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Ora Pro Nobis

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We had the the boys and Irene over for afternoon supper to celebrate Irene's upcoming birthday this week, and some of the wide-ranging conversation [as is our usual wont] and the variety of music we were listening to made me think about our collective family relationship with, and attitude to, the utterly dysfunctional world we inhabit alongside the rest of humanity. We as a family, by whatever means or happenstance, have always found our many and various paths in life without straying from some pretty core values, either politically or philosophically; religion not usually scoring very highly on our need-to-address board.  We try to be fair and kind where appropriate; fierce and excoriating of injustices committed by others, and as generous as personal limitations permit with those less fortunate. Our natural instinct is toward basic decency, but eschewing dogma and orthodoxy. I truly believe that this is the natural mindset of the vast majority of the human race. We are all, afte...
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The Sound of Silence

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I was watching a YouTube of some old climbing footage this afternoon - in particular of a climber called Jimmy Jewell in a 1980s documentary by Alun Hughes - who was most well known for his solo climbing [unroped to the uninitiated] exploits. I never knew Jewell but I did know at least a couple of his close acquaintances from the era. Jimmy died soloing Poor Man's Peuterey, at Tremadoc in North Wales: a relatively easy [graded severe] route for him. What made me think watching the film though, was that, even up until relatively recently, getting decent, editable footage of climbs has not been straightforward.  The interest in filming climbing for a more general audience really only dates back to the 1960s, in particular with the second ascent of The Old Man of Hoy by three parties of climbers. The first, repeating their first ascent of the previous year by their original route; and the second and third opening up two new lines of ascent. The original 1966 party was Chris Bonington,...
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Midnight Snack?

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My repast tonight: it might not look much, and my presentation falls well short of any known benchmark in the food photography department, but trust me, this is one of the tastiest little treats I know of. Devilled sardines on toast, courtesy of one Fred Whowell, probably now late of this parish: a student dish that he carried with him probably from boarding-school days, wherever he was from or educated; he had a faint northern accent but was decidedly quite posh. Essentially, one takes a tin of sardines in tomato sauce, mashes them up in a bowl with chilli powder, spreads the mixture on toast - it has to be white sliced toast, well buttered - and grills the whole shebang under a hot flame. Tonight's variant on this much personally employed theme involved mixing a good teaspoon of Encona Carolina Reaper sauce with the fish before grilling, then garnishing the finished result with a sprinkling of  Kashmiri Chilli powder. And very good it was too, and to be frank very healthy. Oh, a...
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Resilience

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Anyone who has read these pages for any length of time will know that whilst I was a very early adopter of digital technologies, I also cleave to the analogue world that we seem to be leaving behind us at an ever increasing clip. All well and good - I mentioned last night that the invention of the smartphone has pretty much democratised the possession of enormously powerful tech throughout a large part of the globe - when it's all working smoothly and seamlessly, which to be fair it achieves ninety-odd percent of the time. When it does go wrong, however, which it does, this huge basket of metaphorical eggs we carry in our pockets and rely on for just about everything in modern life, suddenly turns into an unmade omelette without pan or flame to cook it. Reliance on digital-only living is precarious and depends on huge interconnected support structures, power supplies and networks simply to function. It is not a chain that can be broken but a huge net easily shredded given the right...
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Where Now?

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It's a strange thing, but our understanding of and our relationship to computers has passed from one of distant observation in the sixties and seventies: as in the film "Billion Dollar Brain"; via vague familiarity during the eighties, with a mainly business-based association through work and maybe youthful hobbyist tinkering, to now, when computing has pretty much been subsumed by the 'White Goods' ethos, particularly in the realm of the smartphone, which most users would never consider in the same light as a 'computer'. Despite this lack of regard for the depth and complexity or the rich history of the technology that most folks simply and naively take as 'my internet, my socials, my camera', the fact is that current smartphones have more processing power than the first supercomputers, developed in the 1970s, costing the equivalent of billions of dollars, affordable only by governments and the military. Today's iPhone, costing around a grand,...
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It's The World, Stupid...

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It's extraordinary how we are stuck in a doom-loop of political/economic nonsense. There are few who are willing to engage with intelligence the true nature of world politics/economics and the relevance of external forces on our own domestic situation here in this now isolated and benighted archipelago of ours. In last week's New Statesman, the estimable young commentator Will Dunn - a man very much after my own heart in such matters - outlines the very poisoned chalice that is the Chancellor of The Exchequer's rôle in the day-to-day running of the UK's finances. In short [you should just chase down his piece in full as I'm not going to précis his article here] he points out some salient facts about exactly how much or little direct influence a chancellor has on the country's economic progress. The bottom line is that it is a thankless task, as most of the key influences on a country's economy are untouchable from their office, and pretty much all external. ...
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Counting The Cars...

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  The is the first in an occasional series based on the "Boring Postcards" book I mentioned the other week. Pictured - well I think it's probably self-explanatory - the New Jersey Turnpike around sixty years ago. Now, disclaimer: I've never been to the States in my life, and whilst like most of my generation I grew up on a diet of Americana - movies, comics, music and garish commercial graphics - I've never really wanted to go over the pond to see it first hand. Given my age now, and the current febrile state of the USA's politics under Trump, I'm as unlikely now to go there as I was when I was an impecunious youth back in the era this postcard was first published. However, as the title of this post alludes, this particular bit of US freeway holds a semi-mythical place in my heart, in that as a young teenager I listened to Simon and Garfunkel's album "Bookends" almost daily; usually just side one, with a very occasional foray into the flipsid...
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