Enter the Whirlwind

Change your opinions,
Keep to your principles;
Change your leaves,
Keep intact your roots.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

I WORE A SWEATER YESTERDAY, as well as my corduroy jacket, and did not feel over-warm. The ghastly metal seat in the Alnwick Bus Station was really rather cold on my backside; I shall soon have to get my winter trousers down from the suitcases atop my wardrobe where I store them for the two or three months that pass for summer up here.

Yesterday’s slight chill is today’s howling gale from the north, and genuine cold. The BBC weatherman used the “F” and “S” words. Ground Frost in Northern England by Friday night, and Snow in the Scottish Highlands by weekend. I live less than 50 miles from Scotland. The first visible sign of winter in Amble is usually an open flat-bed truck come down from Scotland with an unintentional load of snow. I should point out that one’s breath shows in the cold morning air well before the imported precipitation, and I’ve noticed mine as I wait for the car for over a week now.

We had wonderfully coloured autumn leaves in 2008, and then last year, in early September, we had a sudden violent windstorm which withered most of the leaves here on the coast in a day or two. The leaves fell to the ground and blew, I think, into the North Sea before the week was out. They vanished! Autumn’s lease, like that of summer, had all too short a date. One did see some colours in forested areas inland, but nothing compared to 2008. I am watching the plants in the courtyard being blown about; they are somewhat protected. The cables and power-lines above the street are snapping about in the wind, so it’s safe to assume that the bigger trees in town are shaking like a Hawaiian hula-dancer.

There were American and Japanese tourists on the bus yesterday, most of them dressed in summer clothes. Shorts, t-shirts and blouses along with their Foster Grants. The bus hauled a fair number of them from Alnwick (their shopping bags indicated visits to the Castle with its Harry Potter connection and the Alnwick Gardens) over to Alnmouth Village. The usual anxious questions from our visitors: “Are we there yet?” “Will the pubs be open?”

There was an English couple on the bus; I’d guess a husband and wife. Older, dressed for winter, and dressed in rather more formal clothes than the foreigners. I’ll add, to be honest, this couple looked rather shabby, unkempt. They were sat together across and a few rows in front of me in the seats indicated for elderly and infirm passengers. The woman pressed the bell and the couple stood up. The signs on the bus tell us to ring the bell, but to remain seated until the bus stops. I am the only person I know who does that; even the most wibbly of the wobblies insist on rising and making their ways to the door, even as the bus thrashes about. I noticed that the gentleman with his rumpled collar and poorly-knotted tie, old grey-green suit, and a yellow cardigan, had a white stick. He turned back my way, his eyes clamped shut, and it was obvious that he’d come to town without his dentures. His wife called out to the driver: “We can’t see. We want the stop across the roundabout, past the Royal Oak.” They moved along the bus. I knew she’d got it wrong, there is no Royal Oak in Alnwick, it is The Oaks Hotel. The driver brought the bus through the roundabout, which the old lady could sense, and she started calling loudly: “This is the one. This is the one. Stop!” though we hadn’t actually reached the bus stop. She was quite anxious. The bus jerked to a halt and the driver and everyone on the lower deck of the bus watched the blind couple feel their way out of the bus and onto the pavement. Once outside, the man held onto the woman’s arm and began tap-tapping his stick (it was an ordinary walking cane that had been painted white except at the curved handle). They shuffled away, as winter, while those of us on the bus, summer and autumn, rolled on towards Alnmouth.

Weekend before last I went on a day-trip to Bowness on Windermere in the Lake District. Somehow the weather cooperated and we had brilliant sunshine until late afternoon. We’d taken a coach to Haverthwaite where we boarded a steam locomotive and took a really, really slow trip over to Lakeside. In Lakeside we visited an aquarium, and then everybody except me and our coach driver took a steamer down Windermere to Bowness. I opted to do the drive as I do not like boats and with my brother dying in a boating accent last March I’m now totally boat-phobic.




On the train, and during the coach ride around the lake to Bowness, I had some wonderful views of the English countryside. So lush, so green, I have decided that when I win the Lotto I shall buy one of the large estates near Windermere that we passed by. I am wondering, of course, whether all those leafy trees will be as bare as ours in Amble in a matter of weeks. Trees and men are subject to autumn and winter.

On the way back from the Lake District, crossing the tops of the Pennines, we moved slowly through a barren landscape, just low scrub and rocky outcrops. The ubiquitous loose-stone walls were not in evidence, the only barrier between the land and the highway was fencing. There were a very few stone cottages, none looking habitable. A most desolate place. And we passed a small herd of camels. It must be pretty boring up there, even for a camel, as the beasts were standing at the fence watching the traffic go by. The camels would not be surprised by the cars and coaches, for that is their lot by night and day. For me, on the coach, listening to Jefferson Airplane on my iPod, it really was a most unexpected sight to look out at dromedaries. Will they be up there come the snow?

There’s an apple tree in a garden just along the street from my flat. This is the first year in five that the tree is truly burdened down with apples. They are starting to fall, in the grass and some onto the pavement. None are gathered up and I wonder if they are sour. D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem about the falling of apples to the ground in the autumn, making the point that it is only in the fall to the earth and the bruising of the fruit as a result that the seeds inside are released and the cycle permitted a complete rotation. I believe Lawrence was thinking, also, of the advancing years of man, and that it is the ripe, fully mature fruit that gives rise to the new tree in the spring. Lawrence was only 44 when he died back in 1930.

One sure sign that autumn is arriving is The Last Night at The Proms. That was last week. The Promenade Concerts from the Royal Albert Hall in London run through the summer, and some are televised. I rather enjoyed a concert devoted to Doctor Who. I noticed that the audience was more than half young children, nice that many were with their fathers (rather than mothers). I’ve been following Doctor Who, off and on, since the 1960s. I’m more of a fan now than ever. Are my years running in reverse here?

Every year, when it is time for the grand finale of the Proms, I decide I won’t watch as it will be a bit silly with toffs wrapped in Union flags, bobbing up and down to a hornpipe, and then breaking out into “Rule, Britannia” and “Jerusalem”. However, each year I do tune in, just to see who the female soloist will be. The soloist and the conductor always have a chat with the audience on the Last Night, usually something quite amusing.

So, I switched on my telly, dialled up the BBC, and listened to some rather nice pieces by Richard Strauss. The soloist this year, American Renée Fleming, was splendid, dressed up like a ship of state and beaming.

There were Union flags aplenty, and a good many English, Welsh and Scottish national banners. I’m not too good on flags of the world, but did spot a Canadian flag and some from “down under”. Ms Fleming had a small “Stars and Stripes”.

And the audience sang along with “Jerusalem” and not just in the Albert Hall, but in vast crowds outside in Hyde Park, and in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, as well as at other venues in England. I used to sing Jerusalem at school; it was the only hymn we always sang loud enough for our tetchy Headmaster. Listening to Jerusalem the other night brought back the springtime of my life, when grass was green and tides were high. Now, summer is falling behind and autumn is upon me. My mother died in the autumn, 28 September 1992, when she was in the autumn of her life, aged 65. I tried to sing along with Jerusalem the other night, startling Cailean. It comes with too many memories now, which well up as tears. I wonder if William Blake ever wrote of England’s bleak and wintry land.

As I sit here, minutes from midday, the sky has clouded over completely. The wind seems wilder than ever, I can hear it booming in the rooftops, my chimney and fireplace played like an enormous musical instrument. There are the first bullets of rain on my windows.

The few flowers left by my kitchen door tend to be blue: lavender and hydrangeas and small blossoms that froth from my plant pots. Bees are fond of blue flowers, so there are still some of those around. Where do the honey bees go in the winter? Where will the people play?

Gods in Ruins

Standing on the bare ground,
my head bathed by the blithe air,
and uplifted into infinite space,
all mean egotism vanishes.
I become a transparent eye-ball;
I am nothing; I see all;
the currents of the Universal Being
circulate through me;
I am part or particle of God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)

Better than a thousand hollow words
Is one word that brings peace.
Better than a thousand hollow verses
Is one verse that brings peace.
Better than a hundred hollow lines
Is one line of the law, bringing peace.
Gautama Buddha (The Dhammapada)

IT WAS OSCAR WILDE who wrote: In polite society, one does not talk about politics or religion. Of course Oscar made a name for himself doing just that, though he really succeeded by pointing out the petty foibles of mankind and by making light of them. Well, almost. A Woman of No Importance is seriously funny.

I'm no Oscar Wilde, and I should probably thank the gods for that. I wouldn't mind being a manic depressive William Blake or Virginia Woolf.

William Blake wrote about religion, of course, inasmuch as it is generally associated with God. It is probably fairer to say of Blake that he lived, wrote and created his pictures under the close influence of gods and angels and the Ancient of Days. Blake, apparently, felt that these otherworldly creatures were sending him messages that he felt compelled to pass along.

I once read that the farthest that William Blake ever travelled from the home in which he was born on 28 November 1757 (in Golden Square, Soho, London) was 59 miles. And one might argue that one who remained so close to home should refrain from commenting on national issues, much less international issues, even less on issues spanning the Cosmos. In 1757, I'm guessing a journey of 59 miles, if one had a horse-drawn vehicle and didn't meet a highwayman (Dick Turpin was, at least, dead by the time Blake was born), took a few days. One would overnight at some country inn with none of the charm we associate with such places in 2009.

In September 2008, one gentleman, Yves Rossy, from the Continent, crossed the English Channel, with some sort of jet-propelled wing strapped to his back, in a matter of minutes. Not as fast as Hitler's Doodlebugs, but someone will be working on a way to ride a rocket as I sit here typing, one can be assured.

Blake, of course, saw Chariots of Fire. Here's a mathematical problem for anyone interested in such things: If it takes Apollo about twelve hours to cross the sky in his chariot of fire, at the Equator, at mid-summer, what sort of speed are we talking? What horsepower? Even a non-mathematician such as I can appreciate that one must know at what height above the Earth (and must know the Earth is a sphere) the chariot is flying. Religions have depended on such facts and figures. Men have been excommunicated, men have died, good men, for suggesting the inexpedient.

It is remarkable that Popes, after consulting with their gods, have made pronouncements on things they really should not have, given that, quite often, they are proved incorrect within a fairly short time. Ask Nicolaus Copernicus! Copernicus was not the first heliocentric theorist, and his work lead to enlightenment, but he was denounced by the representatives of the One True God as being not only subversive, but immoral, and in opposition to Holy Scripture. Whew!

An issue that bothers some people, perhaps many, in particular in North America, is gay marriage. I should start this paragraph by mentioning that I am a proponent of family life, of a father and mother of different sexes, married wherever they might choose in some sort of legally binding ceremony. If children come along, I believe the best way to raise a child is in a two-parent heterosexual home. I think, I believe at least, that Nature is compelling on this matter. I do not have a stack of books, reports and statistics on biology, but it seems to me that we've evolved (yes, I believe in Evolution!) into what we've called, since 1947, the nuclear family unit. Actually, we may have been nuclear long before we had the bomb.

I do not think there should be a gay marriage option: a pair of husbands, or a pair of wives. I understand, from the very few articles I have come across, that approximately 90% of the population in the civilized world, at least, is pretty much heterosexual (straight), and I like the idea that this clearly natural order is respected. A homosexual world wouldn't last more than the current generation.

If the gay or lesbian couple cries: We only want what the straights have! I have to ask why marriage? If a man is born missing a limb and has a prosthesis attached, it is still artificial, and can be removed at the end of the day.

Pope Benedict XVI, the successor to the popes that parented the Inquisition and burned idolaters and unbelievers at the stake, and successor, I might add, to several popes who have apologised for disbelieving Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Copernicus back in the day, has recently said that homosexuality is a problem that must be dealt with, much like saving the rain forests from destruction. Benedict said that behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations was a destruction of God's work.

The pithy response goes: You don't play the game … Don't make the rules!

The Mormons jumped on the bandwagon - perhaps they provided the bandwagon - regarding Proposition 8 in the recent Californian elections. Together with the Roman Catholic Church, the Mormon leadership advised their membership to vote for Proposition 8, an amendment to the California State Constitution that would outlaw same-sex marriages.

One might recall that the foreigners who settled in America did so to escape unjust kings and religious persecution, even state religions.

Three things:

The Mormons make no secret (for a church full of secrets until recently with the advent of the Internet and whistleblowers) of their belief that the Roman Catholic Church is the Great Whore of Babylon. So it is most odd to find the Mormons and the Catholics in the same bed, even if it is on such a heterosexual matter.

The Mormon Church leaders, from their pulpits (I cannot speak for the Catholics), encouraged their flock to not only vote for Proposition 8, but to contribute financially to making it happen. To help buy the Election? I believe in the separation of politics and religion, except in an essay such as this one I'm writing, as I take a chance in polite society.

The Mormon leaders, from Joseph Smith onwards, have called for Mormon political power outside of the chapel walls. The traditional Christians of the Middle Ages had their Crusades. The Taliban are those seeking religious knowledge, but even they have corrupted this to become those seeking religious and political power. Could the peculiar garments of all be cut from the same cloth?

Nearly $75 million was spent by groups in favour and in opposition to Proposition 8. How many hungry, dehydrated children could be helped with that sort of money?

I believe this whole business should have been resolved as a matter-of-conscience vote. And the result not predicated on how many souls could be bought and sold.

Proposition 8 was passed, just, and it is now against constitutional law in California for same-sex couples to be married in the way heterosexual couples might be. And, when all is said and done, this is the result I believe in, but it should never have been, I believe, a matter for the churches. How many voters for and against actually attend church, actually pay their tithes and offerings?

The pronouncements by the Mormons and the Catholic hierarchy could only serve to divide people. The Pope's suggestion that homosexuality must be tackled, corrected, is very nearly an incitement to violence, isn't it? Pitch a brick at a fag. The Pope, speaking for God, said it was okay! The Mormons used to attach electrodes to the genitals of gay members of their church willing (or unwilling, perhaps fathers and mothers forced it on their sons) to be cured, and then showed them homoerotic pictures. Zap! Has Elder Boyd K. Packer apologised for that yet?

What next?

Gay rights. If homosexual and lesbian couples cannot have a marriage ceremony, with all that that entails, then they should be able to make some sort of very serious and legally binding commitment. A coupling, if you will. Gay rights: Freedom from oppression simple because of a preference they, apparently, are born with. Gay rights: The ability to be so much a part of society that eyebrows (much less swords) are not raised.

And, before I go, a request to some of my gay friends: Rethink these Gay Pride parades. They seem to be awfully vulgar by intent. It cannot do the cause any good. You hardly look like people who could raise a child who - nine times out of ten - has been born to turn out straight.

Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested: A man is a god in ruins. I think we can return to a more divine state if we just think things through before they get out of control, and note that over the centuries so many unalterable pronouncements have had to be retracted.

One word: LOVE

'Nuff said!

Walking On the Edge of Eternity

Tidal Pools, Amble, 1 January 2009

Coquet Island, from Amble, 1 January 2009

Amble Pier, 1 January 2009

Harbour Entrance Light, Amble, 1 January 2009


Amble by the Sea, 1 January 2009





So here hath been dawning
Another blue day;
Think, wilt thou let it
Slip useless away?

Out of Eternity
This new day is born;
Into Eternity,
At night will return.

Behold it aforetime
No eye ever did;
So soon it for ever
From all eyes is hid.

Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881

OUR SCHOOL HAD A SONG AND A PRAYER. The song was in Latin, and something of a rip-off of a common school and university song in Great Britain and on the Continent about the brevity of life, best known by its first line Gaudeamus igitur, meaning Therefore let us rejoice… It's also a drinking song in Europe, especially popular in the pubs in Vatican City where the national language is still Latin. I made that bit up. But it is a drinking song. The European first verse goes:

Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus.

Post jucundam juventutem

Post molestam senectutem

Nos habebit humus.

This translates as:

Let us rejoice therefore
While we are young.

After a pleasant youth

After the troubles of old age

The earth will have us.

Warwick Academy, in Bermuda, poached the first two lines and then inserted two verses about bears (the school crest featured one chained to a stump, the better to be baited), and rising up and flourishing, and Quo Non Ascendam (the school motto: To what heights might I not ascend?). Included from the original full version was Vivat academia, which speaks for itself. Omitted in the Warwick Academy song was Vivat omnes virgines (wisely, it would have been a lost cause). We did not sing Post molestam senectutem because, don't you think, it looks as if it might mean After being molested by old teachers.

And we roared out the School Song on those relatively few occasions on which we had to sing it. I'm guessing if there were 550 pupils at the school in about 1965, perhaps ten knew what the Latin words meant in English. I cannot say I did. I didn't even know what the translation meant when I came across it. But we roared, we let rip.

The only other song we really put our all into was Jerusalem, with lyrics by William Blake. That most English of hymns: Think the WI, think Jam and Jerusalem. And I cannot imagine, in our tremendous effort, our near or actual shouting, we had a clue about what Blake was trying to convey. Blake had gods and angels all around him, much as Yorkshire men have ferrets in their trousers… A way of life.

A shame that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetry has not been made into hymns or school songs as he rests somewhere between the divine and the rodent, don't you think? If Andrew Lloyd Webber is looking for a subject for a new musical, how about Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Solos for seabirds, shanty songs, aria for an albatross. Fire and ice. It could be fabulous.

Back to Warwick Academy (and I hope I never go back, never set foot there again!) I must tell you that I was recently discussing accents with an old friend from schooldays, over the telephone, seven hours across the divide. Perhaps I shouldn't name him, so let's just call him Richard. Now, Richard is an actor and a drama and English teacher, and he speaks well, and not as American as some, I suppose because he spent much of his childhood in Bermuda and he has learned how to project his voice, how to make himself heard. My accent is a mess. I use the English expressions and words, but the squawk that I emit is, at best, some sort of Canadian version. However, I'm fairly good at making myself understood: It is a reasonably clear voice. Hell, I sat in on enough of Richard's 10th Grade drama classes; I should know how to deliver a few lines.

And Richard mentioned the rehearsals we had to go through at Warwick Academy prior to any events featuring the School Song and School Prayer. He, too, recalled the loud, almost joyous, alehouse rock we put into Gaudeamus Igitur, but then said to me: "Remember Miss Devlin and the School Prayer and gra-aw-aw-awnt?" And I did.

Miss Devlin, I believe, was responsible for the music for the School Song and for the Prayer. Reggie Frewin might have fiddled the Latin. Miss Devlin was a peculiar woman, always wore a full length grey fur coat (in Bermuda!) and dark glasses. She spoke with an English drawl; she was very Jam and Jerusalem, even with the Irish moniker. Reggie Frewin was an English fellow, a first cousin of Winston Churchill, all rather proper. But if Miss Devlin could be said to have a broomstick up her jumper, Reggie was often loose as a goose. He was well eccentric.

Miss Patricia Devlin wanted the School Prayer chanted as if by boys at Eton, Harrow or Rugby, and not by the scholarship boys there, god-damn it! If the Prayer had a name, I don't remember it. I think of it as Look with Favour (or Cook with Flavour) - the first three words of the thing. I don't recall much more of it. Let's have a go:

Look with favour
We pray thee, Oh, Lord,
Upon this our school.
(Yadda Yadda Yadda)
And grant…

And one must not sing grant the way Ulysses S Grant probably said his surname. One must not, must never, ever, sing like an American. One must elongate the word grant into at least four syllables: gra-aw-aw-awnt. And so we would overdo Miss Devlin's instructions, chew the scenery, until she'd stop playing the piano, stand up and throw a fit. Her fur coat would have fallen off the piano bench at that moment, if you wondered.

Reggie Frewin died some years ago. So far as I know, Pat Devlin is still around, though she must be awfully ancient by now. I think of her as a menopausal old trout fifty years ago! Seems to me that Miss Devlin was transferred from the music department at Warwick Academy (a school for the better class of white children) to a primary school that was, even after racial segregation ended, pretty much entirely black Bermudian so far as pupils went. How the hell did she adjust? I imagine not a great deal of Latin was sung at that primary school, but the Bermudian accents. Gad!

It's now 2009, and I have to write January, which can be a bugger to spell if I'm drowsy (often!) and I'm wondering if the world can get much messier. Of course it can, but many of us know that it will improve eventually. (William Blake: Without contraries is no progression.) Some people have the means to get through some lean years, and there are tens of millions who will simply starve to death or murder one another. I'm not sure whether the poster child for famine gets time, or has the capacity, to wonder where his next meal is coming from. The wondering is throttled by the pain in his gut.

Yesterday, New Year's Day 2009, I went walking along the coast to the south of Amble by the Sea with young Cailean. I had wakened early and we were en route at sunrise, and I took a few photos of the dawn, the sky over the North Sea. A clear, cold and perfect sort of day.

And, in my head, I sang one of the hymns we sang at Warwick Academy: So Here Hath Been Dawning, which features the words of Thomas Carlyle. This hymn has a lovely melody, and in my head I hear no wrong notes.

Cailean sniffed about, his first New Year's, and I wondered if it is wrong to feel so bloody happy when others are not. Hell, let's sing:

Gaudeamus igitur!

Happy New Year! To a Latin beat!