Brimham Rocks. Burn Baby, Burn.

The comments on the 'A Photo Opportunity Presents Its Self' found me thinking of Nidderdale and, more specifically, Brimham Rocks.

I was born about four miles away from this odd place.

In those pre-National Trust days the site was owned by a bloke known locally as Essy.

Occasionally, usually when the sun was out, Essy would sit in a small wooden shelter at the end of the track leading to the rocks and collect a small fee from visitors, I think it was about a shilling, for the privilege of wandering about the place.

Most of the time he wasn't there though.

The tribe I belonged to all those years ago would periodically band together and go bilberry picking at Brimham.

I would retun home with my hands and tongue indelibly stained purple .

For many of my growing up years regular motor-bike trials were held there.

Just try riding a motor-bike there nowadays.

I dare you.

During my heavy MTB phase I attempted to ride up to the rocks and was pounced on by a bearded NT jobs-worth driving a Suzuki 4x4 (olive green, natch).

He proceeded to give a lecture on the erosion caused by bicycles.

In my response to his spouting I used the word irony in the correct context for the first, and probably last, time.

A television drama, Tom Grattan's War, used Brimham Rocks for some scenes.
Through the magic of television the protagonists would run past the rocks and down to the beach and restless ocean.

For a while, after the series had aired, confused visitors to the area would stop local inhabitants (like me) asking 'where can I find the beach?'

All us locals would reply by pointing to the East saying 'It's 70 miles that way' then, pointing to the West, "or 70 miles that way'.

Oh, how we laughed one and all in those far off days.

Incidentally, during the filming of Tom Grattan's War, my Granny was put in a flat spin on seeing an unannounced platoon of WW 1 soldiers marching past her *isolated cottage on Stripe Lane.

For a moment she believed the boys had finally made it home.

She enjoyed the series though.

I've witnessed some amazing feats of climbing at Brimham.

More often than not by a guy called Wally.

I would watch carefully where he found hand and foot holds as he danced up the rock face.

When I went for the same holds they seemed to have vanished.

I wonder what happened to Wally?

(I'm not in a rush to find out BTW).

This brings me to one of the reasons for this post.

Mr. Banished mentioned that some scenes from one of The Omen films were shot there.

This reminded me of Burn.

Burn, how can I put this in way that will neither offend anyone, living or dead, or leave me open to being sued?

Burn spent a good proportion of his waking hours either chemically or herbally 'refreshed' and, much to the amusement of those around him, lived in a reality somewhat removed from the actual fact.

Not that we, his friends, were 'unrefreshed' it's just Burn took it to another level, and stayed there.

I am slumped a squalid bed-sit, not mine I hasten to add, I lived in a proper house with windows and running water.

Others, like me, but unlike me, are also slumped around the room.

We were digging Rip Rig & Panic maaaannnn.

The door burst open causing the occupants of the room to dash in headlong animation for the various precious wraps and bags they'd invested their disposable income on.

Bad move BTW.
Leave your stash exactly where it is if you find yourself visited by the redoubtable forces of law and order.

'What, me officer? No, I have no illegal substances about my person, unlike these drug fiends who kidnapped me and forced me, against my will i might add, to ingest their foul concoctions and perform actions so abhorrent to my nature that I shall spend the rest of my days ruminating on the follies I have been exposed to in this room.

Can I go home now, please?'

Anyway, it wasn't 'dem Babylon, it was Burn.

Burn is breathless with excitement.

He has cycled at breakneck speed (about 11 miles as the Burn flies) to deliver his news.

He'd just been to Brimham Rocks and seen the Bee Gees!

The room became strangely silent, all attention on Burn.

'You've fuckin' lost it Burn'.

I can't remember who said that, but it seemed to be the general consensus.

Burn insisted and insisted he'd seen the Bee Gees at Brimham Rocks.

Eventually, in the face of merciless taunting, Burn did 'loose it' and stormed out of the squalid bed-sit which, if memory serves, was actually his.

Oh, how we laughed one and all in those far off days.

One Saturday morning, watching SwapShop with my children, Noel Edmunds (I may be wrong, it might have been that Scofield fellow) announces the first British TV airing of the latest Bee Gees video for their song 'You Win Again':

Blink and you'd miss it, but the Bee Gees were most definitely at Brimham Rocks.

Some time later I ran into a very 'refreshed' Burn (pills by now, lots of pills).

'You were right about the Bee Gees being at Brimham Rocks!'

'Wha' dafuq U talkin' 'bout? Yer' fuckin' mental you'

This is the last conversation I had with Burn.

I don't need anyone to tell me what happened to Burn.

I know without looking.

*When my Granny lived there Swallow Cottage looked nothing like it does in the Estate Agent's ad.
It didn't have a bathroom or inside toilet for a start.

Pussy Cats, Bunny Rabbits, Cake Cough, & Evershed.

If you need an excuse for a party, get up and use me (as the Fire Engines used to wail).
'am a right tart, me.

I gave up on organising my own birthday celebrations.
I learned it is impossible to organise a party and enjoy it at the same time.

Girl-on-Wire has a new home and therefore is obliged to have a housewarming.
GoW suggested we combine my birthday and her housewarming.
SpaceMan: "Will I have to do anything?"
GoW: "No".
SpaceMan: "'am in".

The event was to take place during the afternoon of the day BeHeld were to play at Evershed Arts Folk Club.

The snag being GoW's new home is a little to cosy for housewarming parties.
It was decided to have the combined parties at a house in Billingshurst.

The saintly Jonathan now enters the picture.
For it is in the sanity Jonathan's home that those about to party will party.

Now, ask yourself this question:
"Would I open my home.to around 15 people, all of whom seem to be musicians, to have a party in?"

Jonathan considered this question and decided to risk it.

And so I spent an afternoon in a home where pussy cats, and bunny rabbits, and hamsters roam free.
It was like being inside the Internet (without the bare ladies).

I'd go into the details of the 'cake-cough', but I'm not proud of what I did when I blew out the candles on MY birthday cake by coughing on them.
It was very selfish of me not to consider other people may have liked a piece of MY birthday cake.

This post is to say thank-you to all the people that made that party happen.
Best ever.

Evershed Arts

So Long To The King of Selsey.

Sir Patrick Moore (1923 - 2012).

Woman! Stop Blubbering, Consult "The Man-Who-Sees"

Mr. Glyn Webster draws my attention to a giant amongst men:

The Irrepressible Paul Martin!

He's irrepressible!

He can not be repressed!

He Would Have Been 100 Years Old By Now.

Hughes Robustica. (Updated)

Taken from a piece written in 2004 by Robert Hughes for the Guardian newspaper about his update to the land-mark arts series, The Shock of the New.

"Styles come and go, movements briefly coalesce (or fail to, more likely), but there has been one huge and dominant reality overshadowing Anglo-Euro-American art in the past 25 years, and The Shock of the New came out too early to take account of its full effects. This is the growing and tyrannous power of the market itself, which has its ups and downs but has so hugely distorted nearly everyone's relationship with aesthetics. That's why we decided to put Jeff Koons in the new programme: not because his work is beautiful or means anything much, but because it is such an extreme and self-satisfied manifestation of the sanctimony that attaches to big bucks. Koons really does think he's Michelangelo and is not shy to say so. The significant thing is that there are collectors, especially in America, who believe it. He has the slimy assurance, the gross patter about transcendence through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres in Florida. And the result is that you can't imagine America's singularly depraved culture without him. He fits into Bush's America the way Warhol fitted into Reagan's. There may be worse things waiting in the wings (never forget that morose observation of Milton's on the topography of Hell: "And in the lowest depth, a lower depth") but for the moment they aren't apparent, which isn't to say that they won't crawl, glistening like Paris Hilton's lip-gloss, out of some gallery next month. Koons is the perfect product of an art system in which the market controls nearly everything, including much of what gets said about art."

R.I.P. Mr. Armstrong.

"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand."

Stand Up.

It's that time of year when every stand-up "comedian" abandons Oxbridge and heads Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Fortunately we still have a healthy supply of humorous chaps willing to entertain, and educate, the public:

Thanks to jec0066

More 'On Horses'.

In todays post 'On Horses' over at Hooting Yard Mr. Key contemplates various aspects of,
err,
well, horses.
Mr. Key confesses to not really knowing very much about horses this of course doesn't prevent him from being entertaining on the subject.

Although I'm not given to examining my early youth in any great detail, Mr. Key's post nudged a couple of the delicate vases I keep my memory in.

I remembered 'Crackers' the enormous racehorse owned by the Dunbars on whose country estate my family lived.
I remembered 'Rosie' a fat, mild-mannered pony I not so much rode as sat on while she ambled about in  the paddock.
Then there was this magnificent beast which I had the illusion of being in control of, in that I was holding one of the sets of reins, when I was page-boy to the May Queen in a tiny village in the Yorkshire dales long, long ago:

Time was I could recall the names of everyone in this picture but memory's like a train, you can see it getting smaller as it goes away and I'm damned if I can remember more than about 3 names now (including my own).
The significant person in this picture is the woman who actually is in control of the horse, her name was Dolly Rodwell.
Over at Hooting Yard she'd be called a Woohoohoodiwoo Woman.  She was the unofficial mid-wife, layer-out of the dead (she 'did' my Granny) and newspaper delivery person.

It was the last time a horse was used to pull the May Queen's wagon.
I never knew the name of the horse.

(Thanks to Heather and Dayne for letting me have their copy of the picture.)

My Track of the Week: "I'm Okay!" performed by Andrew.

Thanks to AK1994er

Finger-poppin GBS

Well I Never.

Today a British cyclist won the Tour de France.

I didn't think I'd write that sentence in my life time.

Thank you Mr. Wiggins and Team Sky.

My "Track of the Week": (?) played by Korla Pandit

Today, over at Mr. Fabs, err, fabulous Music for Maniacs!!! blog, I was introduced to the enigmatic (ahem) "eastern" wonder that is Korla Pandit:

More hypnotic than the Hypnotoad!

Katherine Higgins (sigh..)

Linda says she looks like Margo Leadbetter crossed with an ironing board I am of a somewhat different opinion.

Image courtesy of The LightBox

Leonard Barras.

Late 1980's, night-time, abed and drifting, BBC Radio 4 whispering in the dark, I become aware of a soft spoken Geordie voice reading stories that seemed to weave themselves into, or out of, my dreams.
So much so in fact, I was never entirely sure I hadn't imagined hearing them.

The voice belonged to Leonard Barras and the stories were from his "Up The Tyne In A Flummox" collection.
Over the past few years I've been re-introduced to them, and more of L.B.'s writing, via Phil's Concert Bootlegs blog for which I am eternally grateful.
(It's worth having a good look at his 'Labels" list as it contains many, many obscure wonders.)

I can't say much about Leonard Barras the man as I know little more about him than what's written in his obituary from the Guardian newspaper.
So, here's what the article says:

 "The Guardian once called Leonard Barras, who has died aged 85, "a disgracefully neglected comic writer", while the Stage referred to him as "a Geordie Ionesco". Yet his talents were little appreciated. This was down to his total lack of ego. He had no desire for publicity and resisted being photographed. His work was also impossible to categorise - a homespun Geordie humour mixed with fantastical flights of fancy and surrealism (surrealism not being that strong on Tyneside). His unusual imagination contrasted with the mild-mannered, quiet man who spent his entire working life at Swan Hunter shipyards. He never lived outside the region.

Barras was born in Wallsend, the youngest of four brothers. He went to work at Swan's in 1942 as a clerk. Bad eyesight saved him from national service. He received a long-service watch from Swan's in 1967 but continued to work there for nearly 20 more years, by which time he was a chief clerk.

In January 1949, Barras began his weekly Through My Hat column for the Newcastle-based Sunday Sun. It was Beachcomber meets Flann O'Brien, with wild, absurd, hugely comic scenarios. He also wrote at this time for the BBC radio programme Wot Cheor, Geordie and began writing for the stage. Two of his plays, A Little Stiff Built Chap (1969) and The Shy Gasman (1970), were premiered by Alan Ayckbourn at Scarborough.

Along with Alex Glasgow and Henry Livings, Barras wrote for the award-winning Northern Drift programmes for BBC radio, and in the late 1970s he penned the BBC2 comedy series Mother Nature's Bloomers, starring Roy Kinnear. Iron Press published poems from this series in Hailstones on Your Father (1979). The TV series was as far from formulaic TV humour as could be. Barras was self-deprecating, saying of his humour, "the majority of people pass it by - like an accident in the street."

Bluebottles on My Marmalade (1982) and Up the Tyne in a Flummox (1987) both highlighted the exploits of his fantastical Wallsend characters, such as poet Herbert Mangle and butcher Arbuthnot Wotherfoot. Several of these episodes were also broadcast on BBC Radio 4. As he wrote of himself in the foreword: "All of his characters are ineffectual, maladjusted, repressed, unsociable and unloved. They are all himself."

Despite writing plays for Tyne Wear Theatre Company - Tight at the Back (1987), which focused on Wallsend Amnesia FC, and for Live Theatre, Come Snow, Come Blow (1988) - hilarious if unfathomable, Barras fell into obscurity. As his publisher, I challenged him to write a novel. The result was The Chocolate Cream Society (1997), a sustained piece of comic surrealism set in a fading shipyard, where one of the main characters is a talking ghost horse.

He carried on writing, regardless of recognition. Cloud Nine Theatre Company commissioned his last work, a half-hour absurdist play called The Purple Pullover, starring the same Herbert Mangle waxing lyrical on a bicycle. This toured north Tyneside last autumn.

No one wrote like Barras. Certainly, no creative writing course could produce his like. Many less original, less talented writers have captured much more publicity, something Barras would probably have seen as comically inevitable.

He was predeceased by his wife Edith, whom he had married in the late 1950s.

· Leonard Barras, writer, born February 13 1922; died January 20 2008"

I note, with some sadness, that my birthday is the anniversary of his death. :-(

On a lighter note, one of his stories led to the family cat being named "Rover".

I Couldn't Resist.

I'm a fan of Saradwyn3's painting over at Mad Ramblings.
She's been working on an illuminated alphabet.
I've chosen 3 of my favourites:

To London & What Happened When We Got There.

I had intended to write-up our London trip last night while it was still fresh in my memory but I was so tired, and not a little confused, sleeping felt like the better option.

I booked 2 cheap day returns on the internet the previous evening, packed our rucksacks (my stuff in Linda's and Linda's stuff in mine, trust me it works), located my very old London street map and did a perfunctory investigation into bus services around the capital.

Linda will NOT travel on the underground system.
"It's unnatural".
I am unable to get my head around the bus timetables.

During the train journey I decide to re-jig the itinerary.
On the approach to London I see the future written in the sky:

Scottish Independence is Inevitable 

The only reason I want to go to the Science Museum is to look at Difference Engine No. 2 so it seems like a good idea to get that out of the way first.

We arrive at Victoria Station where Linda decides we need coffee.
I never disagree with any suggestion that involves drinking coffee.
I take a picture of a clock:

I know what time it is

We take our coffee and sit in Grosvenor Gardens across the way from the station and I begin to work out a route that will get us to the Science Museum, on foot.
I take a picture of a small building decorated with shells:

We have shells just like that in Bognor Regis!

 I scan the buildings around the garden and get the first inkling of what the significant feature of this trip is going to be.

Having plotted a vague diagonal line between us and the museum we set off across Belgravia.
We scrutinise the buildings along the way. Linda focuses in on the shrubbery stood outside the buildings and comes to the conclusion that olive trees are probably the best all round choice for this area.
I see lots of cars parked outside the houses, cars I've only ever seen on Top Gear.
All the houses have the appearance of being made from ice-cream.
Everything seems very clean and well ordered.

After much wandering about I realise we are well off my vague route and we land on Knightsbridge right outside Harvey Nichols, and Linda has spotted it.
We enter Harvey Nichols.
All the staff look like they come from at least 3 rungs higher up the social ladder than Linda and me and there seems to be more of them than there are customers.
Linda managed to get a dab of perfume on her wrist before the counter staff got to her and we were out of there.
I casually mention that Harrods is nearby.
We go to Harrods.

The building is a wonder, the interior is a wonder, that Egyptian bit is a wonder but I still feel the whole place is a bit, well, tacky.
The Diana and Dodie statue only serves to reinforce my opinion.
It starts to rain.

We continue on to the Science Museum.
On entering we both agree we need something to eat and experience one of the highlights of the day, a hot belly pork sandwich with apple sauce and rocket.
From the eating balcony I take a picture of a red steam engine:

Here's where the problem starts

I pour over every part of this vast machine, every nut and bolt and I begin to wonder.
If art is 'useless beauty' is this redundant machine now a piece of art?
We wander though the museum and I become increasingly troubled by this question.
All these cases filled with examples of, to me, inexplicable things that I'm not allowed to touch.
We reach the Babbage bit:

A piece of a long dead human being in a jar.

I couldn't take a picture of Difference Engine No.2 that didn't have a reflection of me taking a picture of Difference Engine No.2 in it so I gave up trying and just looked at this beautifully useless thing in a glass case.
I'm not sure how my experience was 'enhanced' by being able to look at a large part of Babbage's brain in a glass jar.
I took one last picture inside the museum from a balcony:

Lots of stuff.

We left the museum.
Linda noticed the building across the way, "what's that place?"
That place is the V & A.
We enter the V & A.
More useless beauty I'm not allowed to touch housed in glass cases.
Then something caught my attention, an expression I chose to interpret as bewilderment:

"What the..?"

We stepped out into the garden:

Linda contemplates the V&A

Once again I'm enthralled by the exterior of a building.
Back indoors I see something that seems like a metaphor:

This means something.

Time is pushing on so I suggest we try to make it to Tate Britain before it closes.
My plan is to walk towards the river then turn left.
There then follows a very long walk through another interesting built environment called Chelsea.

On turning left at the river, more useless beauty:

Looking at this building fills my heart with joy.

We get to the Tate at around 5 o'clock.
We are both exhausted.
Why are we here?
We are here to look at 'Ophelia' (Lizzy Siddal in a bath) our favourite painting.
"I'm sorry sir, this gallery is closing now".
Linda and I stare through the door's closing gap toward the painting on the opposite wall, the doors close.

On the walk back to Victoria station Linda picks up on the fact that I've become somewhat glum and tries to cheer me up.
I can't deny I'm down in the dumps and it has something to do with what may seem to be an unrelated comment in the birthday card I'd received from my friend Paul.
It's a quote by Don Marquis (1878-1937) it goes like this:
"If you make people think they're thinking, they will love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."
Paul added "You have been warned.."
I haven't made an entirely satisfactory connection between this day, the things in glass cases I'm not allowed to touch, between what is (and what is not) art, and the built environment we wandered through, but I'm working on it, even though I hate it.

Linda suggests we go to McDonalds.
I give in, Big Mac meal, go large with a white coffee please.
Then the day is suddenly saved by a fairy princess, who speaks indecipherable English with a heavy Eastern European accent to no one in particular whilst bashing away at a net-book and who sparkles from head to toe:

Now that's what I call art!

So Long Sir Jimmy

31 October 1926 – 29 October 2011

Encouraging Signs.

Now here's someone who gets the idea and is doing it right:

A sensible person

I am much heartened by this and encourage you to read the full details at Mad Ramblings of how The League of Outa-Space gained it's latest recruit 

Like Saradwyn3 you to could become a member of The League of Outa-Space.
Just provide evidence of your suitability and I shall make the proclamation.