Observations from a Hill

An old friend of an old friend, Pete Evans; Mancunian, but long-since Metro-dweller in London; is a great songwriter, there's no question about that. His canon may be small, but to write one great song is sufficient for anyone, and Pete wrote rather more than one great song, at least one of which should be recorded in the annals of British folk music. He really is that good; and in 1996, following in the wake of his recording an album of his songs at Stiwdio Les in Bethesda, North Wales, a large number of his musician friends produced the album pictured above: "Pete Sounds". The referent of the title itself indicates the respect that his mates and fellow musicians had for him and his writing, and whilst Pete's songwriting is the absolute backbone of the album, the kaleidoscope of interpretations of his work on the record really is truly impressive. I would urge anyone to listen to and love this album, but sadly it's not available online or in physical form to all...

So - the first Labour budget for half a generation or so by the UK's first female chancellor - cause for celebration in itself on both counts - and has been commended to the House and to the country in general. And the world hasn't fallen apart, despite the ex-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's petulant tirade of a response to it; still sticking to his 'the Labour Party hasn't got a plan!' schtick. It's almost like he's on endless loop and nobody knows where the off switch is. Listening to the budget speech I would say that the government not only has a plan, but it's a pretty good one at that. Working with the meagre scraps left behind after fourteen years of self-interested Tory greed and grift, they've made the best of a bad lot and eased as much of the inevitable pain as possible. That the markets didn't immediately melt down is testimony to the groundwork negotiations with business that the party have been engaged in during their last year in ...

Pictured in the gloom of a late October afternoon here at Fairview Heights: my studio workshop roof newly clad in a fetching blue tarp - for some weird reason, my iPhone has rendered it in mauve, but life's too short to piss around with editing it for accuracy - that doesn't quite cover the whole shebang and will need another similarly-sized sheet overlaid in the opposite direction to finish the job. However, it means that for tonight at least, the place is now leakproof. I still have plans to stick a corrugated fibre roof on the poor old structure - I built it fourteen years ago, and it shows - but my budget doesn't currently allow for it. However, at least one winter of no leaks will be a welcome change! Keep you posted on progress...

  Pictured: tonight's repast of pork, smoked bacon and chilli beans alongside an appetiser of some excellent spicy chorizo to nibble on with a glass of cold pilsener beer. So, Tex-Mex meets Spain and Germany head on at Fairview Heights this evening. I really can't be arsed with picking the bones out of the continuing press speculation over the possible contents of tomorrow's budget. I'm of a mind to wait and see just what the Chancellor has to offer. My attention span isn't that short: I just wish that everyone else would stop second-guessing what hasn't yet happened to fill pages with possibles and what-if's. Analysis is only possible with actual data to go on. Speculation and porky-pies don't cut it for me...

  It seems like the transatlantic geopolitical zeitgeist at the moment centres on the metaphorical toss of an electoral coin, so close is the race for the next President of The United States. A round-robin email from my old mate Jeff this morning linked us out to a Guardian piece on Trump's Madison Square rally yesterday, which by all accounts, in any sane country, should have seen him arrested and banged up for incitement and race-hatred. But oh, no, not in the USA, where freedom of speech is paramount, so long as you're white and wealthy. The implications of this freedom to publicly abuse large swathes of the American population, his political opponents and just about anyone else who springs to his ever-diminishing mind, are legion and serious. This madman's psychotic ramblings should not merely be dismissed as such, though: pretty much half the US electorate takes this guy seriously, despite his track record of grift and sleaze, his incoherence and childish tantrum-throw...

Twelve and Twenty are interesting numbers. Although for the most part these days in the UK we use pretty much the base-10 metric system, with its apparently flawless internal structural logic, 'twas not always thus, as I've written about several times over the lifetime of this blog. Up until 1971, our national currency system was a largely duodecimal one, [base-12], albeit with the addition of the proto-decimal 'florin', equal to one tenth of a pound. But crucially, the pound was comprised of 240 pence, and so the florin actually equated to 24d [pence], or 2s [shillings]: a shilling being 12 pence or one twentieth of a pound. Clear so far? The point of all this, as I've mentioned before, is that the divisibility of twenty and twelve is much greater than that of one hundred and ten. Whereas decimal chunks subdivide equally into chunks of two and five, twelve and twenty subdivide equally into two, three, four, six; and in the case of twenty, also five and ten: affordi...

  Pictured, my newly-acquired fountain pen: a Parker Junior Duofold in Burgundy and 14K gold, which arrived from the eBay seller I bought it off yesterday. It was meant to be a birthday present to self, but a day past the date doesn't really matter much at my age. I wanted this particular pen because I had one exactly similar to this, bought for me as a present by I think my maternal grandparents - I could be wrong - over sixty years ago for school use. Tragically the original, like so much other stuff one gets gifted in childhood, got lost along the way of growing up. I stumbled across this one the other day and decided it was time to replace like with like: right model, right colour and right age.  On arrival, I flushed the nib out and filled the thing with Diamine "Imperial Purple" ink, and after a little shake and some customary scribbling, it writes perfectly and most importantly, suits my hand as if I'd worn the nib in myself. Lovely, and in amazing condition fo...