The Ferryman

February 7th, 2010

Last July I mentioned that I had been in the departure lounge of Edinburgh Airport and had been struck by the futility of the exercise – taking an early flight to London to meet a couple of people and then flying all the way back home again.

I was in the departure lounge again this afternoon, this time flying dahn sarf to Sunningdale for a training course.  And my mood is different – partly because I like coming to Sunningdale and partly because I am re-reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, a novel which I have not read for a great many years – thirty or so I think.   These two things seem to me to be linked.

riverOne of the reasons I like Sunningdale is the element of retreat, the element of having an opportunity to be alone and to think whilst in pleasant surroundings.

And, of course, me being me, I find Hesse’s tale of the man who rejects the company and teachings of the Buddha in order to find enlightenment for himself to be a good text to set the pattern of my mood.

I am going on my way – not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone – or to die.

There is a feeling that I often have that some kind of epiphany is just around the corner and that it will be here shortly.  It doesn’t happen, but that doesn’t stop me keeping my eye open for it lurking in the bushes somewhere.

There is a cliche aspect to this but perhaps it is no surprise that I am drawn to wild places and isolation, or to activities which encourage concentration to the exclusion of distractions in one’s surroundings.  I think, perhaps, that it is also linked to why I like rapper so much – being simultaneously an insider and an outsider – an eccentric if you will.

Rapper is not about the dance, it is about the assertion of the dance, about doing something which the observer may consider odd or eccentric because it is important to celebrate the odd and the eccentric and too eschew the bland homogeneity which would otherwise pass for existence.

We live in an age where homogeneity and conformity are revered; where corporate behaviours, attitudes and ideologies run rampant as the new orthodoxy (though this is not that far from the old orthodoxy):

  • why build a guitar for yourself when you can buy a perfectly good factory made one from a shop?
  • why go out into pubs and sword dance when you can go and watch football on the telly instead (and was there ever a more evilly destructive invention than football on telly in pubs)?
  • why think for yourself when the press will do it for you?
  • why seek out the wilderness when you can get steaming on a package trip to Ibiza?

No!  I reject that thinking.  We need to find and celebrate self-hood and to listen to our inner voice and follow its calling.  Not greed, not selfishness, but self-awareness until that time comes when, in the lovely words of Chris Wood, we just close our eyes and let go.

End of the week

February 5th, 2010
Lindsay at play

Lindsay at play

Just to keep honours even, after the previous set of prints of Amy, here’s one of Lindsay deeply engrossed in something or other.

It’s been a funny week and I’m in a funny mood.   I was sorely tempted by an early retirement offer which came round the office in the past couple of days although when I worked out the numbers as best I could it didn’t look like a goer.

I think that this is the first time that I have given this kind of thing some serious thought and it is at least in part a function of my age.   There are quite a few things that I would like to do more of and time has no time to spare.  While I am not going to apply for this, thoughts of the future are not far from my mind these days.

I’m flying down to London on Sunday for a training course out at Sunningdale.  I generally find the surroundings at Sunningdale very conducive to reflection and thought.  That is a good thing.

It’s All There in Black and White

February 3rd, 2010
amypooch1 amypooch2 amypooch3

Meet Amy and Gizmo!

I mentioned a few months ago that I was taking more shots in Black and White on the digital camera.  Just recently I’ve been taking them as TIF images (ie without jpeg compression in the camera).  If the camera was more up to date I’d use raw, but it isn’t so I don’t.   I’ve then been playing with them in Paint Shop Pro 9 (a legal copy which I bought with a laptop some years ago) and trying to recapture something of the feel of a platinum toned print on Agfa paper.

The end result isn’t quite what I’m after but I’m getting happier.

my boysHere’s another one – me and the lads.  From left to right we have my old warhorse Ovation Ultra which I bought in  1983, my hand built Stew-Mac 000, my Martin 000-15 and I’m playing the Martin D16GT.  Not in the picture is my nylon strung Spanish guitar.

They are all very different instruments with different responses and I enjoy playing them all, although I have a deep attachment to the Stew-Mac.  As I may have written before, there is something special about playing an instrument which you have built yourself even if -or possibly especially if- it is your first attempt.

There is also a great feeling of satisfaction to be had from the process of building: going from some bits of wood and a bottle of glue to something on which you can make music.

In an ideal world I’d like to build a couple more guitars, however there are space considerations in the house which make that difficult.  If I were to build more my first would be another Stew-Mac 000 kit but this time put on a sunburst finish and build in a pick-up and pre-amp.  The next would be an attempt to scratch build – probably something based on the old Gibson LG2/LG3 design if I could get hold of some decent plans.  If I got as far as a third it would be another scratch build – something like a Gibson SJ200 but with rosewood and spruce rather than maple.

Well, a boy can dream can’t he?

Legs Redux

January 27th, 2010
Ratho in the snow

Ratho in winter

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had gone back into the gym to begin the process of regaining lost fitness.  I’m pleased -and a little surprised- to report that on Monday just past I succesfully ran a 5K, albeit on a treadmill, and today ran for a comfortable 40 minutes.  At this rate I’ll be at 10K distances within a week and back on track to longer distances thereafter.

I’m a bit taken aback by this as I had assumed that it would take longer and be more painful than has turned out to be the case so I’m optimistic about being in half marathon form for May.  Of course with my track record an injury is probably lurking just around the corner

I took the picture to the left a couple of weeks ago when Kirstin and I tried to go for a walk by the Union Canal at Ratho.  The walk didn’t go well because of the ice underfoot but I got some nice photos.  This one was taken in black and white but I’ve added some toning in Photoshop.  Generally I prefer not to use Photoshop if I can help it except for re-sizing but with Black and White I don’t mind doing things which I might once have done (clumsily) in a darkroom

Titfer – two

January 24th, 2010
I got the Corstorphine Hill Delta Blues...

I got the Corstorphine Hill Delta Blues...

I have been reading Honeyboy Edwards’ excellent autobiography “The World Don’t Own Me Nothing” of late.  It is an excellent read and captures well his early days based in the Delta, hoboing around the US, playing guitar and harmonica, drinking white whiskey, stealing other people’s wives and generally having a wild time.  While doing so he gets to meet Robert Johnson, Son House, Lightning Hopkins, Peetie Wheatstraw and many, many others.  He’s still alive and performing too at nearly 95.

So what’s a poor boy to do ‘cept find his guitar and a suitable titfer and play the blues?

Titfer

January 23rd, 2010

frontI was reading through the Blog of an acquaintance this morning and found myself thinking about hats and the wearing thereof by men.  One of the things which is immediately noticeable when watching archive or newsreel footage from before WW2 is that the men and boys are always wearing a hat.  In the UK this seems predominantly to have been the working man’s cloth cap, with Bowlers and Trilbies for the middle classes, and the American urban footage has plenty of Fedoras on show (and could you imagine Phillip Marlow without a Fedora)?

Why do we no longer do that? Why did it stop?   There remains the ubiquitous baseball cap of course – easily the best thing invented for keeping the rain off one’s glasses – but this does not, in the UK, have the same cultural feel about it.

Although Kirstin mutters darkly about it I like hats and I like wearing them: caps of course – baseball or my favourite grey Fisherman’s cap (I have a dark blue Breton one too but Lindsay keeps stealing it), my Panama in summer, a Fedora when out dancing, all good.  I used to like cloth caps too but it became expensive when I kept leaving them in taxis or on buses.  Floppy summer hats are always good and I have my Barmah soft and floppy sun hat still, bought in Darwin, NT, Australia in 1998.

backIt doesn’t seem to be like this elsewhere in Europe where the wearing of a hat continues to be taken seriously.  I remember in Vienna in late 2008 being struck by the number of hat makers in the City and their window displays of top-quality products; you have to love a city which gives so much time to the art of the noble Fedora!

In Rome or Paris to wear a fine hat is a sign that the wearer is saying yes to life and yet in the UK wearing much beyond a baseball cap is taken to be de facto evidence of eccentricity and to invite sniggers and giggles.

Sad.

The photos here are of yours’ truly modeling the new Mons Meg t-shirts by the way.  Every rapper team should have one.

Flab Surfing

January 19th, 2010
leaves2After the blood pressure scare of late last year and the indolence of Christmas and New Year, I went into the gym today to start the fight back towards the fitness I had when I ran the half marathon back in September.  I had no intention of maxing out, just gently reintroducing my muscles to the concept of exercise. Given that relatively straightforward aim, the session was successful.

I based the session around three sets of twenty lateral pulldowns with a hard ten minutes on an exercise bike and ten minutes on a treadmill in between.  The time on the treadmill was mostly running but also with some walking and a final sprint.  A final wind-down was on the exercise bike.

I had mixed feelings at the end of the session – partly pleasure at getting back into the gym again but equally in part trepidation at the effort which will be required to get up to my previous fitness again.  I do, though, have a hard target in that I am entered in the Edinburgh Half Marathon on 23rd May!

My aim is to condition the muscles again and then retake to the streets to run at lunchtimes and weekends.   Running outside is much better than inside for many reasons.  One is, of course, the fresh air and the feel of the breeze/wind/rain on your face and another is that you do actually feel that you’ve been somewhere even when you’ve just done a big loop: on a treadmill you stay where you are staring at the wall for the whole time!

By happy coincidence I found the attached in this morning’s Guardian – http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jan/18/running-brain-memory-cell-growth . As ever the comments are as entertaining as the article and the serious ones make some valid points about exercise in general.  The basic principle seems to be reasonably well established, though, and it all adds to the motivation to keep going even when there is a little voice in the back of your head trying to persuade you to stop.

The photo is a grab shot taken on my mobile phone on the way to work this morning.

It was wild, wild, wild

January 16th, 2010
Eliza Carthy

Eliza Carthy

I finally managed to get to see The Imagined Village last night, in Glasgow, as they kicked off their tour in support of their new cd Empire and Love.   They were on great form and I enjoyed it, although there was an element of the “first night” about it and some aspects of the pacing of the show as a whole didn’t quite gel I thought.  They didn’t play anything at all from the first album except Cold Haily Windy Night and the band is now more tightly focused with no guest vocalists except on The Lark in the Morning by Jackie Oates who was also the (very good) support act.

Chris Wood, Martin Carthy and Eliza Carthy were all on fine form though the latter was slightly low in the mix at times.  Sheema Mukherjee’s sitar was well to the fore and I think I appreciated for the first time what she brings to the party.

Sheema Mukherjee

Sheema Mukherjee

I bought the new album last Monday so had a good idea what to expect.  The new material stood up well and on a couple of occasions was stronger live than on the cd – Eliza Carthy’s performance of Seeger and MacColl’s “Space Girl” in particular.  Conversely the reworked Byker Hill worked better on the album I thought.  The arrangment of Scarborough Fair with Mukherjee’s sitar and Chris Wood’s vocals was outstanding as was their reworking of the Napoleonic War song “My Son John” to encompass Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their encore (just before midnight) was Martin Carthy’s world-weary reading of Slade’s Cum On Feel The Noize which turned into an audience singalong of genuine warmth when it could have been cheesy and it obviously took by surprise anyone who hadn’t heard the new album.

It was a very good gig (although Tam Lyn would have been nice).

Chris Wood

Chris Wood

The bonus was picking up a copy of Chris Wood’s new cd Handmade Life which he has been selling at gigs but which isn’t available in the shops yet.

Those with relatively short memories will recall that I had his last cd, Tresspasser, in my top 10 cds of the last decade: this one is well up to the same standard with beautifully crafted songs about, well, just about everything.  And just when you think you are in the territory of a contended man writing about his life and his Englishness, he slides the scalpel in.   In one song he muses on the occasional sound of Spitfires heard from his garden, then muses on their adoption as an emblem by the cretins of the BNP and others before recalling wryly that

when I hear them Merlin engines in the white days of July/ It’s the sound/ they sing the song of of how they hung a little fascist out to dry

Hollow Point has been playing for a couple of minutes or so before you realise that his subject is the killing by the Met. Police of John Charles de Menezes.  Parliamentary expenses are metaphorically skewered in Caesar (There’s no more mandate for your soiled institution/We’re all praying here for Divine retribution…) and the origins of the collapse of financial institutions are pinned where they belong (And don’t forget “The Iron Lady” as if we ever could/ The vicious old spiv who taught us how greed was good/ How she sold off our nation and how she started this nonsense/ How you bowed down and worshipped her avarice and her ignorance./ Now let the grand correction begin).

An outstanding album
ps, all photos by me!

This and That

January 11th, 2010

soft light

The chill continues although there is something of a thaw in progress at present.  Aside from my return to work this week, I have taken advantage of the time to do a lot of reading after a lengthy period during which I seemed to read very little.  For the most part it has been science fiction of one kind or another, notably catching up with where things are with Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes sequence but other stuff as well.  And there is a newish Malcolm Prior novel -From Abersytwyth With Love to enjoy.

Highlight of the week, though, was the Mons Meg soirée last night.  The idea was simple enough – invite friends and family along to our normal practice venue – The Village Inn in Leith – but make sure that a decent number of those attending were content to sing some songs or tell some stories or play some tunes or even dance.  Although the weather and other factors limited numbers a bit, it turned into a really enjoyable informal evening.

soiree session

It was all the better for being spontaneous and because enough people were happy to chip in with something to keep things going all night.    We broke up around eleven and ended up round at Trina’s house where music making continued into the early hours.

Chilly, chilly

January 3rd, 2010

sunset

It has been unusually cold here for a prolonged period.   Edinburgh tends to get cold in winter rather than snowy but usually the cold snaps go away for a couple of days and we get a pleasing variety.

Not this year.

It snowed before Christmas and has, I think, snowed every day since.  Despite the occasional mini thaw and slushing up it has always frozen up again and then snowed on top of the ice.  I know that the weather elsewhere is worse, the thing is that it is not usual for Edinburgh.

And a certain cabin-fever is setting in.  It has not been an easy process to get off the hill on some days and the car has been pretty much stationary for two weeks except for an emergency trip to get cat-litter (which is too heavy to carry back from the supermarket).

I keep picking up a guitar but don’t get further than strumming the same few chords over and over.  I’ve read a bit and failed miserably at several crosswords.  I keeping out our front window towards the Pentlands and wishing I could actually get out to them for a walk (a run being out of the question on ice-clad pavements) but my boots remain in the garage.  The picture below was taken from our front window this lunchtime.

midday

The picture at the head of this post was from the window at sunset, although I’ve played with it a bit to make the contrast more dramatic.

In the meantime, Kirstin and I have booked a short break in Paris in March for her birthday which is always something to look forward to.