dark wood beneath the tower, in the rood screen and side chapels. Two magnificent examples of medieval tomb carving in the Bruce and Roucliffe side chapels. A splendid Sedilia. Plus a quite unique 18th century pulpit executed in the style of Hepplewhite, beautifully varnished wood with intricately carved lattice-work. So there are other treasures to be found in this church, once the initial astonishment of the wall paintings wanes, and brings your eyes back down to see what lies beneath them.

The Sedilia

'The Hepplewhite' Pulpit

HOLIDAY SNAPS - A Surprisingly Close Experience Of Sunshine

A furious storm blew over night and was all but out of puff by morning. The first glimmers of a sun rise and the dawn of a blustery cool, but essentially bright day. Sunday in the centre of Malton there was a public running competition circling around the outskirts of the town for six miles in total. The serious minded competitive runners went first, the food themed fun runners an hour or so later, dressed as everything from pineapples, Prosecco bottles, to a MacDonald's hamburger. There was a small food market accompanying this, which gave you a tiny flavour for what the monthly, more full on food market, may be like. One day we will be here when that is on. Very little else was open in town. But we had a top quality lunch in La Trattoria, both of us having arancini in a rich tomato sauce for starters, followed by a risotto. Mine a goats cheese and pesto, Hubby's mushroom with truffle oil, these truly were FAB.

Moving on to Pickering, a market town we've never visited before. Though it was Sunday, most of its shops were open. We were unexpectedly impressed by how quaint and interesting the town market place is. I did a bit of 'church larking' in the Parish Church which is rightly known for its late medieval wall paintings in its nave. To have such complete examples left is pretty much miraculous. Whitewashed over during the time of the Reformation, enabled them to survive pretty much unharmed until the Victorians restored them. 

After yesterday's deluge, the air smelt fresher, the sky and landscape all looked sharper edged. Producing a surprising close experience of sunshine, that was all very welcome. 

MY MOST LOVED ALBUMS - The Man Who Sold The World by David Bowie - 1970

When it comes to David Bowie there really ought to be more than one much loved album. I've selected The Man Who Sold The World because I have always had a particular fondness for how contrary and odd it is. It was way out of step with the singer songwriter vibe he'd been doing prior to it. It has a grungy hard rock and doom ridden feel, with its dystopian, ever prevalent madness theme. At the time folk wondered what the hell was he doing. His record label must have been tearing their hair out.

It is clear, in retrospect, that The Man Who Spld The World builds on a thematic vein that Bowie starts with Space Oddity and takes all the way through his career, of the alienated, and often alien, outsider, disconnected from ordinary human life. The original cover photo was the infamous one of Bowie wearing a dress, that looks like it was run up from a pair of his Grandma's old curtains. I mean a man wearing a dress - gender fluidity in 1970? Way ahead of its time, certainly. The whole thing felt, at the time of release, like career suicide.

The Man Who Sold The World, released two years before Ziggy Stardust, is undoubtedly its precursor. It has a central saviour figure, with a sci-fi story arc running through it. These sorts of dystopian worlds kept reappearing throughout Bowie's career right up to Blackstar 2016 his last album before he died. This played most significantly on the mournful 'end of times' echoes that it shared with The Man Who Sold The World. I wasn't really aware of The Man Who Sold The World until after Ziggy Stardust's huge success. Re-released, with a black and white photo of Bowie in a sparkly Ziggy costume.The original album cover, nor this Ziggy inflected replacement, really reflected the darkly somber nature of its regret filled melancholy - the authoritarian implosion of a messiah like figure. 

Bowie, and Marc Bolan to a degree, brought sexual ambiguity to the fore in the short lived feverish sugar rush that was seventies Glam Rock. And the opening obliqueness of Width of a Circle, that begins the album, contains the classic sexually subversive Bowie lyric - 

He swallowed his pride and puckered his lips And showed me the leather belt round his hips. My knees were shaking my cheeks aflame. He said "You'll never go down to the Gods again"  

If you were a teenager just discovering what his sexual orientation was, living in the cultural backwoods of the Isle of Axholme, this was a beacon, brazen and alluring. I doubt I fully understood at the time exactly what he was referring to, though I undoubtedly sensed its transgressive intent. He gave a whole misfit generation a voice, a vehicle for their individuality to express itself through, and a dress sense to go with it. He gave me hope and the confidence to move towards living my life fully, as who I really was. 

Of the numerous Bowie songs I love, Man Who Sold The World is one from the very top shelf, its just so immaculately written. The opening thrill of it is beguiling, from the moment that melancholic cyclical riff from Mick Ronson's guitar strikes up. And when it reaches the chorus there is that jagged staggered ascending riff that runs counterpoint to -

' Oh no, not me, I never lost control. You're face to face  with the man who sold the world'  

I've always found the structure and production of this song, perfectly executed, yet so completely and delightfully off kilter simultaneously. I mean, what was he actually on about here? Whatever you do, do not listen to the Lulu version of this. Though produced by Bowie, it is a bizarre choice of singer, singing a quite inappropriate choice of song for her

At the time, this album had a strong influence upon my sense of aesthetic and my writing adopted some  of its themes. Bowie never wrote more explicitly about madness and mental instability than here. The crazy little voices whispering 'Can I keep him' in the background of All The Madmen. In the song  After All it appears like its a lament for the consequences of late sixties hippy idealism, but it also paints a picture of a people who lost to a world of drugs and vacant stares.

'I sing with impertinence Shading impermanent chords with my words I've borrowed your time and I'm sorry I called. But the thought just occurred That we're nobody's children. At all, after all'

Looking back through my teenage poems, always an embarrassing thing to do, you'll find lots of tortured and tortuous verses about losing ones sanity. Something I actually had no lived experience of, but its amazing what teenage angst can be mistaken for.  And that, was all Bowie's fault.
. 

HOLIDAY SNAPS - It Rained & Rained & Rained

The rain was forecast to fall continuously all day, which it proceeded to do with a vengence. So we thought, keep ourselves relatively local, within easy access of shops and cafes, should we need to seek immediate shelter. So we went for breakfast in Helmsley, to The Feather Trail Cafe, which we'd discovered three years ago on our last visit. Their Veggie Breakfast was still as good as we remembered it. We wandered around dodging the occasional heavy shower, looking for and then finding a cafetiere in a charity shop. A cake to take home for afternoon tea etc. We will undoubtedly return, we always do.

North Yorkshire has very few National Trust properties, its mostly English Heritage. But we spotted Nunnington Hall on the drive to Helmsley. So on the way back we stopped off for a drink and a cake.The house itself is a smallish country manor house, it is quite a ramshackle affair and has an air of run down neglect. This house could never be referred to as grand or swish. Whether this is the Trust's deliberate decision, to leave it exactly as it was when they took it over, or that Nunnington comes very low down on the list for money being put into it, this I could not say.

But it was one place to shelter from the increasingly heavy downpours. Once we actually found where the Cafe was located, which due to poor signage, was indeed a task in itself. It was heaving, as Hubby pointed out, with all the white haired middle class retired couples currently on holiday having the exactly same idea. We ordered our drinks, and that ever so English notion of having a Scone of the Month - Bramley Apple Crumble Scone. Ensconced on a plate with two dinky glass pots, one containing apple sauce, the other custard. The scone had chunks of apple within it, and once all its accessories were slathered upon it, this was a taste sensation.  This proved to be the culinary highlight of our very wet first day. Excellent.

We returned to base, bought a Chinese takeaway from Pickering, watched the ever delightful Grand Budapest Hotel, and then to bed 

HOLIDAY SNAPS - The Driving, The Arriving & The Exhaustion

The three hundred mile car journey to our holiday accommodation between Malton and Pickering, took us from an 8am start til 3pm when we finally arrived at Robin Cottage, Low Bellafax Grange. Stopping over first for a breakfast at The Chestnut Tearooms at Gedney. Our longest stopover in Lincoln took in our regular visit to The Fabric Quarter in Bailgate, one of our favourite fabric shops. Reaching Malton, and an excellent pizza at Salt, plus a quick shop in Morrisons.

In Lincoln Castle

Robin Cottage looks like a recent barn conversion into four modern apartments. With the emphasis on Modern. Ours is extremely spacious and minimalist, and it has a fabulous view out over the nearby fields, where sheep safely graze. It has a very calming and restful vibe, because its not over cluttered with unnecessary furniture. 

And yet, as far as minimalism goes, it doesn't quite cover all the basic practical requirements one might expect it too. The apartment has a few significant gaps. Insufficient storage for clothes. No microwave. No Cafetiere. The bathroom has not enough shelf space to place your toiletries on. No hooks to hang even a bathrobe on. No where, in fact, to hang your outdoor coats on, nor put your muddy boots or shoes on. As our first arrival day drew to its close, this clocking up of these minor faults started to irritate. This was beginning to feel like this was minimalist style over substance. But that aside, we are enjoying our stay here so far. We're both of us pooped, and couldn't wait to go to bed.

FINISHED READING - At Work In The Ruins by Dougald Hine

 

The manner in which we view and interpret climate change, the way we talk about it in our public discourse, affects how we will respond. Dougald Hine spends a good part of this book going over the development of climate awareness and activism, and highlights the various stages and shifts in emphasis. And he asks the pertinent question - have any of these larger scale world wide agreements and initiatives worked in really changing governments and societies approach to it, or preparing us for the full consequences of it? Humanity may be able to survive climate change, but that requires us to establish what could realistically be preserved of our civilisation. To start behaving like we are already working in the ruins of it. What would that actually look and feel like?

A central argument here, is that we've placed far too much emphasis on the science to convince people of the need for change. So we tend to believe that its ultimately a problem that science will solve. Paul Kingsnorth response puts the problem pithily as 'Science is an ideology posing as a method.' Climate change is a threat, but if our only response is to try and tinker with the causal factors, like fine tuning a car engine. then it will fail. There is currently no magic technological bullet available to us now, that will solve climate change. You cannot resolve a problem that is to do with the way we think and approach the world, by using the same faulty methodology. Man made climate change is the result of our actions, our tendency to exploit and control our environment, which our scientific technological solution focus is itself a manifestation of. 

As the shit starts to hit the fan, a failing environment will eventually hamper, then collapse the global economic system, our delicately tuned food supply logistics, whole cultures and ways of living will disappear, huge movements of the dispossessed will put every aspect of our existing way of living under immense strain and cripple our governments ability to instigate anything. This is already beginning to happen. These are human, not scientific problems, that will not be resolved by minor adjustments in emphasis within our economy, but a complete re-think of our whole approach. Anything else will be dealing with symptoms not causes, and at best we'll achieve only greenwashing.

In trying to establish how we currently respond to emergencies, Hine examines the vexed nature of our response to Covid, and the divisions that opened up as a result. Western society is 'deathphobic' it tends to hive death and disease off, and confine responsibility for it into hospitals. So as Covid struck, governments tried to deal with the increased infections by 'following the science' and dramatically ramping up limited hospital capabilities. Because it mainly killed the elderly, who always require more intensive care, hospitals proved unable to cope. This limited scope in tackling it made lock downs almost inevitable. To some extent what we were living through was a worldwide over reaction. But it does shine a light on the failings of singularly scientific based responses to emergencies, and indicate what may happen once the unpredictable future of our environment begins to really reek havoc. Tightly drawn working parameters and the 'kettling' of any dissent. What Hine dubs 'the fish tank method', with its self- evident authoritarian leanings.

Hine believes Western society is more vulnerable to complete collapse as a result of climate change than less highly developed countries. Largely because everything is so finely tuned. Dealing with discomfort, the ability to adapt and cope with hardship, has been somewhat cultivated out of us. If pasta permanently vanished off the supermarket shelves, there would be a riot. Successive governments have failed in being fully frank with its citizens about what we are truly facing. A culture of self deception, delusion and denial has been cultivated everywhere, about what science is able to do, about climate change itself, but more importantly about how we need to respond as a result of it. 

' In the political imagination of high modernity. There's too much loss already written into the story, too much hardship around and ahead of us, whichever path we take. I think people can smell that, whether or not they want to face it yet. The sense that the future is broken isn't a mistake or a lack of vision, it's an accurate, gut-level read on where we are. What's called for is not to reboot the project of modernity but to see what can be salvaged from it, and what deserves to be left behind.'*

He makes one comment that I found quite telling. That when we hear extinction we assume its the extinction of all human life. But what is actually meant is the extinction of a particular way of living human life - the one expounded to us through western modernity. However, Hine now believes fundamental system change in how we day to day run Western civilisation is highly unlikely. He has 'given up' on responding to climate change in this manner.   

' I want to say that giving up can be a necessary step, a precondition for becoming able to see the world otherwise and find the moves that are called for now, the moves that will be called for as the project of the big path fails. To give up is always to give up on 'something', though at the time it may well feel like everything. The question is what are we giving up on and how we come to see the world as a consequence,'*

We have to recognise when our situation has changed, the point when new strategies and approaches become necessary. He uses a Brazilian saying to exemplify how the particular dynamic and imperative of the moment almost tells you when and how to act:-

'When there is a flood coming and the waters are up to your ankles, you don't start swimming, when the water reaches your knees, its still not time to swim, when the water gets up to your ass, that's when its time to start swimming. When things get bad enough, types of action that were previously impossible become possible.'*

So what do you now do if you given up on large scale responsibility for dealing with climate change. Well, you go local, to smaller initiatives, responding to tangible issues and needs in your immediate area.

At Work In The Ruins, takes its time in laying out the history of climate change as an outcome of the economic system, the changes in the way awareness is raised and protest campaigns are run. Our expectations as a society when we respond to science and emergencies. This all lays the ground for Hines own shift from the big planet wide initiatives to more localised ones, from trying to put climate change into reverse to salvaging the best of what we'll be left with. Its certainly adjusted my viewpoint on where we are and what needs to happen next. And I get the sense that further reflection and pondering will undoubtedly continue in its wake. Its a very prescient book.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

*Extracts taken from At Work In The Ruins
  by Dougald Hine Published by Chelsea Green 2023

RANDOM SNIPPETS - No 1 - Mental Turbulence

'When spiritual teachings tell you - when all things around you seem insecure and ill at ease, just practice and don't comment. That's a great response, but not one I find easy to do. There is always a tendency to want to engage in the debate and the contention. And, as I have found to my cost, if you do respond from a place of fear and insecurity, that this will destabilise your inner world. All will become turbulent and murky. When anyone stomps around in a pond, all the sediment within it gets stirred up, and you can no longer see what lies at the bottom of it. - The same is true of the mind'.

An edited and further adapted extract from my Morning Journal
Originally written 15th September 2025

FEATURE - James Talarico On What Is Broken

 Now this guy, James Talarico is the sort of Christian I can get behind.

MY OWN WALKING - Second September Journal 2025

The last few days I have found very challenging to maintain any degree of  equilibrium. Fascists marching in their hundreds of thousands in Central London. And the assassination of Charlie Kirk in the US and its still unfolding consequences. Have raised quite a potent and very turbulent response within me. I'm frustrated, angry even, but mainly quite fearful for where our country might be headed, and what that may mean for anyone whose rights and freedom of speech can be easily marginalised.

At the same time the online Commit To Sit programme I've been engaging with over the last ninety days is within days of coming to an end. And we have reached the concluding quality of the 8 Qualities of a Good Person -To not engage in useless or spurious argument. And its meaning and purpose is quite specific, useless or spurious argument is anything not focused upon clarifying or is in alignment with, the true nature of reality. So this is rather highlighting, particularly today, how much my thoughts and feelings, my mental preoccupations, are being completely taken over by current events Lets just say I've been doing quite a lot of very bumpy Metta Bhavana and Just Sitting practice.

I'd not been aware of Charlie Kirk until this week. I had no idea he was a such big influencer and supporter of Trump.  And when you hear his self satisfied views on women, trans issues, black people, and anyone whose views might be called woke or progressive, those opinions are so darkly perverted ones that they are truly horrendous to hear coming out of another human being. How he could even think himself a Christian beggars belief. Then I heard he was a free speech advocate who was happy to enter into debate. So I thought well at least he got that right, he was prepared to engage. But positioning himself under a gazebo that says Prove Me Wrong, says a lot about him and the whole confrontational set up. Watching these college debates is a bit like seeing fluffy kittens ritually fed to an apex predator and being publicly eviscerated. Its not pretty, nor a respectful form of debate. Its quite an ugly spectacle.

But then there are plenty of people with horrendous opinions in this world, none of them deserve to be killed because of them. I've found myself parroting that line, because as a supporter of free speech and democracy you are expected to say this sort of thing. And I certainly do not wish to engage in further inflaming an already dangerously polarised situation. My actual feelings, beneath that veneer of democratic principle, are a good deal more conflicted and morally muddy than that. There is some empathy for his young loss of life and the consequent suffering of his wife and children, but it feels more muted than I'd expect of myself. It's seems more like a performative exercise in empathy, ambivalent in tone, not fully heartfelt. And I wondered why that was.

I've come to the conclusion my responses are somewhat compromised by hearing the sort of divisive and provocatively offensive speech he engaged in. He was a very significant contributor in creating the sort of incendiary situation where he, or anyone else some individual doesn't agree with, could now be killed, and another tear in the fabric of social cohesion is formed. He didn't deserve to die, but he was instrumental in making a politically inspired assassination, whether on the left or right, more likely to happen. That even murder is now an acceptable response. He was a provocateur, and once you descend down that route you cannot fully predict what wild and uncontrollable consequences you might poke into life in some 'random' vigilante. I mean he said there were situations when gun violence and loss of life was acceptable. Anyone who so casually stokes the fire, may experience blow back that burns them too.Sad to say.

None of this is remotely useful in moving myself towards understanding the true nature of reality. Is it useful or spurious argument according to its limited parameters? Well I've found it helpful.  I felt the need to lay out all the constituent parts in my response and be as honest as I can be about what I'm actually feeling and thinking, as opposed to what a good Buddhist or citizen is expected to say. Because leaving all the tangled moral mess of it inside my head, was not remotely doing any good for my mental states. As in all spiritual practice, you start from knowing exactly where you currently are, and attempt to move forward from there.

 

MY MOST LOVED ALBUMS - This Heat by This Heat - 1979

 

This Heat, now where on earth do you start explaining them? Pretty much unknown by the wider public, then and now. Too idiosyncratic in their output to leave an inspirational legacy for future bands. You could say, in terms of marking out the basic musical territory - they make experimental, semi-improvised pieces of music. But that tells you very little about its quality, nor what effect it has upon you. Even I Tunes defines this album as Unclassifiable, which seems very apt. 

The album briefly opens with forty seven seconds of the bleeping tumble of Test Card 1, that slips seamlessly into the chaotic guitar rattles and aggressive banging of a flat toned drum rhythm on Horizontal Hold. This has it interludes of gentler introspection, almost pausing for thought, before exploding back into a dramatic widening out of its vistas via a raspy jangling guitar and the moaning undulations of a synth. Its as though you've been travelling underground in a sulphurous dimly lit subway and suddenly you emerge into the glaring light of day, and are swept out onto a manic freeway. It's quite a hair raising out of control musical motorway drive that this track is taking you on.

Having made the jump from Progressive Rock to Punk, by the latter years of the seventies, I was now willing to steer myself towards any music that seemed like an invitation to enter adventurous territory. Seeking out bands aiming for new unheard of places. This shift in my musical horizons and aesthetic expectations, was encouraged by being at Art College in Leeds when punk initially erupted onto the scene. My musical tastes were hence highly unlikely to become frozen in 1972 and never thaw out. In fact it was quite the opposite, I was constantly moving on to my next musical embrace, with a passionate enthusiasm.

I began seeking out the contrary, the strange and the resolutely AWOL. My musical tastes increasingly eclectic and broad ranging. For which I now feel truly grateful, because via this experience I enriched and broadened my world view beyond parochial or tradition bound ones. I saw music as liberating, and hence the world as being altogether a freer and happier place, when not held within rigidly held traditions or fixed xenophobic borders. I think this desire for a wilder exploratory music, free of perceived boundaries, somewhat mirrored my internal world. Where I was having a parallel exploration of awareness and acceptance of my own sexual orientation. A feeling of wanting to reciprocally liberate myself too from my many inhibitions. Though I was not yet ready to be fully publicly open about any of that.

I started encountering reviews of This Heat's live performances in the music press. I never saw them live, but they were represented as intense one off events, highly improvised, yet also very controlled sound-scaping, that unexpectedly could dramatically metamorphose into totally different astonishing vistas. Their approach to live performance appears similar to the early live work of Cluster, with its mixture of prerecorded and freely improvised electronic and traditional instrumentation. They were also within barely a few years of the peak quirky anarchic musical world of Faust. The avant guarde influence of German groups from the early seventies does seem present in This Heat. So they do have some antecedents, their idiosyncratic music did not come completely out of nowhere. 

Where I actually heard them first was in a session for John Peel's radio show. I was instantly taken by their atmospheric provocations. It's a music that can unexpectedly capture you, be edge of the seat stuff, vocals sometimes weirdly muffled, phased to a whisper, or in high falsetto, to ominous background groans. Crashing hissing synth sounds, clanging guitars, out of which a clicking rhythm emerges and a doomy drum beat. hearing one music sections metamorphosis into the next. This can make the whole experience of the album feel like this is one long piece of abstract sound collage. This approach is utilised only on this debut album, abandoned on subsequent ones. To my ears, whilst remaining adventurous, This Heat's subsequent work was never quite as captivating or as exhilarating an experience as this debut album is. 

The best example of this musical collage technique means pieces entitled Music Like Escaping Gas morph into Rainforest that then slips into The Fall of Saigon. I tried, and failed to find this musical progression on You Tube, so you'll just have to seamlessly re-form it in your imaginations. 

The actual Fall of Saigon happened four years previous to this albums release. 1979 was the year Apocalypse Now was in the cinemas. The apparent coincidence of this to the albums release, tells you all you need to know about the zeitgeist of this era, where a doomed dour fatalism hung over the world. One This Heat may subliminally be attempting to convey. The apocalyptic descent of one small countries civilisation into political anarchy. And the failure of a assertively minded US, Post War to effectively carry out the role of guardian and purveyor of Western Democracy, a pose it had self-adopted. Similar to Kurtz,in Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, the US travelled up a very murky moral river and go quietly mad in the dank and fever infested depths of a Vietnamese tropical jungle. This Heat on The Fall of Saigon captures the decadent decay and malignant hubris of when a righteously minded political conflict turns out terribly wrong. 

FINISHED READING - The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson

Judging by this autobiography of Gary Stevenson's early life and career working for Citibank, he's been the sort of man who it's been easy to overlook or underestimate his capabilities. Born in Ilford to working class parents, Gary might appear to be a bit of a 'geezer' with all the cultural assumptions and class presumptions in how this can be misinterpreted. Though he is in possession of an extremely sharp mind, equally adept with maths and working out investment strategies that recoup the most money for him. He's also an acute observer of people.

I was surprised by how engaging and thoughtful a writer he turns out to be. The Trading Game is full of colourfully recounted incidents and he is equally adept at penning pithy portraits of his many truly odd ball work colleagues. He drags you into this strange otherworldly, almost counter intuitive logic of working the percentages, of buying and selling, betting on future interest rates. I've personally never had a firm grasp of maths, so most of his explanations of the trading mechanisms just went way over my head. But it wasn't that important half the time, because Gary also gives you the emotional feel of trading, the highs, the emotional lows. How earning millions of dollars in bonus from your yearly trading, can actually be paralysing. That professional economists disguise the fact that, actually, they don't fully understand how economies function. How much of the trading game is about being simply better at bluffing..

There is a certain type of alienated individual who can productively stare avidly at multiple computer screens all day long, and still remain sane. The reclusive Bill who is always top trader, but no one knows quite how he does it, because he keeps his cards held tightly to his chest. Then there are the brash alpha males like Rupert, who's just an out and out bully, who gets explosively jealous and throws tantrums. And JB who over the period of the book starts to look seriously ill, physically drawn, becoming an alcoholic as he gradually looses vaster and vaster amounts of money and can't recover from it. This is like watching a ship go down in slow motion. 

Gary himself, tells you how his own inner sense of himself gets fucked up by too much stress and nonstop intense work. He ends up hardly having a life outside of Citibank. He can afford to buy himself a spanking new flat, but never gets around to buying furniture for it and sleeps on its bare concrete floor. He knew he needed to get out of Citibank, but in a manner that didn't lose him all his staggered bonus earnings. And so he keeps making a series of short term compromises with his mental health. And when he finally says he must leave, to realise Citibank were effectively holding him financially a prisoner. Can he somehow play them at their on game and come out of it with the bonus money they still owe him?

There was also dawning on him, the immorality built in to how he became unspeakably wealthy.That the whole economic system is permanently fucked, due to the massive levels of inequality. And what he has done is trade on that stagnation never changing. He got rich on the financial ruin of others, and that does nothing but slowly corrode his self esteem and health. In this analysis of why our economy no longer functions properly, lies the seed of his future mission in life.

This is a truly fascinating page turner of a read, which makes you admire him all the more for his blunt honesty and genial frankness.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 130 - Ticagrelor No More

I'm sat on a park bench in downtown Sheringham. Whilst I'm sat there a group of people walk past me. A middle aged couple and their son, and a much older man, probably in his mid eighties whose walking pace is very slow and precarious, even with the aid of a walking stick. The middle aged man, who was his son pipes up
'Are those steel toe caps on your shoes Dad!
Yes - he quietly responds 
Why on earth are you still wearing them now?
Cos I've alus worn em all mi life
the puzzled middle aged woman, comments
They must be very heavy to walk in Dad?
To which Dad gave no audible answer. He appeared to just lean heavier onto his walking stick, carrying on shuffling his feet purposefully, but slowly, along the pavement. Either turning a deaf ear to the implications of what had just been said, or mentally digging in to the existential rightness of his position - wobbly balance, wasted muscle mass, fallen arches 'n' all.

Since my dysfunctional altercation with a pan of spaghetti, I've been cosseting, protecting and repeatedly moistening the area of my hand that was badly scalded, as though it was a baby's bottom with a severe case of nappy rash. Oh, the creams, the soothing tinctures and ointments I've lavished on it. There's been one large scab the shape of Ireland, with an outlying Isle of Man, both covering where the inflatable blisters had happened and burst. Shadowing this a slart shaped area of browned skin, that slowly pealed back to reveal its tenderest vivid porky pink underbelly. 

Over the last fortnight these residuals have gradually quietened down. I no longer wear large Marigold gloves when showering, though that was fun, nor night bandages to protect the area whilst I sleep. The browned skin halo has gone, the lurid pink skin is almost gone. The scab of the ' Isle of Man' has vanished and 'Ireland' is slowly contracting and shriveling into nothing. No one would know to examine it now, quite how ghastly an injury it once was. This has led me to a whole new admiration for what the human body can do to repair itself. And what is most amazing, that it did all of this automatically. I just stood by and watched it happen. I cannot help but feel humbled and immensely grateful for this bodies innate healing capabilities.

Ticagrelor No More

Talking of healing, I crossed what I guess is a significant milestone post since the HA! recently. Its become part of my monthly routine ordering my medications on the NHS App, and a few days later picking them up from the Medical Practice Pharmacy. I noticed one of my medications had disappeared off the prescription list. And after much tooing and froing from me, and a distinct lack of clarity on the App and in the Medical Practice, about whether I needed to do or instigate something. I discovered the medication had a time limit placed on it. the doctor had reviewed it and removed it from the list. But no real communication or interaction with me, no clear explanatory note so I fully understood why. But Hey, once my current batch runs out next week, that's two less tablets to take every day. Which I suppose I could view as progress.

I was in the bus stop in Sheringham looking for the Coasthopper to arrive. About to set off on a Church Larking venture to Wells Next The Sea. As I'm patiently waiting I overhear a conversation behind me. Two old dears were talking about once living in Coventry and how much it had changed. One of the ladies remarked 'I never thought it was right them coming here to this country in the first place' to which the other lady said ' Well, that's not my experience, I take people as I find them and they were perfectly fine' . Which I thought was a very skillful assertion in response to a conversation that was in danger of venturing deeper into racist territory. Clearly marking a difference of opinion and then moving on.

Once I got on the bus another couple of elderly ladies, were doing what elderly ladies the world over do - talk very loudly on public transport so everyone can hear. This one was a more genteel conversation about making friends on holiday. 'Oh, I don't think we are at all cliquey, But you either like someone or you don't, don't you? When you meet folks for the first time you sort of know if they are alright or not, and find you just rub along well.... at least while you're on holiday'

The 90 Day Commit To Sit, period with the New York Zen Center, is within a week of coming to an end. Its been a quite useful time of consistent practice. I've fit into my morning routine listening to the short talk I get sent every day, reflect on it and write in my journal, before meditating, Tai Chi and concluding with a short just sitting. Its provoked a few strong moments of reactivity, and made me reflect on what I currently fill my mind and daily life with. As Uchijama Roshi says - 

'Anyone who asks who or what they’re living for is mistakenly searching for a most fundamental value outside of their self. That I am living means that I myself am living right now. Our text, lists eight different aspects or qualities, but what it all comes down to is just this: When I was born, I was born along with my world. When I die, my entire world will die with me. I am living right now—this is the foundation of all values. So if we ask what we’re living for—I am alive, living for me. I’m living right now; that’s it. Living fully right now is what is of absolute value.”

I'm beginning to realise that all my projects and plans and activities are all various forms of intention driven time filling. Some of these might feel like they are really important, but that importance is only to me, my psyche and my ego. There is no overarching life mission I've yet to discover, there is just the simple uncomplicated straightforward living of daily life. If you can get the need for self expression out of the way, it helps

As we are now well into September, Hubby and I started thinking about taking a holiday. After briefly considering going somewhere entirely new, we are heading once again to North Yorkshire. Staying in a bijou holiday cottage on a sheep farm, ideally placed between Pickering and Malton, and equidistant between York and Whitby. We love the area so much, we do appear to be going there every other year. We are also planning only our second visit to Scarborough, to see if we can discover anywhere in the town that you might realistically refer to as 'rather nice'.