The Best Goal I Ever Scored
Alas! George Bowling and George Orwell’s Coming Up For Air: the spot where I scored my best ever goal is now a housing estate.
The Best Goal I Ever Scored
It must have been 1965,
We were having a lunchtime kick-about.
‘It’s Good News Week’ by Hedgehoppers’ Anonymous
Was playing on someone’s transistor
Just behind the goal nearest the school,
Phil Vine was puffing out on the wing,
And crossed hopefully towards the edge of the box,
Where I had strayed, and where I stood,
Predicting the precise path of the ball.
Alternative Heritage Walk
STROUD RADICAL HISTORY
ALTERNATIVE HERITAGE WALK
Friday, 20th April, 2018
A circular walk from Stonehouse Station to Standish, Haresfield, Ring Hill, Randwick Woods and back to Stonehouse. Ancient Barrows, mediaeval churches, Romano-British farmsteads, a moated stronghold, a hillfort and old woodland. Throughout the walk the construction of the controversial Javelin Park incinerator will dominate the view to the west. We will explore alternative historical narratives via walking through this complex landscape.
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Inprint Eulogy
The Inprint shop and building in the High Street in Stroud,
Resembles nothing so much as something out of Dickens,
An Old Curiosity Shop,
Defying straight lines of logic:
A seeming hexagonal structure,
With Wemmick-like turrets at the top;
The shop doorway on the corner at an angle,
With a fading palimpsest gable end advertisement
For something delicious and ‘home made’,
And a mysterious door numbered 31a,
That might – or might not- take us up flights of stairs,
Past so many Great Expectations,
And so to Mr. Wemmick’s castle up on high.
But far better than such an ascension,
Let us examine the shop windows:
Displays that follow the high ideals of public broadcasting,
Spectacles of books and comics and posters and maps,
All artfully and painstakingly arranged,
A tableau of colour and half-remembered past time,
A street mis en scene that arrests the eye,
And one which informs, educates and entertains,
A business that improves the mind of the passer-by,
As well as tempting the bibliophile;
Fractal Light Show at St. Laurence’s
They met by a sacred oak tree:
The Celtic-British church delegates,
And Laurence and Augustine from Rome;
A sacred oak near to a great river near here:
At Cricklade on the River Thames perhaps,
Or Arlingham on the River Severn;
The wind soughed through the branches
Silver light stippled the water,
A coracle cast its steady shadow,
In the year of our Lord,
603.
A millennium and more later,
A scintillant refulgence,
A dazzle of artful light;
There, in Saint Laurence’s in Stroud,
Fractals of illumination,
Stained glass manuscripts;
Bristol And The Spanish Civil War
24 March BRISTOL
24/03/2018
IBMT’s annual Len Crome Memorial Conference, with historians Professor Tom Buchanan and Dr Emily Mason speaking about:
Aid Spain: the mobilisation of support for the anti-fascist cause among the British people during the Spanish Civil War
Venue: Colston Hall, Colston Street, Bristol BS1 5AR.
Time: 11am (registration from 10.30am) to 4pm.
Plus: Music from Amanda Boyd & David Nash, Ewan McLennan and the Red Notes Choir, and films, exhibition and stalls.
Entrance: £20 (£15 students).
Booking: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/len-crome-memorial-conference-2018-t… or send cheques (include email if receipt is required) to: IBMT Treasurer, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R0DU.
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Woodchester Roman Villa
Boudonus a servant in the Villa Magni Widinis speaks:
‘My family have always been servants to the Great Family whose own ancestors had the villa built in the valley made with stone from the hills around; they were the Great Family before the Dobunni became part of the Roman Empire. My father said as his own father told him that the Roman men were very clever because they left our tribes as they were. In Britain we had our kings, priests and warriors, craftsmen and farmers; we had rich lands feeding our cows, sheep and growing grain. The Roman men left this because they could see it worked and all they had to do was make our noble men willing clients. Only they didn’t like our priests, the druids were too political refusing to acknowledge the divine status of the emperor. You know what happened to them’
‘We gave them tax,- yes that meant our grain-kept the peace–yes kept it because we were too busy scraping up enough grain for ourselves to think of disturbing Roman peace-and our nobility were left alone to enjoy the luxuries of the Roman Empire: lots of wine was the main thing and more skin off our hands working to keep the taxes up. At Villa Magni Widinis the Great Family are the richest here in Dobunnic territory and around them gather all their nobles who live in smaller Roman villas around the vale. My family has always been proud to be servants at Villa Magni Widinis.
It is not just a big house, no the villa is a place where there is industry and where the grain and wool from all the villa estate are sorted and made ready for being sold at the market at Glevum. Through the villa gates you will see there are buildings for pottery, iron working, brewing, baking, carpentry and weaving. They are done by families like mine who live inside the villa walls. It is the shepherds and field labourers who live outside and they are the poorest, but even they have to come to the villa to be paid in grain, beer, salt and wool.
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