I’ve been saying for some time that when I/we tidy up, we’re really just shuffling stuff around. Once again the chest o’ drawers was piled high with crap. Once again I’ve (more or less) cleared it. Once again it’s mostly just moving stuff from one pile of clutter to another.
Some of it has moved over here..… and some over here.
We are planning to let out the Blue Room, to Antonio, our Spanish brother-in-law. That’s partly what’s causing the latest tidal wave of stuff. Plus I set my drums up in the drum room/office. So all the stuff stored in there and the Blue Room has flooded the rest of our tiny domicile.
We went to mum’s earlier today. Part belated Mother’s Day visit, and also checking in on her post hip op’.
I tried a pano’ pic, to get everyone but me in. Teresa moved, so I’ve edited her out, as the double exposure looks freaky! But I got everyone else in.
We had tea n’ cake. Inc. a lovely lemon cake Amy made. very nice!
Skies on the way over.
On the drive over the skies were quite dramatic, with lots of cloud, occasional squalls of rain, and quite a lot of sunshine. Didn’t spot any rainbows. But there were some amazing rays of light breaking through the broken clouds.
Is it just me? Or is it kind of nigh on impossible to really see one’s own face? We take others in at a glance. When of course they are way too complex for us to really sum up in a second. Yet we do.
But ones’ own face? We can’t separate it from the teeming universe of thoughts, feelings, and whatnot, that fizzes away inside almost constantly. At least that’s my experience.
At Teresa’s insistence I went oot in’t garden. To see the budding buds. Very lovely!
Cherry #2, and Egbert.
Cherry #3, out front, flowered a while back. Now #2, affectionately known as ‘The Stump’, because it arrived here as a log (with a little sprouting bit!), is coming into flower.
Cherry #2, & architecture.
The ‘Green Room’, in back of this shot, needs some attention; rotting wood cutting out and replacing, and general filling, painting and weather-proofing.
Cherry #2, & fence.Plum tree. Rather a slow grower, this’un.
The plum tree is in a sheltered corner. And is growing very slowly. Perhaps due to limited light?
Tories are already using draconian measures, brought in allegedly under the mantle of dealing with such things as Islamic extremist terrorism, to target eco-activists.
Tory twat MP Brendan Clarke-Smith has said this: ‘This outrageous decision has given the green light to people looking to commit all manner of appalling crimes in the name of religion to justify their extreme political ideologies.’
He’s referring to the acquittal of these frightening folk:
He’s not talking about a suicide bomber, or machete wielding maniac, but about peaceful protesters.
Their ‘appalling crime’? Traffic disruption. Their ‘extreme political ideology’? A very sound evidence-based concern that government and big business might not be looking after the best interests of the environment/us/our future.
David Nixon, care worker.
Sadly David Nixon – sent to prison for eight weeks for contempt of court (for mentioning the reasons behind his protest actions) – doesn’t have a dog collar.
Nor is he a man who has committed violence against a woman, for which the very same Judge Silas Reid has infamously handed down far more lenient sentences.
His crime is to place his conscience before the letter of the law. And the letter of contemptible laws at that. I think it’s only right that we hold in contempt that which is contemptible. To not do so is a betrayal of one’s own conscience, or total submission to repression.
These people risk jail, for simply stating what is (or perhaps I should say was?) the facts of our laws.
These contemptible laws are those that the Tories have been busily putting in place since Brexit. The kinds of repressive laws that are the real reason they wanted out of Europe.
This is the post-Brexit ‘sovereignty’ of Toryism. The freedom for judges (the elite) to bully juries (the hoi polloi), and take us back in time, to Darker Ages.
Nixon is a care-worker. Reid is a lackey for the repressive right. Nixon will be living on a modest wage, and is clearly thinking about the good of others. Both in his work, and in his protesting. Reid, on a massively bloated salary, is an agent of Tory repression.
The UK today.
Talking about such increasingly common UK legal rulings, Professor James E. Hansen, former NASA scientist and ‘godfather of climate science’, has said:
The cruelty of such ‘know nothing’ judges is not so much to the defendant as it is to our children and grandchildren.
And no wonder Toryland UK wanted out of the EU, or any other similar collective endeavour that might take the moral high ground, when the UN is saying this sort of thing:
In the UK, courts have prohibited environmental protesters from putting forward defenses based on “necessity” or “proportionality”. They have also forbidden protesters from mentioning climate change, thereby preventing them from explaining the reasons for their protest. Courts have held convicted environmental defenders who disregarded this prohibition in “contempt of court” and imprisoned them for up to 8 weeks…
Courts should not impose limitations on environmental protesters’ right to a defense, including to explain their motivation for engaging in protest, and should take into account these motivations in their decisions.
Former tool of repression with a conscience.
This comes from a UN report titled State repression of environmental protest and civil disobedience: a major threat to human rights and democracy. And it’s not talking about North Korea, China or Russia, but the UK!
Teresa tret us to a cooked English breakfast brunch today. Lovely! Even if it is just at our local Tesco superstore.
And then we did a ‘big shop’. Big for us, at any rate. Sheesh… Easter Eggs, what a rip off! £5 a pop. I could easily give them a miss. But Teresa feels we must ‘ave ‘em!
Whilst shopping in the refrigerated section I was rather taken with the architecture of the ‘cold plant’ technology.
This is stuff most folk no doubt mostly ignore. Myself included, most of the time. But it’s pretty amazing. And fairly monumental.
Once we built Cathedrals, allegedly to the glory of God. Now we build these temples of commerce. Hmmm!?
Having just mentioned James Holland’s Big Week, it reminded me of a piece I recently read online by his brother, Tom. The piece in question was a Guardian article on Roman cock pictures, or – more politely, perhaps? – phallic graffiti.
Dylan Herbert, proudly showing off his dick-scovery.
The rampant member was unearthed by volunteer archaeologist, and right Herbert, Dylan (pictured above). Who was delighted with his find. Good man! Read more about this here, on the good old BB of C.
‘Adrian’s Wall’, as Alan Partridge called it.
There are other dicks to be found on ‘Adrian’s Wall:
I’m going to do a separate post on the whopping great British Jazz tome that arrived today (above).
But it’s arrival prompted me to head to Ely, to unbox it and peruse it at Topping, a suitable temple to literature.
I also treated – or ‘tret’ as some Fenny folk say – myself to lunch and a cuppa. There were a few stalls in the Marketplace, including a guy (with very weird hair!) selling books.
A concatenation of circumstances meant that my iPhone was at home. So I’d brought along a secondary or backup iPhone. But that wasn’t charging! So I couldn’t do the unboxing video right away.
This is terrific!
I needed something to read, whilst my iPhone was looked at in a Phone tech repair shop. And I hadn’t brought Trafalgar, my current book, with me. So I bought James Holland’s Big Week from the dude with the weird barnet.
It was a good choice. For starters it ties in nicely with Apple TVs Masters Of The Air, which I’m currently following. And for another, it’s just a rip-snorting good read on a subject I’m fascinated by.
Turns out my iPhone battery is on the way out; it loses charge very quickly. But another and bigger problem was a dirt caked charging port. The guy in the phone tech shop cleaned it out and charged it for me, gratis. Which was nice!
Back to front Jap’ art book!More Fab Jap’ art.
But before sitting down at Topping to unbox British Jazz, I popped into Ely Oxfam, which almost always has an interesting selection of art books. On this occasion I came away with two rather lovely books of Japanese stuff.
I have a mind to cut out and frame as many of the images in these as I can. Keep some for our home, and maybe sell the remainder. That way I may up end up providing us with free home decorations, and poss’ even turning a small Mohammad (prophet!)?
This particular acquisition was prompted by my recent George Benson reverie. Benson recorded quite a few albums with Jack McDuff. As did several other guitarists, including one of my longstanding favourites, Grant Green.
For gifting.
I also sourced some very bargainous copies of the second UWB expanded reissue from Omnivore, An American in Texas. There were supposed to be four copies. But apparently one of them is damaged. Hopefully I’ll be getting a refund on the missing one?
When it comes to Uncle Walt’s posthumous discography, I’m only missing Anthology now. And I can gift these extra copies of An American on to friends or family. If they like this stuff even a fraction as much as I do, they’ll really enjoy it. I hope they do!
‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy’
So sayeth Hamlet, and so quoth Simon Callow, as Chuck D (aka Charles Dickens), in Mark Gatiss’ Dr Who episode, The Unquiet Dead.
I have to say that I really don’t like contemporary Dr Who. It grates mightily. It’s such a mish-mash. Overloaded with ideas that are supposed to be clever.
Like nails on a blackboard…
And unlike Baker-era Who, which uses sci-fi/fantasy much more simply, as a vehicle for fun storytelling, and tends to have an underlying appeal – despite its total kookiness – to the rational mind, CGI-era Who is overloaded with appeals to angels, the mystical, ghosts, sceances, etc.
Za-Who-ssi, or the appliance of seance.
Where ‘70s Who harnessed imagination to progressive rational ideals, current Who is regressive, appealing to ‘comforting’ myths, ironically enabled by cutting-edge tech. Ironically the older Who, more dependent on viewer imagination, and simpler old-school props, is more visionary.
Groan…
I don’t know when the trend for manic Drs set in. But I hate it. Christopher Ecclestone partakes of this annoying lineage. And Billie Piper as his sidekick sums up the shallow vanity of our times. Pretty, but vacant.
