Yesterday I jumped off the tube a stop early to go and take a peek at the ‘mass’ protest outside St Paul’s. I must have looked a touch conspicuous in my dinner suit, striding ardently in the direction of the Bank of England, but everyone was friendly, and no one accused me of being a banker… after all, its half term, so they will all be in Klosters or the Cotswolds.
What stuck me about the whole thing is the total number of these anti capitalist crusaders (also know as Occupy London Stock Exchange) was about fifty persons all up. Yes, there are a few tents gaffer taped to the pavement, but this is hardly Glastonbury. Its more, well, Feltnam Brownies Village Fete. That said, their blog is worth a look, as is the ‘Tent University’. Find it here.
For days now the press have been taking about this protest as if it is somehow going to bring the Western economy to its senses, make them appreciate the feelings of the ‘99%’ and start a new world order. What I saw was a bunch of friendly, imaginative, passionate people, with no real sense of purpose or goal, camping outside the mighty cathedral, and pestering the cathedral wardens over where they could charge their mobile phones. Today the BBC have reported that St Paul’s has been forced to close due to the chaos of the protest. Perhaps they have simply run out of plug points?
… so beware interword… I am now an official dot com interactive downloadable googleable cyber megahub of random information and fascinating nonsense. So watch out William Gates and Mark Suckerbug or whatever you are called. timmyatt.com is the new kid on the block. And this block ‘aint big enough for all of us. You have been warned… pack your cyber satchels and iApp off!
My friend Cressida told me recently that this month was the 2500 year anniversary of the Battle of Marathon. And she should know; she is an outreach officer for Classics here in Oxford. It seemed ‘auspicious’ that this weekend I completed my first ever half marathon at Blenheim Palace to raise money for the British Heart Foundation.
There is much debate about the actual history of the marathon… ledged, or at least Herodotus (the ancient historian, not the toy horse) wrote the history of the Persian Wars in his Histories, composed about 440 BC, telling of an Athenian herald named Pheidippides who was sent to Sparta to request help when the Persians landed at Marathon. He ran 150 miles in two days, and then ran the 25 miles from the battlefield near Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon with the word “Νενικήκαμεν,” or “We have won” and collapsed and died from exhaustion. I think I know how he felt… Mine was obviously only a half marathon, but I was half dead by the end of it.
I really do appreciate all the support and sponsorship from so many people. Thank you all… you are really kind. I have succeeded in raising a little over £300 for the BHF thanks entirely to your generosity. I ran most of the course with my friend Paddy, and we both came in around the 2:08 mark… I was pleased with this, it being our first attempt! But Silk (of the Gardener’s Arms fame) managed it in just short of 1:30 … a truly Olympic performance. Over 3,000 runners took part in the day’s events up at Blenheim in 28-degree heat and together raised over £100,000! The Palace and its spectacular grounds were the perfect venue for the run, but to be honest I was not too interested in the spectacular course… just getting round. Now that I know that I can do it, I may do another one, but not till I can move my legs again!
You can get all the info you need about the British Heart Foundation and the good work they get up to here.
And if you somehow missed the opportunity to sponsor me (and you can for another three months!) please do get involved by following this link.
I like it when disparate things make odd links. I sometimes think that my brain was wired up differently to other people’s… rubbish at linking such important things as strings of telephone numbers or people and their birthdays, but great a connecting obscure facts, places, and snippets of information that normally gather dust in the recesses of our cranial deposit boxes.
Of late I seem to have been bombarded with examples of an obscure form of ceramic type artificial stone. Not your usual musings; I would much rather be thinking about long autumnal walks with Miss Perfect, but for some reason this month fate has chosen to distract me with Mrs Eleanor Coade and her peculiar stone manufacturing process.
A couple of weeks ago an elderly couple I know in Taplow were waxing lyrical about the new gates their neighbours had just erected. Apparently some vandals (and I loved their use of the term ‘vandal’… not thugs or ‘youfs’…they are charming people (the couple, not the yoofs…)) had smashed said gateposts with their wide-boy racing antics, and broken the ornamental vases type things that topped the brick pillars. It transpired that these were made of Coade stone, and were irreplaceable, the ‘recipe’ for its manufacture being lost. Luckily the neighbours had sourced some equally fancy stone finials and the harmony of the village had been restored.
Later that day I was visiting Taplow Court the home of SGI-UK, a lay Buddhist society. SGI-UK is part of a world-wide network of organisations that aims to contribute to a more peaceful and harmonious world through educational and cultural activities based on the philosophy of the 13th century Japanese sage, Nichiren Daishonin. The Victorian pile the group currently operates from is used for courses and conferences and also houses the Library of the European Branch of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy. Hence my interest. However, on the lawn outside was a rather odd but ornate statue of George III dressed as a Roman Centurion. This too turned out to be Coade stone dated 1804.
A bit of detective work has sprung a few surprising finds: It is obviously named after Mrs Eleanor Coade, 1708–1796, who sold it commercially from her new factory in London, Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactory. I love the fact that this crazy woman found that by essentially baking all this stuff together she could make exquisite statues. Its manufacture required special skills: extremely careful control and skill in kiln firing, over a period of days. This skill is even more remarkable when the potential variability of kiln temperatures at that time is considered. Mrs Coade’s factory was the only really successful manufacturer.
The formula used was:
▪ 10% of grog (sadly not beer, but some sandy stuff…)
▪ 5-10% of crushed flint
▪ 5-10% fine quartz.
▪ 10% crushed soda lime glass.
▪ 60-70% Ball Clay from Devon.
This mixture was also referred to as “fortified clay” which was then inserted after kneading into a kiln which would fire the material at a temperature of 1,100°C for over four days. So its all quite simple really…
And still the stuff keeps turning up! This weekend I was driving through Shrewsbury on the way back from a fantastically odd party (more of this in another post….) when I turned a corner to be confronted by a truly enormous column in the style of Nelson’s in Trafalgar Square.
Standing at a modest 133 feet it apparently commemorates the 1st Viscount Hill, who was Wellington’s top bod at the battle of Waterloo. His statue sits on the top gazing over the hideous office block that is Shrewsbury County Hall. It is the tallest Doric column in England, which is just as well to see over this monstrosity, and is two feet wider than Nelson’s Column, and 13 feet higher. And I bet you had never even heard of him!
This was never supposed to be a political blog. I am a political creature, but this blog was really just designed to keep me amused, and share my thoughts with those of you that have nothing better to read while you eat your sandwiches at your desk. I have to admit however that a couple of things I have come across in the last week have rather made me think more politically. The usual disclaimers apply; other political ideologies are available, and no fluffy animals were harmed in the creation of this thought process etc etc.
Last week I watched George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck that portrays the conflict between veteran radio and television journalist Edward R. Murrow and ‘The Junior Senator from Wisconsin,’ Joseph McCarthy. For those of you not kept awake by American politics of the 1950’s and the Cold War, McCarthy was the leader of a significant and influential sector of the American Government that was obsessively paranoid about widespread Communist subversion. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathisers inside the United States federal government, military forces, and judiciary. Most of his claims were total speculation and scaremongering, used for political ends, but the atmosphere of fear, mistrust, and paranoia he created lead to the term McCarthyism being used for not only anti-communist activities, but also more generally in reference to demagogic and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of one’s opponents.
The film itself is interesting; shot in glorious Technicolor, it was colour corrected to black and white while in post production. This results in a really clever ‘feel’ to the movie, in which the actors behave in the way that actors (and presumably ordinary people?) behaved in the 50’s (think thin ties, quick talking, and endless smoking) while the film has the smoothness and picture quality of a modern production. David Strathairn, whom I confess I had never heard of, plays Murrow really convincingly, and I really liked the way the director blended new film with original footage of the trials of accused communists and Murrow’s speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association in 1958 admonishing them not to squander the potential of television to inform and educate. Again, think Lord Reith, but more American, and less beardy…
The film questions what it is to be American, and to be loyal to the founding principles of the United States. Forgive the lengthy quote, but at one point Murrow broadcasts, “We must not confuse dissent from disloyalty… We will not walk in fear, one of another, we will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. If we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, we will remember we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular… We can deny our heritage and our history but we cannot escape responsibility for the result…As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom where ever it still exists in the world. But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.” It’s stirring stuff, well executed, and made me warm again to our friends across the pond.
I was perplexed and angry therefore when I read a piece in last week’s Sunday Telegraph written by Paul Theroux, the well known travel writer and novelist and father of Louis Theroux. I will leave it to your own conclusions to draw parallels between Murrow and young Louis, but I just thought I would throw that one out there. I love Paul Theroux’s books; his ‘Great Railway Bazaar’ is highly evocative, and his ‘Kingdom by the Sea’ captures Britain in a sort of academic Bill Bryson sort of way. It’s well worth a read, and follows his walk in 1982 around the perimeter of Britain capturing Thatcher’s Britain at its social and economic low water mark.
In the article (found here) Theroux described living in America today, and especially in the light of the tenth anniversary of the atrocities committed on September 11th. The America he talked about in his reassuring and conversational way is an uncaring, unquestioning, hurt, and paranoid America that has little understanding of its own authority and role in global affairs. Its long tradition of patriotism is described as being a thin veneer to deeper concerns relating to race and cultural differences. “Politicians have tried to prettify and ennoble the response to 9/11, medals have been awarded, flags flown, but this is patriotism at its most hyperbolic, verging on theatre. What has followed in the 10 years since 9/11 has been a tightening of attention along with its opposite, a sense of despair or indifference.”
The parallels with the America that Murrow accuses McCartney of whipping up are plain to see, and I was not expecting them to be quite so stark, or come from such disparate sources. Theroux writes that, “to Americans today, the world seems hellish and unforgiving. Americans travel less and are fearful of travelling in any Muslim country… Any aggrieved web-savvy Muslim can claim that at the highest levels of the US government, many Americans – politicians, so-called Neo Cons, cabinet members, operatives – hold dual US-Israeli citizenship. Americans are not allowed to be dual citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Pakistan or any other Muslim country… It is perhaps melodramatic to say Americans are living in an age of fear. Because no one can stand much strength-sapping tension for very long, we have become exhausted, dispirited and small-minded, living through a period of inexpressible self-induced dullness, with a subtext of fear and uncertainty that is reflected in all phases of life.” This is surely not the same America that shines a beacon for “your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
As I said, this is not supposed to be a political blog, but I don’t want to find myself in a world where fear, suspicion, and terror are the primary motivating influences. Perhaps it is time that America (and for that matter, the UK) begins to acknowledge The Palestine as an independent state and not continue to veto its application to join the UN. Perhaps it should be possible for Americans to have dual citizenship with some God fearing, but Muslim, nations. Perhaps we as individuals should think about how we have allowed fear to infiltrate our lives rather than expect our governments to defend us from all dangers and perils of this night. Perhaps we need more Murrows and Therouxs to make us realise what is done in our names. But more than that, perhaps we all need a little more trust in one another. Oh, and another cup of tea.
The Daily Mail, not my usual read, has the occasional blinder… this week’s has been the auction of a collection of antique cookery books and lifestyle guides that go on sale at Bloomsbury Auctions in London on September 22. Follow this link if you are really bored.
One of the collection boldly titled ‘A Perfect School of Instructions for the Officers of the Mouth‘, was published in 1682 and includes this bizarre recipe for a tart containing the entire body of a tortoise. Perfect for those late summer dinner parties you were all planning. Now, where did I put my tortoise net…
PS. 20/Sept. I have been re-reading Robert Byron’s Road to Oxiana. If you have never read it, go and buy a copy now. Its brilliant. No really, it is… anyway, more on that later, but when discussing the Turcomans and anti-Bolsheviks fleeing Russia (the book was published in 1937) he mentions that of the 25,000 a year crossing the boarder into Persia most were not fleeing political repression, but were simply fleeing from starvation: “If their accounts are true of the heaps of empty tortoise shells that surround the workmen’s houses in some places, tortoises being their staple food, it is no wonder what foreigners are discourages from visiting Russian Central Asia!”
I have been helping a friend with her new Blog… It’s a bit like the blind leading the blind while we navigate the high seas of the web, but the project is going well, and I think we are both pleased with the results.
You can find her Blog at: http://pianowisdom.wordpress.com/ or follow this link.
Her approach is all about Piano Wisdom… Piano Wisdom is dedicated to committed pianists who have developed injuries through playing and who are looking for a long term solution towards their own pianistic health. If you want to avoid operations and injections and sort out the root of your playing related problems, then this is for you! I have recommended her to a few of my ivory fingered friends, but if you have any questions, or indeed comments on her Blog, do get in touch.
The Blog currently features some snazzy new videos of her techniques for teaching, and thoughts on students learning the piano. The plan is to update it regularly, and incorporate new interview style videos and tips for gaining the best possible sound whilst tinkling the old Joanna!
I am super proud of my chum Zem and her friends at Team Otter 2011 who have just swum all the way to France!
Together they swan 30miles in 15hrs 6mins. Each ‘Otter’ swimming 3hrs each in one hour bursts. I struggle to swim in a warm pool for more than 20 mins, so what three hours much be like in freezing water, full of old tin cans and jelly fish can only be imagined.
This is the route they swam:
The best bit about it all is that they were doing this madness for a couple of really good charities, WaterAid and Allsorts. So dig deep into those purses and wallets, and give them all a wet fish style slap on the back.
WaterAid is a long standing international charity that helps the world’s poorest people have safe water and sanitation. Once they’ve achieved this basic human right, their health, education and livelihoods all improve.
Allsorts is an innovative Gloucestershire charity that works with disabled children and their families to provide often disregarded young people, their parents, carers and siblings with support. This includes toys and equipment, plus a wide range of exciting and unusual activities, serving Gloucestershire’s unique Of Course We Can programme.
You can read all about their crazy project, endurance training, and see all kinds of aquatic athletics on their blog: http://teamotter2011.wordpress.com/
Tim Myatt 