Age

Lydbrook Valley, Gloucestershire looking north towards Courtfield

I left Lin asleep upstairs. With old Oscar I walked out of Rock Cottage, along the familiar path by the small iron gate of Plum House, which has a new resident. With my hazel stick and walking boots I clambered, sharp left, up the random stepping stones of a ladder-length gully to a familiar path that runs through the woods to a lych-gate opening onto a sheep mown pasture filling the foreground of the Lydbrook valley, coated on either slope with trees in wintry brown, yellow and fading green. At the head of the sloping meadow there’s a break between hanger woods leading via a steepening track to an edge. Along this runs a staked barbed wire fence with large mesh chicken wire, to keep in lambs. There's a stile. 

It’s a boundary that recurs in the paintings of our friend Steven Outram, who works in an old church hall on the opposite side of the valley. 

'It seems like forever' Steven Outram

Oscar and I climb slowly, pacing ourselves, towards the stile. Beyond it, the landscape opens to a panorama; nearly twenty miles away I can often see the grey outline of the Brecon Beacons; in the middle ground, the tower of English Bicknor church, amid fields of cattle and sheep. Earlier clouds had thinned. We had sun for our walk. Over the wet turf of Lydbrook’s small airfield, there are two runways mown flatter, surfaces fancied by Oscar who not so long ago would scout through deep tangled bracken and bramble. 

A family was walking the same field.  I heard the chatter of happy children. Oscar and I strolled slightly askance towards the same field gate, letting the band of ramblers and their dog advance and disappear. 

Herefordshire towards the Brecon Beacons

We descend from the larger landscape to the combe, edged by the road past Eastbach Court. I enjoy this Queen Anne house, slightly grudging the investment apparent in its excellent maintenance, walled garden, out-lying barns, stables, Dower House and steward’s cottage - each address indicated by push-bells next to a bright red post box with the initials VR - with the time of daily collection - embedded in the stonework of the modest gates. But here’s no local farming squire embroidered into the landscape and lives of an ageless community. We’ve walked Bell Hill over thirty years and seen this house change owners three times. 

The morning is beautiful. Occasional cars slow for us, as I walk upwards; Oscar on a lead until we’ve ascended to the forest’s plateau. What may have been Eastbach Court’s home farm marches beside a rough track back into the woods above Lydbrook. I follow it into the trees, bright sun beams sliced by tall spruce, signs of leaf mould turfed over by foraging wild boar. 

Passing Nigel Aston’s old car yard – hulks of many models rusting on a bulldozed track just above our path, we arrive on the steep path down Bell Hill between the beech wood above Rock Cottage, at one point sliding on my bottom over leaves, mast and twigs. 

The slope down Bell Hill through the slender beech

At home again. Lin has fed the wood stove more of our well seasoned ash, cut four years ago, sawn and split in the summer.

A day later the rest of the family arrived. Linda and I become 'Nan' and 'Grandpa', 'Mum' and 'Dad'. The cottage becomes turbulent. To let grown-ups stay in bed, I'm steward - for drinks, cereals, toast, getting dressed and resisting the spreading disorder of objects that accompanies the activities of children. 
"Right everyone, A walk! Coats and boots"
With the two dogs, Oscar and Cookie, and three children we set off up Bell Hill inventing the ten foot rabbit that lives here. 
"Keep your eyes peeled. Listen carefully. Be not afeard. Bell Hill and the woods are full of noises, " 
They know we're making things up. The sky is cloudless. 

Hannah, Oliver and Sophia on the way to Eastbach

"You know that on the other side of this hill there's an enormous bison"
We retrace the walk I made, walking along a sloping track beside heifers and a placid Black Angus bull, the dogs on leads. 
"There's the bison!" I show them a construction placed on a rise across a field.

"Do you want to see it close?"
"No, no, no!" in chorus. I knew we'd be trespassing.
Along the Eastbach road we troop north along Probert's Barn Lane, the narrow road - in places grass along its centre - that crosses back into the Lydbrook Valley.

Probert's Barn Lane

I'm trudging, glad of my stick. The children's energy is boundless. We've further to go. Back briefly to the cottage across a long sloping meadow, then down the path to the main road. Hannah and Oliver talk to one another through 100 feet of plumbing of the galvanised hand rail - mouth and ear; childish teasing back and forth along the pipe.

We stop to post a card the children have written to Sophia's dad...

... cross the dangerous road through the village, with tremendous care, and ascend the opposite hill on a narrow path to where the railway ran in and out of the Forest of Dean.
"There's a ghost train runs along here! Can you hear a train?"

Waiting for the ghost train that runs through the Lydbrook Valley

"What about the ten foot rabbit?"
"It's scared of the train. It lives over the way where we walked before"
"It's coming" shouts Oliver "Get on the train. Quick"
Safe on the train, we head toward the river. We descend by many steps to the Wye, collecting interesting fruit and seeds and leaves.

Beside the river there are ducks and a pair of swans scavenging, neck dipping for seconds at a time, by the opposite bank.
So home on the pavement up to the centre of the village, up the Bell Hill path.
"Have you seen the mess the wild boar have made of our lawn"
"It's the ten foot rabbit"
"No! Wild boar rooting"
Indoors the grown ups are about, well fuelled wood fire warming the room.

"Where are we going today?"
Making decisions about this will go on a while. I sit back with a mug of tea. The children lay out their samples, examining what they've collected.

*** *** ***
Εορτή Αγίου Ισιδώρου 

Παρά το δυνατό νοτιά, ο κόσμος γέμισε απόψε το εκκλησάκι του Αγίου Ισιδώρου πάνω από τη Βενετιά, για να παρακολουθήσει το Μεγάλο Εσπερινό, παραμονή της εορτής του Αγίου. Το ψαλτήρι, όπως πάντα πλήρες, με ανάμικτο «τοπικό» και «βυζαντινό» ιδίωμα, με τον Γεώργιο Κένταρχο και το Σπύρο Τσιριγώτη στο Ανάγνωσμα της «Σοφίας Σολομώντος». Αύριο, Δευτέρα 4 Φεβρουαρίου 2019, ανήμερα της εορτής του Αγίου Ισιδώρου του Πηλουσιώτου, στις 8.00 το πρωί θα ξεκινήσει η ακολουθία του Όρθρου και στην συνέχεια, κατά τις 9.00 η Πανηγυρική Θεία Λειτουργία, μετ’ αρτοκλασίας. Στις δε 5.30 το απόγευμα θα ψαλθεί η Ιερά Παράκλησις προς τον Άγιο. Above Ano Korakiana tonight, in spite of the strong south wind, people filled the little church of St. Isidoros of Pelousios above Venetià, in order to attend the Great Vespers service, on the eve, of the celebration of the Day of the Saint. As always, the list of  hymns and chants, was full of mixed local and Byzantine pieces. George Kentarhos and Spyros Tsirigotis read from the Wisdom of Solomon. (Part translation: Thanks to Maria Strani-Potts)

*** *** ***
Memo to myself re Birmingham City Council's plans to decommission Walsall Road Allotments - a petition. It was started by my friend Betty Farrugia, Secretary, for many years, of WRA - probably the best allotment site in the West Midlands. She it was who persuaded me to have an allotment myself, after we'd saved the Victoria Jubilee Allotments near my home in Birmingham. [By 21.00 on Tue 19th Feb 6.700 signatures had been attached to the petition: 8006 by 01.00 22/2/19]; 10274 signatures by 15.30 on 28th Feb 2019.

Walsall Road Allotments threatened by plans for Birmingham's 2022 Commonwealth Games

On Bell Hill

I had been looking forward to being at Rock Cottage. A solace for leaving beloved Greece. Amy had already sent us a photo via Facebook.

'We can finally see Ross after 4 hours of motorway hell 😆YAY!' Amy and family approaching the Forest of Dean

On FFriday evening of half-term week Lin and I joined the family in a cottage already warmed for two days.
"The heating's working a dream. Your shower is just brilliant" said Guy.
I begin to feel that Rock Cottage, so neglected for over five years, is becoming a home again. Our children knew it as babies and toddlers and now our grandchildren are sleeping here. Our dear friends Martin and Sandra and their son Adam and his fellow workers have transformed the place, which was not only suffering our neglect, but also the cod-work of our ill-chosen builder, Royston, with whom I parted company over two years ago over a series of new windows that he...why go on? The windows are fine now, frames sealed with improved opening. The kitchen and bathroom are in almost full working order, as ditto bedrooms and sitting room.

Amy's second photo - Oscar curled by the wood stove at Rock Cottage

In the morning I inspected Craig's strimming, lopping and uprooting in the garden - clearing a jungle of weed shrubbery, brambles and saplings back to the older contours of three dry-stone walled terraces. We're getting back to the half acre allotment that surrounds us on the steep sides of Bell Hill. I'm bathing in unashamed nostalgia, hoping that we will make this our 'place' again. As enjoyed and loved as Handsworth and Ano Korakiana, by the whole family. So - yes - I was pleased when my son Richard, just back from Vietnam, phoned and asked for the keys so he could come down with E on the evening the rest of us returned to Birmingham.
The grand-children are a challenge. Playing, arguing, noise and mess-making with unabatable energy. On Sunday morning I set out to walk with Oliver - 'wear him out' I thought - up Bell Hill, the tree covered slope that ascends the west side of Lydbrook.
"First we get sticks. You can't go for a good walk without sticks"
I cut and tidied two - smaller for Ollie - from a hazel cluster by our path, as we set out up through the tall slender beech trees on the margins of the forest, the houses of the village receding below.

Oliver, 4 years old now, on Bell Hill

The steeper slope levelled off as we passed the old ruined house. Recalling past stories told me I told Oliver of an old lady used to live there.
"Every day she went to the bottom of the hill and came back with a pail of water. Old Mrs Cook"
He asked questions about her which I dodged and invented. Rather he ask questions than be uninterested in things I point out, or he notes, on our walks. I frame my answers, to keep our conversation going; Chinese whispers over time, amplifying, distorting and confusing, but conveying seeds of history, a scent of madeleines, 'the echo of great spaces traversed'.
Next time we make this walk I'll suggest to Oliver that Mr. Cook was a 'bodger'.
"You see these tall trees. Beech trees. See their leaves all around. See the little nuts, Beech mast. They used to cut these trees before they grew so big to make chairs - wheel-backs, Windsor carvers"
We came to a level stretch, narrow beside a wire fence, broken in places, with, on the other side, the remains of dry stone walls, then, almost hidden behind the remaining greenery of Autumn, the tiers wrecked cars that Nigel Aston has long stored up here, sinking mossy and rusting into the landscape. Then we're onto a lane high above the village with a few houses...
"It's called Uphill Road"
"Why?"
"I'm not answering that, Ollie!"
...before taking the narrow path that leads on up the rest of the hill. Here the trees become forestry spruce, occasional chestnuts, mixed with birch - their small brown-yellow leaves falling like snow when, for my pleasure and Oliver's, I tap the sapling trunks with my stick. Along the path are the prickly husks of fallen chestnuts, marked by the rooting of wild boar. The forest population of wild boar has increases vigorously since the haphazard introduction of about 40 farmed boar to the Forest in 2004.
Two people with dogs on leads walk towards us.
"Get Oscar and Cookie on their leads!"
They pass us with smiles.
"Nice morning."
"Yes it is"
"I'm earlier than I expected. Forgot the clocks went back this morning"
At last we're at the top of the hill, looking over fields, one with sheep; in the far distance horses grazing and a tractor pulling a plough on the slope below English Bicknor. I take my grandson through the rules - the gate rules, the sheep rules.
"A dog that worries sheep can be shot. Always watch out for sheep and other farm animals in the fields"
We see a herd of Welsh cattle - black bullock, or perhaps heifers, silhouetted in a field on our left as we start to walk downhill towards Eastbach.
"Come up! Come up!" I shout and they raise their heads and consider investigating us.
"Can you smell them?"  I can sense their rank from here on a small shifting breeze.

Oliver runs down the sloping road to Eastbach.
"Oi! Watch out for cars!" I shout.
He pauses, sensible. And indeed a few cars edge by us on the narrow road until we come to the old milestone that says, in carving. 'London 122 miles. Gloste'r 17'

We wwalk by Eastbach Court, a house of enviable elegant beauty, about which Lin says "When we win the lottery..." I lift Oliver up to see the manicured lawn, a bronze hind, and swings hung from a tall fir branch.

A public footpath beside the house's northern boundary turns off the road, curving back up to the top of Bell Hill.
"We've come about half way"
There's a small air strip with hangars on the hill top. We can see a wind sock stirring in the distance. At the gate the dogs go on their leads. I half hope Oliver will see a small plane come bouncing in at 40mph. They often fly on Sundays. As it is I let him peer through a tiny gap in a hangar door.
"I can see an aeroplane!"
Another stile brings us to the last meadow before getting back to the cottage. I lift the dogs over; let them free again. They listen to my voice and note my whistle, and seem utterly at home, getting soaked nosing in the tall grass. It's still a time of year for ticks, so remember to check when we get home...

 ...Oliver, fooling around, falls over and cries.
"Get up and stop that noise" I say, giving him a momentary hug. So we come to a steep part of our walk as the fields re-join the hanger woods. In my old age I have to take this part carefully less I fall arse over tip. My stick helps.
"When your mum was about 12 years old she persuaded me to walk home from Monmouth - ten miles away. When we got to this field the light had gone. I couldn't see a thing. She held my hand for a hundred yards."

Oliver and the dogs descend heedless to the lychgate that leads into the path that takes us, in a few yards, to Rock Cottage, where the dogs get a good towelling before drying themselves in front of the fire.
*** *** ***
Richard Pine's latest Irish Times article from Greece:

'....It’s actually surprising that life continues at all, since the heartbeat seems to have gone out of the country. But it is the resilience of the Greek spirit, and its resistance to external pressure, that keeps that heart ticking over, even imperceptibly.
One can only conclude that this is not a brave new world but a global pandemic of fear-driven entropy. To paraphrase Seán O’Casey, observers can confidently say: “The whole world’s in a terrible state of stasis.” To paraphrase Seamus Heaney, politicians can safely adopt the maxim: “Whatever you do, do nothing.” '

'Another soul'

Robin, my friend, and neighbouring plot-holder, on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments has just circulated an email to me, and others who might be interested, having persuaded me, who really wanted to stay out of it and first prove myself a gardener...  

....of Novalis' quoted by Conrad on the start page of Lord Jim - which I did for 'A' level English Lit - 'It is certain my Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in it.'

Subject: Draft of: Motion on VJA information policy, for consideration at AGM
Date: 19 August 2013

Dear VJA Members,
I am copying below a draft of a motion that I am proposing for consideration at the next AGM.  Simon has agreed to second it. If anyone has any suggestions for improving on this draft then please let us know as soon as possible. Otherwise please consider it as being here submitted 'as is' for inclusion in the AGM's Agenda and for the Motion and its Rationale to be included in the notices of the AGM.
Thank you, Robin (Clarke)

Motion for consideration at AGM 2013

Rationale for the following motion: A number of Members have expressed concern about lack of informing and consulting about what the Committee are planning or deciding. Even non-committee Members have to pay their rent (which more and more are finding difficult) and have to invest time in working their plots (which some find burdensome), and their membership needs to be respected and encouraged. We need to be attracting more new members and not risking disenchanting existing members by not informing and consulting them. In order to alleviate the hard work of running the Association, more plotholders need to be involved, and that cannot be achieved without keeping the entire membership better informed and more involved.

Motion Proposed by Robin Clarke
Seconded by Simon Baddeley

"That the following Annex be attached to the Constitution of the Association."

Annex to Constitution

The important and key role of the Officers and Committee as volunteers enabling the effective functioning of the VJA is recognised.  However there is not any basis for some Members having greater or lesser access to information within the association. 

Except where there is some consensually clearly accepted basis for making an exception: 

(a) All meetings shall be open to and notified to all Members.

(b) All meetings shall be minuted. 

(c) All meetings shall have as an opening item “Minutes of the last meeting”, at which draft previous Minutes will be corrected if necessary and then agreed. 

(d) All Minutes and Drafts of Minutes shall be posted on the Notice Board and circulated to all members as promptly as is practical. 

(e) (Subject to Clause (h) below,) Minutes of meetings shall avoid generalisations but instead make clear the specifics of what is being discussed and decided, such that the reader obtains the same knowledge as if they had been at the meeting themselves. 

(f) Minutes of decisions of any significance shall name the proposer and seconder and number of voters, along with statements of rationale concerning the decision. 

(g) Before any significant decision is taken the Committee and Officers shall endeavour to inform and consult with as many of the other members as possible, and take into account their views. 

(h) In the event that a Member asks for some matter of their personal circumstances to be treated as confidential to only some others, then that matter will be proceeded with as appropriate on a case-by-case basis which may include not being reported in the generally-circulated Minutes or in a generally open meeting.

*** ***
There is a door in the high privet at the bottom of their garden - Amy's and Guy's home on the edge of city. When we visit I'm strongly persuaded to fetch the key to the padlocked chain...

...and head over the fields with dog Oscar, my grandson and Cookie. In no time the rain, spattering at first, is teeming down but we run carefree across the wet mown meadow towards the wheat field beyond, divided from us by a shallow stream at the bottom of a defile, Cookie with her spaniel instinct, dashing to and fro and Oscar, getting old now, following with me in straighter lines, observing Oliver, in wet wear, who chases one dog then the other until by the unmown field verge we follow it round working our way back to the door in the hedge.

**** ****

• Simon Baddeley Facebook!! What a waste of time, a bit like Marmite except Marmite is never a waste of time

  18 hours ago · Edited · Like
• 

  Jill Darby I don't believe you mean that Simon.

  16 hours ago · Like
• 

  Simon Baddeley FB is useful enough to stay subscribed, but I wouldn't miss it despite uts versatility 0 multimedia and hyperlinks. It gives the impression of mattering but it's superficial

  16 hours ago · Edited · Like
• 

  Linda Baddeley So why do you spend so much time here???

  6 hours ago · Like · 1
• 

  Simon Baddeley In US alone Facebook has...
  • More than 64 million active users
  • An average of 250000 new users registered daily
  • More than 55000 regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks
  • More than 14 million photos uploaded daily
  • More than 65 billion page views per month
  • More than half of users outside formal education
  • The fastest growing demographic of 25 and older
  The USA has most users, followed by UK. with 8 million plus active users, and Canada with than 7 million.
  Portia in MoV 'These men are like moths, drawn to these boxes as if they were flames. This is how the candle burned the moth. Oh, these fools! When they choose, they only know how to lose.' If the world presents itself as chaotic there are three reactions (other than the wise one) - 'repression' (fall back on a simplistic world in which all is explained by astrology, God's will or a favourite newspaper), 'disassociation' (take up a nerdish preoccupation to get away from the buzzing blooming confusion beyond it) and 'superficiality' (like a moth to the nearest flame dart back and forth between immediate stimuli). Thus FB, but it's a brilliant invention and nothing's all bad, except perhaps the Stinking Bishop you make me keep outside the house. I am nearly a dinosaur grumbling about the telephone in its early days, or a 100 other world-changing innovations. Remember the man who said of railway trains that going over 30mph would suffocate passengers? I suspect that a globally connected population is still learning the best way to use this invention and early criticisms like mine will look quite absurd so little have I imagined the full possibilities of FB.

  A few seconds ago · Edited · Like
  
  

From Democracy Street at Christmas 2008:

I remain intrigued with the possibilities that I am observing this crisis through the distorting lens of the present. Throughout my career the ideas of Fred Emery, my boss at the Tavistock Institute, for a few years after I left university, have periodically recurred - especially his thoughts on understanding future possibilities in a paper he wrote for the ESRC in 1967:

From Section III Methodologies for predicting the future: …It is not simply foolhardy to think that we may enable ourselves more readily to recognize the future in its embryonic form. There are almost certain regularities about these emergent phases. Social processes which, in their maturity, are going to consume significant portions of men’s energies most likely have a lusty growth. They do not, by definition, command human resources at this stage, and hence their energy requirements must be met parasitically, i.e. they must in this phase appear to be something else (my italics). This is the major reason, we think, why the key emergents are typically unrecognized for what they are while other less demanding novel processes are quickly seen. A social process which passes for what it is not should theoretically be distinguishable both in its energy and informational aspects. Because it is a growing process, its energy requirements will be substantially greater (relative to what it appears to do) than the energy requirements of the maturer process which it apes. Because it is not what it appears to be, the process will stretch or distort the meanings and usage of the vocabulary which it has appropriated. F. E. Emery (1967) 'The Next Thirty Years: Concepts, Methods and Anticipations' (excluding FEM’s 1997 postscript – in the year of his death), Human Relations, 1967, 20, 199-237. p.15

This suggests we should assume that what is really happening lacks, for the moment, the characteristics of a whole or a gestalt, that can be named and analysed. What may be emerging may have a 'lusty growth' - but currently exists as a diversity of disconnected trends and events - unjoined dots - which may, with the benefit of hindsight, be seen as converging. Though this is the result of human actions, inevitably imperfect awareness of these possibilities can induce the false causality of millenarianism, cargo cults and conspiracism - paranoia made confusing for occasionally being nearly correct, as with astrology. Fred would suggest looking out for the debilitation caused by parasitic action on familiar institutions. From where is energy being sucked? Where is it going? Is language being stretched, distorted, 'appropriated'?

...and from Democracy Street in July 2011

Fred Emery: Policy - Appearance & Reality 1993

On Friday I gave a talk and led a discussion on 'The Politics of the New Order' to officers participating in a four day Summer School at the University. I spoke of what could be discerned and what could not, what might be certain and what might be a matter for speculation, developing my talk around the challenges of working in that space where politics, management and professionalism converged and overlapped. What of localism and the vision of devolved power? Is there a real willingness to place trust in the judgement of the demos; a serious pursuit of democracy - one that would dispense with Plato's guardians - the oligarchy essential to his ideal democracy? Should we be more sceptical, regarding democracy as just another form of government whose machinery requires constant maintenance by experts. This would be Maine's contention, with his convincing scepticism towards 'popular government'. Can't popular government be a root to tyranny, the return of the folkish? I used the idea of a temporal gestalt to describe the difficulty of being sure what was happening. How many words do you have to hear before you know the phrase? "To" I said. People looked expectant and puzzled; "to be..." I said, and everyone instantly recognised Hamlet's soliloquy. "Never..." I said with lisping rhetoric and all knew I referred to Churchill's praise for 'The Few'. We inevitably struggle to recognise the form and direction of what is spoken of as 'localism'.  What gestalten - wholes - might be conjectured? Are these the culmination of an existing and recognised development in government? What might be something new evolving - unrecognised - inside the camouflage of the familiar? I spoke of paradigms, especially those competing for and against the idea of diffused power; how alien this was to a population historically steeped in hierarchy, unfamiliar with and distrustful of equality even though sentimentally attracted to the idea. At the end I slipped in a mention of Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons - and her idea that since neither states nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving 'common pool resource' problems, there might be other ways to govern public goods.