Author: Sandra Meech

Stroud And The Inuit

Stuart

We are off on holiday soon so wanted to share the information
I was relating this info whilst stewarding at Landsdown gallery on the weekend.

I am Canadian living in the UK and while doing the Diploma in stitched textiles at East Berkshire college many years ago, used the Art and caribou skin clothing of the Inuit in Baker Lake as my main theme of research and work.

I had read in an article in Piecework magazine from the USA about the women in Baker Lake using what was described as a wool/felt material called Stroud to make their colourful naive wallhangings that are still being made today.

The co-operative was set up in the 70’s by the Canada Council to encourage Inuit women to continue sewing (the nomadic families were being brought into communities in the 1950’s, 60’s because of severe winters, education for children and malnutrition).

There was a concern that they would stop sewing the caribou skin clothes (for hunter husbands) and lose sewing skills (which were evident in the applique and beadwork on their amauti coats.)  They thought they would be more attracted to modern winter wear.
This did not happen because man made cloth garments were not warm enough.

Stuart

We are off on holiday soon so wanted to share the information
I was relating this info whilst stewarding at Landsdown gallery on the weekend.

I am Canadian living in the UK and while doing the Diploma in stitched textiles at East Berkshire college many years ago, used the Art and caribou skin clothing of the Inuit in Baker Lake as my main theme of research and work.

I had read in an article in Piecework magazine from the USA about the women in Baker Lake using what was described as a wool/felt material called Stroud to make their colourful naive wallhangings that are still being made today.

The co-operative was set up in the 70’s by the Canada Council to encourage Inuit women to continue sewing (the nomadic families were being brought into communities in the 1950’s, 60’s because of severe winters, education for children and malnutrition).

There was a concern that they would stop sewing the caribou skin clothes (for hunter husbands) and lose sewing skills (which were evident in the applique and beadwork on their amauti coats.)  They thought they would be more attracted to modern winter wear.
This did not happen because man made cloth garments were not warm enough.

So this co-operative in Baker Lake came about and brought in bolts of felted wool – often very colourful to make the wallhangings that are sold in galleries in many places in N/ America.  The women had stories to tell and would applique shapes onto the cloth and add intense embroidery stitch.

The dense felted wool material was referred to as Stroud.   I had not come across that term of wool fabric, and asked about, when I visited Winnipeg – the curator of the Museum  there (it has a huge collection of caribou skin clothing and a large Hudson Bay archive collection) if she knew the term, she did not.  But in chatting further, she said that the wool material that originally came to Canada through the Hudson Bay Company for the RCMP red uniforms was a similar wool and perhaps when it arrived and the crates were marked ‘stroud’ the material was called this  –  the place it came from.   I guess similar to way we call vacuum cleaners ‘hoovers’.

This seemed to solve the mystery for me.     I don’t really know who actually first called it stroud and would think that the uniform material has been sourced elsewhere for many years.  There were from the turn of the century plenty of wool and cotton mills in Canada as well.

The wood felt today that the women sew with is like a blanket material and very colourful.  I expect the end of bolts are donated as they never know what colours they will be working with.  The wallhangings are often on a dark background.  I would expect they come from somewhere in N. America.  I was able to purchase two large wallhangings when I was there.

So that is the extent of my knowledge.
I spent 3 weeks in two communities in northern Canada some years ago.
The women never stopped making caribou skin clothing and they prefer and depend on the animal for everything – meat, skins, sinew.  Still today.  They may ride around the community in snowmobiles but it is still so cold in the winter  -50F that two layers of Caribou skin is the warmest clothing.  Grocery stores abound and they can get most all Canadian goods but it is very expensive so mostly caribou and Arctic Char is eaten.

Hope this has been informative.

Sandra Meech

—
Sandra Meech
artist,author and teacher
www.sandrameech.com
http://sandrameech-art.blogspot.com

Attached are two images of Inuit wallhangings.
The first will have to be nameless as I don’t have the maker’s name.
The 2nd is by Irene Avaalaaqiaq and you can google her name and see more pieces.

The hangings tell stories – often half man half animal motifs, or a day in the life of a community – animals, hunters etc.
I hope the new hangings being produced are still as naive as these were.  Some with heavy embroidery stitch – stranded cottons used.

I have one of Irene’s and met her (can’t find my images at the moment and they are wrapped up in the attic at the moment). Mine is bright red and white but you can see the ‘red’ in many of her pieces.
I don’t know where they source the rolls of wool felt. When I asked the helper, at the co-op in Baker she didn’t know.

I am not sure if it is still running, but the women did see it as a way of earning extra money so will be still ‘making’ I am sure.
The art/prints and textiles from Baker Lake, Rankin Inlet and other communities is quite sought after in some circles.

God Save Great Thomas Paine

Why, sirrah, and why, madam, hast thou not read thy Tom Paine?

‘Kings succeed each other not as rationals but as animals …
an hereditary governor is as inconsistent as an hereditary author.’

And you needn’t visit Paris in this, the year of our Lord,
Seventeen Hundred and Ninety Two,
To witness republican enthusiasm,
You could travel on the turnpike to Sheffield instead,
And witness the 5,000 cutler ‘republican levelers’,
The ‘Sheffield sans-culottes’ with their Angel of Peace
Proffering Tom Paine’s Rights of Man to Britannia,
While across the land, parodies of the national anthem are sung:
God Save Great Thomas Paine,
While
AT THE FEDERATION THEATRE IN EQUALITY SQUARE,
On Thursday
Will be Performed
A new and entertaining Farce, called LA GUILLOTINE!
Or GEORGE’S HEAD IN THE BASKET!
Dramatis Personae: Numpy the Third …
Tight Rope Dancing from The Lamp-post,
By Messrs. CANTERBURY, YORK, DURHAM &.
And
Pamphlets such as King Killing;
The Happy Reign of King George the Last;
100, 000 people meeting at Copenhagen Fields, Islington;
The King’s carriage attacked:
‘No War! No King! No Pitt!’
The following sung to the tune of ‘God Save the King’
At Drury Lane Theatre:
‘And when George’s Poll
Shall in the basket roll,
Let mercy then control
The Guillotine’

Why, sirrah, and why, madam, hast thou not read thy Tom Paine?

‘Kings succeed each other not as rationals but as animals …
an hereditary governor is as inconsistent as an hereditary author.’

And you needn’t visit Paris in this, the year of our Lord,
Seventeen Hundred and Ninety Two,
To witness republican enthusiasm,
You could travel on the turnpike to Sheffield instead,
And witness the 5,000 cutler ‘republican levelers’,
The ‘Sheffield sans-culottes’ with their Angel of Peace
Proffering Tom Paine’s Rights of Man to Britannia,
While across the land, parodies of the national anthem are sung:
God Save Great Thomas Paine,
While
AT THE FEDERATION THEATRE IN EQUALITY SQUARE,
On Thursday
Will be Performed
A new and entertaining Farce, called LA GUILLOTINE!
Or GEORGE’S HEAD IN THE BASKET!
Dramatis Personae: Numpy the Third …
Tight Rope Dancing from The Lamp-post,
By Messrs. CANTERBURY, YORK, DURHAM &.
And
Pamphlets such as King Killing;
The Happy Reign of King George the Last;
100, 000 people meeting at Copenhagen Fields, Islington;
The King’s carriage attacked:
‘No War! No King! No Pitt!’
The following sung to the tune of ‘God Save the King’
At Drury Lane Theatre:
‘And when George’s Poll
Shall in the basket roll,
Let mercy then control
The Guillotine’

Or you could visit Uley in 1795,
To read a threatening letter:

O remember ye poor in distress by ye high prs of provision if not the consiquens will be fatall to a great many in all parishis round a bout here how do ye think a man can support a famly by a quarter flour for a shillin and here is a man in this parish do say the poore was never beter of as they be now a fatel blow forhim and his hous and all his property we have redy 5000 sworn to be true to the last & we have 510000 of ball redy and can have pouder at a word & every think fitin for ye purpose no King but a constitution down down down o fatall dow high caps & proud hats for ever dow down we all.

Or hear the words of Sir George Paul on our locality:
’‘the cry of want of bread … forms a body of insurgents, amongst them
are mixed a number of seditious persons’,
And the Earl of Berkeley
‘A vein of bad materials runs through the lower order in the clothing part of the county which still continues to study Tom Paine with a few political clubs
of the very dregs and of T. Paine’s cash’.

Why, sirrah, and why, madam, hast thou not read thy Tom Paine?

‘Kings succeed each other not as rationals but as animals …
an hereditary governor is as inconsistent as an hereditary author.’

The Famous Five, Windrush, Walter Tull and Enoch Powell

The Famous Five and Enoch Powell and Walter Tull

What an extraordinary coincidence,
That on the fiftieth anniversary
Of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech,
Our railway stations should be awash
With ‘Five Go on Holiday’ GWR posters;
Four children – well adults really – and a dog,
Escaping to a whitewashed cottage,
In a West Country all white fastness,
Where BBC received pronunciation,
Snobbish condescension,
And lower class deference
Keep everyone in their place,
Abetted by kindly constables on the beat,
Who will willingly tell you the time.

The Famous Five and Enoch Powell and Walter Tull

What an extraordinary coincidence,
That on the fiftieth anniversary
Of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech,
Our railway stations should be awash
With ‘Five Go on Holiday’ GWR posters;
Four children – well adults really – and a dog,
Escaping to a whitewashed cottage,
In a West Country all white fastness,
Where BBC received pronunciation,
Snobbish condescension,
And lower class deference
Keep everyone in their place,
Abetted by kindly constables on the beat,
Who will willingly tell you the time.

And in the real world far away from cliffs and coves,
Far away from picnics, cream cakes and ginger beer:
Youth services, early intervention, Sure Start,
And imaginative initiatives are being cut,
Young men and women are dying in the streets,
Their faces appearing only in a newspaper,
Not on a railway station advertisement
That portrays a holiday westwards
As an escape from the present tense;
And other black faces appear in the newspaper,
The children of the Windrush generation,
Now applying for pensions,
But threatened with deportation,
Even though they have worked hard here all their consequent lives:
What an extraordinary coincidence,
That on the fiftieth anniversary
Of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech,
Our railway stations should be awash
With ‘Five Go on Holiday’ GWR posters –
So let’s hope the new memorialization of Walter Tull,
Professional footballer and the army’s first black officer,
2nd Lieutenant Walter Tull,
Once a printer, grandson of a slave, orphaned son of a joiner,
KIA 25th March 1918, aged 29,
Eulogised by his Commanding Officer,
“The battalion and company have lost a faithful officer
and personally, I have lost a friend”,
And so popular with his men,
That they repeatedly tried to get him back,
As he lay dead in No Mans’ Land,
Let’s hope the new memorialisation of Walter,
Can contribute to the saving of young lives,
And the ending of Windrush heartbreak:

Otherwise his life was lost in vain.

Walter Daniel John Tull (28 April 1888 – 25 March 1918)

‘We are positioned in the knowledge that we are living
in the afterlives of slavery, sitting in the room with history …’

Christina Sharpe In the Wake On Blackness and Being
Duke University Press 2018

Paris 1968 50th Anniversary and The Prince Albert Beer Fest Anniversary too

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.

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.

Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié ne font que se creuser un tombeau.

Those who make revolutions by halves do but dig themselves a grave.

On ne revendiquera rien, on ne demandera rien. On prendra, on occupera.

We will claim nothing, we will ask for nothing. We will take, we will occupy.

* Ne négociez pas avec les patrons. Abolissez-les.

Don’t negotiate with the bosses. Abolish them.

Le patron a besoin de toi, tu n’as pas besoin de lui.

The boss needs you, you don’t need him.

Ni Dieu ni maître!

Neither god nor master!

Comment penser librement à l’ombre d’une chapelle?

How can one think freely in the shadow of a chapel?

Vivez sans temps morts – jouissez sans entraves.

Live without dead time – enjoy without chains.

* Il est interdit d’interdire.

It is forbidden to forbid.

Dans une société qui a aboli toute aventure, la seule aventure qui reste est celle d’abolir la société.

In a society that has abolished all adventures, the only adventure left is to abolish society.

L’émancipation de l’homme sera totale ou ne sera pas.

The liberation of humanity will be total or it will not be.

Je suis venu. J’ai vu. J’ai cru.

I came. I saw. I believed.

Cours, camarade, le vieux monde est derrière toi!

Run, comrade, the old world is behind you!

Il est douloureux de subir les chefs, il est encore plus bête de les choisir.

It’s painful to suffer the bosses; it’s even stupider to pick them.

La révolution est incroyable parce que vraie.

The revolution is incredible because it is real.

Les motions tuent l’émotion.

Motions kill emotions.

Bannissons les applaudissements, les spectacle est partout.

Let us ban all applause, the spectacle is everywhere.

Un seul week-end non révolutionnaire est infiniment plus sanglant qu’un mois de révolution permanente.

A single nonrevolutionary weekend is infinitely more bloody than a month of permanent revolution.

Le bonheur est une idée neuve.

Happiness is a new idea.

Plus je fais l’amour, plus j’ai envie de faire la révolution.
Plus je fais la révolution, plus j’ai envie de faire l’amour.

The more I make love, the more I want to make revolution.
The more I make revolution, the more I want to make love.

Je jouis dans les pavés.

I find my orgasms among the paving stones.

La perspective de jouir demain ne me consolera jamais de l’ennui d’aujord’hui.

The prospect of finding pleasure tomorrow will never compensate for today’s boredom.

Construire une révolution, c’est aussi briser toutes les chaines intérieures.

Building a revolution is also breaking all the inner chains.

Le sacré, voilà l’ennemi.

All that is sacred – there is the enemy.

La poésie est dans la rue.

Poetry is in the street.

*La culture est l’inversion de la vie.

Culture is the inversion of life.

L’art est mort, ne consommez pas son cadavre.

Art is dead, don’t consume its corpse.

Ne me libère pas, je m’en charge.

Don’t liberate me, I’ll do it myself.

Si vous pensez pour les autres, les autres penseront pour vous.

If you think for others, others will think for you.

Professeurs vous êtes aussi vieux que votre culture, votre modernisme n’est que la modernisation de la police.

Professors you are as old as your culture, your modernism is only the modernisation of the police.

Debout les damnés de l’Université.

Arise, you wretched of the University.

Même si Dieu existait il faudrait le supprimer.

Even if God existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.

Je t’aime ! Oh ! dites-le avec des pavés !

I love you! Oh, say it with paving stones!

Travailleurs de tous les pays, amusez-vous !

Workers of the world, have fun!

Pouvoir à l’Imagination.

Power to the Imagination.

Je participe
Tu participes
Il participe
Nous participons
Vous participez
Ils profitent

I take part
You take part
He takes part
We take part
You all take part
They profit.

Ne changeons pas d’employeurs, changeons l’emploi de la vie.

Let us not change employers, let us change how we employ life.

Stonehouse, Standish and Haresfield Walk

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:

Thanks to Deborah Roberts for the above photos.

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:

‘We are Stroud travellers to an antique land,
Who saw two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the waters … near them, in the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is INCINERATOR, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level river stretches far away.’

On through sinuous paths through wide open fields:
Blackthorn smoking in the vaporous air,
And not just a profusion of spring flowers,
But also a profusion of names for the same flower,
Down there, by the gravesides:
Cuckoo pint, arum lily, lord and ladies;
Lady’s smock, or shall we call it cuckoo flower?
Then on past shaded, modest violets,
Scented wild garlic,
Alexander, primroses, bluebells,
Stitchwort, hemlock, honesty,
With tales of Tyburn Tree and conspiracy,
Lost Roman settlements and treasure,
Medieval moats and mottes,
Skylarks soaring and rooks calling to their parliament,
Past echoes of milk churns at long lost country platforms,
To sit beneath the milk-white pear blossom,
Here at the Beacon and Railway Hotel,
And the level crossing,
Penning these lines,
Before ascending to Haresfield Beacon,
And ramparts and ditches and bulwarks,
With Will Kempe morris dancing for Elizabethan company,
To reach a copse where Robin Treefellow hypnotised us:

Up on Broadbarrow Green
grazing my milch cow and two sheep
on the rough turf
my two feet on common earth.
The wind blows freely about the haw thickets
loosens smells of young green beech leaves
put in mind
of my life
hard grace from God
services and labour through the year.
I lend all myself to fending
off hunger.
Broadbarrow Green is the only earth
I can stand on without bending my back
in toil to my lord
no only my milch cow and two sheep
are my care up here.
Up where on ridge and edge
I can see below
Standish Manor
with open fields
that know my foot’s trudge
my aching bones.
So I speak their names
to send them to the clouds:

Stony Field
Lynch Field
Little and Great Combe Fields
Ridley Field
Odmarlow Field
Clayardin Field
Wayardin Field
Shutfurrow
High Field
Podley Field
Cooknell Field
Broadcroft
Great Harefield and Little
Charcroft Field
Moncraft Field
Marsh Field
Meadland Field
Breach Field and the Stopple.

I’d linger a while longer
on Broadbarrow Green.
For play and merriment
in bagfuls bids me shrug
the fields for a snatch in this heaven
and know that grace of being light footed again like my youth
when I chased Mabel about the lizzory trees.

Addendum: ‘In The Open Air‘ by Richard Jefferies published in 1885 –
‘There shone on the banks white stars among the grass, petals delicately white in a whorl of rays – light that had started radiating from a centre and become fixed – … Give me that old road, the same flowers – they were only stitchwort….’

The Yin And Yang Of Football

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.

By Clay Sinclair.

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.

I also follow Forest Green Rovers football club.

I have been following with interest their first season in the English Football League. The club are now known more for their cuisine than their football, as it prides itself on being the only vegan football club in the world. It has been a tough season for FGR and they have flirted this season with relegation and an immediate return to non-league football. But on Saturday they gained a much-needed win against local rivals Cheltenham Town. What pleased me most about this game was not the result but the little bit of mild hooliganism that the Forest Green ‘casuals’ expressed before, during and after the game. Now I’m pretty much a pacifist, can’t stand violence in any form, and am glad I can go to a football match and know I won’t get attacked. So why did I smile when I heard a group of lads had been causing disturbances in Cheltenham town centre, letting off green smoke canisters in the stand and invading the pitch to celebrate the winning goal?

The answer maybe lies in the ancient Taoist symbol of Yin and Yang. Jordan Peterson uses this imagery to help describe order and chaos. How both are needed for us to flourish and grow. A life controlled by order is dull, unimaginative, predictable and at worst, totalitarian. In contrast, lives dominated by chaos resemble a living hell and frequently lead to unhappiness, unfulfilled potential and even premature death. He writes “To straddle that fundamental duality is to be balanced: to have one foot firmly planted in order and security, and the other in chaos, possibility, growth and adventure.”

Football as a sport is a little Yin and Yang. There are two teams in opposition, wearing uniforms of contrasting hues and offer a divine combination of brutality and subtlety. I would argue that it is also the perfect symbol of order and chaos. The rules of the beautiful game are rather simple if you exclude the offside rule. But within that framework there are infinite possibilities of how a final score of 0-0 can be achieved.

As an example: I have two sons. One plays cricket and the other football. To stop me interfering with the children (with my unsolicited coaching advice), I take photos and send them to the parents, coaches etc… What I have noticed is that almost every photo in football is vastly more interesting than the cricket photos. Cricket is about rules, technique and has a clearly defined action area. Bowling crease, batting crease etc… The movements created by both batter, and bowler, are repetitive. The photos are therefore predictable and to be honest, quite boring. Whereas when I download my latest batch of football photos I am constantly surprised by the variety of shots. Bodies contorted in different shapes, player positions and combinations always changing and the ball never in the same place twice.

Is there a better sport that symbolises the perfect balance between order and chaos?

But the point I really want to make is what is happening to the fans, what is happening to football in England and what is happening at Forest Green Rovers.

If you look at these through the lens of order and chaos/ Yin and Yang it really starts to make sense. While the authorities have taken a little of the chaos away from what happens on the pitch with rules that reduce the chances of a broken leg or bruised ego, they are really the same as have always been. But the real changes in football have been for the fans. The biggest being the elimination of terraces for teams in England’s highest divisions. The terrace is naturally the place where chaos, creativity and passion thrive. It is from the terraces that conversations are entwined, that ideas are hatched and life is lived in flow.

But in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster the terrace is now perceived as a relic of the past.

There is a cost to this policy and is maybe symbolic of our ever controlling society and creeping totalitarian state. English football has become sterile at the highest level and I suggest it might not just be because of over inflated player wages, match tickets and media saturation. Could it be the elimination of the football terrace?

Is it a coincidence that Germany has some of the most passionate supporters? Germans are not perceived as people of the most emotional nation. Put them in a safe terrace, which all clubs have and passion happens. Flags waved are not those handed out by well meaning club owners. They are home designed and made, reflecting the organic enthusiasm the supporters have for their team. There are even smoke bombs, which add to the atmosphere.

Is it a coincidence that the passionate, creative supporters stand in solidarity on the terraces tolerating the worst views and often the lack of shelter from the elements?

I think not.

So what is happening at Forest Green? The well-meaning owner with genuine ambitions to change the world for the better has invested his millions in to his local football club which not long ago had a fan base of a few hundred. The club is doing well and is used to promote green issues, environmental sustainability and veganism as some of the solutions to help humankind. Meat and milk of the traditional variety are not available in the ground.

While this does exert further control over the supporters, Forest Green fans of the more passionate variety congregate in the South Stand terrace. This is where the rebellion festers. This is the area the manager fears when things are not going well and it’s where all passion emanates on match day. Healthy chaos and rebellion are on the terraces of The New Lawn and long may it continue.

My fear is that this creativity will be crushed by those who wish to sterilise football even further to placate the authorities who wish to control all aspects of the game.

Yin and Yang football please, along with a few smoke bombs.

Collecting Football Autographs

Do you remember collecting autographs,
When the football specials steamed back west,
When the last faint gleams of terrace street sun
Slipped behind the shadows of the stands,
And the ground went abruptly quiet and numb,
When the crowd made its hot chocolate way home
And the terraces and streets were suddenly empty;
And do you remember the mayhem outside the players’ entrance –
Crowds of kids, scrap books and pens thrust upwards,
Huddled together by the red and white fence,
Hoping for names of star centre forwards,
Like me with my scrapbook with pictures stuck in
With flour paste, from all the Sunday papers,
Of players, arms aloft with toothless grins,
In wintry darkness, mud, mist, rain and vapours.

Do you remember collecting autographs,
When the football specials steamed back west,
When the last faint gleams of terrace street sun
Slipped behind the shadows of the stands,
And the ground went abruptly quiet and numb,
When the crowd made its hot chocolate way home
And the terraces and streets were suddenly empty;
And do you remember the mayhem outside the players’ entrance –
Crowds of kids, scrap books and pens thrust upwards,
Huddled together by the red and white fence,
Hoping for names of star centre forwards,
Like me with my scrapbook with pictures stuck in
With flour paste, from all the Sunday papers,
Of players, arms aloft with toothless grins,
In wintry darkness, mud, mist, rain and vapours.
But my best prize was to have my programme signed
Open in the middle, with teams in 2-3-5 formation –
If you could get all 22 to sign on their lines
In symmetrical pattern – such elation!
It gave me order out of chaos,
Form out of function, and a record
Of events. You could file away reality
And you didn’t give a toss
Whether you won, drew or lost –
For autographs were the real actuality.

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.

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.
It came, as anticipated, at waist height:
I leapt from the ground before the ball’s arrival,
Levitating horizontally a metre up in the air,
To meet the ball on the volley,
And send it hurtling into the top left hand corner
(The nets were up for an after-school house match).
I landed on the ground, elated,
Knowing that Linda Silcox was watching.

It was the best goal I ever scored,
A perfect harmony of prediction, execution and ambience,
And it was all so perfect that I didn’t even celebrate,
I just stood there in a Zen state of bliss,
Knowing that such an immaculate conception
Only happens once in A Good News Week Lifetime.

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.

STROUD RADICAL HISTORY

ALTERNATIVE HERITAGE WALK

Friday, April 20th – 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.

Start 09.15 from Stonehouse station (catch the 09.07 train from Stroud) Approx 6 hours. Mostly footpaths through meadows and farmland and a steep climb via a country lane. No need to book. Just turn up.

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;

Thanks to Deborah Roberts for the above photos.

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;

When you enter the shop via the corner door,
Even though a bell doesn’t ring,
I always hear one,
A magical rite of passage,
For I am sure the bookshelves reach to ceilings
In rooms that seem to carry on for ever,
With posters and pictures and mechanical contrivances
Also inhabiting this liminal space.

It is as unlike George Orwell’s bookshop
As unlike can be –
‘books give off more and nastier dust
than any other class of objects yet invented …’ –
For at night, when Stroud’s High Street is muffled
In pitch-black silence,
The books come alive in Inprint:
Talking of their origins and import,
Boasting of their wisdom and sagacity,
Like nineteenth century backbenchers –
But their colloquy always ends in agreement,
For as dawn approaches,
The Old Curiosity Shop and
A la recherché du temps perdu,
Hop down to the table; stand upright,
And propose their daily toast:
“And so we conclude our discourse
Ladies and gentlemen,
With this question:
Are our owners Goodenough?”
And all the books reply in unison,
Banging the shelves with their pages
And the walls with their spines,
With an occasional tear but always a smile,
“No! They are sans pareil!”

But when the shop closes for the last time,
And Inprint goes online,
There won’t be a dry eye in the house,
When that toast is proposed for the final time –

But remember:
A la recherché du temps perdu
Reminds us all
That we can still enjoy our memories of this wonderful shop,
Be grateful for its existence,
Visit it online,
And cherish our madeleine moments,
For Joy and Mike Goodenough,
And dear old Inprint,
(Please raise your glasses,
Ladies, gentlemen and comrades)
Are simply,
“Sans pareil!”