Amy LaVere

It's three weeks since I went to see Amy LaVere in the Cooler. It was one of those gigs that will stick in the memory; wonderful but also embarrassing - there were only a couple of dozen people there in the audience in a music-loving city like Bristol.

If Lou hadn't called to let me know that Amy was playing, (and put me on the guest list; thank you again, Lou) I wouldn't have known because there was so little publicity, not even a listing in Venue. So when I entered the Cooler, there were hardly any people, just a cringe-inducing emptiness. So I behaved like a groupie and introduced myself to the girl at the bar, Ms LaVere herself; bummed a cigarette from her, talked to her and the tour manager, bought a round of drinks for the band when they went on stage, and really enjoyed the music they played. I felt quite warm when she played "Pointless Drinking" and ended by knocking back the whiskey I'd bought.

What I liked about their music was the simplicity; with only three on stage, Amy, a guitarist and a drummer there was no room for show, just skills. I liked the pared down sound which had a purity that just isn't found in bigger bands. It's why punk took over from prog-rock, and why bands fall apart as they grow bigger and less together. That;s the secondary snowball effect, I guess, as things get too big they become less cohesive. Here, though, Amy LaVere's music was sparse, sad and simple and quite lovely. I've been playing it a lot over the last few days.

I owe Lou. It was a great night.

:0)

End of Term

Moonface has now finished her first half-term in her new job as head of Access courses, and she seems to have coped well. It's not been easy, it's been stressful, but she appears to have coped well. We think that her recent bout of under-the-weather-ness is probably a result of her having to manage new relationships and new activities every day, combined with a shorter daily walk instead of a longer cycle to work; she misses the cycling.

But I'm proud of her and pleased with the way she's taking the changes. One of her more disparaging ex-colleagues told her that it would be "a big job" with the imputation that she wouldn't cope. He was right about the former, wrong about the latter. Twenty-five reporting staff (some part-time) and a budget of a million quid is definitely a big job by any means; I've worked in companies with far fewer staff and less cash moving through. She's doing well, she will do better. And I look forward to seeing how it goes.


:o)

Evolution

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The Second Spectrum

As today is the Solstice, and the subject of this post is a sop to all the woolly-minded new age non-thinkers and religious nuts everywhere, it's a good time to start writing it down. The basic hypothesis has been ticking around in my mind for a dozen years, but I've never committed it to paper whether real or virtual.

So, once upon a time, before Isaac Newton and Galvani took their parts upon the stage of the Renaissance, mankind's experience of the electromagnetic spectrum was limited. We could see (visible wavelengths) and we could feel the warmth of infrared from fires and sun upon us; we could detect static electric charge from fur and other fabrics, but that was all. The rest of the all-encompassing electromagnetic universe was hidden from us. In the few hundred years since then, we have detected and found how to use wavelengths from gamma-rays to radio.

Science explains nearly everything we experience. That's a "nearly". Many people have reported phenomena that are not explicable, however. Coincidental dreams, premonition, animal behaviour before earthquakes, synchronicity. I know that I have experienced my own share of events that are not explicable nor at all probable. So here's a hypothesis: there is a second, parallel spectrum of radiation which is transmitted and vaguely detectable by humans under certain circumstances. Think of feeling warmth from a distant fire as an analogy. It happens, we just cannot explain it at present, and we have not invented the instruments which could isolate and detect this vibration in the ether. That's why humans adopt a consistent posture of worship in most religions: we give ourselves the shape of radio aerial receivers as an unconscious effort to improve our ability to pick up the "divine". Conversely, transmitters of magic or healing in most cultures make pointing gestures to maximise their ability to radiate.

That's the hypothesis. How could it be proved or disproved without instruments? How could we design detectors or transmitters without the knowledge of what comprises this second spectrum?

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Winter Solstice MMVIII

I'm writing this as the darkness falls on the shortest day of the year, another solstice, one year ending and another beginning. This is the third year in a row that I have been to Avebury for the Solstice, rising at five in the morning to drive the forty-odd miles towards the Marlborough Downs for that strange informal semi-religious ceremony of welcoming the sunrise.

They reckon the circle is older than the Pyramids, and it's still impressive in spite of all the stone breaking and theft that has taken place over the centuries. Perhaps this makes the Solstice ceremony held here the oldest in the world: I don't know. If so, it's important to maintain the tradition. This year there were about eighty people in the circle and scattered around the stones. That's quite an increase over recent years, perhaps because it's a weekend and it's easier for people to get here. Terry the Druid lead the ceremony as he has for forty years, with his mix of enthusiasm, amateurism and humour. He's not imposing or ascetic but a typical round rubicund Briton, long-haired, bearded, pot-bellied and jolly. This year he passed a horn of mead around the circle for us all to drink from, saving the leftovers for the earth at the centre of the Stones.




It was a cool cloudy morning today, so after arriving Moonface and I decided to walk along the Avenue extending south from Avebury, and were rewarded by watching the daybreak colours change from dark through many shades of grey to speckles of pewter, fresh lead, silver and light. A falcon cut low through the air as we walked toward the dawn.

I'm looking forward to 2009.


:0)

Pork

I'm happily sitting at home on a Saturday night, not worrying that our social life has tailed away of late. Why am I content? I suppose it's the realisation that we have the excuse of being variously ill or just under-the-weather for the last couple of weeks, that it's the last week before the solstice, and that I cooked a roast for ten people last night.

I do enjoy cooking; there's a soothing ritual to the preparation and procedures involved. There is art and there is science, there are tools and there are actions all of which have to come together to make things right. Last night was socially comfortable and confirming: all the guests were people whom we both like very much, although we haven't seen enough of anyone of them over the last few weeks. John and Clare have been out of the social flow for months, really, ever since they started going out with each other they have been a couple who have cocentrated upon themselves rather than their wider circles. Young love, eh? Or at least, middle-aged love.

So- let's be critical, shall we?
The pork, a roast roll of whatever-the-butcher-provides, turned out very well, with the crackling both crisp on the surface and juicy underneath. The swede and carrot mash was fine, turning out just sweet and bitter enough to make it tasty and yet interesting. I was very disappointed by my potatoes. I think I chose the wrong variety, as although I cooked them in the usual fashion they were limp on the outside and soggy within. That'll teach me. I was quietly upset about them. The apple sauce was good. I'm pleased with my method of preparing that, as it's just a few chopped apples, a mix of Bramleys and Cox and a windfall from the neighbours' garden, microwaved with a smidge of sugar for sweetness and some lime juice for acidity and to prevent browning through oxidation.

AS this was an American supper the guests provided the other courses. Caroline's butternut squash superb was as pokey yet smooth as she promised, (and the baker's rustique french bread is superbly tasty), Susan's tart was as excellent as Nicky's citrus and cranberry bread pudding. Yum.

Somehow both Moonface and I missed out on the port. Nevertheless, neither of us was sober when we went to bed. Caroline took ill halfway through the evening, which somewhat dampened our enthusiasm for staying up too late. We blamed the joint she smoked - she wasn't sure about the provenance of the dope - but she thought that it was something caught from one of her pupils. Whatever, she was more-or-less fully recovered by Satuday afternoon.

******************

I don't know why I whinged about my social life. On Thursday lunchtime I has a pie and pint with Neil to wish him a good holiday in the US over the Christmas period; and in the evening Drew and I went out for a drink while Moonface celebrated leaving her last job with her ex-colleagues by having a meal in the Inn on the Green. Drew and I had a bizarre walk down the Gloucester Road, rejecting every pub we passed as either being too full or as lifeless. The band in the Prom was pretty dire and too loud, so we ended up at the Bishop's. It's the first time I've been in there although it has been open for several years. It was quiet, not too busy, with cheap beer and comfy seats. I need to return there soon to check that it could become a regular haunt.


:o)

Anthem

Leonard Cohen, from "The Future", 1992:

Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything
And that is how the light gets in.

To be human is to be flawed.


:o/

Poorly

Apart from that peculiar debilitating season-long weakness which I suffered from in 2003, which I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I'm hardly ever ill. Usually all I get is a 24-hour crashing headache and need for sleep like a form of massive hangover. Moonface is even healthier, as I cannot remember the last time she was sick. (Perhaps it was the result of a curry in Devizes on one of her walking tours a few years ago) As she is an extremely moderate drinker she doen't even get that as an excuse for being ill.

However since last Thursday, either one or the other or both Moonface and I have been laid up with miserable colds / flu / weakness, and spent most of the weekend in bed moaning at each other. It's both a literal and metaphoric pain: we both want to do stuff, but are too weak or tired and unmotivated to try. A five-minute walk around the block seemed too much like hard work, and afterwards we just collapsed into abject heaps of misery again.

Still, now it's Wednesday, Moonface has gone back to work and it's just me that is finding drive and action difficult. I feel better than at the weekend, so perhaps it's my turn to recover. We were both asleep by 10 last night, though.


:(

Autumn

I find that there's something reassuringly primeval about this time of year with the dead leaves having completely fallen from the trees, and lying piles into brown decaying heaps in the gutters before the street-sweepers come to remove them. Somehow, it feels as if nature is proving that she could take over again if man were to disappear and that our concrete and asphalt could be covered completely in a matter of years.

It's a mournful time of year. This year, there isn't even a good summer to reminisce about, yet the days are cold and the evenings long. And while reflecting upon mankind's place in the world, autumn is the time to realise that we're only a blip on the screen, here only for a brief moment and then gone the way of all the other species - I seem to remember that most species only have a life of a million or so years, so we are a good way into our communal oblivion even if we don't continue to hasten our doom by causing global warming, atmospheric poisoning or some such catastrophe.
Somehow, I don't mind. Gaia will manage without us.


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Strawberries

We've had many frosty mornings already this year, but the small strawberry bush in our front garden is still producing ripe(ish) fruit, even in December. They're not even being attacked by slugs now, since those vile things appear to have hibernated at last.

:0)