I’ve spent most of the month since I last posted sitting out under a sun umbrella either reading or trying to write. A lot of the reading has been research for the writing, and has included spells in the National Library, Edinburgh Central Library and the National Records. In terms of fiction I’ve been deep diving once more into Dorothy Dunnett; I really enjoyed her second series of historical novels, the House of Niccolo series set in C15 but have always found her earlier series, the Lymond novels (C16) harder to get into and that’s my current task. So far so good.
I thought writing would flow more naturally once the worry about cancer receded but I’m finding it tough to get back into it. My process is to turn up for work every day with notebook or MacBook and trust that sooner or later the Muse will come and join me. I’m getting there but it’s slow going.
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I have occasional conversations with other men who have been through, or are still in the middle of, the prostate cancer experience. Those of us who have had the hormone treatment tend to gripe about the inexorable weight gain that is common amongst us. One chap said that he had named his moobs Thelma and Louise and I got to thinking about mine – Agnetha and Anna-Frid? Althea and Donna? Suggestions on a postcard, etc.
Added: since writing and publishing this my perspective has shifted somewhat. Stay tuned for further thoughts 🙂
Rush is a band that has never done much for me. I recognise the quality of the musicianship but the music itself has never grabbed me. I have several of their CDs, the ones the hardcore fans talk about, that I bought cheap some years ago and every so often I put one on to see if I like Rush yet and the answer is always no.
I mention this because Rush are making waves with a reunion tour with Anika Nilles taking the drum seat left by the death of Neil Peart in 2020. Despite my general feelings towards Rush, I enjoyed the first appearance of the ‘new’ Rush (which includes Loren Gold on additional keyboards) at the Canadian Juno Awards (embedded below) and have been dipping into fan footage of the first shows of the tour.
The musicianship is evident as is the fun and joy on stage. Anika is a force of nature and made the vacant chair her own on the first night of the tour proper; judging by the big cheesy grins on the faces of Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee they know it too. A lot of the footage has been of them playing Tom Sawyer which, although this is a cliché, is one of the few of their songs I like – musically at least, I have no idea what is going on in the lyric. I’ve also embedded the performance of the song from night 3 of the tour and it is evident at the very end just how much fun they’re having; Lifeson’s face (around 5’16”) in particular is a picture of happiness.
Anyway, two things have come out of this. The first is that I checked out the prices of their Glasgow dates next March thinking it might be nice to tick them off the list of bands I’ve seen. I looked at the numbers then put my credit card away again. The second is that I had another listen to one of their popular albums: I was part way through track two when I turned it off. Still no.
Added: since writing and publishing this my perspective has shifted somewhat. Stay tuned for further thoughts 🙂
The BBC’s statement this week on the future of Dr Who has provoked a lot of comment, not least because it whiffs of a chaotic rush job to mask behind the scenes issues. For this viewer since 1963, there is a sort of sadness but not a lot of surprise.
Cards on the table, the idea of contracting production to a company other than Bad Wolf under a lead writer other than Russell T Davies is necessary, not because I have any particular animus towards them but because I think their time has run its course. Spectacle and melodrama have increasingly nudged thoughtful writing aside and the show got caught up in a doom loop of diminishing returns soundtracked by Murray Gold’s over-wrought incidental music that never shuts the fuck up. Yes there were latterly some very good episodes, but they shone against a dimming background.
Dr Who has a long history of experimentation, exploration and invention, balanced by an equally long history of bathos and ridiculousness; each of those things lie behind both its persistence and charm as well as those moments that invited things to be thrown at the TV screen. This is not just a New-Who thing: critics of modern incarnations often forget that both Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy had to put up with some seriously weak material, Baker especially, before the show was put out of its misery and placed on its long hiatus.
Dr Who is, in many respects, a victim of its own longevity and also labours under the expectations of vocal, online fandom [as I’ve said before, fans are great but fandoms cleave to toxicity.] The well is poisoned by notions of canon and rigid canonicity is policed by obsessives with nothing better to do but whinge on YouTube. Even so, despite having all of time and space to play with, somewhere along the way the producers ran out of ideas about what the programme could be, or perhaps they knew it but no one had the courage or vision to carry it through except in occasional flashes and glimpses, most consistently recently in the Peter Capaldi incarnation.
What if?
Writing has moved on since 1963 as has televisual language, not just in terms of major points of reference like Twin Peaks, Sense8 or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but in the conceptual possibilities of all genre and cross-genre programming. Dr Who was conceived in the era of Robin Hood just like Star Trek was Wagon Train in space. As I write, I’m rewatching the magnificent Arrival which, like the story it came from, Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life, exemplifies a way of treating time and language and adventures in time in a thoughtful, emotional and intelligent way that Dr Who has rarely approached. Can you even begin to imagine Arrival or Project Hail Mary scripted by RTD?
There have been some very, very good stories told, notably in the Steven Moffat era, but we’ve also had a succession of good actors doing good work over increasingly short tenures and having to do their best with shallow or inadequate material, or good material produced on the cheap, or stories that fail to rise above a premise, with poor dialogue and a lack of substance. Jodie Whittaker, whose Doctor I liked, also had to contend with Covid and lockdown.
Would a general audience respond well to a Dr Who that cloned the off-kilter modernism of Twin Peaks, the Return and mixed in Arrival or Annihilation? Probably not (though I would), but it would respond to a writing and production team with an expanded conceptual language. I do not suggest a complete reimagining but I would like a conceptual regeneration featuring coherent stories by talented writers that engage at least two of the following three: my emotions, my imagination and my intelligence. I’m not expecting Andre Tarkovsky or Denis Villeneuve or Alex Garland, and at heart Dr Who is a family show, but a tangible sense of meaning and depth wouldn’t go amiss.
The danger is that the BBC will award the production contract to a company that promises more of the same, that the corporation will run scared of the creative imagination. That is, after all, what it normally does. How much better would it be to honour the original vision of Verity Lambert and give us something that finally matches the unworldly possibilities of Delia Derbyshire’s original and unmatched realisation of the theme
[Added after first posting, it occurs to me that Dr Who would benefit from a spin off that stands in much the same relation to it as Andor does to the main Star Wars corpus. This does not mean a war between the land and the sea.]
2026 is one of those years in which various things come together that should be celebrated. The first is our fortieth wedding anniversary in August, the second is a significant birthday for Kirstin and the third is the end of my cancer treatment. We took the opportunity to do something we haven’t done for a while: we had a holiday. After a lot of thought we booked up for a week in Bardolino on the shore of Lake Garda in Italy. We thought May would be cooler than in August.
Italy is an easy country to like and we’ve been there several times over the years, starting with our honeymoon above Sorrento in 1986. It is a country, like Portugal, where I have occasional fantasies of living out retirement. It is a fun fantasy to indulge until reality kicks in, the main problems being Brexit, climate and climate change. Al fresco living with good food is only part of the story when a heat dome settles above you and the temperatures soar (or seismology takes a hand.)
There are some lovely little towns around the lake albeit that they are significantly over-touristed. It was an odd feeling sometimes given that I live in a city that is also over-touristed. We visited Garda, Lazise and Sirmione and I liked them all even though they’ve all fallen into a similar pattern – restaurants around the waterfront with tourist shops behind. The tourist shops all sell the same stuff which seems pointless (the same is true in Edinburgh.) There were gems to be found, especially in old churches which usually also had the benefit of being cooler inside than out; in general, though, the ‘authentic’ is increasingly buried beneath a packaged history.
Sirmione was particularly overcrowded, which was a shame as I think it would have a lot to offer in slower time. I had a fine lunch in Lazise at the Caffè del Corso, a simple bruschetta caprese with tomatoes and burrata, but with good bread and good local wine. Garda, though much smaller, had a great vibe and also has hidden depths, I suspect.
We also took a bus to Verona which was where the wheels came off a bit. Verona is lovely, like walking through a Dorthy Dunnett novel, and full of places I’d like to spend more time exploring. The Duomo is impressive for more than the Titian that graces its walls. The problem was that the weather was already hot and, that Monday, the temperatures started to rise, the sun bouncing off the marble streets and the buildings. We wilted. The next day, our last, was the one on which May heat records were broken all over northern Italy. We got caught out in it waiting in the full midday sun for a delayed ferry and I found myself drifting towards heat stroke until I found shade, ice cream and plenty of water.
My homework before we went was to binge watch both of Stanley Tucci’s series in which he eats his way around the Italian regions; I binge watched them twice (one is on Disney+ the other on Amazon Prime and probably elsewhere too.) My homework paid off. There is plenty of decent food in Bardolino but I/we set out to find proper regional cooking rather than tourist cooking; I wasn’t looking for decent food, I was looking for exceptional food. My top three places to eat, should you ever go there, were (in alphabetical order):
Caprice 1971 (by the time we left there was a line waiting to get a table)
Taverna da Memo
Trattoria Bardo (better for supper than lunch but went out of their way to help with Kirstin’s allergy.)
With an honourable mention for Corte San Giovanni which gained bonus points for the presence of a Nonna.
My best mains were at Caprice 1971 (Bigoli all’amatriciana was superb) and Trattoria Bardo (Bigoli di pasta fresca alle sarde di lago was excellent); Trattoria Bardo also had the best house red of the week (Enantio Massenà which I can’t trace in the UK though there is information about the grape.) I also had a series of excellent variations on Carpaccio di Manzo as starters throughout the week.
Over the week I developed a rough checklist of what makes a good Italian restaurant; it is not a foolproof list and may be revised next time we visit, but I hoped for the majority of these,
Italian extra-virgin olive oil on the tables rather than generic ‘EU sourced.’
A good house wine (every respectable restaurant should have a good wine list from top to bottom)
A varied menu with, in tourist hotspots, more imaginative dishes than pizza or Italian ‘classics”
Good bread, preferably made in-house
The degree to which they worked with Kirstin’s dairy allergy
The overall ambience.
I did not want the holiday to end, and we’ve been talking about going back, but if we do it will be in either April or October to avoid the worst of the heat.
I was at the hospital today where it was confirmed that my PSA is <0.1 ng/mL which is effectively undetectable. No doctor will say that I am ‘cured’ because that is not how cancer works, but the news is that the treatment worked. Hooray for the NHS and Edinburgh Cancer Centre.
I will now have blood tests every six months for the next couple of years and then annually thereafter. The main side effects of the treatment for me have been weight gain, hot flushes (especially at night) and general fatigue and joint pain. I’m told that I can expect all of these to improve by the time of the next test in December.
I’ll probably write a more considered piece about the whole experience, but not yet.
Despite the metabolic havoc wreaked by hormone implants, I was delighted and relived to find out this week that my HbA1c remains in the ‘normal’ range (34mmol/mol, 5.3%). I was concerned that the weight gain caused by the hormones had messed with my type-2 Diabetes ‘in remission’ status; happily, it has not. I’m also happy to report a weight loss of 1kg (2.2lbs) over the past few days, so perhaps that is on the turn.
***
I found a passing mention of a book called Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy published in 1973, based on his PhD thesis. The book reprints articles and news items from Jackson County, Wisconsin, primarily from 1885 to 1900. The book also includes photographs by local photographer Charles Van Shaike and the articles are primarily from the Badger State Banner as well as records from the local mental hospital.
Unfortunately, the book is now quite expensive, however a film adaptation was made for the BBC’s Arena, broadcast in 2000, narrated by Ian Holm. The film is very much available to view in excellent quality on BBC iPlayer and in lower quality on YouTube (links below). I watched the film twice, enthralled. It is very dark (and some may find it upsetting), the more so because the stories are narrated straight without commentary. And the music choices are excellent.
I found the objectivity of it very affecting, especially the many, many human tragedies. I had a powerful sense of the fragility of life and a dissociation from the usual internal narrative of what it is to be human. I sometimes get this in Family Tree Research which, at its most basic, revolves around a narration of birth, procreation and death. Some of that was on my mind when I had my initial cancer diagnosis although it also helped reconcile me to the diagnosis and informed my determination to live life to the full while I’m here.
Wisconsin Death Tripadded something else, a feeling of the shallowness of so much of life, of the wasted potential of our species that has such a high opinion of itself.
Yesterday (8 April) was an important day for me. I was prescribed two hormone implants that had to be inserted a set number of days/weeks apart; had I been prescribed a third it would have been implanted yesterday.
The implants are important. Prostate Cancer growth is associated with testosterone and the implants (Leuprorelin/Prostap) are designed to get testosterone out of the equation. In the usual case, that ought to stop cancer cell growth and also, during and after radiotherapy, stop cancer cell regrowth. That’s fine with me, but shutting down testosterone has side effects that strike different men in different ways. In my case I’ve had night sweats and weight gain. This morning before breakfast I was 10kg heavier than I was in October 2025 just before the first implant, without any significant change to diet or lifestyle.
The probable cause of the weight gain is the body’s reaction to the shock of androgen deprivation: it tries to store energy in the form of fat in order to synthesise the testosterone that has gone missing. That fat lodges primarily around the waist and chest. I understand that, but after spending a long time losing weight and keeping the weight off it is frustrating to put it on again even if it’s for a good cause.
In my head, today is the day on which the impact of the last hormone implant begins to diminish, albeit slowly. I have a hanger in my wardrobe for what I call my ‘target’ shirts. These are shirts that fitted me last autumn but don’t now. They are my proxy targets for recovery; I have no heroic ambitions but I would like to be back into those shirts by Christmas as a marker of progress. Six months to lose all or most of the weight it took six months to accumulate doesn’t seem to me to be unreasonable, assuming that the hormones and radiotherapy did what they were supposed to do and no further treatment is required.
Oops.
My next checkpoint with the oncologist is in early June, by the way. I do not expect any nasty surprises but I’ve learned to take these things as they come. I do have some general blood tests lined up for next week though which ought to show if the metabolic impact of the hormone implants has had any hidden consequences.
In the meantime, I’ve put off today’s gym session after an accident with an 18.5kg dumbbell on Monday resulted in blood, steristrips and bandages.
No serious harm done but it does inhibit my ability to use the gym equipment a bit and I don’t want to run the risk of reopening the wound.
I looked forward to reading Malcolm Guite’s Galahad and the Grail, the first part of his four-volume retelling of the Arthurian corpus, which has the overall title of Merlin’s Isle. The series title comes from Kipling’s Puck’s Song:
She is not any common earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye
Where you and I will fair.
Guite has set himself two tasks. The first is to organise the Arthurian corpus and cast it into ballad metre. Like common metre, ballad metre alternates tetrameter and hexameter with an ABCB rhyme scheme. Thus:
When Galahad was still a child
they let him run full free
and roam the castle holds and halls
and hear the minstrelsy (Book one, Stave 1, 1-4)
The form is very flexible and extendable, particularly with the C lines:
The stroke that brought the ruin down
the stroke that maimed the king,
the dreadful stroke that Balyn gave,
that ill-starred knight whom none could save,
who brought his brother to the grave,
as the old minstrels sing. (One, 1, 29-34)
Unlike common metre, ballad metre is more flexible in the number of unstressed syllables in a line, and this is something I’ll come back to as it threw me in places. The rhythmic structure and rhyme scheme mean that a writer of Guite’s skill can tell a story that fairly zips along, and zip along it does, in lively accessible language. Pleasingly, the book is handsomely produced in a cleanly bound and cased hardback printed on notably good quality paper. It also features excellent woodcut illustrations by Stephen Crotts.
I must say now that I was right to look forward to it: I enjoyed Galahad and the Grail and am pleased that I bought it. I have no doubt that I will buy the subsequent volumes. What follows is more by way of thoughts arising from Guite’s approach together with one or two editorial observations.
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Guite is a Church of England priest and a theologian. His theology is squarely in the tradition of Anglo-Catholic orthodoxy with a leaning towards the ideas of CS Lewis and Owen Barfield. This informs the second task he set himself which is to ‘make a poem that restores the spiritual elements that have been shorn away and renews their deepest meaning’ (p318) and to,
make an epic poem that would … awaken again in the modern world that openness to beauty and mystery that prepares the heart for the coming of Christ.’ (p316)
I knew that going in because I subscribe to his YouTube channel. It remains to be seen how this flows through the rest of the volumes but I think that, in the abstract, it begs several questions.
An important and influential writer in the study of folklore and Arthuriana was Jessie Weston (1850 – 1928). Her best-known book was From Ritual to Romance (1920) which TS Eliot cites as a major influence on his The Wasteland. Weston was concerned to uncover the origins of the Arthur stories but identifies an immediate and important problem. She sets out her stall thus:
The main difficulty of our research lies in the fact that the Grail legend consists of a congeries of widely differing elements—elements which at first sight appear hopelessly incongruous, if not completely contradictory, yet at the same time are present to an extent, and in a form, which no honest critic can afford to ignore.
Thus it has been perfectly possible for one group of scholars, relying upon the undeniably Christian-Legendary elements, preponderant in certain versions, to maintain the thesis that the Grail legend is ab initio a Christian, and ecclesiastical, legend, and to analyse the literature on that basis alone.
Another group, with equal reason, have pointed to the strongly marked Folk-lore features preserved in the tale, to its kinship with other themes, mainly of Celtic provenance, and have argued that, while the later versions of the cycle have been worked over by ecclesiastical writers in the interests of edification, the story itself is non-Christian, and Folk-lore in origin.
Both groups have a basis of truth for their arguments: the features upon which they rely are, in each case, undeniably present, yet at the same time each line of argument is faced with certain insuperable difficulties, fatal to the claims advanced.
Thus, the theory of Christian origin breaks down when faced with the awkward fact that there is no Christian legend concerning Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail. Neither in Legendary, nor in Art, is there any trace of the story; it has no existence outside the Grail literature, it is the creation of romance, and no genuine tradition …
In the same way the advocate of a Folk-lore origin is met with the objection that the section of the cycle for which such a source can be definitely proved, i.e., the Perceval story, has originally nothing whatever to do with the Grail; and that, while parallels can be found for this or that feature of the legend, such parallels are isolated in character and involve the breaking up of the tale into a composite of mutually independent themes. A prototype, containing the main features of the Grail story—the Waste Land, the Fisher King, the Hidden Castle with its solemn Feast, and mysterious Feeding Vessel, the Bleeding Lance and Cup—does not, so far as we know, exist.
Discussing the Wasteland, Guite writes,
I resist Jessie Weston’s reductive, re-paganising reading of [the Grail] and see its full Christian meanings not merely as a Christian gloss on an essentially pagan symbol, but as the full realisation of that pagan symbol’s true meaning. (p352, my emphasis.)
I do not adopt Weston’s reconstruction of the origins of the stories, which have been comprehensively criticised over the past century, but I do think that her identification of the problem of origins is clear and precise, and I don’t think her reading is reductive. Guite is entirely entitled to assert a decisively Christian reading of the text of the Fisher King and Waste Land tales, and goes for it with skill and gusto. However I don’t think it is at all persuasive for the non-Christian reader that he sidesteps her criticism for reasons which do not arise from the tangled texts themselves but simply from an overarching assertion of the truth of Christian belief, adopting Owen Barfield’s formulation that the Christ myth is a master myth that holds the key to the true meaning of all others (something I have commented on previously)
That is to say, I don’t think Guite is on any firmer ground in Christianising than Weston was in paganising, for reasons that Weston herself understood and stated. I think also that he veers perilously close to the same charge of reductionism that he levels at Weston.
I might add that the notion of Christianising the texts tends tacitly to assume a continuity and essential unity of Christian thought and doctrine. I don’t think this is true even in the writings that now constitute the canonical New Testament in the Western tradition (other traditions and views of canonicity are available) let alone over the millennium and a half, give or take, that the elements of the Arthurian corpus have been present and developing. In this sense, although Guite reflects aspects of the sheer weirdness (to the modern eye) of, for example, Gawain and the Green Knight and The Alliterative Morte Arthur, I’m not sure that he fully engages with that weirdness; the earliest forms of Christianity in these isles (or, indeed, in the eastern Mediterranean) were not Anglo-Catholic.
Christianity has a long history of incorporating and syncretising elements of cultures it came to dominate, most notably the incorporation of substantial aspects of Roman worship of gods and Imperial bureaucracy from around the turn of the fourth century onwards. We might note Paul and John incorporating elements of Aristotelianism and Stoicism into their respective letters and gospel. It is no great stretch to posit the incorporation of elements of native cultures into a Christian framework without (reductively) intellectualising it as the revelation of the ‘true meaning.’
I mentioned in my Hangzhou diary that I had bought a copy of Journey to the West in Shanghai. I enjoyed it but think I probably need to find a better translation to do it justice. One of the things which I found intriguing is the character of Buddha who plays an occasional role in the story. Unlike in the Indian tradition, this Buddha is a magical immortal and one of a pantheon, NOT the Siddhartha Gautama who found enlightenment. I found the conception of him in the stories to be surprisingly reminiscent of the “magical” Jesus of some of the the apocryphal gospels and mystery plays. Even more strikingly, the Heavenly Court of the Jade Emperor is very like a manifestation of the earthly Imperial court – just like the structure of Roman Catholicism reflects that of the Imperial court in Rome around the time of the Emperor Constantine.
Finally, the notion of re-sacralising in opposition to Enlightenment rationality and objectivism is not something that can or ought to be confined to a resurgence of Christian thought: it applies equally to any of the major world religions or, indeed, to paganism. I might come back to this in a later post.
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I mentioned a couple of editorial observations. The first is that casting the verse in ballad rather than common metre led to some jarring moments for me. Guite encourages his audience to read the text aloud in an ‘incantatory’ manner, which is fine until ones accent/dialect reads non-stressed syllables differently. I regularly found myself thrown out of the rhythm by lines that, for me, read as having ‘too many’ syllables. Second, and here I am an old man shouting at clouds, I suppose it is because the primary publisher is American that double rather than single speech marks are used throughout (though spelling is British English.) Third, some stanzas seemed awkward to me and I’m a bit surprised they survived revision. For example
Not far from here, if I am right,
the drear Wasteland begins—
barren and bare, lifeless and drear,
because of human sins. (Three, V, 119-122)
That repetition of ‘drear’ clunks.
For all that, I must stress that I did enjoy the book and look forward to what comes next.
I am on the next stage of recovery, resistance work in the local gym. I am following a set of core exercises suggested by an exercise specialist at Prostate Scotland. Today was my third session.
The core issue is that the hormone implants and radiotherapy tend to reduce muscle mass and the resistance work is intended to restore it and also help create a cancer-suppressive environment in the body. The exercises I have are targeted at the main muscle groups and include deadlifts, a first for me. I’m not a complete stranger to resistance work but in the past it has always been as an adjunct to cardio training, mainly running; this time the resistance work is the main course and any cardio is an adjunct to it, at least for the first few months until things get back into balance.
The target is to find the weight for each exercise where I can manage 8 – 10 repetitions before having to stop, then doing three sets of them. Once I get used to that weight and can do, say, 10 to 15 repetitions, I raise the weight a notch, and so on. I would like to get back to running, but it isn’t a priority at present.
I won’t know how well the hormones and radiotherapy worked until early June when tests are scheduled.
***
I’ve been reading a lot lately. I mentioned Stevie Smith a couple of posts ago but I’ve also been dipping into Thomas Hardy’s poetry (there is a lot of it, of varying quality), Malcolm Guite’s first volume of the Arthurian corpus in epic verse, Galahad and the Grail, and Patricia A McKillip’s Ombria in Shadow. The latter is an object lesson in writing Fantasy to a very high standard and has given me plenty to think about as regards craft and technique in general.
I also read The Hobbit for the first time since the girls were small; it is an odd book. I enjoyed revisiting it but every so often the writing irritated me. Still, I enjoyed it enough to make the mistake of revisiting the first of the Peter Jackson Hobbit films to see if time has improved it; it has not.
I had intended to go swimming today but felt quite fatigued (the hormone treatment is still active in my system and will be for a few weeks yet) so I decided to go for a walk instead. As it happened I ended up walking 13.3km (8.25 miles) to Dean Village and back along the Water of Leith Walkway. It’s a walk I know well and like very much. I keep my eye open for wildlife, especially dippers and kingfishers and the outside chance of an otter. None of those today though there was an audible but invisible woodpecker. I also let my mind and thoughts wander.
And wander they did.
For some reason it occured to me that 50 years ago, in 1976, I was, or should have been, working towards my Highers at school. At the time I was studying Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering Drawing, Art and English. At the end of that school year I had acceptances from Glasgow and Strathclyde universities for courses including Applied Physics and Mechanical Engineering. In the end, I completely changed my mind and returned for sixth year, initially studying English, Art, French and Latin. I dropped the Art for additional French.
That fifth year in 1975/6 included one of the few things a teacher said that I can remember clearly as if it were only said moments ago. Higher Art and Design included a module on the history and appreciation of art. One day, while we were considering one of the impressionists, I forget which one now, I said, in the way that only 16-year-olds can, that I didn’t like the work of one of them. ‘Laddie,’ said Mr Bennett, ‘ Yer no’ here tae like it, yer here tae appreciate it.’ One of the most profound and long-lasting lessons in all my school life.
I thought too about the post I made the other day about the persistence of quiet faith and remembered something I noticed in China some years ago. Buddhism is generally tolerated rather than encouraged by Chinese authorities, especially in places where tourist income can be generated. But the Buddha is everywhere when you look and become attuned to it, and more often than not small statues become small personal shrines, even in Beijing (which I wrote about here). Memorably, there is a large room in the magnificent National Museum of China on Tiananmen Square devoted to statues and images of the Buddha, and it is noticeable that these usually attract small devotional offerings. Again, faith persists.
It persists too in some of the odd things that are known to appear along the Water of Leith Walkway, workings in wood and string and feathers that may or may not be amateur folk art but also give off a distinct hint of paganism.
***
I have a current YouTube obsession with the channel of Ben Maton, the Salisbury Organist. Ben was an Organ Scholar at St Peter’s College, Oxford and, unlike Anna Lapwood who is known for playing grand organs that respond to the merest touch of the keys, he focuses on playing small instruments in village churches that may or may not have been well-maintained. I hate to use the ‘A’ word but there is an authenticity about Ben’s videos and a gentleness that I really like. I have no idea about Ben’s faith because he never mentions it, but it doesn’t really matter.
I’ve embedded four videos below, one playing Elgar in his birthplace, one playing Vaughn Williams in Down Ampney, one playing a tiny organ in Compton Valance, Dorset, and one in which he is a child in a toyshop at the console of the organ of Wells Cathedral supporting the organ restoration fund (watch out for his smile at 13’39.)
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