Black Patch Park

We had a good meeting - we reckoned who were there - about the Black Patch; with Nick at Sandwell Council.

Winding up the meeting: Friends of Black Patch Park at Sandwell Council house

"It's very chicken and egg. All about momentum!" said Nick twice, as we wound up a meeting that lasted a good hour. We'd explored and aired the continuing problems of lack of public money, the marginal location of the Black Patch on the Birmingham-Smethwick boundary; that there's not a single resident who opens a window on to the park. Nearly everyone who lives beside the place has been 'decanted' elsewhere. Black Patch has no obvious local constituency of users, but it is the focus of  significant communities of interest - rather than of place; urban explorers, industrial historians, Travellers, footballers. It has four schools nearby, connects to the Midland canal network and the SUSTRANS network; a wildlife haven amid industrial dereliction. It's haunted by Queen Henty...

A conversation with Bridget and Michelle on the Black Patch - June 2011

Nick, himself enthused by our separate presentations, will seek to widen interest in the Council. In the current situation we can hope for nothing better than that we, and all involved, should via a mix of luck and endeavour, arrive at a critical mass, a tipping point that brings serious attention to the meaning and significance of this neglected place.

Outside the Council House: "Are we agreed?" asks our Chairman Ron "It was a good meeting"

My message this morning to committee members of the Friends of Black Patch Park

Dear All 

BLACK PATCH PARK LINKS

Can we get these links to Nick ASAP - with brief explanations. 

- Draft history tour of the Black Patch mentioning it as the birthplace of Charlie Chaplin and the links to the Soho Foundry - key place-marker in the birth of the Industrial Revolution 

- The Wikipedia article on Black Patch Park 

- Song on YouTube by Bryn Phillips about Queen Henty's curse 

Best, Simon

Soho Foundry today

Going home from the Council House in Oldbury Phil gave me directions for getting home off the roads, so I cycled past Sandwell and Dudley Rail station - where I'd arrived after a 20 minute journey from a morning appointment in New Street - and came to a sloping alleyway that led me to the Birmingham Mainline canal, whose narrow towpath widened after Galton Bridge, a greenway into the centre of Birmingham on which I saw a heron, dodging me by yards, unfrightened; also geese, duck, seagulls, coots and moorhen and a few walkers and one other cyclist and greenery galore.

Under and over on the Birmingham Mainline. Those are pillars for the M5 motorway

From the mainline I turned off at the Soho Loop to cycle home past Winson Green Prison, via New Handsworth Road, the Soho Road, Ivy, Lansdowne and Broughton Roads, dropping in on the Victoria Jubilee on the way. I am enjoying just seeing my allotment and in a while will set to scything my neighbours overgrown plot...

Dear Jeevan/Gill. Can I get my scythe to to the seeding weeds all over my neighbours' plots? Plot 13 and 15. Best wishes, Simon 

Hi Simon, Plot 13 can be trimmed as it is now empty but plot 15 has a new tenant, his name is Rxxx so please don't cut this one. all the best, Gill

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The walk we planned in  Handsworth Park started late. Amy and Liz arrived with their children. Oliver had turned poorly with a temperature, clingy and weepy. We headed for Summerfield drop-in centre - a projected two hour wait.

Liz, Sophia, Oliver and our pregnant Amy 

I bought some Kalpol so Amy could dose my slightly reluctant grandson. She used a squirter to get two teaspoons into his mouth. Fifty minutes waiting with me doing some babysitting for Sophia and Amy's name comes up on the clinic TV screen.
It was all simple.
"He's probably fine. Keep an eye"
So now we headed for Handsworth Park, Linda joining us along with Oscar. So now we have hardly three weeks before the entry into the world of a grand-daughter.

Handsworth Park

Our picnic at last. Lin made the sandwiches

*** ***
As a result of a two day course I helped lead the other day I've been sled to do a morning for officers in a northern council:

MANAGING WITH POLITICAL AWARENESS 

Training for officers in xxx Council  (date to be agreed)

A morning seminar focusing on skills and values for working in a politically led organisation. It will:

• assist you to read and maintain your knowledge of the political scene,
• explore the skills and values basic to political-management working,
• develop and fine-tune your feel for the boundaries between political, managerial and professional work,
• add to your vocabulary of political concepts, offering models of competence and integrity in politically sensitive situations.

PROGRAMME

Brief introduction - overview of the morning

Reading the Council’s political environment: facilitated exercise

Defining political awareness: skills and values; talk and discussion

Work on ‘critical incidents’: facilitated exercise

Summary and feedback: Q & A

Tutor: Simon Baddeley’s expertise lies in the study of working relations between politicians and managers in local government. As well as in the UK, he’s taught and researched in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Japan, and Canada. During the morning Simon will stimulate interest in the skills and craft involved in managing with political awareness, as well as facilitating discussion among participants of the local political environment and its implications for officers.

**** ****

Dear G. Can I get my scythe to to the seeding weeds all over my neighbours' plots - Plots 13 and 15?  Best wishes 

Hi Simon, Plot 13 can be trimmed as it is now empty but plot 15 has a new tenant, his name is xx so please don't cut this one. all the best, G 

Understood. But xx's grasses are growing as high as 13’s. Any chance you could get him to get in touch with you re the impact of his ‘weeds’ on me and everyone else. S

Hi Simon I sympathise as I have the same problem but xx has only just taken on the plot so perhaps we need to give him a bit of time. He has been down so he is keen but I will talk to his plot rep and ask them to keep an eye on things. All the best. G

I've started scything Plot 13

A strimmer or, even better, a power scythe would do this job faster, so why rely on a traditional  scythe? I enjoy the process; the judgement involved in selecting the right blade, setting its angle in two dimensions, and positioning the handles of the snath, tailored to my height and the length of my arms; the physical skill of getting and keeping up a scything rhythm; knowing how to sharpen the blade, keeping it razor sharp with a whetstone every few minutes of work; the pleasure of hearing the slice of the blade as it fells the grass, its fallen smell and the quietness of the work. The ability to deal with chips and dents as a result of striking stones in the undergrowth. That's the process of peening with hammer and jig, which also ensures a sharp edge as a blade gets older; the sheer pleasure of owning, looking at, and holding, so simple and so ancient a tool.
A friend told me of an old groundsman in Birmingham who could shave down to bowling green standard with a scythe. I tried it on our front lawn last year and realised how it could be done - a blend of blade set, sharpening and rhythm.

• Margaret Prothero War and peace springs to mind.......... the only real satisfaction in life.(?)

  21 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Margaret Prothero satisfaction the wrong word. Peace (?)

  21 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Simon Baddeley Ah! Kalinov meadow! Margaret thanks so much for reminding me of perhaps the most important thing - the effect on the spirit of using a scythe - and your reference to War and Peace... Part 3:4 of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina when Levin to settle his temper takes up a well sharpened well-set scythe and mows http://ypmuseum.ru/en/2011-04-13-17-27-29/87.html
  

  
  

  Kalinov Meadow

  ypmuseum.ru
  

  Kalinov Meadow is the largest and the best meadow for mowing at Yasnaya Polyana....See More

THE PERSONAL matter that absorbed Levin during his conversation with his brother was this. Once in a previous year he had gone to look at the mowing, and being made very angry by the bailiff he had recourse to his favourite means for regaining his temper,—he took a scythe from a peasant and began mowing.
  He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his hand at mowing since. He had cut the whole of the meadow in front of his house, and this year ever since the early spring he had cherished a plan for mowing for whole days together with the peasants. Ever since his brother’s arrival, he had been in doubt whether to mow or not. He was loth to leave his brother alone all day along, and he was afraid his brother would laugh at him about it. But as he drove into the meadow, and recalled the sensations of mowing, he came near deciding that he would go mowing. After the irritating discussion with his brother, he pondered over this intention again.
  ‘I must have physical exercise, or my temper’ll certainly be ruined,’ he thought, and he determined he would go mowing, however awkward he might feel about it with his brother or the peasants.
  Towards evening Konstantin Levin went to his counting house, gave directions as to the work to be done, and sent about the village to summon the mowers for the morrow, to cut the hay in Kalinov meadow, the largest and best of his grass lands. (Anna Karenina 3:4)

Malasha

I went into town yesterday to do errands and offer Lin and our friend Liz some perfunctory help - scrubbing out the space behind the washer - as they painted our vacant flat on the top floor of a tower block off Cambridge Street. I picked up rail tickets bought on-line from a self-service ticket machine in New Street Station - busy as ever amid major rebuilding - then wandered up to the Council House past a fine array of food stalls. I nibbled cheese samples, bought a garlic sausage, treated myself to a rare beefburger and cycled home along the Birmingham Mainline Canal turning onto the Soho Loop where I popped the camera on the ground to catch myself cycling my favourite route between Handsworth and the city centre.
In the post this morning - Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife - earlier than I expected. I'm taking my time with Ivo Andrić's long short stories ending with The Damned Yard. This man writes so cleverly; his translators so talented they make genius look easy.
I wander amid narratives, trying to focus. There are big pictures and macros - events as seen by an individual, especially a child; Tolstoy's Malasha, a six-year old perched on the chimney stove shyly watching a Council of War at Fili about whether or not to abandon Moscow to Napoleon, seeing dear dedushka Kutuzov  - left in the picture back from the table - and 'long-cloak' Benningsen, facing him, and other grown-ups arguing about things she doesn't understand, but knowing who she prefers.

Malasha watches the grown-ups

There are so many experts; so many wise analyses; such a range of optimists and pessimists. Some are optimistic things will get better; some that they will get worse. All are presuming the meaning of 'better' or 'worse' and what's included in 'things'. Sometimes I breath a sigh of relief when listening to description. But then I want prescription. There are plenty of differences and debates among describers and prescribers, as many around the table of finance ministers in Brussels as in our kitchen or at Fili; exchanges on twitter and facebook and the op-eds of the world's newspapers, newsak and current affairs broadcasts; such a cacophonous spectrum of voices and images. The last thing many want to or are allowed admit is that they don't understand even though incomprehension can be a quite reasonable, a corollary being the range of feelings involved. No invented character conveys sentient wisdom better than Tolstoy; his paeon to the real General Kutuzov, often regarded as an old fool, who understands, that there is something more powerful and more significant than his will - the unavoidable course of events. He sees them, and understands their significance. Much of the time he waits in silence. Description of events in Greece in any place and any level at least offers so many opportunities to break silence, but I wonder who if any present leader comes closest to Tolstoy's idea of one.

Any historian relying on primary sources knows that what later becomes history, unfolds from day to day and minute to minute in just this way. Poring through the records of a momentous time will restore something of their original messiness. Experts sounding confident are seen to have made absurd predictions while lost in someones private musings may be found some of the most prescient understanding.
As George Papandreou's  shuffled Cabinet is sworn in amid rancourous crowds in great Athens in beloved Greece I find a documentary challenging the dominant narrative without turning old red. Χρεοκρατία, Debtocracy, is 74 minutes long, made by Katerina Kitidi and Aris Hatzistefanou, explaining the causes of the debt crisis in Greece and suggesting solutions not on the agenda of the Hellenic government. The film's been distributed on-line under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license since 6 April 2011. Kitidi and Hatzistefanou funded the film through crowd-sourcing.

Debtocracy International Version by BitsnBytes

Kitidia and Hatzistefanou: ....It’s clear that Greece cannot repay its debt – whether legally or not, regardless of the interest rate. $350 doesn’t just grow on trees (and ironically, the market was the first to reach that conclusion). The government keeps on saying they will find the money, but the market is not stupid. The bailout plan designed by the European Union and the IMF was not about rescuing Greece – it was about saving the German and French banks which would collapse if Greece went bankrupt.

Kitidi & Hatzistefanou

So our point of view is that we should not expect anything from them. It will be too late if we wait for them to take the necessary measures. We need to find the solutions ourselves and create initiatives.  Considering that, first we have to carry out the debt audit in order to distinguish what is legal or illegal. There are indications that a huge amount of our sovereign debt is pernicious or illegal. But only an audit commission could determine and prove this. This is why we completely support this proposal. However, it should be driven democratically and transparently, and not by parliamentarians. We are more radical than others advancing this proposal, because we think we should stop paying the debt, exit the eurozone, and nationalize the banking system. That is not something easy to get support for as it may seem too radical – but even some politicians and economists from the center are beginning to consider it.

And see Democracy vs Mythology: The battle in Syntagma Square. A eloquent diatribe from someone who left Greece in 1991 and returned in 2006, close to the time we came to have a home in Ano Korakiana, in 2007:

...I do not wish to excuse my compatriots of all blame. We did plenty wrong. I left Greece in 1991 and did not return until 2006. For the first few months I looked around and saw an entirely different country to the one I had left behind. Every billboard, every bus shelter, every magazine page advertised low interest loans. It was a free money give-away. Do you have a loan that you cannot manage? Come and get an even bigger loan from us and we will give you a free lap-dance as a bonus. And the names underwriting those advertisements were not unfamiliar: HSBC, Citibank, Credit Agricole, Eurobank, etc. Regretfully, it must be admitted that we took this bait “hook, line and sinker”. ...That irresponsibility, however, was only a very small part of the problem....