Chippenham, Wiltshire – a new video
My latest video on YouTube:
cafe reviews, wanderings, disconnected thoughts
My latest video on YouTube:
Today I published my latest video, of a small town in the Cotswolds.
My latest video, showing the town of Droitwich, near Birmingham in England.
My latest video is of the town of Ledbury in Herefordshire, in the West of England.
Only yesterday I was working on a piece of music called “The Lonely Sea and the Sky” and postulating a story told from the viewpoint of a boiler operative who one night got very drunk and missed his ship. In the morning he stood on the quayside yelling “I hope your bloody ship sinks and everybody drowns!”
That ship was, of course, the RMS Titanic.
And then I am reading about the life of Jack Kerouac only to find that in the 1941-45 war he was in the Merchant Marine, served on the SS Dorchester, and one night in early 1943 got drunk and missed the boat.The Dorchester sailed, and on that voyage was torpedoed with the loss of 600 lives.
I don’t know what to make of this other than that coincidence happens.
My latest video – the town of Cricklade, in Wiltshire, England.
The last of my London trip videos is another area that is special to me.
Not as picturesque perhaps as others, but it stands out in the area as being somehow quieter and set apart, streets of Victorian houses and mansion blocks (i.e. purpose-built blocks of flats in late 19th / early 20th century style), street trees, Brook Green itself meandering through along the path of a long-buried minor river, the remains of St Paul’s School and the new housing built on its land, St Paul’s Girls’ School where Gustav Holst was music master from 1905 until his untimely death in 1934, a row of little Iranian restaurants opposite the Olympia exhibition centre, Rowan Road where the poet Leigh Hunt lived his last years, the pub on the corner that used to be an inn where the stagecoaches changed over from the elegant horses used in town to the beasts that could get a coach to Bath faster than the wind (although the journey time to provincial capitals was still measured in days). Then when the stagecoaches stopped became a writers’ pub and later on (rebuilt) was a rock venue; the artists’ studios by the A4, huge windows to let in the unvarying northern light; well-heeled inner suburbia inhabited by media persons to this day; three Tube stations (if you include Olympia on its edge): West Kensington and Barons Court; where Gandhi lived, and H Rider Haggard, and Geoffrey de Havilland.
The first place I lived in London, and the first place I lived away from my family. I still dream of it regularly. Going back was strange because I dream of it so much that it didn’t seem real. But it was.
At the moment I’m reading my way through the TBR pile. First was Colm Toibin’s “Homage to Barcelona,” the story of a place that isn’t just a city but incarnates a culture (Catalonia). I lived in that city during 1982 when the Catalan language was really taking off but I believe now it’s much changed. Interesting that the language took off because of its use by the middle classes (a lot of the working class are not Catalan by origin) whereas in Wales their language seems marginalised by the perception that it’s middle-class, i.e. used by essentially the same people. I wonder what the difference is?
Then it was Richard Rohr’s “Everything Belongs” which I don’t know why I was reading it as I’m not a practising Christian (or any other sort really) but Rohr does find common cause with other paths and seems particularly fond of Buddhism, arguing for a kind of devolved (to the individual) Christianity that might not seem alien to a Buddhist.
And another new video!
This one has taken a while to edit, as it’s an area that is very close to my heart. I lived nearby for 20-odd years and while most of the area is busy and full of traffic and development, the riverside is another matter – still bustling, but full of green spaces, cosy little pubs and boathouses leading down to the Thames.
And another video from my London trip … one of my friends called it a ‘snapshot’ and it is, not a long video as I originally planned it to be a section of another one but it doesn’t really fit in to any others, it’s a separate place.
Holland Park is in Kensington, West London, and was previously (prior to WW2) the gardens of Holland House, the largest private garden in London (Buckingham Palace now holds the crown, so to speak, but only because Holland House was bombed and no longer exists except for a few fragments). The gardens and park are now public. They also contain the Kyoto Garden, a Japanese-style garden.