Category: Past

This anniversary coincides with the 11th Prince Albert Beer & Music Festival, Thursday 3rd – Monday 7th May
Real ale, cider and perry. Food available all weekend.

And here are some slogans from Paris, fifty years ago.
You could declaim one or two,
over a pint or two, if you fancy it.

Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible.

Be realistic, demand the impossible.

La barricade ferme la rue mais ouvre la voie.

The barricade blocks the street but opens the way.

Refusons le dialogue avec nos matraqueurs.

Let us not dialogue with our persecutors.

On achète ton bonheur. Vole-le.

They buy your happiness. Steal it.

Sous les pavés, la plage !

Beneath the paving stones - the beach!

L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire.

Boredom is counterrevolutionary.

*Pas de replâtrage, la structure est pourrie.

No re-plastering, the structure is rotten.

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Words of the day were obvs bound to be
Metaphor, Palimpsest, Serendipitous,
Inscription and Superscription,
On such a walk as this;
A train ride to Stonehouse
And then a walk through what once was Standish Hospital,
Now a Dystopian Derek Jarmanesque seeming film set,
A Victorian mansion built as a temporary home,
Becomes a Great War hospital,
Becomes a sanatorium,
Becomes an NHS hospital,
But now a building site in limbo,
Fencing all around the mouldering mansion,
The once-were stables,
The towering red brick chimney at the boiler house,
The Japanese knotweed infested lakesides,
The art deco sanatorium: its clean air and sunlight,
Long gone the way of all flesh;
We continued past streams and brooks and railway lines and bridges,
Past ridge and furrow and Revenants,
Past round barrows etched on the skyline,
Past churches and graveyards and lost villages
(And Standish, where the body of Edward the Second rested en route
From Berkeley Castle to Gloucester Cathedral),
To see the line of motorway and the cathedral of the Anthropocene:

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It has been said that football is a religion. It is true that for many, attending a match can seem like a religious experience. The blind faith that one day your team will reach the promised land (of the Premiership), the sense of belonging, the passion and the weird attire all replicate that of many religions. Even the killing of the opposition supporters has been known to happen, but thankfully not to Inquisition style proportions.

I suggest that the links to religion don’t stop there.

I have been reading a book recently by the psychologist Jordan Peterson and in his opening chapter he makes the comment “Chaos and order are two of the most fundamental elements of lived experience”. We order our lives in a way that can cope with the chaos that life throws at us, whether it is health issues, financial problems or the elements of nature that are doing their best to make life difficult. read more

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;

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Well that was a walk, that was,
For we explored boundaries,
Spatial, temporal, linguistic, social, spiritual, rational,
By exploring Jon Seagrave’s Stroud map of the subjective,
Of the emotional and the affective,
Rather than the conventional topography:
The boundary between landscape and experience;

We explored the archaeology of industry:
Rusting capstans and a forgotten railway turntable,
John Seagrave was talking of how the turntable
Could accommodate one wagon at a time only,
For the winch down to the gasworks,
And, oddly, in true time-shift fashion,
I noticed a notelet recently dropped
On the ground nearby:
‘DO NOT DOUBLE STACK’;

Pleased by this coincidence of time and space,
This damp leaf typescript revenant,
Our quickening pace took us back
To 1920s guides to London walking,
Gordon Maxwell and HV Morton;
We planned a Captain Swing memorial walk,
Along the old Tetbury branch line,
To the Trouble House Inn;
We talked of walking the 1839 Newport Rising.

We dropped down Time’s wormholes n so many ways
At the Roman villa at Woodchester,
Where Robin Treefellow transported us
With his fictive account of a servant’s life there,
Druid mistletoe shrouding the lime trees;

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Temple Meads via Swindon, 14 quid?
Temple Meads via Gloucester, only 7?
Well, that meant a ride through the warehouse edgelands,
And the buddleia rusting railway lines to Gloucester
(‘YES MATE’, as it said under the bridge),
But there was time enough for a trip down football's memory lane
With a Swindon fan at Stroud:
'No football at Ebley, now, look.
Nothin'.
Nothin’ at Ebley anymore’
I said I was off to watch Derby at Bristol City,
And he recalled
Swindon beating Derby one nil,
November 5th 1968:
'Best Bonfire Night I ever had.'
We talked of FGR:
'You be careful at Forest Green on Friday.
I know about 200 Swindon fans will be at the FGR end.'
'I know mate. I'll be one of them. With my red and white scarf.'
He looked at me with new and slightly befuddled admiration.
He slapped me on the back:
'Fair play on ya, mate. Fair play.'

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