Mixed up confusion

Sweet Thames Run Softly

It started well.  The day dawned fine, and Grosvenor Square was tranquil, though the strangely wrapped figure of Dwight David Eisenhower outside the Qatari remake of the US Embassy seemed an ominous portent:

Anyway, in one of the Halcyon Galleries on Bond Street I get a glimpse of early Hockney, where the women come and go:

And across the way Bob Dylan exposes his inner Marlborough Man with a little less finesse than Bradford Davey:

And then I work my way through the streets of Soho, past traces of earlier communications, now repositories of today's excess:

I note that Pink seems to be the in colour today, whether on your rickshaw:

Or with a casual glass of wine while trading al fresco:

Or as part of your biker gear:

Or if you are Queen for the day:

Then, where Kipling once lodged, I pass one of my favourite haunts, though now it's hard to get a seat:

With my special dragon bike I take a pedal up the river to Richmond and beyond, where the sun is out:

And a heron fishes, the cycle of life:

And where, in the 18th century, George II lodged Henrietta Howard, his mistress, in Palladian splendour, another cycle of life.

It is hot now, but the Sweet Thames runs softly, 

So I took her sailing on the river (Flow sweet river, flow),

From Putney Bridge to Nine Elms Reach
We cheek to cheek were dancing
Her necklace made of London Bridge
Her beauty was enhancing

Ewan MacColl

But this is where things start to go wrong.  The heat. The after effects of gothic strawberries, the press and confusion of London Town; even if it is French:

We dine upstairs, the food, the drink, the company, the wine, the digestifs.....

It may be my daughter's birthday, but the confusion is beginning to set in, my pulse beat racing, 

Well, there’s too many people

And they’re all too hard to please

Well, my head’s full of questions

My temperature’s rising fast

Well, I’m looking for some answers

But I don’t know who to ask

Bob Dylan

Mixed-Up Confusion

And so it goes......

But then, despite the gentle musings of Ewan MacColl, and the ebb and flow of Old Father Thames (without which, London would not be) I sink into oblivion, exhausted by the heat and confusion of the city. I long to be back in the calm of Norfolk, even though this yearning is a two-edged blade. I trip from MacColl to Edmund Spenser, and look to Prothalamion for solace, those sixteenth century lines like a cool gauze across my brow:

CALM was the day, and through the trembling air 

Sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play, 

A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay 

Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair;

And at dawn it is quiet now.  Oxford Street so near a desert:

Tottenham Court Road a pedestrian dream:

And all the fowl which in his flood did dwell 

Gan flock about these twain, that did excel 

The rest so far as Cynthia doth shend 

The lesser stars. So they, enranged well, 

Did on those two attend, 

And their best service lend, 

Against their wedding day, which was not long: 

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

Edmund Spenser

Prothalamion

And, waking, as if from a confused state, I walk through Gordon Square, and hear a voice:

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

Rabindranath Tagore

But I’m walking and wondering

And my poor feet don’t ever stop

Seeing my reflection

I’m hung over, hung down, hung up!

Bob Dylan

Mixed-Up Confusion

*****

The nymphs are departed.

T S Eliot

The Waste Land

*****

To unwind, please see Christy Moore, with 

Sinéad O'Connor and Neill MacColl, singing Ewan MacColl's Sweet Thames Flow Softly....

https://youtu.be/Tgwtl-s0CNI

Watching the River Flow

 Flow, River, Flow.....

I am at The Bridge, watching the river flow....  

Simon Russell Beale, or Simon Beale as he was at Clifton College when I called the roll....  is also at The Bridge, construing Johann Sebastian Bach as a difficult father.  Photography is not allowed in the theatre, so this is an artist's impression of SRB as JSB.....

In October 2010 Mr Beale wrote, in his Foreword to Nicholas Kenyon's Pocket Guide to Bach, that the book tells the story of a man who from an ordinary family background, with a thorough but unexceptional education, a man who wrote dazzling music that summons up the sensual, everyday pleasures of the world around us, could then push himself to produce work that touches the face of God.....

Although it's an interesting play, with some effective moments and fine acting, in general it exudes a shortage of drama, and the paragraph above does more for me than the interactions of the actors on the stage, with - in my mind - the dumpy, argumentative maestro taking me back rather to Clifton in the mid-70s than Leipzig in 1750.  And I suspect Simon Russell Beale, despite his love for Bach, knows it's something of a Mess in B minor.....

Outside the theatre the river flows on under the bridge.....

It's good to be back in the city, even if only very briefly.  Life hasn't stopped, yet, though the streets are still relatively quiet.....

Tottenham Court Road

It's good to be out and about, moving freely through the arcades,

Burlington Arcade

The side streets,

Colville Place

And the parks, where the air is green and perfumed.....

Gordon Square

In Leicester Square, the Bard is having a wash and brush up,

And in Trafalgar Square the police seem relaxed,

One with no tie and bursting at the belt; the other neat with pink accessories

I drop in to The National Gallery to pay homage to my namesake kneeling in a cloth of gold in the Wilton Diptych:

I pause to admire a guitar solo in the San Pier Maggiore Altarpiece:

Wander down The Avenue at Middleharnis, one of my all time favourite places:

Meindert Hobbema

Then take a stroll in the beautiful Tuscan countryside: 

The Assumption of the Virgin: Francesco Botticini

Before pausing to look at life on the Grand Canal in Venice:

Canaletto

It's great to roam again, even if, when I turn to look at a mirror; I see an old man, puzzled by this streaming world, distressed by infirmity, unsure about the past, the present or the future....  Something like Johann Sebastian Bach toward the end of his life....

Rembrandt: Self Portrait at the age of 63

It's great to roam again, even if only in my mind's eye. So, back outside, I see a Virgin and Child.  Well, perhaps not exactly that, but the tenderness of mother's attention and the cool confidence of the child make me wonder at the ongoing flow of humanity and its resilience.

So, bach (sic) to the river, and that swirling coalescence of notes and molecules that rises and falls with the tide, but continues incessantly under the bridge.  Watch a bubble, or an eddy, and see it disappear.  Watch a leaf, or a discarded bottle top, watch it spin and dip and carry on, towards the sea and some form of watery death. Hear the embellishments, the cadenzas, the repetitions....

The river flows

It flows to the sea

Wherever that river goes

That's where I want to be

The Ballad of Easy Rider as sung by Roger McGuinn, but derived from a note on a paper napkin by Bob Dylan, follows the current, which perhaps began with Edmund Spenser in Prothalamion.... 

People dance in the evening, the river slipping away past us all, tugging at our lives, eroding the time we have left, while shining Godzillas reach for the clouds on the far bank.

T S Eliot took up the theme in part three of The Waste Land, The Fire Sermon:

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept... Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

Youth seems oblivious of the drift. Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme......

And, from another angle, the Shard rises to the heavens: Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubilieret....

I wonder.  I wander.  My head returns to another song about the river.  Ewan MacColl's Sweet Thames, Flow Softly.  Although it has nothing, really, to do with this piece, it is a beautiful song about London and the river, and never better performed than by Christy Moore with the damaged angel Sinéad O'Connor (Shuhada Sadaqat) harmonising shyly in the chorus.  Have a look and a listen:  https://youtu.be/Tgwtl-s0CNI

So then, into the fading night, join me by the riverside, while lights glisten on the surface and  Bob and Leon join in the ruffling waves:

But this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though

No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow

And as long as it does I’ll just sit here

And watch the river flow

Watching the River  Flow

Bob Dylan, 1971

The Peak District

I'm a Rambler.....

My accommodation (as seen above) may not seem much, but, as Ewan MacColl (James Henry Miller) sang:

I've been over Snowdon, I've slept upon Crowdon, 

I've camped by the Wain Stones as well, 

I've sunbathed on Kinder, been burned to a cinder, 

And many more things I can tell. 

My rucksack has oft been me pillow, 

The heather has oft been me bed, 

And sooner than part from the mountains, 

I think I would rather be dead. 

This song, based on a traditional one, became one of the theme tunes of the movement against Enclosure. Following the industrial revolution, walking in the countryside had become an essential part of recreation for hard-working mill-workers who lived in the cramped conditions of Victorian cities, but wealthy land-owners were increasingly trying to stave the flow of the hoi-polloi across their grouse moors and grazing land.  The confrontation came to a head on April 24th 1932 when groups of ramblers left Manchester and Sheffield for an organised trespass onto Kinder Scout, the highest peak in Derbyshire.

Ewan MacColl was responsible for publicity in the planning of the trespass, and his song subsequently became highly popular with hiking folk, and can still oft be heard when beer and guitars come together:

I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way, 

I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way, 

I may be a wage slave on Monday, 

But I am a free man on Sunday. 

The Kinder Trespass led to violent clashes with gamekeepers and some of the ramblers were arrested and imprisoned.  However in the following weeks much larger trespasses were held and public opinion began to move in favour of the trespassers.

This led eventually to the start of an access movement that saw the establishment of National Parks, long distance footpaths including National Trails and finally, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 which granted unrestricted access to 10,000 square kilometres of countryside in England and Wales. (See more at: http://www.ramblers.org.uk/what-we-do/what-we-have-done/past-campaigns/kinder-80.aspx#sthash.siFHHkhr.dpuf)

Ewan MacColl, once married to Joan Littlewood, and father of the late Kirsty MacColl, had a file opened on him by MI5 when local police tagged him as a communist with very extreme views but his efforts led to the formation of the Ramblers Association, and today (he died in 1989) he is commemorated in Russell Square on a plaque which includes the citation: Folk Laureate – Singer – Dramatist – Marxist ... in recognition of strength and singleness of purpose of this fighter for Peace and Socialism....

Cotton Grass atop the Kinder Plateau

The top of Kinder Scout is 636 metres (2,087 ft) above sea level. One way of getting there is to ascend Jacob's Ladder, which, apart from anything else, is wonderful for being referred to favourably in Christian, Jewish and Muslim literature....

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

The plateau is dynamically varied, with exposed peat and strange shapes sculpted in millstone grit.  Henry Moore is said to have been inspired by outcrops fashioned by ice and rain here, but you do not have to be a famous artist to imagine that what you see is not quite what you see.....  After all, the over sixties who have clambered breathlessly here are perhaps short on oxygen to the brain and high on adrenalin.....

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Ogden Nash: Very Like A Whale

Nearer the ground, and closer to the homely, bell heather provides a refreshing splash of colour to an otherwise strenuously bleak palette....

Then, slipping southwards from the Dark Peak, limestone becomes the stratum of the day, and fields hold their delineations in dry stone, with the landscape peppered by barns and salted by livestock..... 

The status of National Park (the first such designation in the UK, in 1951) has brought touristic stability to the area, but this has meant increases in property prices which inevitably have affected local residents. However, traditional stone buildings survive and somehow their owners are managing to access funds to preserve them, without necessarily altering their function....

In the so called White Peak part of the National Park, Dovedale has long been a justifiably popular destination: Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte - in no especial order - and, believe it or not, Richmal Crompton (!) have all been touched in some way by the landscape here....

And, historically, Bonnie Prince Charlie is said to have stopped by (his thunderbox is still in use in Hartington Hall)....

And a more modern Prince Charlie can be seen in a photo by the bar of The George in Alstonefield....

But that is by the way.  The river Dove has entertained human activity for some fifteen thousand years, with plentiful evidence in limestone caves to support this claim.  

The first scene that strikes you upon descending into the valley, is the River Dove fringed with sedge, and stopped with a variety of small tufts of Grass hurrying between two hills, one of which about six years ago was cloathed with wood; the wood is again getting forwards; the other had a number of cattle grazing upon it. The scene was pleasing –

William Wordsworth, 8th June 1788

Brown trout manage their busy lives here, and daily seek to avoid the crowds, but they have been immortalised through the relationship of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton, who, between them produced The Compleat Angler (first published in 1653, but with a second part about fly fishing by Cotton in 1676). Apart from the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, no book has been reprinted more often than the Compleat Angler (though I have heard Pilgrim's Progress put forward for this particular Booker Prize). As a treatise on the art of fishing (and cooking coarse fish) it has never been bettered.

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue:  The Compleat Angler (pt. I, ch. II)

Though not all fishers have read the handbook......

Dipper in the Dove

Bird life is one of the attractions of Beresford, Wolfscote, Biggin, and Dove Dales. These steep sided valleys are now protected habitats and much enjoyment can be had by simply sitting back and watching the show, from the simplest duck white water rafting.....

To the shadiest wren chattering away in the shadows of a tree....

To a smart raptor (an immature or female Kestrel) resting after an incredible flight in pursuit of a butterfly, mirroring each clumsy flapping turn like some sophisticated Russian missile...

The Dove, in any season, is a delightful river.  River enough to continue year round, but not so grand as to support shipping and have lent itself to human degradation....

In the meantime, we stroll and we chat, and we admire....

I once loved a maid, a spot welder by trade,
She was fair as the Rowan in bloom,
And the bloom of her eye matched the blue moorland sky,
I wooed her from April to June.
On the day that we should have been married,
I went for a ramble instead,
For sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead 

And we relax....

My rucksack has oft been me pillow,
The heather has oft been me bed,
And sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead. 

Though the Peak District is but a Saturday Night Fever from the conurbations of Manchester, Sheffield and Derby, and therefore not much further from Liverpool, Leeds and even Birmingham (so perhaps a third of the population of Britain live within a radius of fifty miles of this National Park), it is varied and corrugated enough to support innumerable visitors. The best times to be here may not be weekends in the school holidays, but then it can still be busy in the rainiest, and coldest, of times.  I have walked in driving rain and not been alone.....

And braved the springtime snows in splendid company.....

But there is space enough for all.  The Monsal Viaduct used to carry passengers from Derby to Manchester, and with five arches spanning 300 feet it is one of the wonders of our industrial past, but today it only carries hikers and bikers (and would-be artists!)

The Monsal Viaduct

And along with the natural, and industrial, marvels, the area also has many vernacular attractions as well, at least for the moment..... For example, The Barley Mow, a Jacobean-style inn at Kirk Ireton, which dates back to 1683, is one of the very few English pubs to have retained the traditional image of what a public house used to look like in times past.....

Here is the ancient floor,

Footworn and hollowed and thin,

Here was the former door

Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,

Smiling into the fire;

He who played stood there,

Bowing it higher and higher.

Childlike, I danced in a dream;

Blessings emblazoned that day;

Everything glowed with a gleam;

Yet we were looking away!

The Self-Unseeing

Thomas Hardy

While not far away, at Chatsworth, Debo (the Duchess of Devonshire) was busily writing to Paddy Leigh Fermor (in 2005) that Here is chaos. I'm on the brink of moving, trying to undo 46 years-worth of GLUT....

But me?  I'm a Rambler, and I find the quiet rot and cardboard box-like interior of my caravan sufficient. Tomorrow I will be gone, and those framed stains on the walls that I called watercolours will be someone else's forgeries....  This is a place to be outdoors, and I am grateful to Ewan MacColl and his contemporaries for blazing the trail that made way for the Long Distance Paths, and access to land that hitherto had been somehow privatised.  As MacColl said:

He called me a louse and said "Think of the grouse". 

Well I thought, but I still couldn't see 

Why old Kinder Scout and the moors round about 

Couldn't take both the poor grouse and me. 

He said "All this land is my master's". 

At that I stood shaking my head, 

No man has the right to own mountains 

Any more than the deep ocean bed.

So I'll walk where I will over mountain and hill 

And I'll lie where the bracken is deep, 

I belong to the mountains, the clear running fountains 

Where the grey rocks lie rugged and steep. 

I've seen the white hare in the gulleys, 

And the curlew fly high overhead, 

And sooner than part from the mountains 

I think I would rather be dead. 

I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way, 

I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way, 

I may be a wage slave on Monday, 

But I am a free man on Sunday.