Observations from a Hill

I was just sitting here trying to come up with a topic for tonight's post - my usual status quo at this time of day; the fog of unknowing meeting the sea of doubt somewhere near the shores of confusion - when a bloody migraine struck me. I won't say right between the eyes, because that's not how migraines work. They're not just headaches; in fact I rarely get much of a headache as a consequence: I'm one of the lucky ones that experience the visual disturbances without the concomitant crippling head pain. But they are intrusive in the extreme, nevertheless, as, to be frank, not being able to see straight is exactly how it is with the damned things. Much as with hay fever, I arrived at experiencing migraines rather late in life: hay fever appeared when I was forty, and the migraines when I was in my mid-fifties, around 2011. They take the form of a gradual onset of 'the halo', which is a visual disturbance that varies from person to person: in my case a kind o...

I came across my copy of Carl Chinn's book "Peaky Blinders, The Real Story", whilst rummaging around in the studio. Looking through it at the old black & white photographs of my old city - a place I left almost exactly forty-five years ago at the age of twenty-five - I was moved by a curious nostalgia for something I voluntarily divorced myself from in 1980. It's a strange thing as I, as a young adult, actively hated the vestiges of Victorian Birmingham, and glorified the concrete brutalism of the city's 1970s architectural transformation. The thing is now, I love both: I love all the onion-skin layers of a the great city's history. But could I return there to live? Never. Big city, or even big town living has not been on my radar for most of my life. My village here has a population of fewer than five hundred  approximately nine hundred people [correction courtesy of Wikipedia: although I feel they might be conflating parts of the community that are elect...

  Early Autumn is kicking in and party season beckons: at least that's the way I would have characterised this time of year in my youth and early thirties. That too-soon dusk and the incipient sharpness of early evening air - although tonight it's still reasonably warm, to be fair - heralding in days past an evening of revelry, drunkenness and fun to be had. I still get that frisson of anticipation that goes with the turn of late summer into the fall, despite not really having any great desire to repeat the excesses of youth simply for the sake of repetition or continuity. The period of discovery in the particularities of nighthawk partying has long since passed for me; what was once new is now familiar and much less attractive, let alone sustainable. But I just hope that future generations will discover the magic that we experienced in our youth; go for it, suffer a bit, and grow as people, as a result. I fear that the current generation(s) are either denying experiencing them...

Just a brief one in tribute to the Red Roses and their victory over Canada to take the World Championship. In my humble opinion, as a rugby fan of many decades, the women's game at the international level has now drawn ahead of the men's. The women's game is rugby at its most complete and ultimately this means it's great for those of us who grew up with the game of total rugby union to watch and appreciate. All elements of the game are played and to the highest level of precision: from the ruck to the scrum; the line-out to the driving maul and the kicking game, all are played with a style, speed and elegance which harks back to the great days of 1970's men's rugby. Since then, the emphasis in the men's game seems to be brute strength and attrition over open play. I can honestly say that I've enjoyed the game far more during this World Cup than I have done for a good while. This year has also been a major tipping point in bringing not just equality to th...

...and what a time it was... I promised something more about yesterday's visit to Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire, so here we are. The house itself is an imposing Palladian edifice, designed by Thomas Paine and built in 1733 for the Winn family, on the site of a medieval priory. In the ownership of The National Trust since 1953, it houses a fine collection of Thomas Chippendale furniture, a substantial library and some artworks of note; two of which were pointed out to me by Steve on our visit there and are of particular interest to me personally. The first is "The Procession to Calvary", by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, which, though difficult to see in the now customary - and necessary, from a conservation point of view - stygian gloom, is nevertheless magnificent. The second, however, is far more accessible, in terms of access, scale and lighting: "Sir Thomas More & His Family" [pictured above], a 1592 copy of a lost painting from 1527 by Hans Holbein the Y...

Pictured, The Tapestry Room at Nostell Priory, Nostell, near Wakefield; which we visited this morning. A pretty sumptuous collection of rooms, with a couple of stand-out artworks to which I will return tomorrow, as I'm frankly too knackered to think straight, have walked the gardens in beautiful early autumn sunshine, following this late afternoon with a trip into Huddersfield for a few pints and an excellent meal at the genuinely authentic Kebabish: again, I'll post something about that too, tomorrow. 

Tonight's repast, pictured, at Steve & Margaret's in Yorkshire: and a splendid repast it was too [now demolished]. Middle-eastern food, home-cooked, and frankly bloody lovely. This is de facto a brief diary post as I've just eaten my fill of this excellent fare, including pudding, and we are into our third or fourth bottle of wine, so I am not going to last much longer this evening. All I will say though, it is so good to see Steve & Marg: we are the oldest and best of friends. More tomorrow...