The illustrator Karen Davis has been out and about in Wiltshire taking weather pictures to show how they are up to their knees in drought. She has a new painting out, Moonrakers, so the first part of the blog is about that, then she moves on to the local news.
If you like whimsical paintings and a touch of hippiedom then you'll enjoy the graphics. If not, scroll down and compare weather notes with where you are.
N.B. She has romantic music playing in the background automatically.
Showing posts with label hobbies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hobbies. Show all posts
Friday, 11 May 2012
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
Boxing Day Hunt 2011
Certain subjects instantly provoke a strong emotional response and hunting with dogs is one of them.
A regular measure now of the support of the the public for hunting is the annual Boxing Day Meet whereby hunters put on a free show on a slow news day. The Countryside Alliance has gradually coordinated this in to a carnival event. Masters are expected to make sure that the best riders are neatly dressed outside a suitable pub, the dogs under control, and everybody gets to take photos. This is about saying to the public "We hunt and we are part of the landscape" and crucially "So are you."
Over to Bedale then, where the fair weather this morning brought a large field of riders and viewers. The main photographic event was outside the pub with the riders posing with stirrup cups, but just down by the church in a larger field were all the other riders and a crowd well on its way to a couple of hundred.
The dogs were cheekier than expected; one of them rushed in to the CoOp as if realising there was a handy supply of sausages, another lazy dog wriggled under a parked car and settled down for a snooze, hoping not to be seen while the others made the running. When the pack set off a small wire haired terrier strained on its leash and whimpered pitifully to go with them, called by the ancient sense which even a chihuahua has, that deep in their DNA is still the string which connects them to a wolf.
Although the hunting with dogs ban is a nuisance, wasting police time and obliging people to perform legal dances, it hasn't had quite the effect which was feared. In fact, what with hunt ball tickets selling fast, carol services, calendars of very well-stacked young ladies, sweat shirts, support events and the general opening of social channels, the idea of hunting has never been more popular. It has thrown off some of its snottier and exclusive airs and has stepped in to a functional niche which used to be occupied by the Church of England.
Whether people mean to get on a horse is as irrelevant as whether they mean to drive an F1 car. They don't care if someone else does, it is the excuse for the meetings. Hunting is cheap until you saddle up; you can do all the hanging around for a few pounds and that includes having a drink. Or, if you are feeling skint, bring a flask of tea.
For women, hunting has one huge advantage in that it is one of the few sports where a broad beam is regarded as acceptable. Since the riders are under no obligation to be stick insects, nobody else has to either. Hurrah, I'd like cream on that apple pie, thank you.
No doubt it will horrify the old guard and those who don't much care for the riff raff, but the Countryside Alliance has helped the hunts re-position the sport as a socially binding and inclusive activity. The editorial slant of magazines such as The Field reflect this; articles which would be more at home in Country Living have crept in to justify the cover-price to an audience which, realistically, is not going to buy a gun, a horse or a sporting estate. But they might buy wellies or sportswear such as Dubarry.
The pressure is gearing up, then, to get MPs to repeal the ban. So far, according to the Telegraph, the government has indicated that it doesn't want to talk about this subject, and you can see why. It's not a deal-breaker from a Conservative point of view. If you mean to vote for Cameron, this issue won't prevent that. However, it might alienate some floating voters, particularly urban women who are a crucial swing group for all parties. There are disputes about how widely supported the ban is, but if legislation were simply a numbers game, then perhaps we'd be out of the EU and have the death penalty restored by next month.
Unhelpfully, a group of Conservatives - Conservatives Against Fox Hunting - have formed themselves in to a classic circular firing squad and are about to disrupt the current delicate balance by slagging-off their own voters. Turkeys may not vote for Christmas but they definitely campaign for it. Their 'about' page says:
For some reason, CAFH keep quoting Brian May of Queen as if being married to an ex-EastEnders actress and current Strictly contestant makes the science drop-out and popular banjo-plunker an authority on environmental conservation.
What matters is that people who live and work in the countryside - rather than invest in chunks of it from the sale of catchpenny choons - are not cruel, do not deserve to be insulted that way, and thoroughly understand what they are doing - unlike CAFH.
A regular measure now of the support of the the public for hunting is the annual Boxing Day Meet whereby hunters put on a free show on a slow news day. The Countryside Alliance has gradually coordinated this in to a carnival event. Masters are expected to make sure that the best riders are neatly dressed outside a suitable pub, the dogs under control, and everybody gets to take photos. This is about saying to the public "We hunt and we are part of the landscape" and crucially "So are you."
Over to Bedale then, where the fair weather this morning brought a large field of riders and viewers. The main photographic event was outside the pub with the riders posing with stirrup cups, but just down by the church in a larger field were all the other riders and a crowd well on its way to a couple of hundred.
The dogs were cheekier than expected; one of them rushed in to the CoOp as if realising there was a handy supply of sausages, another lazy dog wriggled under a parked car and settled down for a snooze, hoping not to be seen while the others made the running. When the pack set off a small wire haired terrier strained on its leash and whimpered pitifully to go with them, called by the ancient sense which even a chihuahua has, that deep in their DNA is still the string which connects them to a wolf.
Although the hunting with dogs ban is a nuisance, wasting police time and obliging people to perform legal dances, it hasn't had quite the effect which was feared. In fact, what with hunt ball tickets selling fast, carol services, calendars of very well-stacked young ladies, sweat shirts, support events and the general opening of social channels, the idea of hunting has never been more popular. It has thrown off some of its snottier and exclusive airs and has stepped in to a functional niche which used to be occupied by the Church of England.
Whether people mean to get on a horse is as irrelevant as whether they mean to drive an F1 car. They don't care if someone else does, it is the excuse for the meetings. Hunting is cheap until you saddle up; you can do all the hanging around for a few pounds and that includes having a drink. Or, if you are feeling skint, bring a flask of tea.
For women, hunting has one huge advantage in that it is one of the few sports where a broad beam is regarded as acceptable. Since the riders are under no obligation to be stick insects, nobody else has to either. Hurrah, I'd like cream on that apple pie, thank you.
No doubt it will horrify the old guard and those who don't much care for the riff raff, but the Countryside Alliance has helped the hunts re-position the sport as a socially binding and inclusive activity. The editorial slant of magazines such as The Field reflect this; articles which would be more at home in Country Living have crept in to justify the cover-price to an audience which, realistically, is not going to buy a gun, a horse or a sporting estate. But they might buy wellies or sportswear such as Dubarry.
The pressure is gearing up, then, to get MPs to repeal the ban. So far, according to the Telegraph, the government has indicated that it doesn't want to talk about this subject, and you can see why. It's not a deal-breaker from a Conservative point of view. If you mean to vote for Cameron, this issue won't prevent that. However, it might alienate some floating voters, particularly urban women who are a crucial swing group for all parties. There are disputes about how widely supported the ban is, but if legislation were simply a numbers game, then perhaps we'd be out of the EU and have the death penalty restored by next month.
Unhelpfully, a group of Conservatives - Conservatives Against Fox Hunting - have formed themselves in to a classic circular firing squad and are about to disrupt the current delicate balance by slagging-off their own voters. Turkeys may not vote for Christmas but they definitely campaign for it. Their 'about' page says:
The Hunting Act 2004 is not about class issues, town versus country, civil liberties or banning rural customs or traditions.Yes it is. If it hadn't been, they'd have banned fishing, and even Labour wasn't quite that stupid.
For some reason, CAFH keep quoting Brian May of Queen as if being married to an ex-EastEnders actress and current Strictly contestant makes the science drop-out and popular banjo-plunker an authority on environmental conservation.
What matters is that people who live and work in the countryside - rather than invest in chunks of it from the sale of catchpenny choons - are not cruel, do not deserve to be insulted that way, and thoroughly understand what they are doing - unlike CAFH.
Thursday, 14 October 2010
La Bamba Le Monde
Graphic courtesy of Mark Wadsworth
I've proposed Richie Valens "La Bamba" because it is a universal song with the power to lift the mood. Everyone knows it even though they don't know the words.
This clip is the proof. It is of a La Bamba festival in Japan at the Saitama Super Arena.
The Saitama Super Arena is gorgeous engineering, worth a visit just for its improbable self.
The gigantic structure, weighing 15,000 tons and 41.5m high, moves a distance of 70 meters horizontally, a taking with it with approx. 9,000 seats and numerous facilities to transform the Main Arena into a Stadium accommodating up to 37,000
The innards glide about and re-arrange themselves in the manner of a tethered space ship.
Sunday, 10 October 2010
Classic Cars for Low Carbon Day
Butties gone, apple crumble and custard next
Drove to King's Lynn for Saturday's Anglia Car Auctions Classic Car event. They don't let you bid unless you've registered at the office, so there's no danger of finding you've accidentally bought a monster whilst scratching your nose. Hundreds of people come for the spectacle or seeking after that dream on wheels they've always wanted to own. Maybe they will find it; such things exist and here is the proof.
This is not the sale where you buy the sensible work-a-day vehicles for hauling paint or animal feed or ladders or grannies; this is not where you buy a wife. This is where you buy a mistress. The crowd is 95% male. The clothes are Clarkson, but proper bloke jeans and leather bomber jackets. As this is an Event, not just a sale, the jeans and shirts are clean.
There are one or two golfing jumpers with plump wives on their arms; in the Mormon fashion these are men come to buy a second wife and they want the approval of the first wife. A fat lot of good it would be to have the missus at odds with the other missus.
It's £4 on the door to get in, for which you get a catalogue and full access to the cars. Unlike a museum where you aren't allowed to touch the display, here you can open everything and even get in if you wipe your shoes.
The gates open at 10am so there is plenty of time to have early lunch in the cafe, although it is a crush before the auction starts. Then have a good look round the offerings, making notes of the lots you are particularly interested in. Everybody looks very serious; as thoughtful as a farmer leaning on a fence and figuring the price of cattle at a county show.
The fascinating - it means hopelessly expensive and will take all your time - projects are the ones which have been discovered hidden in the back of barns or old buildings. One day a 1954 Sunbeam Talbot 90 Drophead Coupe was parked in a dry but very dusty garage, possibly because it needed some repairs.
Going by the condition of the cars which have been found after twenty years in store, this one might have been parked around 1970 after 16 years on the road. This is not just a car sale; this is industrial archaeology. (For a full picture, see the first link. The car is the first item on the catalogue).
Eventually it is time for the sale proper, so everyone makes their way to the great sheds where the cars will be driven through - it's generally a bad sign if they can't even make that short journey - and either dealt of held in front on the auctioneers dais.
There is a sign on the door showing we are in Kansas:
There is a tang of religion in the air which is full of the incense of hydrocarbons. The auctioneer leads the ceremony from his pulpit and everyone has their catalogue out, marking the price or bids for the cars they would have liked for themselves. A few cars are withdrawn either because they fail at the door or because they never make the reserve price at the block.
Then auctioneer treats them all the same with his manic chant, the glory of which is to make it sound like he is running on a wheel when everyone can see that he's just a man standing with a microphone. From the floor and at his elbow there are phone bids coming in from people who are giving instructions from home.
The car of the show was the surprise star; lot 96, a 1974 Citroen Pallas mechanically sound and exceptionally restored by a body shop specialist. Delta blue with a black leather interior.
The detailing of the original design shows that when the French think about Futurism they are touched by genius. The white stripe down the side, for example, is not merely a visual motif. It is a ridged rubber scuff-strip which fits in to chrome holders and can be renewed to protect the car.
This car looks like a space ship and is as fresh as the day it came off the drawing board. In the end there was only one bidder for it, who got it at the reserve price of £20,000.
Monday, 4 October 2010
Big in Japan
Kanji fan: Sea Wish
To Brick Lane for the HyperJapan event held in a 1950s warehouse which used to be part of the old Truman brewery.The show had the patchwork atmosphere which comes from a mix of small businesses rather than the aggressive displays of the global companies. However some of the companies are global brands in birth as they take orders via their websites, manufacture the goods in China, then do the accountancy and marketing from Japan. A few big players such as Panasonic displaying their giant 3D tv systems, came to join the fun. Considering the aim of the show was to sell high-priced goods to Brits, a surprising number of Japanese people came along for a taste of pop culture, just like home.
The glass roof of the old store floor in F block T1 provided the Blade Runnner atmosphere of a re-colonized beer factory. In its painted brick walls it keeps the post-industrial melancholy which modern London has swept away in the past twenty years. Wiping its tears away with an exquistely embroidered silk hanky it charges you a fiver to even look at the shop. The show popped up inside the reclaimed space with its imperfect roof, a cheerful magpie's nest of karaoke, fantasy and riffing on traditional themes, such as making a fortune.
The West lauds Japan for its simplicity and purity of vision; this was nothing like that. This was heretical and steam-punky, growing out of the eclectic tastes of Japanese youth; the ambassadors of cute and the otaku (nerd) subculture. The girls dress like porcelain dolls, the boys hang around glumly and pay too much attention to the pneumatic fantasy heroines in the model kits. Much like youths anywhere, really.
The food court had about half a dozen mobile kitchens where the sushi chefs were working themselves to a sliver for three days running. These were surrounded by grocers selling Japanese brands of store cupboard goods and one or two ceramics shops. There was a distinct lack of obesity. Live on rice, fish, and chicken and you won't pack it on the way wheat, dairy and beef-eaters do.
The stall doing the most business had manga cartoonists turning out portraits within minutes; they were queueing down the hall for that. The Kimono ladies dressed customers and took their photos, as did the man who makes Japanese armour for martial arts and display.
The lady applying eyelash extensions by hand was building a portfolio of regular customers; three days hard work but she should have enough repeat work to keep her busy until Christmas. The wigs and hair pieces were being carted off by the pelt-load in their distinctive Loves Change carrier bags.
The stage ran events with music the audience likes, such as James Bond themes and snippets of opera.
There was a roving live-feed to the equivalent of Japanese Youtube. Wranglers lined up visitors to be interviewed in front of a huge digital screen. Comments from the watchers on the other side of the world drifted across the live image. Hi, very cute, you like udon, you look like man.
It is regarded as rude to take a photograph without permission so taking them requires "May I?" then reciprocal posings and bobbings. Everyone has the idea that the Japanese bow a lot, so they get the custom in first. The Japanese look vaguely baffled, bob back and put a penny in a tin for the knee replacements they are going to need if this keeps up.
The specialized fashion labels shifted more products than even they expected; by the end there were barely a handful of dresses and one or two over-priced handbags left. The inspiration is high Victorian. These are maximalists, harking back to the opulent eye which has its deep-memory in Catholicism. They use a cocktail of words; 'Elegant Gothic Aristocrat Vampire Romance'. I never yet met a Vampire who was not aristocracy. The prices are enough to make you faint but they know what their customers like and it is a level of detail and whimsy which the constipated miserabilists if western fashion cannot understand; the most they can tolerate is the little doggie on a Radley handbag.
Then, on an aisle corner, a picture nothing like anything else in the hall. The calligrapher Koichi Murai of Kanji designs has one, just one, landscape.
Koichi Murai - "Powder" - ink on paper - calligrapher's stamp.
Sapporo-born Mr Murai expresses the energy of skiing down a mountain in Hokkaido.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Model Aeroplanes
To Old Warden, Bedfordshire, for a day with the aeromodellers. As anyone who has watched Flight of the Phoenix will tell you, a toy aeroplane is something you wind up and it runs along the floor.
A model aeroplane is a real aeroplane but you just don't happen to be in it when it is flying.
There is an airstrip full of radio controlled models with a field and a control protocol of its own.
Far in the distance are the free-flight models. On a still day when the planes are perfectly trimmed they will come back to the launcher's hand, but where there is a very slight breeze they will end the flights far down the field. Free-flight modellers are the hippie anarchists of the modelling world. They don't have peg numbers and protocols. They just avoid banging in to each other. Mostly.
It is a gentle place where time appears to stand still. Nothing but pleasant people building models and seeing them float around a field. A peaceful world of neat cars, lazy old dogs and polished caravans with awnings for the stall-holders. A world of where the gentlemen wear beanie or panama hats and women produce picnics out of VW camper vans or the much-loved classic car.
There's no law against women flying. A few do, but not many. They are happy to wander down the stalls, sifting the jumble for treasures. I take photos and a stall holder becomes a little nervous, wondering what I'm doing. I explain I'm writing a blog post to suggest people take up the hobby of modelling. He tells me he's asking because his brother - a professional photographer - was arrested a while ago in central London.
His brother - also a grandfather - was looking for library shots of well-known landmarks. Everybody in the world recognizes Eros in Piccadilly Circus so that's where he was, just looking for the picture. It was a hot day and a man was dipping a child in the fountain. Probably not very hygienic but a great image. He snapped it and went on his way. On the bus home, he found he had been followed by the police who confiscated his camera as they thought that taking photos of a child in a public place could be construed as a crime. The stall holder alleged the police had also removed the contents of his brother's darkroom (some photographers still use film or have archives of it). He was arrested and kept in a cell for hours.
Eventually the police admitted they did not have any evidence against him and no charges have followed. It took weeks to get the camera back, the archive was disrupted, and no apology has ever been made. The police now have his DNA and a record that he was arrested for possible child pornography offences. It isn't illegal to take pictures of children in a public place. It does not constitute grounds for the police to suspect somebody of taking pornographic pictures of children. The stall holder wondered what England had come to. A shadow went across the sun.
How is it that an out-of-control police force, intent on destroying the support and consent of the law-abiding middle classes, can exist in the same time and country as this cottage and all it stands for?
If you would like to take up model building and/or flying the British Model Flying Association can help you find the nearest like-minded individuals and places where you can fly.
A model aeroplane is a real aeroplane but you just don't happen to be in it when it is flying.
There is an airstrip full of radio controlled models with a field and a control protocol of its own.
Far in the distance are the free-flight models. On a still day when the planes are perfectly trimmed they will come back to the launcher's hand, but where there is a very slight breeze they will end the flights far down the field. Free-flight modellers are the hippie anarchists of the modelling world. They don't have peg numbers and protocols. They just avoid banging in to each other. Mostly.
It is a gentle place where time appears to stand still. Nothing but pleasant people building models and seeing them float around a field. A peaceful world of neat cars, lazy old dogs and polished caravans with awnings for the stall-holders. A world of where the gentlemen wear beanie or panama hats and women produce picnics out of VW camper vans or the much-loved classic car.
There's no law against women flying. A few do, but not many. They are happy to wander down the stalls, sifting the jumble for treasures. I take photos and a stall holder becomes a little nervous, wondering what I'm doing. I explain I'm writing a blog post to suggest people take up the hobby of modelling. He tells me he's asking because his brother - a professional photographer - was arrested a while ago in central London.
His brother - also a grandfather - was looking for library shots of well-known landmarks. Everybody in the world recognizes Eros in Piccadilly Circus so that's where he was, just looking for the picture. It was a hot day and a man was dipping a child in the fountain. Probably not very hygienic but a great image. He snapped it and went on his way. On the bus home, he found he had been followed by the police who confiscated his camera as they thought that taking photos of a child in a public place could be construed as a crime. The stall holder alleged the police had also removed the contents of his brother's darkroom (some photographers still use film or have archives of it). He was arrested and kept in a cell for hours.
Eventually the police admitted they did not have any evidence against him and no charges have followed. It took weeks to get the camera back, the archive was disrupted, and no apology has ever been made. The police now have his DNA and a record that he was arrested for possible child pornography offences. It isn't illegal to take pictures of children in a public place. It does not constitute grounds for the police to suspect somebody of taking pornographic pictures of children. The stall holder wondered what England had come to. A shadow went across the sun.
How is it that an out-of-control police force, intent on destroying the support and consent of the law-abiding middle classes, can exist in the same time and country as this cottage and all it stands for?
If you would like to take up model building and/or flying the British Model Flying Association can help you find the nearest like-minded individuals and places where you can fly.
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