Tales from under Black Hill

FolkWorkshops Newsletter: January 2012

2012-01-27T15:35:00.000-08:00

Stop Press: we have just heard from the Rev Nicholas Lowton about a concert at Craswall Church on Saturday 4th February, 7.30 pm, to be given by the award winning folk artist Sam Lee. Entrance will be free with a retiring collection. To learn more about Sam and his career to date aee the previous blog.

Other News: Congratulations to Black Hill Folk for raising £275.65 for Crisis at Christmas at the singing at the Cornewell Arms and at our Folk Night at the Crown. Black Hill Folk, their partners and guests had a very successful Burns Night at the Crown Inn Longtown on January 24th with Jim Neale and his band in attendance to provide some excellent Scottish music. Our thanks go to Sheila and her staff for providing a most enjoyable spread. Our thanks also go to John Biggs for getting everything together and to all those who helped in various ways, sang, played and recited. Following on from the Wassail with Foxwhelp Morris at the Yew Tree Inn, Preston on Wye, the previous week, as Mr Kipling of Cakes fame might have said, ‘these two events seem to have belatedly rung in the New Year in a most splendid and exceedingly good manner’.

If you would like a change in your radio listening then why not try the internet radio station Folk Radio UK. This is funded by donations from the listeners and a wide variety of music is broadcast. Their website also has a great deal of news and you can subscribe to their Newsletter. Donations may be one off or on a regular basis.

Black Hill Folk will be resuming their singing practices at the Griggs by invitation of John and Bridget on Tuesday 31st January starting 7.30 - 8 p.m. and then on Wednesday 15th February starting 7.30 - 8 p.m. Should you want to join in or know someone who would, please make contact via this e-mail address.

Folk Music Nights: NEWTON CHURCH ROOM, 7th February, 7.30 p.m. Free but donation requested. All welcome, and likewise at THE CROWN, LONGTOWN Tuesday 21st February 8.00 p.m.

Visiting other Folk Clubs and Venues: Several interesting clubs have been tracked down within an hours drive so we will be reporting on any planned trips should anyone want a car share. Should you be interested in seeing the full range of clubs in this category and beyond you could start by Googling Chepstow Folk Club which will take you to the Chepstow Accoutic Music Club. Their motto is ‘Strength in Community, Quality and Consideration’

Workshops: Interest in these has proved encouraging. Other workshops can be arranged on other topics so let us know your musical interest. Should you have an idea for a workshop or would like to run one or know someone who would, then get in touch.

Bass Guitar and Guitar Workshop: Peterchurch Fire Station 18th February. Bookings are now coming in for this session. Please spread the word on this as it is open to all ages and abilities. Jim Neale holds the necessary certificate etc should under 18’s wish to attend. Full details on thia site.

Banjo and Ukulele Workshops: this is being made available depending on demand. It includes advice on purchasing an instrument, basic techniques and where to find worthwhile and free, You Tube Lessons. For those who want to practice without disturbing the household or the neighbourhood we now have ‘practice mutes’ available’. For more details make contact by e-mail.

A Workshop entitled, ‘An Introduction to Folk Music Instruments’ is also available depending on demand.
And Finally: This came in from the ever active and comprehensive Cas Smith of the Gigs Guide: Hallsway Manor is well worth checking out as it is a residential centre in Somerset running all kinds of events and weekend schools throughout the year. Here is Cas’s recommendation:
To mark the 150th Anniversary of the opening of the original West Somerset Railway between Norton Fitzwarren Junction, near Taunton, and Watchet in 1862 our neighbours at Halsway Manor, Crowcombe, are holding a weekend called Songs, Steam and Stories of the Quantocks between May 11th and 13th. There are top-line acts booked including Taffy Thomas, Tim Laycock, Tom and Barbara Brown and the Hotwells Howlers. For more information about what promises to be an excellent weekend in a wonderful Quantocks keep an eye on www.halswaymanor.org.uk.

From: John Simms [mailto:john.com@wsrail.net]
Subject: WORDS ABOUT THE HALSWAY MANOR WEEKEND
Yours Sincerely

John Simms
Commercial Department

This is probably quite enough for one Newsletter. We are sure there will be quite a lot more happening in the year to come.

Sam Lee in Concert

2012-01-27T07:06:00.000-08:00

Sam Lee in Concert at Craswall Church, Herefordshire,
Saturday Feb 4th at 7.30

Entrance will be free with a retiring collection

Sam Lee, folk singer, promoter and animateur will in late 2011 be releasing his debut album “Ground Of Its Own” a musical manifesto recognising the unique artistic journey Sam has taken and the less than conventional route getting there. Although a gifted singer, this was completely unknown to him until his first encounter with folk song some 5 years ago. This discovery of an unheard music compelled him to abandon his then career as a trained visual artist, teacher of wilderness survival and moonlighter as a burlesque dancer and embark on a journey into the songs of The British Isles. Sam is fast becoming accepted as one of the new pioneers defining the sound, sight and texture of contemporary folksong. This was reflected in his winning the 2011 Arts Foundation Award winner, which for the first time this year, honoured folk music amongst its art forms. Likewise his live band carves an new acoustic with their homemade and mongrelised instrumentation and unconventional arrangements that challenge any preconceptions of what ʻtraditionʼ should sounds like.

Sam is also an award-winning promoter and live events producer through his 2010 BBC Folk club of the year ʻThe Magpieʼs Nestʼ. The Nest has played a key role in the resurgence of the creative live folk music scene and is behind many innovative concerts across London, festival stages around the UK and radio and television appearances. He also helped organise (and modelled for) the first ʻfolk featureʼ in Julyʼs edition of Vogue UK.

On an experiential note, Samʼs only real musical training has come via a unique 4 year apprenticeship under the legendary and sadly late Scottish Traveller Stanley Robertson last of the great ballad singers. Sam became the musical ʻnext of kinʼ to Stanleyʼs vast repertoire of songs and an ancient, idiosyncratic Traveller singing craft. While travelling himself he is also to be found creating ground breaking research documenting the music and stories of the Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller communities.

Sam is a regular teacher at Newcastle University, Goldsmiths College, the EFDSS and despite failings by both Cecil Sharp and Vaughan William’s to gain permission, holds the accolade as the first folk singer ever to teach and sing at the Royal College of Music.

Bass Guitar and Guitar Workshop on Saturday 18th

2011-12-08T06:18:00.000-08:00

We now have full details of the Bass guitar and Guitar workshop to he held on 18th February. We are very lucky to have Jim Neale as the workshop leader who will draw on his own learning and teaching experience as well as his work with ceilidh bands. Jim plays bass guitar, guitar, mandolin and fiddle as well as being a singer.

FolkWorkshops Acoustic Guitar and Bass Workshop for Beginners of any age

Attention to all budding, acoustic guitar players and singers. I, Jim Neale, propose to organise a community workshop at the Fire Station, Peterchurch on Saturday 18th February 2012. You only need to bring an Acoustic Guitar or Bass Guitar with you. If your Bass is electric, you will need a Bass amplifier; although I have a spare Bass amplifier to share (even electric Bass guitars can be played without an amplifier!).

I would like to start with the Bass guitarists, (either acoustic or electric) at 10.00am,an hour before the acoustic six string guitarists arrive at 11.00. I feel confident that the Bass players will be able to enhance the sound of the guitars and add the ‘deep notes’ to keep us together! So when you ‘sign up’ below, please let me know your requirements. (No extra charge for Bass Players joining the acoustic guitar workshop at 11.00 am)

I have carefully chosen songs that are ideal starting points which embellish both Guitar and Bass. I will provide all material including a CD so that you can practise on your own to perfect your skills.

The aim of the Workshop is to get people playing and singing together, the most important part of creating music. With that in mind, the morning’s session is broken down into the following elements:

1. 1) Tuning the strings in standard pitch (both guitar and Bass)

2. 2) Introducing the simplest chords on the guitar and Bass pattern

3. 3) Using a plectrum and creating the rhythm pattern for the songs

4. 4) Introducing the ‘extra’ notes for the more adventurous player

5. 5) Playing together to create a community of ‘sound and song’

Please note: The number of songs we manage in the workshop is unknown at our first session. However, the method used will provide any beginner or moderate guitar player the means to play along with others and follow most guitar books with greater understanding. There will be a fee of £5.00 (students and job seekers free) to provide the CD, printing and refreshment.

To sign up for a place on this Workshop please cut and paste the the following registration details and send a printed versions to the address shown, together with a cheque for £5

............................................................................................................................................................................................

I wish to enrol for the Bass session. I understand it starts at 10.00am and finishes at 11.00am, Saturday 18 February. Please tick here...... (also tick below if you also want to attend the guitar session at no extra cost)

I I wish to enrol for the acoustic guitar session starting at 11.00am and finishing at 12.30pm Saturday 18^th February. Please tick here........

My Name:

My Email:

My Address:

My Phone/Mob:

Please return these details with a cheque to the value of £5.00 to: Jim Neale

1 Meadow Heights, St.Owens Cross, Hereford, HR2 8NP info:Mob(07909524171)

Revew: A Grand Folk Concert, Shire Hall, Hereford, Saturday November 12th: 7 to 11 pm

2011-11-15T02:08:00.000-08:00

The Performers: My draw to this concert was to hear Roy Bailey for the first time. The reputation of this left wing singer and song writer reached me well before I had seen him perform. It is an odd thing how some artists seem to have passed one by. This is hardly surprising. Work, commuting and family life does tend to prevent one from ‘getting out more’. It was well worth the wait however since this is a man who holds values I have no difficulty identifying with. Songs and stories which were at times both very moving and amusing added up to an excellent performance. His style of guitar playing was varied and fascinating to an old ‘3 chorder’ like me. If I could have a voice like Roy’s when I reach his age I will have no complaints, and neither should my audience.

Memorable among the supporting artists was Martyn Wyndham-Read whose collection of Australian songs and stories has got me returning to this repertoire. With Remembrance Sunday just an evening away his choice of material, including references to the loss of his father in Normandy in 1944, was apt and poignant. This is a man well worth visiting on Google. For reasons which will become clear below I cannot name the other supporting artists as I had not intended to review this event so did not take a note pad. It will also become apparent why I have written this review. Consequently I can only report that the opening act, I think he was Eddie Upton as he is the only other name on the flyer I have, was an excellent starter with a good voice, guitar technique and material. I apologise for not doing him justice through lack of detail but a brief printed programme would have been nice. A fund raising opportunity, along with others, lost.

The same absence of details applies to the troupe of French singers and musicians who brought some World Music to the evening. It was very, very good, but not my cup of tea and suffered from what I regard as a failing of World Music: they never know quite when to stop. The couple from Devon, who managed to survive the failure of the PA system, sang a version of Henry Martin which sounded a bit too jolly. The absent bag pipe player referred to in their intro would no doubt have put this right. They both had strong voices and the harmonies worked very well.
Martyn Windham-Read then returned for his second set which was equally impressive but for the reasons expressed below I had to leave the event before his set ended and before Roy Bailey returned to the stage for the final set. Musically this was a lovely evening, but...

The Organisation of the Event: this was very weak and did not do justice either to the talented performers and the good causes being supported, let alone those who had paid £15 each and probably travelled some distance to hear Roy Bailey. We were assured by the person at the contact number that there would be no problem with admission on the door. This was true as, despite an impressive turn out there was room for us, but no tickets! It seemed that if one needed to take a break outside it was clearly to be done on trust. Furthermore, we were told that there was no drinks licence and so drinls were to be acquired by donation. Also, there was something mumbled about the Vegan Buffet not actually being on sale, but donations could be given. No notices about recommended donations were displayed and the dreamy youngsters behind the bar had to be reminded why they were that side of the counter. By the time we reached the barrel, the beer had run out, my friend had had a glass of wine spilt over his trousers by a member of the bar crew and I was thinking of going back to reclaim some of my donation as it now seemed excessive for 3 apple juices and a glass of bio-dynamic wine, but a moment’s thought about the good causes brought me back to my senses.

This was a pity really as my senses were about to be assaulted in several unexpected ways. Firstly, is it obligatory that children at folk or artistic events of this kind have parents who wish their kids to demonstrate the extent of their free spirits by running all over the place and talking during the performances? As did some of the adults I would add. All this, with the backing chatter from the customers and assistants at the catering tables. The announcements were unpredictable in their audibility anyway due to the intermittent failings of the PA system and the great door to the hall often being left open meant we could hear even more noise from the free spirits playing in the entrance hall below. Surely someone from the Woodcraft Folk could have organised a training evening for ‘Occupy London’ or something? If there isn’t a local group, why not? On top of all this there was no programme at all, let alone one with some biographical details about the artists (hence my limited review above) and the running order seemed to be evolving as the evening went on. Having started late the inevitable consequence was that Roy Bailey’s final set didn’t end to well past midnight. This was too late for many judging by the reduced numbers in the room. This seems disrespectful of Roy Bailey and those artists who had commitments elsewhere on Sunday. Let alone the audience. I will now stop this report on the evenings missing production values.

The Venue: I am prepared to put up with quite a bit of discomfort for a good cause but there are limits. The Shire Hall, although it was very grand in the past, is now looking rather sad and shows all the signs of a municipal white elephant. The lighting was awful. I have had a more relaxing evening with institutional lighting while waiting in the arrivals hall of Terminal Five. This was not helped by someone forgetting to put the rear lighting back down after the first surge to the bar and vegan buffet. The PA system, when working, coped well with this barn of a place, but even with most of the seats occupied it still felt a bit like having a concert in a defunct Victorian baths complex.

This discomfort was compounded by the steel chairs. To those who complain about hard pews at church and chapel events I say, ‘You ain’t felt nothin yet’. If you are going to a concert at this venue two good cushions for back and posterior protection are essential. The seating in the entrance hall downstairs for those attending court is luxurious by comparison. My free advice ( no consultancy fees here) to Herefordshire Council is to check the price of scrap metal and see what replacements can be bought on the modern commercial chair market. In the meantime I feel as though hard punishments are not confined to the court rooms below. Such was my accumulated discomforts that my endurance ran out before Roy Bailey’s last set.

Conclusion: I understand that this concert was part of a birthday celebration which had been going on for much of the afternoon. I have no problem with that, but when you invite paying members of the public, albeit for good causes, everyone deserves better. Amateur organisation and an uncomfortable venue nearly spoilt the evening for me but some great artists came to the rescue. Those planning public events on this scale should take advice from someone with experience. But I repeat my specific advice to anyone going to the Shire Hall. Don’t forget to take the cushions and possibly the shades, unless, of course, you are appearing in court.

Dacier

FolkWorkshops Newsletter for October/November 2011

2011-11-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Supporter,

Ooops! What happened to October? There is no shortage of things happening. Our Tuesday practice evenings for the Black Hill Folk are now under way. It has been assumed that this would fit in with various work commitments and other meetings but please let us know if this is wrong. You will also see from below that the 2nd Tuesday of the month will be taken up by the new session at the Crown Inn, so Susie’s Song School will still be possible. Check on the Village Quire website for details of the Song School. That said, it would be a pity if anyone was excluded by inflexible meetings. Talking of sessions, the 11 of us who made it to the Longtown WI evening on the 18th October really enjoyed the experience and by all accounts so did many of the audience who came up to express their thanks afterwards. Well done everyone.

Just in case there is not enough going on for you it is always worth checking out the e-newsletters from the Borough Theatre Abergavenny and the Courtyard Hereford. There seems to be a regular supply of musical surprises. Since these can be very varied we will do nothing more than draw your attention to these excellent publications. Also, welcome to all our new followers of @FolkWorkshops. We now have 62 followers from elsewhere but only 2 from this mailing list (now numbering 60) as far as I can see. By exploring who follows us and who we follow you can build your own collection of information sources on Folk Music events throughout the border counties and beyond. Don’t forget to let us know if you think an event should be posted with us.

Upcoming Events

Sing Out and Sing Around Evenings at The Crown Inn, Longtown on Tuesday 8th November and every 2nd Tuesday of the month thereafter, weather permitting. We have always been made very welcome by Phil & Sheila at this excellent pub so let’s hope the sessions take off. Solo’s, duo’s, ensemble, instrumental performers and listeners all very welcome.

Grand Charity Folk Concert in aid of Oxfam, Water Aid, and Friends of the Earth, with ROY BAILEY and a host of others. Lots of interesting refreshments for sale including bio-dynamic Red and White Wine etc. Hereford Shire Hall: Sat 12th November, 7 p.m. ‘till late. Tickets ( £15 adults, children under 12 free) from Outback Records, Church Street, Hereford.

Friday 11th November, Armistice Day, at St. Margaret's Church 7.30 p.m. Black Hill Folk will be taking part in this evening of readings, song and meditation on the theme of Memories and Remembrance. Jim Neale will be joining us. We aim to end by 8.45 to give time for hot drinks and a chat with friends, new and old, afterwards. Entrance is Free, but all donations will be given to Royal British Legion.

Lanveynoe Church, Winter Warmer Concert, 25th November, Clodock Church, at 7.30 pm: The Pax Singers from Malvern will be signing a wide ranging selection including spirituals and folk songs. Tickets £10 ( children under 12 free). To include a glass of punch & a minced pie. Contact the Churchwardens or tickets on the door.

Carols & Crumpets at Brilley Village Hall, Fri 9th December 7.30 p.m. If you enjoyed the recent John Kirkpatrick concert, or are sorry that you missed it, he is performing at this evening of music for Christmas and Midwinter. At the moment we do not have a contact phone number, but we will post more details on @FolkWorkshops and pass the word in the usual way.

The Village Quire in Concert Saturday 10th December, All Saints Church, Cwmbach, Glasbury 7.30: Performing their annual concert of music and readings for Christmas this is an evening not to be missed. More details on their website. Simply Google Village Quire Glasbury. Please note this concert will also be staged again at the Globe, Hay on Wye on the 23rd December, also at 7.30

Annual Black Mountains Group Church Choir Coach Trip to St. David’s Hall Cardiff:14th December If you have never been to this event it is well worth the trip to hear the combined Welsh Hospitals Choirs, the Brass Ensemble of the Royal Welsh Regiment, and a celebrity guest. The latter is not usually known until nearer the date. Pick ups at Longtown Village, Clodock Church and Pandy. If you would like more details contact Bob Burson. We can always forward your e-mail if you send your request via FolkWorkhops.

Christmas Carol Singing at the Crown Inn Longtown: Friday 23rd December: From 8 pm As last year the Reverend Nicholas Lowton will be taking his keyboard to the Crown Inn Longtown to lead some Carol Singing, aided and abetted by Black Hill Folk with a few party pieces of their own. As this is the evening at the end of the last working week before Christmas it should be quite busy.

We hope to have some voice left for a quiet family Christmas and the two usual Carol Services. Will we be battling through the snow as in recent years?

So, if you are seeking a traditional Christmas there is loads of the stuff on your doorstep, hopefully with not too much of the white stuff. This seems all a bit tiring at this point but the trick is to make a happy selection. In the meantime our thanks go to John and Bridget Biggs who provided much of the above information and who are taking on some much appreciated organising due to the roller coaster ride we have had since September.

Best wishes from,
John & Jane Baxter

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FolkWorkshops September Newsletter

2011-09-21T04:29:00.000-07:00

September is the month which marks the slowing down of the festival season and the settling down for the winter evening sessions. This is not to say that things are any quieter on the events front as you can see from the various events guides. But first a quick look back at the month just gone.

Sian and I made two trips to Kent. The first to buy an upgrade banjo and the second to hear our great niece sing with the Wallingford Choir during their week’s residency at Canterbury Cathedral. On both occasions Jane and I sang at the Faversham Folk Club’s singaround evenings (by invitation in the sense we invited ourselves: that is how it works), and it confirmed the value of the informal and tolerant approach. The second session was made up of totally different people to the first, but the talents were equally impressive with people travelling from various parts of the county to attend. On both occasions it was clear that a lot of original writing is going on as well as songs being passed on from one singer to another without any clear indication of where they have come from. There were no inhibitions about reading the words from a sheet on a music stand, (apparently some Folk Clubs can be quite snooty about this) or coming along with homemade instruments or exotic instruments. Jane and I did a number with the banjo and psaltery; another couple did several pieces with dulcimer and guitar while another couple sang beautiful harmonies and original songs to a homemade amplified electric lute!

Incidentally, some of us are beginning to take the ‘workshop’ idea a bit further. John is in the process of getting the things together to build a ‘dulcijo’ while another is tracking down plans for building a ‘cigar box’ guitar. However, don’t hold your breath as such things take a while!
We have had some encouraging feedback regarding our singing at the Songs and Poems Among the Flowers evening at St.Margarets and there are plans for other occasional events of this kind. Thank you again to all those who took part.

The other highlight of the summer was our caravan/stand at the Longtown Show (complete with the new @FolkWorkshops banner) which drew a lot of people, including a good few youngsters. It got a bit hectic at times but it was most rewarding and we made some new friends. One husband may well find that he will building a dulcimer for his wife as a Christmas present while one youngster is looking forward to a banjo in his Christmas stocking if Dad keeps his promise. Thanks to all those who turned up to help and sing and to all those visitors who made it worthwhile. We have been asked back for next year if we can make it.
Various plans are being made to resume our evenings at Newton Church Room and occasional evenings at the Crown in Longtown and elsewhere. Regular singers have already been given the new collection of songs for our winter programme. It is never too late to start so let us know if you want to be added to the list of those to be notified of rehearsal sessions.

EVENTS

The first events will of course be the Workshop with the Village Quire at St. John’s Newton on Wednesday 28th September at 7.30 and their concert in St. Margaret’s Church on Saturday 1st October at 7.30.If you want to take part in beautiful harmonising please come to the workshop. Tickets are £5 for the workshop and £10 for the concert. A combined ticket is £13. You can reserve your tickets by phoning John on either 01981510629 or 01981510388. We have attached a poster if you have room to display it somewhere such as in your car etc.
Our other fixture is a FolkWorkshops session with the Longtown WI on Tuesday 18th September at 7.30. The aim will be to get as many people singing as possible as incited by our regular singers and songs, aided and abetted by a glass of wine or two. In between songs there will be short explanations of the folk repertoire and instruments. We will take as many instruments with us as possible by way of display items as well as for accompaniment. Sadly, the ‘dulcijo’ is not expected to be ready by then.

Susie’s Song School the Song School again on Wednesday, October 5th, 7.30 - 9.30, and will run fortnightly. If there are any songs that you fancy doing, or any queries, please let Susie know. Details will be avaia;lable on the Viggae Quire Website.

John Kirkpatrick Workshop and Concert, 15th October: John Kirkpatrick
Vocal workshop and concert
The Victorian Farmer’s Year in Song
Gwernyfed High School, Three Cocks
LD3 0SG Contact: Dave or Cheryl on 01497 847676
Workshop 2 - 5 pm
Concert 7.30 pmTickets £7.50 concert only / £10 workshop only / £15 combined workshop and concert.This will be a brilliant event for those wanting to learn more about folk song and to have a pleasant evening out. For booking details visit http://www.villagequire.org.uk

So, at the beginning of our third year, let’s hope we continue to grow, get more people singing and playing, but most important of all, that we have an enjoyable time in the process. Perhaps you will be encouraged by the following quote from the latest English Folk Dance and Song Society Magazine in an article written by Sarah Morgan of Craig Morgan Robson regarding one aspect of our activities. I know it strikes a familiar note for some of us,

‘The community choir movement is one of the huge musical success stories of our time. Underpinned by egalitarian principles that singing is our birthright, and that everyone’s voice is of value...these open access choirs (which anyone can join without an audition or music reading skills) can be found the length and breadth of the country...many do not even use the term ‘choir’ lest it should be off-putting for those whose experience of singing in schools was to be told ‘stand at the back and mime’.

Keep on singing and strumming!

Welcome to Our Tales

2011-08-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

While you are here why not try our search facility and see what else might interest you. Looking back over the subject covered we seem to be a wide ranging sort of blog. I am not sure I still agree with some of the older articles on politics and elections but they are part of the record and it would be against my instincts to delete them. I have always found librarions who want to get rid of some of tjheir holdings rather disconcerting as how do they know what might be of interest in the years to come. On the other hand I have snapped up a few treasures thanks ot their shortsightedness.

Dacier

The Night the Weasels Took Over Debenhams

2011-08-15T04:41:00.000-07:00

Having spent a pleasant day with our daughter in Birmingham last Monday we went our separate ways when she caught her train back to London at 18.57. Not long after we had a call from her saying that police were being deployed in Birmingham city centre so we abandoned any ideas of eating out at Jamie’s for the first time.

Earlier in the day we had joked about the Tottenham riot spreading to Ealing where she now lives. Rather like Bournemouth voting Labour we thought. Little did we know. When my daughter went to catch her bus home at Ealing Broadway Tube station, 15 minutes before the shops opposite were trashed, the police presence amounted to two normally clad officers and a van. Whether this meagre presence was a look out posting or an advance party we do not know. But, such was the speed of the descending looters and the absence of advance notice on the part of the police, the results were a ‘free for all’ in Ealing Broadway and other Boroughs. There were no police deployed in many areas where they were needed. West Ealing for example, just along the Uxbridge Road, seems to have become a help yourself festival.

Later that evening when we were back home in the hills we watched the footage of the Debenhams Store in Clapham being looted, rather like an early Christmas sale, and it brought to mind the images from Wind in the Willows and the occupation of Toad Hall by the Weasels from the Wild Wood. Even then I couldn’t help totting up the bill which the Metropolitan Police were going to be presented with under the Riot Damages Act 1886. It now seems that the costs to be borne by the police, and the Met in particular, are going to be much wider. I am however prepared for it to be argued that looting, was not in law a riot.

All this has made me wonder whether the police are suffering from a loss of institutional memory. Yes, responses to public disorder take a time, but not being ready by Monday evening? This recent festival of looting was a unique event. Since the founding of the new police with the Metropolitan Police Act 1928, there is nothing in the books of this scale. But, this is the second time the police have been caught on the hop recently. The first was the slow response to the Millbank invasion. By contrast the riots of 1981 were responded too quite quickly with the Mutual Support system being activated to deal with riots in several major cities during one weekend.

By the time of the Miners strike of 1984 Mutual Support had come into its own as a means of dealing with flying pickets, aided and abetted by inventive, and sometimes illegal interpretations of ‘an, anticipated breach of the peace’. On the other hand, few people knew how few police were left on duty in non mining areas.Very few in fact.

On Monday evening the ‘Flying Looters’ were much more difficult to deal with due to their speed of travel, their modern communications, and a large amount of cheek. The penny had dropped in the twisted minds of gang leaders and aspirational thieves alike, namely, that when the mob strikes quickly in large numbers, in several locations, the police cannot cope. The slower the police are in responding, the bigger the impact on property and individuals.

That the mob can quickly get the upper hand can be seen from the Castle Morton Festival beneath the Malvern Hills in 1992 which started with one or two vans arriving on a Friday afternoon. These were the first of a convoy moving into Worcestershire from Gloucestershire. The result, as explained by local residents in the part of the Committal Proceedings in a prosecution for common law Public Nuisance, I attended, was that by the next day a small town had been created which not only damaged resident’s property but in effect made them frightened prisoners in their own homes for nearly the following week. In the meantime the mob ruled, the common became a no-go area to the police and a major drug exchange seems to have been set up. The West Mercia Constabulary recognised the power of the mob and explained their observing role as, ‘taking a low profile’. By mid-day Saturday they had little choice.

( As far as I am aware this case was the last prosecution for common law public nuisance before it was replaced by a statutory offence. A trial was eventually held in Stoke on Trent but I lost track of it due to an illness. If anyone has any information with regard to the outcome please leave a comment as this will probably prove to have been the last spontaneous public assembly of its kind.)

So, if there was an institutional memory, if there was someone somewhere on duty who possessed some of it, I would have expected various contingency plans to be triggered on the Saturday. Yes, this was a ‘public order’ issue, but these often spill over into periods of opportunist looting. Prime Minister Cameron’s purported claim to having made some kind of difference at his first Cobra meeting when he claims tactics apparently went onto a crime fighting agenda is a distinction without a difference, and a claim now disputed by senior police officers. Whatever the parties to this spat might say the facts speak for themselves. A small peaceful vigil marked the beginning of a mobilisation of the mob.

Could there be a connection with all this and the many early retirements, cost cutting already implemented and low police morale? Does the Prime Minister's obvious wish to import an American cop as the new Metropolitan Commissioner stem from a low opinion of British policing and an ignorance of what has been achieved in policing since 1981? I for one, as a policing critic, do not think that there is anything fundamentally wrong with the model. More often than not problems arise from ethical and resource deficiencies. Is Prime Minster Cameron's wish to import an American policeman to Britain's top policing job now saying that the police have deficiencies in the human resources department as well? Present Government policies will do nothing to help any of these deficiencies.

Whatever the causal links, the fact remains that the events of Saturday 6th August 2011 did not bring any more police into London through Mutual Support until Tuesday and by the time they did arrive the scenes of Clapham and Croydon were already emblazoned in our minds. Large scale destruction of this kind is not supposed to happen in Britain. The looters knew they were in control, the police knew they were in trouble, but PM Cameron also apparently knows things will be better next time round, even though there will be fewer police. Such is his knowledge of the history of policing since 1981 he thinks that an American cop, who actually increased police numbers in New York, can come to the rescue with regard to one of the suspected causes of the problem. Unfortunately he has no idea of the lead time for a cure for gang culture. I can also tell you now, he will not like the advice his American buddy will give and I will have no sympathy for him. Those who live by the gimmick often die by the gimmick and our current Prime Minister seems to have a plentiful supply.

Why it is wrong to use Homelessness as a Punishment

2011-08-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

Whilst the desire to do something about rioters now the smoke is clearing is understandable, I fear that the Government, led by the PM, are letting their enthusiasm for draconian punishment get the better of them. I have no problem with individual responsibility but there is usually a well established way in which the law can bring that about for the individual concerned. Neither do I have any trouble with parents taking responsibility for the acts of their children, but there are positive ways and negative ways in which this can be brought about.

My particular concern is with parents being evicted as part of this process of attributing responsibility when their child has been charged or convicted with a public order offence. Leaving aside the presumption of innocence, as some have already done, this is wrong. This is because it is a vicarious punishment imposed by way of strict liability.

Since we are told that the Government believes in the family, although not yet enough to give them some tax breaks, I find it difficult to see how making a mother and her child homeless achieves any relevant purpose. If a tenant had been a nuisance to neighbours and has a record of anti-social behaviour, then having a recently convicted 'rioter' in the house could well be the last straw for the landlord and the other neighbours, in which case one might ask why an eviction has not already been sought. If however this is the only cause then to make the family homeless is disproportionate and damaging to any family unit, or what is left of it.

Some of the parents seen on television swearing at reporters as they leave court with their children do not evoke much sympathy, and may well deserve eviction for other reasons. However, when asked where they expect such people to go after they have been evicted the PM simply says the private sector and they should have thought about that, before the child went off to a riot. I suppose this is at least better than ignoring the question as has been the result of my as yet unanswered enquuries of the Housing Minister @grantshapps.

To be vague or silent about these consequences is not only to reveal an ignorance of how traumatic homelessness can be, it is also tantamount to writing people off in the heat of the moment. If a dysfunctional family is at least in their home, there is a possibility, albeit slim in some cases, that there is something to build on. There is at least a chance that worthwhile lives can be built.

If the Government is saying that is nothing to do with them, then they might as well write off an awful lot of dysfunctional people, wash their hands of them, and hope they go away. They may do so for a while, they may be out of sight, but in such instances, unless someone can help achieve a breakthrough in providing hope for such ‘punished’ human beings, yet another seed is sown for a whirlwind which will inevitably return. This harsh, disproportionate and indiscriminate punishment not only shows a degree of callousness, it is also marks the absence of governmental compassion from people who probably never have been, and never will be, homeless. It lowers Government to the level of the thoughtless and unfeeling looters who cared nothing for their fellow citizens’ property or lives.

Dacier

Understand Looting? No thanks: it’s much easier to Condemn

2011-08-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

Trying to explain the new phenomenon of ‘consumer looting’, is often seen by some, as condoning it. This is clearly nonsense and often comes from people who are strong on condemnation generally and short of the talents required to explain. Sadly, Prime Minister Cameron and Home Secretary May, reveal this failing when they say that the disorder on the shopping streets is, ‘crime, pure and simple’. If only it were. Anyone who has eavesdropped on conversations between young street people or taken vox pop interviews of unemployed youngsters seriously, will soon realise that many of them are suffering from a serious disconnection from what no doubt Cameron and May would describe as ‘the standards of normal society’. Having seen quite a few employed ‘adults’, of whom it is tempting to say should have known better, leaving court, I think the problem goes back across several governments.

Unfortunately in the world of disaffected youth and their parents, or parent, the standards of comfortable Britain are difficult to find. Serial bad parenting over two or more generations can produce a very different person to that which members of ‘normal society’ would like to have living next door. How many people in ‘comfortable Britain’ have heard of the need to teach some failing parents basic parenting skills like how to wash themselves or prepare food. This might explain why such places on such courses, if they still exist, are very hard to find by hard pressed social workers trying to help the disfunctional families among their impossible case load.

The range of factors causing the cultural disconnection is wide and runs from the inability to read, through to an inability to escape the hold of the local gang, drug addiction, let alone an inability to find or keep a job. And all this takes place in a context of materialism and its attendant advertising based on the notion that to be worth anything you must have the product being advertised. No wonder levels of self esteem and hope plummet. Such an individual has no future and nothing to lose.

Excluded people looking in on ‘normal society’ from the outside, sooner or later, will be tempted to break in, or break it up, in some way, you break themselves up. Some get a lucky break but they are hard to come by. Aspirational looting, as I have heard it described today, is now one way of achieving both the break in and having a ‘smashing time’, all at the same time in the company of similarly disconnected youngsters possibly in your gang. These youngsters get some feeling of worth according to their own distorted view of where they are.

To those in normal society they are ‘feckless’, ‘anti-social’, ‘a-social’, ‘a-moral’ and many other things. Judging by the values of the Cameron Government they do not appear to be a sub-class worth investing in. Condemning their social origins as sick Dr Cameron is easy. Do you have a modern Dr Finlay to find a cure? Like so many of the cuts I fear there will be rather a lot of false economies in the pipeline. John Major said we should ‘... condemn more and understand less’. His wish seems to be coming true. Unfortunately, failing to understand something through fecklessness or ignorance, or both, usually has a big price.

Dacier

FolkWorkshops August Newsletter

2011-08-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Supporter,

Let’s start by welcoming all of you who have just joined the mailing list. We hope you will be able to come along to some of the events mentioned here and that you might have an instrument you would like to play or a voice to get into condition. If you have neither then as always come along to develop you’re listening skills, your knowledge of folk music, and have a pleasant evening or two out. As always, if at any time anyone wants to be taken off the list then please let us know. Equally if you know of anyone who might like to be on the list then get them to send in an e-mail request.

Let’s end by thanking all of those who turned up and sang at the Songs and Poems Among the Flowers evening at St. Margaret’s Church on July 18th. This was very much an experiment but very favourable feedback has come in and it looks as though another evening for early November is planned with the provisional theme of Memories and Remembrance. A big thank you goes to our singers, Black Hill Folk for doing such a good job. Don’t be surprised if we get asked to do a few more things at St .Margaret’s. Thanks also go to Jim Neale for singing songs which were just right. I think he had better consider organising a fan club up here in the hills.
We are just about to go off on a trip to the Somerset, Devon and Cornwall in search of some Folk Clubs to sing at so see you later in the month. In the meantime should any of you feel like buying the Bridge Inn at Michaelchurch we are sure that FolkWorkshops supporters will be only too pleased to boost your sales.

Keeping the dream alive,

Regards from all @FolkWorkshops

Events:

Wednesday 17th August: Newton Church Room 7.30 pm: Turn up and Sing Evening. John Biggs has a new song we might like so he will bring along a CD player to get us started. Dont forget to bring your song files with you. New members should not be put off by this as we can always find some lyrics for you.

Saturday 20th August: Longtown Show: FolkWorkshops Stall & Caravan: Look out for the sign and drop in for a chat and a drink. We will have various promotional leaflets from the English Folk Dance and Song Society, a display of musical instruments, and literature. A CD player playing folk music will provide the background music. Depending on who turns up, occasional outbursts of song and strumming on the hour from 2pm, will occur.
If you have any promotional material you would like to add to our collection then get it to us by Friday 19th or on the day of the show. Flyers, posters, and cards can all be found a place. Old books on music or artists you no longer want can also go on display for sale on your terms. If you have any old musical instruments you would like to sell or just bring along to add to the display, feel free. If it’s raining we will take shelter in the caravan! If it’s also blowing a gale we will see at the Crown Inn later getting warm and sampling the Butty Bach. It is August after all. If you have any ideas we have missed for the stall please let us know. We have no idea what to expect but we are looking forward to it!

Wednesday 28th September: Newton Church and Room 7.30 pm: Singing Workshop with the Village Quire: Your chance to try out part singing. Absolute beginners and above welcome. This is an evening which can really convince you that it is worth giving your vocal chords an outing. Tickets £5. All proceeds of this event as well as the concert below will be shared between the two churches.

Saturday 1st October: St.Margarets Church 7.30: Concert by the Village Quire High days and Holidays Along the Welsh Border Marches if you come to nothing else during the next twelve months this is the event not to miss. You can read a review of this concert on our tag link below. Heard in the setting of St. Margaret’s Church in sight of the Cat’s Back as it forms the sky line from Hay Bluff, via Black Hill and Red Darren to Hatterall Hill, we cannot imagine a better setting. Tickets £10. Combine it with the Workshop ticket and pay £13. To reserve any ticket either send your request to john.baxter87@virgin.net or telephone John on either 019812510388 or 01981 510629

Saturday 15th October John Kirkpatrick presents

The Victorian Farmer’s Year in Song
Songs about farmers, and songs sung by farmers; songs about the work on the farm, and songs to make that work easier; songs celebrating particular days in the country calendar, and songs celebrating the daily miracle of life, death, and renewal. And the world we are shown here is not a romantic pastoral idyll viewed through rose-tinted spectacles—this is a world full of sweat and muck, a world with dirt under the fingernails, a world full of snorting, and grunting and heaving. And then there’s the animals ...

John Kirkpatrick, winner of the ‘Musician of the Year’ award at the 2010 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In the popular TV series Victorian Farm John popped up now and again contributing folk songs, squeezebox tunes, dances and snippets of information about folklore and traditional customs.
Saturday 15th October, 7.30 pm at Gwernyfed School Drama Studio, Three Cocks, Nr Hay on Wye LD3 0SG. Cost £7.50

Folk Harmony Singing Workshop - John will also be running a vocal workshop from 2 - 5 pm at the school. Suitable for anyone who likes a good sing and can hold a tune! 'Dots' will be available if needed, but the afternoon will be suitable for those who prefer to learn 'by ear'. Cost £10 or combined workshop / concert ticket just £15. Workshop places must be booked in advance.
Tickets and further details from 01497 847676 or any member of the Village Quire / www.villagequire.org.uk

What is FolkWorkshops?

2011-08-05T16:26:00.000-07:00

We are an informal group of people who like music from the Folk Music Tradition. Some of us play musical instruments, some of us sing, while others like coming along to listen. We hold regular folk music evenings at Newton Church Room and at other locations such as the Crown Inn Longtown.

Singing: We are not a choir, although when we sing as a group we are known as Blackhill Folk. We also hold regular rehearsals when we have been asked to sing at a particular event. Supporters regularly attend Susie’s Song School near Glasbury during the winter months. We are also strong supporters of the Village Quire from Glasbury who organise occasional singing workshops. There is no need to be able to read music.

Singing Workshops: The Village Quire organise occasional guests to run these in Glasbury and also lead workshops themselves. Please see the Newsletter for the latest details.
Instrumental Workshops: We hope to run occasional workshops for specific instruments at beginners and improvers level as the number of players increase. We will be holding a Guitar Workshop sometime during the winter and other instruments will be added when possible.
Events: We are not a Folk Club but we can look like one at times. We have organised events such as our own Ceilidh, and helped with last year’s Concert and Workshop by the Village Quire from Glasbury in association with St. Margaret’s and St. John’s Churches.
Dancing: some of our supporters are folk dance enthusiasts and most of us try to support events run by Foxwhelp Morris whenever we can. Our members also attend singing workshops organised by other groups and individuals.

The e-Newsletter: through this and our twitter feed @FolkWorkshops we keep in touch with the growing number of fellow enthusiasts. We try to give early notice of folk music events and car sharing is often possible. We receive mailings from the English Folk Dance and Song Society as well as other groups. To register for the e-Newslettter send a request to john.baxter87@virgin.net

Six Ways kill a Village Pub: Or the Murder of The Old Albion

2011-07-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

I was brought up in a pub, I have served in a pub and have changed the occasional old wooden barrel. The first time I struck that brass tap with a wooden mallet I hoped that disaster would not also strike. The thought of a barrel of best bitter flooding the cellar did not bare thinking about. Although my pub life came to end shortly before my 19th birthday I had enough experience of customers to learn quite a bit about ordinary people, both the wicked, sad, reliable and occasionally heroic.

Our pub was a town centre house, killed off by the sudden obsession with television and property prices. But it had at its centre a loyal and interesting mix of customers and a house tradition of being run simply, but well. Keg beers? What were they? My father had taken over the pub from my maternal grandfather who had been running pubs since he retired from the army before the First War. My mother and her four sisters had been helping their father run the pun. In my mother’s case since she was 14. He had risen from a raw recruit to be the RSM for the Royal West Kent Regiment. He had quite a reputation as a local character having fort in the Boar War as a first generation Dutch immigrant to Essex, been mentioned in dispatches and had led the force that ended a riot at the local prison. His customers knew he would brook no nonsense. Despite his reputation in the town, all these pub girls took a while to find husbands suitable from the RSM’s viewpoint. Unfortunately some suitors would have been discouraged from marrying a publican’s daughter. One of my aunts had to wait some 15 years before her boy friend’s father died, such was his opposition to the marriage. I had no idea of this prejudice growing up in the 1950’s and have only recently come learn of the stigma attached to my family's trade.

With my background I have always thought, until recently, that I was perfectly qualified to baldy state that if you take me to a ‘bad’ or ‘dying pub’, I will be able to introduce you to a bad landlord. I say until recently because rather a lot of things have changed so that various exceptions have to be noted, but outside of these exceptions I still think I know why many village pubs across the country are now dying or being killed, sometimes with malice aforethought. A common cause for closure in some urban areas is that there are too many pubs for the potential customers. Re-housing has left many pubs with a smaller market nut this not so common in a rural community, unless the second home level is so high, the winter brings too many dark properties. I must add that in my own county there are many excellent village pubs who serve as examples of how it should be done, even though trading conditions are continually being made worse by the decisions of Government and the recession. Suffice it to say, if I make a return visit to a pub it is usually because I like it, unless of course it is so bad I have to see it again to believe it.

The accessory before the fact for ‘pubicide’ is Government. High alcohol duties and the smoking ban have made a tough situation worse. Smokers have to be outside which means that non-smokers have to go inside to avoid smoke and they in turn often lose the pleasures of drinking outside. When I was a kid a pub with a Children’s Room was a great change to sitting outside by myself with a lemonade and a packet of crisps. Now, once they have tired of any ‘Jungle Room’ facility children join their parents in the restaurant area and run amuck. I haven’t seen a children room for years. Why couldn’t a Smokers Room have been developed so that drinks were bought into a well ventilated separate bar area by the smokers themselves? ‘Smoking damages your health’, I hear you say. So does drinking, so why not close the pub in that case?
Publicans have had to put up with the high alcohol duty as unlike the supermarkets they have little room to sell lost leaders. Combine this with the higher costs of the multinational drinks industry, often advertising third rate beverages, and a whole raft of overheads for the publican, is it little wonder that margins are narrow? However, these are the main causes of death which will often be found at the pub’s post mortem:

1) Not understanding the word ‘hospitality’: I am now going to be accused of being as snob, mainly the people taking on a pub have no idea of what the term ‘hospitality’ means. Is there a question that brewers put to tenants along the lines, ‘Do you like people?’ If so it would seem that the qualifying answer is, ‘No’. Did Basil Faulty open a charm school for prospective landlords I wonder? There don’t seem to be ‘the right sort’ new landlords about nowadays. Some of them seem to have no idea what they are up to.

2) Serving rubbish or pretentious food: both inappropriately priced. Serving fry ups and grill ups straight from the freezer might well be a speciality of the Basil Faulty School of Catering if there were one. Luckily the standard of pub catering is usually very good, although I draw the line at pretentious menus with yuppy age central London prices. Somewhere between these two, most catering landlords, and of course landladies have struck a happy balance between cost and quality, often making sure that much of the menu is locally sourced. There is nothing wrong with good honest pub grub. Get rid of that and another nail goes in the pub’s coffin.

3) Not selling local real ales and cider: why do some publicans think they are running a milk bar or soda bar with only nitrogen infused fizzy pop bears or just bottled beer? I do that at home with a bottle opener or a can with a widget device built in. What I don’t want to do is install a hand pump in my living room and a micro brewery in my non-existent cellar. Furthermore if I want to drink Norfolk, Suffolk or Somerset Ciders in Herefordshire I’ll take the trouble of trying the bottled versions from the supermarket or make a trip to try the real stuff on its home territory. So called ‘locals pubs’ that serve a range of fizzy drinks from away are missing the point, and as for local produce, forget.

4) Not opening regularly: opening just at the weekend or from Thursday to Sunday seems to be lazy and not caring about the community. These limited opening times are the first sign of a loss of will on the part of the landlord. If opening the premises becomes a matter of the landlord’s convenience, but they still survive, they have again missed the point. They are supposed to be running a village pub not a minimalist investment company or a retirement cottage.

5) Making sure that the local community is not welcome: failing to have quizzes, providing a meeting place for local groups or a folk session once a month and not encouraging local customers through special promotions. Little things like not displaying posters for local events is a guaranteed sign of not being part of the community. Some pubs seem to think that the high value customers in the tourist season will do. This might well serve the proprietors long term plans for the building but the concept of the village pub has already being put to death by such proprietors. Which brings me to my final method of killing a village pub.

6) Not wanting to run the property as a pub at all: planning to apply for a change of use either to a private residence or for building development is the most common ulterior motive for the deliberate running down of a business. There are extreme cases of landlords turning away customers or regular folk singers so as to prepare poor accounts in readiness for the planning application. In one case, having lost a planning appeal for a housing development, the landlord actually demolished the building and the last time I saw the site it had been fenced off for nearly two years. If in the future there is any opportunity left to object to such a change of use, the claim that the business was not viable should be met with evidence to show that it was the landlord who was not viable, being a person unsuited to run a village pub because they wanted to convert it. A private house is worth so much more. In such cases I would say, ‘Show me a bad pub and will show you a deliberately bad landlord’.

‘Herein lies the plot of the Old Albion’ RIP

FolkWorkshops Newsletter

2011-07-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

Dear FolkWorkshops Supporter,

A great deal of things seem to be going on. A quick look at Broad Sheep says it all. Supporters are gradually increasing on this e-mail list and so by the time the dark winter evenings arrive there should be a few more of us. Our Twitter followers are also steadily increasing but, ironically, not from among our own supporters. Since there seems to be a lot of people out there who are interested in what we do we shall continue to run the account as well as the FolkWorkshops tag for the Blackhilltales Blog which gets about a hundred visits a month. Since a major insurance company I know of only gets 900 visits a month with the aid of a vast advertising budget this tag connection seems to do very well with just the aid of the @FolkWorkshops account. If you would like to send in a review or article for publication then please e-mail it to us. This newsletter is always posted on the FolkWorkshops tag. ( see signature bit below if you were wondering what it was) Equally if you hear of an event which is worth publicising then that can be easily posted on Twitter if you let us know.

We will continue to have evenings at Newton Church Room. If we can have one or two sessions like the Wednesday 11th May evening then the winter months will soon pass by. Many thanks to Jim Neale once again and he sends his thanks to all of you who have supported the various events to fund his sons trip to Cambodia to do some teaching. We have also been made very welcome at the Crown Inn, Longtown, and so look out for announcements of regular sessions there as well.

Our singers who went to the Help the Heroes event in Peterchurch did exceptionally well. One of our group was in the audience and will give us some constructive feedback which will be useful for the next time we do this sort of thing. The general feedback from the organisers and members of the audience was very positive. As most singers had not performed before up on a stage with microphones, among all the cable, drums and amps, I think they should all be highly commended for that alone. Although at times the evening was a bit daunting in prospect it was one of those experiences which was well worth it. We have made a few more friends as a result and we have been invited back for next year. At the last count they had raised about £900.

Foxwhelp Morris: Now the light evenings are with us you may be looking for an outing. Why not combine support of a local hostelry with watching a bit of Morris Dancing. Here is Foxwhelps itinerary for places nearby. Full details can be found at: http://foxwhelpmorris.wordpress.com However, just a reminder that they will be at The Crown, Longtown this Tues 19th July from 7.30 pm and at The Yew Tree, Preston-on-Wye on 26th July.

Village Quire Visit: Make sure you put these dates in your diary. Workshop and Concert at St. John’s Newton and St.Margarets Church on September 28th and October 1st. This is a jint effort between FolkWorkshops and the two PCC’s so all offers of help welcome.

There are lots more events coming up in the Autumn and we hope to get most of this information to you in due course. In the meantime the August Newsletter may be delayed. Jane and I will be visiting a few folk clubs this August and a festival or two but we will be in back for our FolkWorkshops stand at the Longtown Show on the 20th August. We are then off again as our great niece is singing at Canterbury Cathedral and rather more mundanely we will be joining the sing around at Faversham Folk Club. It’s a long story but suffice it to say we were in Faversham, Kent, earlier this month buying another banjo and we were made very welcome at the local club when we made contact via e-mail in advance. It must have been reasonable as they have asked us back!

Finally, by visiting other singers and venues we have learnt quite a few things about developing our activities. Sing Arounds are a good way for individual singers and duos or quartets etc to develop their confidence and ability; whether singing or instrumental. There is nothing wrong in getting together separately to rehearse such contributions but such efforts should be given room to perform at the sing arounds without a group expectation that everyone should be able to join in with the whole piece. If there is a chorus, then all well and good, but individual performers need room to build their confidence and thereby add to the group experience. Equally, instrumental sessions, if run properly, can allow the beginners and improvers to learn from the more experienced in a way which allows them to learn from their mistakes without embarrassment. Several of the clubs we have come across make such sessions a regular event, separate from the main ‘club night’. This was the case with us in Faversham but as we were travelling back to our caravan in Walton-on-Thames that night via the M2, M20, M26 and M25 the invitation to try the new banjo out in the main bar with half a dozen instrumentalists the following night had to be declined! Consequently any players who are beginners or improvers should keep a look out for any instrumental workshop sessions which may be organised by individual supporters in the coming months.

If you can drop in at a local club when you are on your travels it can be quite a worthwhile experience, and in any case, you can always leave early.

What my Parish Church means to me?

2011-07-11T13:20:00.000-07:00

Since the church referred to in this article sits in the beautiful country beneath the Cats Back, the ridge which is the location of our part of the Offa's Dyke Path, and is in sight of Black Hill, we thought this was a more than fitting place to reproduce this article which was originally written for the Hereford Diocesan Newspaper.

A 'sense of place' is a phrase which I suspect does not feature in many people's vocabulary in this ever changing world. The only constant seems to be our ancient buildings and the continuous spawning of new supermarkets at the expense of old fashioned things like local shops. I think this article captures what I understand to be 'a sense of place' which many of us experience when visiting 'special places'. In all honesty however I must confess to knowing the author very well so I am not an objective critic in this matter.

Dacier

I love our parish church of St.Margarets. It sits in the landscape as it has always done surrounded by trees and fields. I am surprised when visitors say how beautiful it is. Every interested visitor makes me look anew at the ancient building.
With so many medieval churches, the temptation is to speak of the glories of the architecture. In our case the Rood Screen, Texts and the East Window are our main treasures. Wonderful though these features are, it is the people, past and present who have given meaning to the wood and stone which form the building.

Others will say, ‘My village church is always there, it’s my constant in life through all my ups and downs. It is somewhere to go home to’. Particularly important to those who can no longer live and work in one place, the ‘journeymen Christians’, who become members of successive congregations, but who always have the constant affection for their spiritual home. Like the belief that sustains them, having a constant in their life means so much.

When I sit in the church on Sunday I look around at the people with me and remember those who used to be there. The green man on the rood screen still leers at the vicar in the same old way, and the light still shines through the coloured glass window with Saint Margaret holding our church in her arms, but I am also picturing my parents sitting in a pew on an old bit of carpet. The carpet has gone now but it was noticeable that if we were late someone else would be sitting there grateful for the warmth this unsightly article provided. I remember the largest family in the parish with all the boys dressed in their red jumpers at Christmas, teenagers then, but grey-haired now.

But to the present. Happily, although most of our congregation are of pensionable age, we still have a toddler who mostly dozes through the service but occasionally wails when deserted by a parent who has gone to read a lesson.

There is a groove worn in the grass from our organist’s house to the church where she walks to unlock the medieval door every morning and to lock it again at dusk. You would think it was a cat’s path but I know better. She says the church is a life-line and a refuge for her. And of course that is what many people need in their lives.

When entering a church you are suddenly no longer alone. One visitor described our church as being soaked in the prayers of centuries. No fooling that visitor with the wrapping. It is a special place and I am pleased to say that it is not just me who has that feeling.

Jane

Its Ceilidh Time Again

2011-06-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

FOXWHELP MORRIS

ARE HOLDING A CEILIDH IN PRESTON-ON-WYE VILLAGE HALL, HEREFORDSHIRE, ON 9TH JULY 2011 WITH THE BAND “SUCKLING RUNT”

TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM ANY MEMBER OF THE SIDE OR CALL JOHN ON 01544 340780

This is our very own own local Welsh Marches Team who will probably be appearing at pub near you soon and showing you what good Morris Dancing can be. Details of their tour of Herefordshire and Welsh venues are in be in FolkWorkshops Newsletter available here.

But why not get your own dancing shoes on and come along to their Ceilidh? Having seen them perform and knowing how they can make a great evening, you should not miss this evening. I know that quite a few FolkWorkshop supporters will be making their way through the lanes to Preston-on-Wye.

Dacier

FolkWorkshop's Newsletter: June 2011

2011-06-02T07:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Supporters,

Many thanks to all those who made it to the recent FolkWorkshops Session. Jim Neale greatly enjoyed the evening and he tells us that there will be others wanting to visit in the future from the general direction of the Black Swan in Much Dewchurch. Everyone enjoyed his songs, music and stories. Many thanks Jim, and please come again. The softer lighting and refreshments seem to have been appreciated and as usual thanks go to all those who helped set the room up, provided snacks, and most importantly, did the washing up. The surprise appearance of a spider dangling above the singers heads during the performance of the Wreck of the Old ’97 also added to the general mirth caused by the ensemble of guitars, banjo, bass guitar, harmonica and the percussion provided by Sue. Thanks also to all of you who gave so generously towards the cost of the evening and to Jim’s Cambodia fund.

There seems to be a lot of live folk music just at the moment. The Pete Coe Concert in Leominster was an inspiring evening and the trip to the Festival Hall Singing Festival to hear the Village Quire, the Martin Carthy 70th Birthday Interview and many other choirs, was well worth the effort. Please see the attached photo of a new recruit to the Village Quire who joined them in the Roof Garden of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Needless to say the Village Quire were on top form in front of large and appreciative audiences.

The Norma Waterson benefit organised by The Village Quire raised £1400. It was a great evening and a local discovery was Anne Lister, a singer and song writer from Pontypool. Dave Swarbrick performed a wide range of pieces including works recently discovered among forgotten manuscripts at the British Museum. This seems to be a growing trend as while we were at Cecil Sharp House earlier in the year the librarian told us that they have been working on a new collection from among their own archive.

With news that the Shrewsbury Folk Festival ( August26th/29th) is now sold out, if you are thinking of going to a local festival this year make sure you don’t miss the boat. The Bromyard Festival is being held on 9th/11th September.

News and Events Update

Foxwhelp Morris: Alison has just told me that the Foxwhelp Morris appearance at the Angel at Grosmont for this coming Tuesday the 31st May has had to be cancelled. This comes as a timely reminder that they will be dancing at the Crown, Longtown on Tuesday 19th July. Other bookings near us are The Harp, Glasbury on Tuesday 7th June 2011 The Pandy Inn, Dorstone on Tuesday 5th July 2011 and at The Yew Tree, Preston-on-Wye on Tuesday 26th July 2011.

Garway Folk Festival: Day tickets are now on sale. We are off there with our caravan on Friday morning whether its emptied of junk or not. Might see you there. http://www.learningobjectivity.com/garwayfolkweekend/tickets.html
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Mid-Summer Singing Workshop Brecon Beacons Saturday 18th June: An all day event. Please see the earlier e-mail of 17th May but note you could still get to the Ceilidh advertised below.

Ceilidh for Cambodia|: The Courtyard Hereford: Saturday 18th June: This is Jim Neale’s event so why not try some mutual support!Tickets are now available from the Courtyard ticket office. A good evening for £7.50 with concessions.

Help the Heroes Fundraiser: Peterchurch Fire Station 25th June: We have been given a 15 minute slot and rehearsals start at the Griggs, Wednesday 1st June

10 Years of Fund Raising at the Griggs: A Celebration: John Biggs writes ‘At 6 p.m. on Tuesday 12th July, we shall shut the gate on the last National Garden Scheme visitor after 10 years of garden visits for charity. Over the last 9 yrs we have sent off in excess of £7,500 to nominated charities. If FolkWorkshop’s supporters consider this worthy of celebration, then we would suggest the following evening, Wednesday July 13th, for a sing in the garden and hopefully a B.B.Q.’ Many thanks John and Bridget. This is a great idea and many thanks to John and Bridget for the invitation. I am sure there will be quite a few who would like to accept this invitation.

Longtown Show: Saturday 20th August: general publicity presence with some musical instruments, English Folk Dance and Song Society literature and shelter from the heat or rain in the caravan and possibly a CD or two being given a spin.

Longtown W.I. FolkWorkshop event:Tuesday 18th October: This has now been confirmed and should prove to be an enjoyable evening of song. We hope to do as many chorus songs as possible as well as say a bit about folk music generally. Please think of suggestions for songs and we can run some chorus words off.

Village Quire Workshop and Concert Sept and October 1st: as last year there will be a singing workshop on the Wednesday 28th at St.John’s Newton and the concert on the Saturday 1st October in St. Margaret’s Church. On the Sunday it will be St. Margaret’s Church Harvest Festival at 11. am followed by a Harvest Lunch. It will be a busy weekend so volunteers in all departments will be welcome. More detail in early September.

Spreading the Song: Can we repeat the plea that you forward this e-mail to those who you think will be interested in joining in with FolkWorkshops activities. Because we are neither a Folk Club, nor a choir or even a music teaching organisation an explanation of this ‘umbrella’ organisation is often needed. Hence the Longtown Show stall and our delight in being invited by the Longtown W.I. for an evening of song. FolkWorkshops can be whatever supporters want to be. If there are enough to form workshops for individual instruments where skills and ideas can be swapped then that can happen. If funds permit we can ask experienced players or singers to give classes. We are also acutely aware that there are many younger people who would like to sing but somehow are not sure what to do about it. If you can tactfully encourage them and explain the possibilities then they might turn out to play or sing folk music. A quote which we recently heard at the Martin Carthy Interview is well worth keeping in mind, ‘The only harm you can do to a folk song is not to sing it’.

Best wishes from all at FolkWorkshops and our singers, Black Hill Folk

FolkWorkshops Newsletter; 5th May 2011

2011-05-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Supporter,

What an Easter we have had. It is comparatively restful now but you will be pleased to hear we had some very favourable comments re our singing at the Mountain Mayhem Fete. One such person was very well qualified to express an opinion. Say no more.

Just a brief update. Our next session will be at Newton Church Room this coming Wednesday 11th at 7.30. Jim Neale for the Black Swan is hoping to come along. He plays the guitar and violin and has a wide range of songs as is happy to play along with whatever is going on. There seems to be rather a lot going on with events coming thick and fast. This week alone there have been four events. We have succumbed to two. The Courtyard tonight with Belshazzar's Feast, thus missing the Black Swan, and Pete Coe at the Lion Ballroom Leominster on Friday, thus missing the Martin Harley band at the Courtyard.

Village Quire News: our friends will be singing at various points around the Festival Hall next Saturday 14th May. The highlight should be The Main Foyer after Martin Carthy has been interviewed for TV as part of his 70th Birthday celebrations and while the audience is coming in. It is all part of the celebrations marking the Festival of Britain 1951.

Foxwhelp Morris: Now the light evenings are with us you may be looking for an outing. Why not combine support of a local hostelry with watching a bit of Morris Dancing. Here is Foxwhelps itinerary for places nearby. Full details can be found at: http://foxwhelpmorris.wordpress.com

Tue 10th May 2011 Black Swan, Much Dewchurch, Tue 31st May 2011 The Angel, Grosmont, Tue 7th June 2011 The Harp, Glasbury, Tue 19th July 2011 The Crown, Longtown Tue 26th July 2011 The Yew Tree, Preston-on-Wye.

Garway Folk Weekend: 3rd to 5th June: After some boring thoughts about travelling back and forth we have decided to take our caravan for the full weekend. Hope to see some of you there. For full details visit: http://www.learningobjectivity.com/garwayfolkweekend/

More news will have arrived by our session next week so look forward to seeing you then.

Keep on singing!

Follow us on twitter
@FolkWorkshops

FolkWorkhops April Newletter

2011-04-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

STOP PRESS: FolkWorkshop this coming Wednesday April 13^th at Newton Church Room at 7.30

Please spread the word!!!

A week is a long time in politics and so it would seem it is the same in the world of FolkWorkshops and the Black Hill Folk. Having had a great time at our Ceilidh it has taken a bit of time to recover but I am pleased to say we are not only re-covered personally but that we recovered our costs and made a modest profit for our events fund.

Many thanks to all those who helped with the various tasks to set the whole thing up, but a big thank you has to go to all of you who turned up to dance. Without you it would not have been the great family occasion which has convinced our group that we will try and organise another one during the early winter. We had visitors from the Village Quire members and supporters’ from hay and beyond and several people responded to our Villager News entry in the Hereford Times and made the journey from Hereford City.

Many thanks to the Silver Branch Ceilidh Band who kept us on our toes and to our Black Hill Folk singers, joined by Village Quire members, who started the second half.

So why is a week a long time? Well, with a bit of ale going off in the barrel the ceilidh organising crew had to have an emergency meeting to decide what to do about the potential waste of beer and to sort out who was owed what. This was soon resolved and as result we had a planning session and few songs. The result was the following.

Firstly, we must return to our original home at Newton Church Room. The first will be on THIS COMING WEDNESDAY 13^th April at 7.30. We will also be having another one in mid-May once all the bank holidays have passed. At the moment Wednesday the 11^th or 18^th May is being suggested so if you have any thoughts please let me know by Wednesday 13^th as that is the Newsletter deadline for advertising the session.

Please notel the Norma Waterson Benefit Gig which will betaking place on Saturaday 21^st May ( see Gigs List attached). We are hoping that a few of us will go and car share could be possible.

Secondly, we have been asked to do a bit of singing at the Mountain Mayhem Fete in aid of Llanveynoe Church on Easter Bank Holiday Monday. We will have our own table and have been asked to do some songs from about 12.45 to give the place a bit of life. The more that can come along for an hour or so the better. We will have plenty of printed word sheets for those who want to join in and we will be singing many of the songs at the coming workshop on Wednesday. It will be more of a ‘sing song’ rather than a formal performance so it should be a relaxed affair. There should be a good few choruses.

Having inspected the venue it is a big one, believe me, so we will be able to blast away in the manner of the Crown at Christmas or like our experimental evening at the Bridge Inn. We have about six very strong pieces most of us know already and with one or two other impromptu sing around songs it should be a pleasant afternoon. We are not obliged to stay all afternoon but as there is a bar and hot food this might be immaterial. More details will be given on Wednesday when we will be singing several of the songs we have in mind.

See the posters and flyers for full details of the fete.

Thirdly, we have been asked to do a set at the Help the Heroes fund raiser in Peterchurch on 26^th of June. This is a very flexible event and details will become clearer nearer the time

Fourthly, we will be running a stall at the Longtown Show on Saturday 20^th August. This will include a display of musical instruments, a bit of singing and playing as well as lots of leaflets and publicity to do with folk music in our area as well as trying to find more musicians and singers who would like to join us. We have permission to take a caravan plus awning so if the weather turns nasty we should be quite comfortable. If you would like to take a spell at the stall have any ideas as to what can go on the stall please let us know and.

Fifthly, we will of course be involved in organising a return visit to Newton and St.Margarets Churches by the Village Quire with their new programme, High Days and Holidays in the Welsh Marches on 28^th September and 1^st October for a Workshop and Concert. All proceeds will be shared between the two church funds. We managed to attend the premier performance of this collection of songs and reading last week and it is something well worth looking forward to. Please see a review of the performance at http://tinyurl.com/6khate2

Finally, our experimental visit to the Bridge Inn a while back now brought new contacts and inquiries from audience members as to when we would be making a return visit. We would be very keen to do so at sometime. In the meantime look out for other appearances of Black Hill Folk at local hostelries as part of our campaign to support local facilities: ‘Keep it lively, & Keep it Local!’

While I have been writing this the grass has been growing, more bits have fallen off the cottage, and Jane has been reading Broad Sheep and finding more events to go to. At this rate it looks as though a trip to the Garway Folk Weekend in June might be difficult to fit in. But then, the grass will still be there when we get back!

Looking forward to the summer ahead,

John and Jane Baxter

PS: We are thinking of organising dedicated workshops for specific instruments. We already hold informal 'strums ins' and 'pluck ins' for banjo and guitar but we will also be doing a 'drum in' for those who want to have a go or just let off steam. We have already done twitter and folk on the internet sessions. All of these can be arranged on demand when there is enough interest.

PPS: It has just been confirmed that we will be running a Workshop at Longtown Village Hall at the invitation of Longtown WI on Tuesday 18th October. More deatils should we live that long.

@FolkWorkshops

Review: The Village Quire: High days and Holidays along the Welsh Border Marches Maesyronnen Chapel, Saturday 2nd April 2011

2011-04-08T02:35:00.000-07:00

It was after telling a colleague where our permanent family base was, and singing the area’s praises he responded with the words, ‘ Ah!, a sense of place. You must be very fond of it’. I had not come across the phrase before.

This conversation came back to me last night during the first performance of this new programme from the Village Quire. I was already feeling that ‘sense of place’ when we parked the car in the field by Maesyronnen Chapel and looked across the Wye Valley to the northern escarpment of the eastern ranges of the Black Mountains. I knew I was in for a musical treat but I did not appreciate how much that landscape and its history was to be woven into the performance I was about to witness.

I think it is not only fair, but accurate to say, having heard the Village Quire perform on several occasions now, that these singers and their narrator are unique. With a mixture of West Gallery Music, Shape Music, Catches ( rounds which can be a bit cheeky) and the broader traditions of the folk repertoire, the audience never fails to be bowled over by the glorious polyphonic blast that greets them at the start and which underpins the performance throughout. I suspect that much credit has to go to Dave Newell, their conductor and fellow singer, for the harmonic arrangements which are so beautifully brought to life by this well balanced and disciplined group of voices.

‘I Like to Rise When the Sun She Rises’ led the way into a not so distant world of rural worthiness, naughtiness and rebellion which through its echo enriches us today and which makes living on the border so interesting. In looking back from the comfort of modern living we must remember that these would have been hard times, yet among all the troubles, humour, faith and community seems to have produced the communities which so fascinate today.

In all there are 16 pieces in the programme with an interval just over mid-way. It is hard to choose a favourite at this stage, but suffice it to say that the material ranges from the secular to the sacred, from the Welsh to the English, and from the light to the dark as though reflecting the tensions that have for centuries ebbed and flowed across our much loved Welsh Marches. Like having heard an album for the first time the favourites only emerge when you have had time to mull over the tracks. This is why I shall be going to another performance of this programme later in the season.

Similar tensions can be found in the readings which interleave with the songs. I am ashamed to confess that although my particular sense of place has been with me in excess of 50 years I have never got round to reading any of Raymond Williams works. This author’s description of our part of the Marches, taken from his book The People of the Black Mountains, is used to set the scene and the image presented is one that will remain with me permanently. I shall not spoil its effect by repeating it here and would advise, if, like me, you are a Williams novice, that you postpone reading the book until you have seen and heard this performance.

Also among the readings are extracts from Mary Webb, Alexander Cordell, Dylan Thomas, and Pat Malloy together with extracts from the stunningly named Brecon and Merthyr Silurian. For those who know little of the toll road troubles Dylan Thomas’s account in ‘Rebecca’s Daughters’ is entertaining history at its best.

This is a demanding programme but is no less well performed because of that and certainly no less enjoyable. I could go on at length about how important it is that people get together and sing and where this fits into what appears to be a retreat from funded culture, but you would find this tedious. Instead I will say that anyone who has an interest in music, local history and literature will feel very disappointed when they hear from friends what they have missed. To avoid this feeling, make sure you go.

Dacier

The Village Quire will be performing at:

St Michael and All Angels Church, Lyonshall, Herefordshire
HR5 3LN
On 30/04/2011
Further details and tickets from Bo Hollingshurst on 01544 340788
at 7.30 pm.In aid of the church bell fund.
£7.50 in advance / £8 on the door
(to include glass of wine / juice)

St James' Church, Audlem, Cheshire
CW3 0AJ
28/05/2011
2.00 - 4.00 pm
Entry free to festival goers.
Tel. (01270) 812125
info@audlemfestival.com

At the Abergavenny Food Festival
Abergavenny Baptist Church, Frogmore Street, Abergavenny
NP7 5AH
17/09/2011
7.30 pm
Details to be announced

Singing Workshop for FolkWorkshops
Newton Church
Newton St Margaret's
Hereford
HR2 0QR
28/09/2011
7.30 pm
And at nearby St.Margerets Church Saturday 1st October at 7.30
Tcket details to be announced. All proceeds in aid of both church funds.

Review: Moishe’s Bagel at the Court Yard, Hereford, 2nd March 2011

2011-03-05T08:27:00.000-08:00

The first time Sian and I were going to see this group was at the Big Sheep but the schedule slipped and our energies ran out, thanks to over doing it to the rhythms of the Destroyers and we went home. (See Review for 22nd July 2009) This time winter ill’s nearly kept us in the warm but as it turned out we had the best winter warmer and tonic combined with these five musicians ( yes and they really are) and their wide range of evocative tunes drawn from a broad sweep of European musical traditions. These include Ashkenazi, Balkan, Klesmer, Sephardic, Spanish and Arabic influences with a bit of the Americas thrown in for good measure. Classical, Folk Latin, Asian and Celtic influences can all be detected. All this combines to create a life affirming mixture of feelings in the listener. Politics so often seeks to divide while this sort of music naturally unites.

At the centre down stage sits the percussionist, Guy Nicholson, surrounded by a range of drums. The Darabuka is one drum among many, including the ever versatile Cajon alongside cymbals and bells. Behind is the double bass played by Mario Caribe using the full techniques possible which add both depth and texture. Mario also contributes on the ukulele and cavaquinho. A triangle and the occasional tapping on the shoulder of the ‘bull fiddle’ added a further to the percussive range. Although originally a klesmer influenced band is present, the clarinet is not. Instead this lead role is met by Greg Lawson on violin with a staggeringly varied mixture of sounds. At either side of the stage the piano accordion presence is made known.

On the left hand side of the stage however an accordian serves to add additional colour as its player Phil Alexander is mainly occupied bringing out the wonderful breadth of a grand piano well played. He also manages to make a contribution on a professional melodica, or ‘wind piano’ as you will see it described in some catalogues. On the opposite wing is Pete Garnett on lead accordion whose sustained presence underpins so many pieces as well as representing melody throughout. Although there are only five of them there is so much going on that the visual impact becomes as entertaining as the ever changing music. When we told someone we were thinking of buying tickets we were told in no uncertain terms to go as the live performance was such an important added attraction to this talented group.

And the music itself? Rarely have we attended a concert with so few musicians but with so much evocation of so many images whether they were of dark rainy street from pre-war Eastern Europe or New York, or the dry airs of North Africa or the damp flatness of Lincolnshire. At times the appearance of a haunting melody would nudge us into a Stephen Poliakov film. It is very hard to choose a favourite from such a repertoire, a task made no easier by the purchase of all three of their CDs during the interval. At the moment we are listening to Si Verias, a Sephardi melody, which was just one of the many new musical journeys that were on offer during the evening.

Phil Alexander can claim credit for many of the compositions but it can be seen from the sleeve notes that he is not the lone composer or arranger within the group. All in all this was both a surprising and uplifting musical experience which not only makes one want to play and listen to music but to dive back into history books to explore so many lines of enquiry into the musical heritage of several continents. If ever get the chance to see Moishe’s Bagel, follow the advice we were given ‘Go!’

Dacier

Stop Press: latest Newsletter

2011-02-16T12:55:00.000-08:00

STOP PRESS: AGAIN!

Dear Supporters,

If you have recovered from the last Newsletter, here is a bit more news. FolkWorkshops is intended as a community based group, which, as our twitter account clearly states, is a place where ‘We get together to sing folk songs & play instruments in a tolerant & relaxed atmosphere of mutual encouragement and support’. We are based in the hills above the Golden Valley in Herefordshire in the Welsh Marches.

With so much going on it is not surprising that we have several dilemmas as to what support can be given to the many events going on. Susie’s Song School has regular support, and the sing around at the Black Swan is also a big draw, especially as they ask us to have a go. So that’s Wednesdays and Thursdays covered, and some of us also have church choir on Thursdays.Thursday evening also clashes with the Night Jar Folk Club at the Courtyard. (Even nationally, Thursday night is Folk Night!) We also want to continue to support Newton Church Room. By way of contrast we have already had offers to sing in 2 local pubs should we want to. We want to keep it as local as possible.

So, you can imagine our delight and increased ‘dilemmaring’ when Alan McCardle reported that the new landlord of the Bridge Inn, at Michaelchurch, had offered the dining room as a location for a practice sing along! We therefore had a dilemma to solve at pretty short notice as for various reasons the first opportunity would be Wednesday 23^rd Feb. Rather than lose the momentum Alan, John Biggs, and Jane and I thought we ought to go ahead. As the session at the Griggs is already set up this coming Monday 21^st we thought we would do that as well just to add a bit more choice for those who might not have enough dilemmas to solve.

The reason for this hasty decision lies in the fact that many people in the community would like to help the Bridge thrive as a successful local pub, which, like so many country pubs in these difficult times, needs local support. Nationally we have been losing village pubs at an alarming weekly rate ( 9 at one point) so this would be our small opportunity to do something. If you can get to the Bridge Inn on Wednesday you will be supporting the new landlord who is also the proprietor of the Golden Valley Brewery based in Peterchurch. What day of the week and how often future sessions might be held remains to be agreed. In the meantime we think we have a win, win , win situation so tell your friends and support your local pub and its new landlord. This is in no way intended as a performance so please invite anyone who might like to join in or just listen while having a real ale or a lemonade! Please forward this e-mail to others or pass the word on to those you know who are not on e-mail. Your local pub needs you!

Hoping you can get to both sessions.

PS Don’t forget the Gig for Norma concert in May: http://www.villagequire.org.uk/

Why not follow us on twitter. We now have 24 followers, most of whom are not on our mailing list, so keep up to date with events in between these Newsletters. ( of which there are too many)

@FolkWorkshops

FolkWorkshops Newsletter February 2011

2011-02-12T13:11:00.000-08:00

LATEST: FOLK WORKSHOP on MONDAY 21st February at 7.30.

It’s time we started getting our repertoire together, whether for the various singing occasions which seem to be coming our way, or just for the fun of it. With the Hall being booked for our preferred night on the 26th and various other happenings John and Bridget have invited us to their home. New listeners, musicians and singers just as welcome here as at our usual venue. Please pass the word as this has not been put in the parish Newsletter. It really is true what we claim about our ethos, 'mutual support and encouragement' and a lot of good company.

Any queries please e-mail or telephone as usual leave a comment here. Or for twitter followers by DM on either @FolkWorkshops or @DacierOutten.

As you will have seen from the ‘stop press’ e-mails, quite a lot has been happening. We have had several additions to the e-mailing list, the articles on the blog, and a website is under discussion. You can follow on twitter @FolkWorkshops.

Please forward this Newsletter to people who you think would be interested. By clicking on the folkworkships link below it will take you to Newsletters and various folkworkshops blogs.

You will see that there are several family events taking place in summer camps this summer so who knows there might be a family out there who would like a change from the usual trip to Tenby!

The Wassail at Preston on Wye was a very enjoyable evening with enough of us turning out to give another public performance and make new friends. The article on this blog has had a record number of readers.

Some of us made our first visit to the Black Swan in Much Dew Church the other week to see what the sing around there is like. It has been going for 14 years with a group of singers and musicians who go under the name of Compost Heap. A great variety of songs and instrumental accompaniments made it a brilliant evening and none of us knew that it had been there all these years. On top of all this a very useful contact was made with someone who is organising some of the events in the list below.

Susie’s Song School. Susie is the female tenor from the Village Quire who has a wide collection of folk songs we can try out. The meetings are being held weekly at Cymbach Chapel starting at 7.30 and cost £4 a session. Depending on who is going each week a car share may be available so ask among the group. The first session covered 10 songs, some very old, with some familiar regulars from the folk clubs.

Events

Saturday 26th March: Our very own Ceilidh at Escleyside Hall complete with snacks and a licensed bar. Children go free, so why not make it a family night out.

If we can make a modest profit on this event we will be able to invite more groups and singers to local events as well as paying for the occasional master class or singing workshop from well established names on the folk scene. In the meantime we are building up a list of experienced people who might be able to give their services free of charge. If the Ceilidh goes well....who knows?

1st May: Arthurs Stone: See the sun rise with Fox Whelp Morris (To be confirmed)

Friday 6th May: at the Lion Ballroom in Leominster. Pete Coe supported by Hop Pickers Feast and a few 'old boys'. (In aid of a Cambodian charity)

Saturday 18th June: at the Court Yard Theatre, we have a Ceilidh with vintage 'Porridge' with young 13 year old Cohen Kilcoyne'Boy Wizard' on all instruments!!! (In aid of a Cambodian charity)

News from the Village Quire: www.villagequire.org.uk/ There are lots of events planned for 2011, not only workshops & concerts with the Village Quire, but also a vocal workshop & concert with folk musician John Kirkpatrick (from the BBC series Victorian Farm) later in the year. For details of this and all our concerts an eye on the website above.
28th September and 1st October: The Village Quire at St John’s Church Newton for Workshop and at St.Margaret's Church for concert.

'High Days and Holidays in the Welsh Border Marches'. More details soon but put these dates in your diary
28th Sept Workshop at Newton Church, 7.30 pm - 9.30 pm
30th Sept Rehearsal at St. Margarets Church 7.30 pm - 8.00 pm
1st Oct Concert at St. Margaret’s Church 7.30 pm, (joined by workshop)

Cas’s gig list updated February 2nd 2010: for those of you who don’t mind a bit of a journey across the border into Wales to see an artist you really like you may find this guide useful. It is supplied by the lady who runs the Pontardawe Folk Club. Also, check out @folkorbit on twitter who follows @FolkWorkshops

News from Susie Stockton

Polly Bolton is starting a monthly Friday Night folk choir starting on April 15th, then May 20th and 17th June. At the Women's Centre in Ludlow , from 7pm till 8.30. She'll be teaching her own harmony arrangements of traditional British songs.

The Oak Barn singing camp will be running for the 12th year from July 29th to 31st and they will be having the same facilitators as last year; Polly Bolton, Sue Harris, Gitka Partington and Mark Thomas. The cost this year will be £120 for the whole weekend if you are staying at the centre or £40 for a whole day if you are dropping in. Details will be on her website soon or contact her. info@oak-barn.co.uk OAK BARN CENTRE, CLEE ST MARGARET,CRAVEN ARMS,SHROPSHIRE,SY7 9DT,01584 823609

Also from Roxane Smith: are on www.harmonyjunky.co.uk/ will be running a new camp, with some good friends, on the weekend of June 10th-12th, near Leominster, www.herefordharmony.org.uk/

And finally, forget Glastonbury, and all the others. Why not support your local Folk Festival at Garway. Find full details on: www.learningobjectivity.com/garwayfolkweekend
This is probably enough to be going on with.

New Orleans Jazz and the Trad and Folk Music Revivals: Pt 2 of A Draughtsman’s Journey

2011-01-25T15:12:00.000-08:00

So what happened to all these young Cartographers, surveyors and draughtsmen/women? A great many chose to leave soon after completing training, because of course, with all the development that the country required to heal the wounds caused by the war, local government offices, public utilities, construction companies etc were also desperately seeking people with cartographic skills. The words, Ordnance Survey, inserted in the 'Previous Experience' box on an application form, seemed to almost guarantee an interview at least, and perhaps the offer of a job closer to home. But for those of us who stayed, the O.S., like so many other large institutions of that time, gathered us in like a huge enveloping family.

To find accommodation for all these young people arriving from all over the country, many leaving home for the first time, was the job of a small but efficient welfare department who would search Southampton for suitable lodgings. Recreation was catered for by a sports and social club which could provide facilities, for most popular sports, and a long list of hobbies like photography and stamp collecting. One of the welfare department's main competitors for accommodation was of course the rapidly expanding Southampton University. Many of us found ourselves sharing digs with University students and, with their help, it was not difficult to 'acquire' a Student Union Card which opened up a wealth of other recreational possibilities.

The popular music of the early sixties was all around us in the pubs and coffee bars, but so also was jazz. Both traditional and mainstream were enjoying a revival and the bands of Alex Welsh, Chris Barber and Monty Sunshine were frequent visitors to The Concorde Club, then housed in an annex of the Basset Hotel. Across town in rather less salubrious surroundings, was the infamous Yellow Dog Jazz Club. Housed in a cellar under a pub, and accessed by one narrow staircase, this establishment was considered by most respectable citizens to be a hell hole, a den of sex, drugs and alcohol. This was to greatly malign it, for while all those three commodities were as available there, as they were in other similar venues, The Yellow Dog provided the opportunity to hear some of the finest exponents of New Orleans style jazz then working in Britain. The bands of Alan Elsdon, Keith Smith and Kid Martyn were regular visitors on a Friday evening, with occasional visits from The 'Guvner' himself, Ken Collier. During the interval Long John Baldry would sing and play the blues of Muddy Waters, Rev Garry Davis, Leadbelly and all the other musical legends of Chicago and the southern states. One evening we all flocked to the Gaumont Theatre where a festival of American Blues and Gospel artists had rolled into town. Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, Browny McGee, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Bo Didley to name but a few. To warm up there was a British blues band, that no one had heard of, called The Rolling Stones. Actually they were quite good.

Following blues singers like Gerry Loughran and Long John Baldry led me from the jazz clubs to the folk clubs (often the same pub on a different night) and my musical education which had started in the southern states of America completed a full circle and brought me back home to the folk music heritage of the British Isles. For several years 'The Concorde' hosted The Balladeer Folk Club once a week with resident singers, Dave Williams, Vic Wilton and Pete Mills along with fellow O.S. cartographer, author and folk music historian, John 'Paddy' Browne. There were regular performances by national and international stars of folk music including Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Martin Carthy, Bob Davenport, The Watersons, the list goes on. I was a sponge soaking up all this music which spoke so eloquently, and often with exquisite poetry, of the human condition, past and present.

Flute

Follow on twitter @Flute66

To be continued.

A Herefordshire Wassail Experience: Old Twelfth Night, 17th January 2011, at the Yew Tree Inn, Preston on Wye, Herefordshire.

2011-01-19T17:48:00.000-08:00

I have often thought that with the one life we have there is not enough time. For most of us it is a struggle to keep up with the demands of the modern work place, its conveyor belt routine and the frustrations it brings, often making the daily commute a depressing time. So it is a great privilege and joy to have escaped the restrictions of the workplace, albeit as pensioners, at a time when our generation may well be the last of the modestly superannuated classes.

As a result Sian and I found ourselves with both the opportunity and energy to attend our first Wassail. Instead of working late into the night to meet the next deadline as we used to, we were now spending the evening with a hundred or so other people encircling an old apple tree.

A great deal of hard work goes into producing a good harvest of any kind, and of course, more specifically, the apples and pears which make good Cider and Perry. In Herefordshire it is not the culinary apple which is at the centre of attention, although the county produces some of the best desert apples such a Garden of Eden deserves. No, it is the cider apple, with its bitter and sweet flavours, its tannin and its golden and quickly oxidized juice.

Good husbandry, careful processing and a large measure of good fortune go into producing these most sustainable beverages. As April and May approach the fear of late frosts threatening the newly formed buds is the first anxiety. Once that is over the next concern is the right combination of rain, warmth and sunshine during the summer and finally the hope that early autumn gales do not strip the trees of the immature fruit.Is it any wonder that our forebears hedged their bets by appealing to both the old and new religions?

Having gathered our strength in the pub we joined the crowd which had gathered in the car park armed with flaming torches. Led by the Foxwhelp Morris musicians, who were suitably protected from the rain by an umbrella and plastic sheets, we set off into the darkness to the sound of trumpet, fiddle and accordion. Somewhere among the throng were two men carrying shotguns still in their cases.

Looking back at the procession from the van of the parade was an unexpected shock. With no street lighting to lessen the impact, the sight of this snake of flickering light making its way in the darkness sent a shiver down the spine. We could have been in any century since the people of these islands depended for their survival on a meagre harvest produced by their own communal labour.

The traditional ceremony involved the wassailers forming a large circle round an old tree. We stood outside a circle of small unlit fires constructed of wood and straw while the Morris team took up position under the tree itself. There was much talk and song of the spirit of the tree, its guardian Old Meg and the general wish for plenty after a hard winter. At some point the fires were lit and the scene was transformed into one of a swirling confusion of smoke and flames with figures looming and fading as the wind changed. At another point, the end of a wassail song or recitation was met by a great noise of shouting, ringing bells and the reports of the two shotguns being used to fire blanks into the night air.

All of this would have been, and still is for some, intended to frighten off any evil spirits which might be lurking in the orchards. For others the evil is now represented by the intensification of production aided and abetted by the agro-chemical industry and the uniformity demanded by the profit obsessed supermarkets. In spite of cider apple prices being quite good last year, there is a sense that a more general malevolent spirit of rural betrayal is stalking our country lanes.
As we stood outside the circle of fires, each representing a month of the year and being warmed by these and the tree’s very own fire invoking Old Meg, our thoughts were of the New Year to come, not the past.

However, with the tree having been offered toast and been given a liberal dousing of cider, the crowd started to move off back down the lane. But one further act remained to be performed, almost without any witnesses and with no ceremony. One, and only one, of the encircling fires was trampled into extinction, leaving the others shining into the darkness. Of the twelve, this fire represented Judas and his betrayal, while the other ‘Apostles’ were left to bring the light of a new day. Strong stuff indeed, but it prompted in us the thought that although electric light has long since come to these rural communities, enlightenment as to modern rural affairs on the part of distant others, is yet to be gained.

We were now among the very last to leave the orchard and so we slowly made our way back through the rain and the gloom. The dark thoughts of a few minutes earlier were soon dispelled by the light, warmth, and good company of a well run public house, and, once the singing started, as an old miner friend of ours would have said across the other side of the Black Hill from here, ‘... well, boys bach, we ‘ad a triffic time’.

‘So You Like Maps?’: Pt 1 of A Draughtsman’s Journey

2011-01-16T10:09:00.000-08:00

This article is the first of a series from a new contributor. The series arose out of a discussion we had at a FolkWorkshops session about how some of us finished up being folk music enthusiasts. Much of it is to do with either where we grew up or where we went to earn a living after leaving school. My own discovery of folk music is revealed in the earlier article entitled, Memories of the Troubadour, while here you will see that this particular musical journey starts with the drawing of a map.

Dacier.

‘So You Like Maps?'

Following the end of World War 2, Great Britain was a shambles, with an economy almost bankrupted by the cost of war, huge social problems, much of it's urban housing destroyed by bombing and an industry and workforce geared entirely to a war effort. With so many problems requiring immediate attention, it was not until the early fifties that any real growth and redevelopment of towns and cities, and transport infrastructures could be contemplated. It was then realised that before you can build anything, you need accurate and up to date maps and plans of the existing topography, and that the mapping of Great Britain was hugely out of date. Britain's mapping agency, The Ordnance Survey, was, after the war only just ticking over and obviously the first thing to be done was to increase it's capability and it's output. A massive increase in staff was required.

And so it was that the beginning of the 60s found me, fresh from leaving school at the age of seventeen, travelling from my home in Hereford to Southampton, where the O.S. had it's headquarters, to begin my training as a cartographic draughtsman. I had gained (by the skin of my teeth) the necessary five O levels, which had to include maths, english and geography, and undergone a fairly rudimentary school careers interview. Q." What is your favourite subject ?" A." Geography." Q." Why ?" A." I like maps "..."Well ,you should join the Ordnance Survey." Of course there were still hurdles to be negotiated, Civil Service Commission exams and interviews, and tests to ensure that I was not colour blind, but eventually I was Southampton bound.

At that time the O.S. was housed in a variety of locations around Southampton. The Surveyor School was in a large town house in University territory at the top of The Avenue, Small and Medium Scale Mapping was in an old barracks at Crabwood on the Romsey side of the city and Large Scale Mapping, Photo, Printing and The Drawing School were housed at the edge of the city centre on London Road in a range of elegant victorian buildings that had once been a lunatic asylum. Some said that we were maintaining continuity with the the original purpose of the premises.

The throughput of the Drawing School was incredible. Trainee draughtsmen and women arrived from all over Great Britain, mostly straight from school, though a few had tried other jobs. A new course, containing between twenty and thirty students, started every two to three months. The basic course lasted for nine months, and to graduate at the end of this 'gestation', your final piece of work had to be of a standard suitable for publication. Failing to meet the required standards meant being asked to find another career, but in fact the assessments carried out at intervals during the course ensured that very few 'no hopers' got this far. Much later in my career I became an instructor in the training department and experienced for myself the agony of having to tell a young person that they really were not cut out for the job that they had chosen.

We were taught all aspects of Cartography, it's early history, projection theory, scales, typography and basic design, but the bulk of the course was taken up with learning to draw with consistent accuracy to exacting standards. Line work was produced at a standard thickness of seven thousandths of an inch, we had a graduated microscope to check this so no variation was tolerated. Pecks (broken lines) were produced at eight to the centimetre, that meant eight pecks and eight spaces, each peck being twice the length of a space. This was no place for an impressionist !

Flute

Follow on twitter @Flute66

To be continued.

Christmas & New Year Greetings

2010-12-28T05:36:00.000-08:00

We hope you have all had a great Christmas and send best wishes for the New Year from all of us at Tales from Under Blackhill. For the second Christmas running we got out in the snow and for the second time I have decided to build a bigger toboggan. That must be job 3021 on my list of things to do!

Things have been rather too quiet on the blog posting front but with a bit of luck there might be a bit more coming through in 2011. I think the General Election postings probably took up more energy than at first thought although they proved the most popular political articles in the collection. Many students made use of the series on 'Resolving a Hung Parliament' and I suspect there will be many issues which will spin off from the present political settlement. Should we really be moving towards 5 year fixed Parliaments etc? And, of course, we have a referendum on the voting system coming up as well as a Royal Wedding. We have already been invited back by our old neighbours in Worcester to join in their street party!

You will see that there will be more reports and reviews on folk music matters including a ‘Memories’ series looking back at musical trends in the past. The first of these can be seen on the Memories of the Troubadour posting. It is also clear that articles which recount earlier times are popular such as those on cycling in the 1950's, so we hope to bring you a few more of these as well as the occasional book review and reviews of events.

Mary Horesh is still an editor and occasional contributor and is currently in the middle of a re-location to London. She is still a keen environmental campaigner with special reference to farming and food. She is currently a member of the Friends of the Earth Advisory Committee on Food and Bio-diversity. Should you be moving to either Birmingham or London yourself and need some contacts @maryhoresh might be a useful source.

Sian & I continue to be members of Birmingham Friends of the Earth and try to help out from a distance and I try to get to Management Committee meetings, weather permitting.

Sian and I have been very involved with FolkWorkshops which has developed very quickly in recent months due to the great enthusiasm of those involved. We have no idea where it is all leading save to say that we are gradually building up our network with the intention of bringing more live folk music to south west Herefordshire and making sure we do not overlook events which we could car share to attend.

Mary has given us a years membership of the English Folk Dance and Song Society so we will be inundated with lots of information. We are looking forward to our next trip to London so we can spend some time in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House and possibly attend a ceilidh.

An ambition in FolkWorkshops is to develop an expertise in harmony singing and our rehearsals for the Carols at the Crown Inn session at Longtown before Christmas shows that we are on the way. The key is that our meetings should continue to be an enjoyable joint effort and in this spirit new musicians and singers are most welcome.

The trouble is trying to fit everything in, not only in our own lives, but in among the many events that get organised up here in these beautiful hills. You will not catch us complaining about that however as we are firm believers in 'community' and whatever quibbles the sociologists might have in defining it, we definitely know it when we see it!

Looking forward to your company in a peaceful 2011,

Dacier, Sian and Mary

Memories of the Troubadour Coffee Bar, Earls Court, London: Winter 1962

2010-12-21T12:47:00.000-08:00

The present winter conjures up the vision of waiting for a bus in Seabrook on the coast road between Hythe and Folkestone and watching, through the sodium street lighting, the mass of snow falling on me and everything else. This was New Years Eve 1961 and I was leaving home for the first time. I got to the station in time but the train took nearly seven hours to reach Charing Cross through the Kentish snows. My first contact with work was to ring in and tell them I had been stranded on a train all night and would be in the next day. 1962 was not starting very well for this 18 year old.

My accommodation was primitive and had been found by a school friend who had moved to London about six months earlier. It was at the Youth Travel Bureau at 16, Cranley Gardens South Kensington and the room was split off from another resident’s room by a dividing wall of sorts. It was cheap and I soon found out why. The food was inedible, the rooms were freezing and the two characters who ran it knew full well that the cheapness kept a near full hostel throughout the year. Among the victims who endured this were some estate agency students of some kind who must have been studying nearby. As temporary residents these were the remand types, while we felt more like properly sentenced miscreants, especially when we found out that paying rent in arrears was not such a good idea when you went to move on. All the other landlords wanted rent in advance and so to be able to pay off the hostel’s rent in arrears and a new landlord all on one day meant that many people just did a moonlight flit.

Somehow or other we found a small bed sit further down the Old Brompton Road in Drayton Gardens. In one short walk we moved from South Kensington to Chelsea. It was a major cultural shift however. Our bed sit, with its own little balcony, was one room in an apartment on the third floor of Drayton Court opposite the Paris Pullman Cinema. This was what I would now call an art film venue in the nicest possible sense. I remember going to see Fellini’s 8½ but gave Last Year in Marienbad a miss as I was still trying to work out what the hec the other film had been about. Instead of becoming a film buff I became a regular visitor to our nearest acceptable coffee bar, The Troubadour, in Earls Court. Yet another short walk down the Brompton Road we soon discovered the club in its cellar which by today’s standards would be a health and safety nightmare. At the time it was a very warm, comfortable, and most important to a clerk with few prospects on £7 a week, just affordable. Such were my finances I never gave the poetry readings or the flamenco nights a go. I didn’t even buy copies of the new satirical magazine which was specially acquired by the proprietor hot off the press on publication day. When I did eventually borrow a copy of Private Eye I understood why the cafe had been filled with so much laughter so soon after its delivery.

The current Troubadour Coffee Bar and Club, which now occupies much extended premises, records on its website , ‘ the roster of troubadours ... includes Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello...’ but sadly doesn’t mention Martin Carthy ( awarded the MBE in 1998 for services to music) who was a resident singer. He also performed with Redd Sullivan’s Thameside Four. Sadly I don’t think I was there the night he brought along Bob Dylan anymore than I can remember Paul Simon dropping in. They would have all been part of a glorious procession of new voices from a world I hadn’t known anything about. At one time or another during those early years of the English Folk Revival anyone who was anyone, or no one, took a spot in that dark, smoky, crowded and wonderful cellar. I now know that Bob Dylan stayed with Martin Carthy during his cold winter visit to London. He had been asked to take part in a film for BBC TV called, Madhouse on Castle Street (1962) out of which came the The Ballad of the Gliding Swan.

It was so cold that he and Martin chopped up an old piano that happened to be in Martin’s garden for extra warmth from the open fire. I also now know that Martin is credited with being an inspiration for both Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and that there was an English folk tour circuit developing for American singers. That is why Simon and Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound came to be inspired by waiting in the cold for a train at Staly Bridge station where I am told a plaque notes this event.

The harmonies and singers I heard at the Troubadour in those days have stayed with me. I heard the guitar and the banjo played in a way which I had never heard on the Home Service or BBC television. I couldn’t understand where all this music was coming from; never having heard of Cecil Sharpe House or been aware of how much music had been preserved by the English and Scottish immigrants to America. I knew a bit about traditional jazz and followed skiffle’s short life. ‘Trad Jazz’ had been my first big musical enthusiasm in the late fifties but it was only later that I understood how all this joined up through the migrations to North America from Europe and the awfulness of the slave trade from which so many of our cities profited and on which many of our industries depended. I was eventually to learn the awful truth why the slave traders made sure there was a primitive banjo and other African instruments on board for the gruesome practice of ‘dancing the slaves’. By making them dance this warded off their wish to die while at the same time exercising them in an attempt to keep mortality rates at an acceptable level while the slaves were chained to the deck in the squalor of a slave ship. I had no idea that playing a funny sort of banjo in such a peculiar way ( nothing like George Formby or the Black and White Minstrel Show) had come to me by such a vicious route and at such an awful price. In the meantime the ignorance of my youth shielded me from this history while I soaked up the music of a momentous musical period I could not appreciate was happening around me.
Dacier

For full details of the Troubadour Cafe and Club and events go to: http://www.troubadour.co.uk/
Also, why not follow @FolkWorkshops on twitter

Folk Music, Harmony Singing and the West Gallery Choirs

2010-12-21T08:32:00.000-08:00

If you haven’t heard a full West Gallery Choir complete with the old instruments then Vital Spark, which is performing at Clodock Church, Longtown, Herefordshire on December 28th at 7pm, weather permitting, is an evening out you should not miss. There is no charge for entry but there will be a retiring collection:

Traditional Old English Carols by Candlelight
with Vital Spark West Gallery Singers and Musicians
plus Mince Pies and Mulled Wine

Folk Music, Harmony Singing and the West Gallery Choirs

The first time I really heard this type of singing was at the famous Troubadour venue in the Old Brompton Road. I knew nothing about folk music but it was a cheap and warm evening out in the winter of 1962. I could just about afford the ticket and the cheapest meal on the menu; cheese salad. Little did I know that people like Martin Carthy, Bob Davenport, Red Sullivan, Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor, Colin Wilkie and many others were the emerging establishment of the English folk revival. An evening in, by contrast ,was usually involved a feeble attempt to learn to play the guitar. In my case a rather dead sounding product of the now well known guitar rush of the 1950’s.
Although I enjoyed the sound it was only in recent years that I learnt the basic theory of harmony singing and started to understand what was involved. I had heard many harmonies without realising and of course this type of folk singing is most famously preserved by the Copper Family of Rottingdean in Sussex and the singers of various communities up and down the country. Many still singing Christmas carols of this sort in similar styles. It was only a few years ago that a fuller picture began to emerge when I first heard Vital Spark sing in Clodock Church. It was then that I first heard the term West Gallery singing.
As the name indicates it is the music which used to be sung in the West Galleries of our churches from about the start of the 18th century until it met its demise at the hands of the reforming Victorians. The first time I heard this music I recognised what to me was a ‘folk sound’. Where had this music been all those years. It was of course always there but like so many things during a working life my music had had to play second fiddle to surviving in the conveyor belt of rat race which rarely left an evening free for musical outings. OK, I now know that I should have made more of an effort but I realise that this is easily said now I am an escapee of the system.
Unfortunately West Gallery music did not escape another form of attack, church reform. My reaction to hearing Vital Spark for the first time was very much along the lines ‘ We was robbed’. Granted, the thieves, a combination of the anglo catholic Oxford Movement and the introduction of the more manageable Church Organ, has created a new tradition of English Church music which we would not like to lose, but even so, a rich heritage has been hidden away and only in recent times has it started to come out of the closet.
You have only to read Under the Green Wood Tree by Thomas hardy to see the resentment which was felt on both sides as the new formal and spiritual music replaced the more melodic and energetic tunes which would have been sung the night before in the pub before the choir managed to be in place on a Sunday morning. Luckily, like many of our old English songs, our ancestors who settled in America in the 17th had continued to sing in the style of the old country and happily preserved the old styles.

A FolkWorkshops publication by John Baxter with acknowledgments to Wikipedia.

FolkWorkshops Christmas Newsletter

2010-12-04T06:34:00.000-08:00

We all deserve a big thank you from ourselves to ourselves! Without FolkWorkshoppers we wouldn’t be getting together to sing at regular intervals and to eat some rather splendid cakes. We are all at different stages of our musical journeys, but I think you will agree it’s great to be on the move together.

We are not really just a Folk Club or just a choir. We are ourselves, and long may our relaxed and mutually supportive ethos continue.

In addition we wouldn’t have been around for the following:
i) A summer solstice barbecue courtesy of John and Bridget
ii) John and Bridget’s fund raiser Ceilidh for a school in Nepal
iii) Singing at a fundraiser for Longtown Village Hall and School
iv) the Village Quire Workshop Concert fundraiser for St. Margaret’s and Newton Churches
v) The Workshops in Newton Church Room which also contribute to the hall’s running costs
vi) Car sharing to the many events in our area such as Harp Songs at the Harp Inn Glasbury
vii) Meeting people like the Village Quire who value our group and want to encourage us
viii) Starting to improve our musical skills, both through rehearsals for carol singing and the occasional ‘strum- ins’ to swap tips for playing the banjo or guitar
ix) Being asked by the Vicar to sing carols at the Crown on the 17th December
x) Making plans for a Burns Night on Wednesday 26th January in Newton Church Room
xi) Making plans for a ceilidh on Saturday 12th March in Escleyside Hall. (Hall booking to be confirmed)

John Biggs and Allison Price asked us whether we had any idea that so much would have happened in FolkWorkshop’s first 12 months and I suppose the honest answer is probably that we always try to travel hopefully and that arriving somewhere enjoyable is always a bonus. FolkWorkshops has an expanding mailing list and can now be found on twitter as @FolkWorkshops, link http://www.twitter.com/FolkWorkshops . There are various folk music contributors being followed and we already have 9 followers from the folk music world. This might prove to be a useful notice board and a collector of useful information.

This Newsletter will eventually appear on www.blackhilltales.blogspot.com and the link http://t.co/nk1AlFV will take you directly to any articles involving folk music, thus avoiding the various other polemics/articles on this blog site. This could be a purely temporary arrangement while someone sets up our own FolkWorkshops blog site. Any volunteers? You could start by seeing if Wordpress would be a suitable medium.

Other interesting bits. The Cecil Sharp Library is a source of lots of material from 5 collectors and visiting the Cecil Sharp House home page might give you an idea for something to do if you are in London. If you sign up you will get their national newsletter e-mail sent to you each month.

Stop Press: Village Quire at the Globe, Hay. 23rd December. Christmas program with Parti Mari Lwyd ,from Llantrisant Folk Club. (Check out the Mari Lwyd on Google)

As usual I am going on a bit too much. Many thanks to all who have provided cakes, sheet music, suggestions, hospitality and very good company.

Happy Christmas from your very own,
FolkWorkshops and from John and Jane Baxter

WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER !!

2010-11-25T05:13:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader,

The following is a reproduction of an e-mail which was forwarded to me. I would like to acknowledge the author but who that is has not been made known to me. The least I can do is thank him or her for cheering me up on a rather gloomy day. I am sure many of us can add to the things which we have survived, but that's another blog.

"And we never had a whole Mars bar until 1993"!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1940's, 50's, and 60's
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank Sherry while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos...
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, bread and dripping, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday, somehow we didn't starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers and Bubble Gum.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter,milk from the cow,and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O..K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY ,
no video/dvd films, or colour TV
no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time....

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we didn't need to keep up with the Jones's!

Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on
MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren't concentrating .
We can string sentences together and spell and have proper conversations because of a good, solid three R's education.
Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL !

And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore

You can’t have the town without the country

2010-07-29T17:15:00.001-07:00

I am now trying to get stuck into some real country living having been on a quick tour of the Black Country and Birmingham to go to the dentists and to meet up with our daughter. Those of you who follow me on twitter may have detected an urban element in my comments. That’s because I grew up at the centre of a county town in the south of England which is now surrounded by motorways and bungalows. A short bike ride would mean I was in the countryside. In the fifties that meant cherry and apple orchards. A longer bike ride would bring me to cornfields, hop yards and mixed farms and then the high downland. A longer bike ride would find me descending the old coastline escarpment through chestnut under wood onto Romney Marsh.

From my town centre bedroom window I could observe the summer weekend dash of London Transport buses taking community outings to Margate and Ramsgate, I saw the Olympic Torch pass by being carried to the 1948 Olympics and later the Monte Carlo Rally speed through the traffic lights fixed at green at the top of the town. But what fascinated me just as much were the sheep, and occasionally the cattle, which on rare occasions were driven down the High Street to the Tuesday livestock market in Market Meadow.

And that’s the point which we seem to have forgotten. Its not town and country, its town with country and visa versa. That is why the growing interest in getting your hands on some real food is well overdue. Real bread, real beer, fresh vegetable and properly produced meat is all part of a reaction against the mass production of protein and carbohydrate that the food industry makes available to the thousands of victims of long working hours which makes it impossible, so they think, to prepare real food.

I am an expert on this subject. As a bed sit teenager the height of my quick fix cuisine was a Vesta Curry! I haven’t read the ingredients list on this dietary anachronism for some time but I bet when I was eating the stuff, when the e number did not exist,salt and fat was high in the list. Ironically, when I eventually became a mature student and escaped the bedsit I spent one summer making the stuff and saw chicken and beef flesh come in at one end of the factory, get dried to a crisp, so much so that you could press it to dust between your fingers, to eventually be thrown in with the curry source ( mainly fat) and then dried out again. The meat that came in seemed to be soaked in a strong brine and I remember thinking, I don’t think I would start off making a curry this way. Not that I ever did of course. But one thing which this brought home to me was that the ‘food’ I used to pull from the shelves in my NW10 ‘supermarket’ had been manufactured in my own county and was the product of a farm somewhere. Who knows where? I also remember thinking that not far from the factory where I worked and acquired the need for a bath every night after the shift, to rid me of the smell of curry, were those green fields and hop yards where it all starts as well as the deep litter sheds and battery farms where the chicken meat came from. I don’t know about the beef, but I can imagine.

The schism that has arisen between the urban and rural is literally fatal for many. We once pointed cows out to our neighbour's children when we all went for a ride out into the countryside from a large east-midlands industrial town where we lived at the time. To the statement that, ‘..that’s where milk comes from, pointing to a dairy herd, was met with laughing and the comment, ‘ Don’t be silly it comes from the milkman’. That was then. Is it better or worse now? I suspect the freezer stuffed with ready made meals in may homes sums it all up. Unless we restore the relationship between town and country which I grew up being fully aware of, both sides of this relationship will be condemned to a short lived future, in which both will be diminished.

Springtime and the Hay- on- Wye Festival

2010-06-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

The day started well with good sunshine and the fact that yet another member of the slapper twitterati had been reported for spam by the time I checked out her ( for ‘her’ it always is), profile. Then the day took a downturn with our on-line banking account blocking Sian’s ID while she tried to help me get the necessary numbers to retrieve my points so we could get a nice voucher for Sainsbury’s before the points were cancelled due to old age. After 90 minutes on the phone and not being allowed to continue with my request for an ID number because I didn’t have an ID number, we were eventually told to go to our branch. For good measure someone must have thought at this point that it was a jolly good idea to take Sian’s number off the system as well!

As neither of us now had on-line banking a trip to Hay-on-Wye became essential. Normally this would not be a problem but in Festival Week? Oh dear! Nevertheless, as things turned out, we had a very pleasant sunny afternoon in the town. Our banking problems would seem to have been sorted within 10 minutes, although we have not actually tried the new numbers out on-line. We managed to get very quick service at the Post Office. ( If you go to Hereford’s new Post Office with more lights, counter numbers and service tickets, than actual service, it’s best not to be in any kind of a hurry at all) followed by two cones of sheep ice cream from Shepherds. A quick check in the charity shops for bargains and then an attempt to get a copy of Broad Sheep, the live arts bulletin. The bookshop where I regularly check out the latest second hand sheet music denied all knowledge of having held such a publication for distribution. As I have picked up quite a few editions from this establishment I left without comment and later learnt from the helpful ladies at the Tourist Information Office by the main car park that it is due out any time now. Perhaps the warm weather had brought the guy out from his dark hibernation into an unfamiliar world.

In the depths of the newly revamped Richard Booths Books ( now under new ownership) we discovered an excellent collection of photographs by students from the Hereford College of Art, entitled ‘Portraits of Hay’ with many familiar faces recorded. Chris Gibbon’s butcher’s bike featured in one of them which reminded us that we must get some of his brilliant sausages. This we duly did after calling in at Kilvert’s Hotel. Sian had a glass of local apple juice while I treated myself to an afternoon pint of Butty Bach. (Sian tells me this last sentence sounds like Mr Pooter: that can’t be true. H e would have made it in time for a ‘cold collation luncheon’.)
Chris Gibbons was coming to the end of another busy day when we eventually reached him with much of his stock retiring to the fridge for the night. We still had time to talk about his prize-winning Welsh Ponies and his planned showing of them at the Three Counties Show and the Royal Welsh. A man who clearly knows and loves his chosen breed. I told him of the many happy gallops I had had as a student along the sands at Harlech on a Welsh Cobb and how I regret having never got round to making a trip over the Abergwesyn Pass to Tregaron. I think this passed for as some idea of heaven for us both, and as I am always fond of saying, there is no harm in keeping the dream alive. It shows we are still here to appreciate this lovely part of the world.

The afternoon sun was now quite hot and the shuttle bus to the festival site was doing good business. The idea of the festival is great and it is an important annual boost to the local economy but it is very frustrating finding so many of the tickets are sold to Friends of the Festival before they go on general sale. The kind of thing we would like to go to is either on at 9 am or sold out, so we just soak up the business of the festival in the town and delight in seeing local businesses thriving. We see Hay as being on loan during this time and the peak summer months to those who, in a way, need it much more than we do. We can always reclaim in the damp days of winter and chat in the Sandwich Cellar with Sue and Mal when times are less fraught. Never can the phrase ‘gather ye rose buds while ye may’ have more meaning for those who have to make the bulk of a year’s living in a few summer months. ‘Visitors? Dont knock ‘em, we’re farming people now’, as a much missed farmer friend of ours once said.

Dacier

13 Rules for Resolving a Hung Parliament

2010-05-06T02:18:00.001-07:00

Having heard rather a lot of muddled thinking from politicians, gargling journalists and on Newsnight from no less than Lord Armstrong, sometime Cabinet secretary, I thought I would try and state the constitutional conventions as clearly as I can.

If there are any Constitutional Lawyers left in the UK they might well want to add to these rules. It is hoped that Anthony Howard and Peter Hennessey will be made great use of during the election programmes as they are fascinating authorities to listen to on this and many other political and constitutional matters. Here for what it is worth is my penny worth, which I suspect will be challenged as being divorced from reality or inaccurate by the time Rules 12 and 13 are reached, if not before.

The Queen
I do not expect the Queen to get in contact as she will be too busy getting ready for watching the results come in or getting an early night. She received one to one tutorials on the British Constitution from the age of 13 at Eton College just across the road from Windsor Castle. Her teacher was Sir Henry Marten and the teaching was probably based on the writing of the Victorian Walter Bagehot. She has seen the Constitution operate with regard to Prime Ministers' Harold Wilson and Edward Heath after the 1974 election and so she will not need to do much homework in preparation for a stalemate on Friday. Her great grandfather King George the V became familiar with the rules during the great Constitutional crisis which led to the Parliament Act 1911 so there is some family experience involved here. On being advised by his Private Secretary that he was constitutionally obliged to follow the advice of his Prime Minister in all circumstances, even if he was advised to sign his own death warrant, the King replied in his usual nautical language, ‘If he did, I’d shoot the bugger dead!’

Even if Queen Elizabeth II might feel like using strong language I suspect that the handbag on the table and the regal look might be enough to discomfort a modern Prime Minister.The rules that follow are constitutional big time and hopefully will never need to be applied through to Rule13 because I suspect it would be lucky for none.

Contingency Plan
The current Cabinet Secretary's contingency plan is designed to allow time for the Prime Minister to establish whether he can form a Government from the new House of Commons. If the Conservatives win an overall majority of 326 seats or more he must resign and recommend that Mr Cameron be asked to form a government, If there is no overall majority then the Prime Minister will have to decide whether he can do a deal with another party so that he can either run a minority government or form a co-coalition or pact of some kind. If the Conservatives do not reach 326 seats but nevertheless have more seats than Labour and Liberals combined, then he will have to consider resigning he should advise the Queen to invite Mr Cameron to form a minority government.

In all such negotiations the Queen should not be involved although the Prime Minister is under a duty to keep her informed. The Opening of Parliament is set for May 23rd so whatever the outcome the new Government must present its Queens Speech to Parliament to accept or reject.

The 13 rules for resolving a hung parliament
I think i have covered all the points but I must confess that by the time I got to the end of Rule 13 I felt I was entering an Alice in Wonderland constitution.

1) The Prime Minister is the Queens principle adviser until he resigns
2) The Queen must always act on the advice of her Prime Minister
3) The Prime Minister must give reliable advice to the Queen
4) The Queen may advise, encourage and/or warn her Prime Minster
5) The Queen cannot insist that her advice etc shall be followed
6) The Queen may only have a person as Prime Minister if he or she commands the support of the majority of the House of Commons
7) Until that confidence is clearly not available the PM can stay in office
8) The PM is entitled to establish whether or not that confidence will be forthcoming when the Government presents its programme to the House Commons in the Queens Speech.
9) If that cannot be done then the Prime Minister should resign and recommend who else should be invited to form a Government.
10) If the Prime Minister’s party, and its other supporters, have not won the vote on the Queens speech the Prime Minister would ask the Queen for a dissolution of Parliament and a new election should follow.
11)The Queen should not intervene and should await advice from the Prime Minister but her Private secretary will keep her informed in the meantime.

It now gets a bit unpleasant:

12) It would seem that the Queen may not be obliged to grant a dissolution. She might ask the Prime Minister to see if he or another person could form a government.In the event of losing such a vote the Prime Minister can either resign with a recommendation to the Queen as to who he thinks will be able to form a Government, or ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament so that a new election could be held.

13) The Queen being entitled to advise, encourage and warn, will seek advice from the Prime minister as to whether another election would be in the nations interest due to e.g., a serious run on the pound or public hostility etc. There would have to be something seriously wrong either with the UK's position or the Prime Minister if the Queen was to delay in responding to Prime Ministers request for another election. She is entitled to seek the advice of others such as Privy Councillors to see that there is no possibility of forming a Government from the recently elected House of Commons. If the Prime Minister insists that a General Election is the only way forward the Queen would be obliged to follow his advice. However, if the Queen feels that someone else might be able to form a Government she could take the highly risky step of inviting another person to do so, but of course the Prime Minister might refuse to resign. In which case the Queen can advise, encourage and warn him of the consequences and should follow convention and dissolve Parliament. If she did refuse the Prime Ministers request this would be a major departure from the usual and it could be seen as ‘unconstitutional’ although it would be completely within the law. It would also be perfectly lawful for the Queen to dismiss the Prime Minister in these circumstances but again this could be seen as unconstitutional.

The Queen is required to keep above politics but at the same time must act on the advice of politicians. It is up to the politicians to get their act together when a Hung Parliament arises. Should she receive advice which could causes excessive damage to the nation she will warn. If the position is so severe she could act as a constitutional long stop. Such circumstances could put the Constitutional Monarchy itself in jeopardy. The Queens obligation is to protect the Constitution in accordance with her Coronation Oath. No Prime Minister should put the Monarch in such a position as he himself would be seen to be undermining the Constitution.

While we are at the limits of constitutional bad case scenarios, the Queen would probably be taking little risk to sack a Prime Minster who refused to resign after failing to form a Government or losing a vote of confidence and did not want a further election. There would be no Government and the Queens intervention would be the only legal course of ending the stalemate.

How to run a Marathon:One persons run in the London Marathon

2010-05-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Mary received this account of the London Marathon from a friend who took part this year. We all thought it was moving and inspiring and we publish it here with the kind permission of the author. Our last information is that a full recovery has been made.

Dear all,

As many of you already know, I successfully completed the London marathon on Sunday in 4:18:32 which put me in 15679th place and the 3272nd woman to finish! Not quite the first place some of you were rather ambitiously predicting but in the top half! A massive thank you to all of you for your interest, good luck messages and your sponsorship. Your generosity means that I blew away my target amount for sponsorship for Whizz Kidz as well and am currently climbing towards £2,100! Well done you all.

The day didn't start well as I woke up to a flat phone battery and no idea what time it was. After showering and getting dressed I finally found a clock on the central heating controls which told me it was still only 6.45a.m.! Mairead had been a star already, feeding me pasta and donating her bed to me, and she made sure I was delivered to the station time. I had been worried about finding my way to start but there was no need - both the train and the platform were full of friendly fellow runners. Most of the people I talked to were also first time runners including one girl who had given birth only 10 months ago!

The start was a hive of activity and the rain didn't seem to dampen anyone's spirits. I made a new friend from Norwich who was starting in the same zone as me and was also running for Whizz Kidz so we lined up together. Finally the big moment was there and 15 minutes and 58 seconds later I crossed the start line, pretty close to the back of the field and alongside a man in armour.

Having only ever watched the marathon (every year) on tv, I wasn't really prepared for how overwhelming I would find the atmosphere. The crowds are mindblowing all the way around the course. They turn out with buckets of oranges, mars bars or jelly babies to help the runners. Or they set up sound systems or bands in their gardens or the local pub to help you along. They cheer people's names if they see them looking tired and some defy the many tube disruptions to appear multiple times along the course in support of friends or family. If I ever started to feel a bit tired, there would be a fantastic song to dance and clap along to as I ran past - 'Tonight's gonna be a good night' by the Black Eyed Peas was a particularly good one. I had hundreds of high fives with kids around the course. At times, I was struggling not to cry - it was amazing.

The running was not nearly as bad as I expected. I kept drinking and managed to eat a mars bar in bits during the race. I gave in to the need to pee after about 15 miles by which time the queue for the portaloo meant I only had to wait a couple of minutes! The Whizz Kidz supporters were giving me a big cheer at various points along the course and I managed to spot Mairead after about 21 miles which gave me a big boost. Sarah, Jo and Sian saw me and screamed at me but I completely failed to spot them - sorry girls! I pretended any Vote Labour posters were Gwynne cheering me on, which I knew he was in spirit. The last couple of miles were a case of picking off each 100m as it came and trying not to think that the finish was close in case all my muscles gave up. The crowds and the other runners carried me along - there was no way I was going to stop at that point.

And then I crossed the finish line, nearly tripping the girl next to me in my attempts to wave and smile at the camera! There is sense of quiet satisfaction in that area behind the line. No-one has the energy to celebrate flamboyantly and I happily got my medal and goody bag and put on my foil blanket so I looked the part! I managed to find the girls in the crowds and they fed me sweets and delivered me safely home to Cardiff for a well deserved and very much appreciated hot bath. The legs were pretty sore the following day and going downstairs was an issue but I seem to have made a full recovery!

It has definitely been one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. And not just the day - everyone's support and encouragement has been brilliant. I recommend that any of you give it a go if you can!

Thanks again for everything.

Whizz Kidz is a charity which is all about giving disabled children and young people the chance to enjoy an active life whether at home, school or at play.
http://www.whizz-kidz.org.uk/

Lost in Rochdale

2010-05-04T05:12:00.000-07:00

(Or Gordon goes deaf in the mill towns: Did you say ‘Flocking?’)

In the summer of 1960 I decided that I would spend my week’s holiday hitch- hiking to Fort William in order to climb Ben Nevis. To cut a long story short I finished up bouncing around in the mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire before escaping with the help of a lorry driver who to my good fortune was heading for Glasgow. As a southern 16 year old those mill towns were a bit of a shock with the girls sitting out having their lunch break, all looking like Gracie Fields.
I have since learnt quite a bit about life in the mills, the hardships of the working people and especially the noise that caused many of them to go deaf due to the clatter of the machines. I now know that Rochdale has the proud claim to be the home of the Rochdale Pioneers who brought us the idea of the co-operative movement and it is this bundle of memories which makes Gordon Brown’s electioneering gaff all the more distressing. He is, as far as I am aware, of sound hearing, but he wasn’t listening to Gillian Duffy, and for some time hasn’t been listening to Labour’s traditional voters.

Of all the places to visit this surely was a Labour homeland, albeit having been represented by Cyril Smith for the Liberals for many years. This was a place where Labour’s record and plans for the future should have been articulated at their clearest with the help of the many faithful lifetime Labour voters who would find it unthinkable to vote for any other party. Gordon’s Black Wednesday was to bring none of this. Like Tony Blair before him he seems to have paid little attention to history and presumably thought that a succession of handshakes and small talk would suffice.

Unfortunately he was introduced to model traditional voter, Gillian Duffy, whose working class tradition of speaking out would normally have been a credit to any Labour constituency branch. Such is the shallowness of modern political life that this grandma was not heard but dismissed as a bigot even though as a person concerned for the future of her grandchildren she wanted to hear Labour’s plans. Whatever impression the film footage might have given, the now well known interlude of accusing anger, says much of Labour’s loss of vision and connection with its roots.

Gillian Duffy was a sure bet for a Labour vote but the signs of disconnection were already showing. The 10p tax controversy and the ridiculous purported correction which Gordon Brown claimed to have made and the whole fiasco of immigration and asylum seekers are the most obvious. Gordon Brown’s slogan, ‘British Jobs for British people’ if it had any meaning at all, was too late. The Labour Government rejected delaying open borders for those seeking work and, getting its estimates wrong, jumped in with both feet. It appears to have had no inkling of how working people would perceive this. Was it really all about having cheap strawberries for much of the year! Unfortunately not, it was about the arrival of a great deal of competent workers who would provide added competition and keeps wages down. Worse still, it was providing much needed skilled workers when the Labour Government since 1997 had undermined the value of acquiring practical skills and promoted the higher education route.

It has falsely raised the aspirations of many young people who in another age would have been the proud and natural recruits for the modern skilled workforce we need. While Polish plumbers were fully employed, many British youngsters were finding it extremely difficult to find a place on a plumbing course at their nearby college, while those who went to university had to take on part time work to supplement the crippling debt which crippling fees required. As a result the quality of their university experience has been reduced, aided and abetted by the dash to acquire funds by overvaluing researchers and regarding good teachers as unimportant. How many stories have you heard of lecturers who regard the teaching as a chore attracting no kudos, or of post-grad students teaching with poor communication skills?

Not surprisingly the cartel of older universities has managed to keep the impact of this muddled expansion to a minimum, and exploit research funding to great advantage. For a generation of Labour politicians who benefitted so much from free higher education this speaks of Jack and his ladder with more to come in further education with practical skills courses already being cut.

Whatever the complicated reasons for this influx of labour from the EU or elsewhere, it is clear from listening to the many debates and watching the faces of the audiences, that a large proportion of working people remain unconvinced when they see the lack of jobs, houses and investment in areas like Rochdale. If a party seeking re-election is unable to respond in a convincing manner, and does not appear to even listen to its thinking and articulate supporters, is it any wonder that some people exploit the job shortage/immigration ratio, imagined or not, for their own unpleasant political purposes. It should not be forgotten that many potential Labour voters will not all have the principles which prevent their sense of betrayal leading them to the extreme right. Mrs Duffy has chosen not to vote at all, whilst others might be thinking of ‘flocking’ elsewhere thanks to Labour’s failure to stay in touch with its roots. Let us hope that the Rochdale incident reminds people of what the Rochdale Pioneers represented and what New Labour never seemed to understand.

Postscript: The Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday won the exclusive interview rights with Mrs Duffy and it would seem that the editor was happy to print her story without embellishment. Presumably on the basis that its speaks for itself. The interview story was accompanied by an excellent piece by Rochdale girl Liz Kershaw.

See also: Michael Collins, author of “The Likes of Us: A biography of the White Working Class”

The co-operative movement and the Co-operative Party seem to have been hidden behind the aristocratic embrace of the Labour Party establishment for too long and it is ironic that suddenly the merits of companies like the John Lewis Partnership are now expressly referred to in the Labour Party Manifesto. It is ironic on several levels. A party which has had so much faith in British management and bankers now recognises that employees are very much third fiddle to Directors and shareholders. Would it have anything to do with the popularity of their products with MP’s when refurnishing their homes at the tax payer’s expense? Too little too late me thinks.

That said the John Lewis Partnership and the co-operative models are ideas whose time should have come years ago. Let’s hope they are not forgotten in the coming hard-times we are about to enter.

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010: Pt.6

2010-04-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

Reason 6: Election Night

I had not long been born and the Third Reich was already providing my childhood playgrounds just round the corner. It had prepared plans for one of its battle routes to London along the A20 which came right past my dads pub in Maidstone. Rather than serving these travellers a drink or two my dad would have been shipped off to a slave labour camp somewhere. The rest of us I know not where, although I have a few horrible ideas. When I last looked over the English Channel from Hells Corner tucked away in the cliffs below Dover Castle I couldn't help pondering how that twenty miles of sea has affected me and what I like to believe is my thinking.

In 1943 it was just wide enough for this sceptred isle to dig in, prepare the defence lines, get ready to flood Romney Marsh as we had done in readiness for Napoleon, to build all the pill boxes and tank traps and to get a network of last stand heroes hidden away in their bunkers among the chestnut under-wood of my home county of Kent. The Men of Kent would have been in the front line. In 1066 on the other hand these narrow seas were just not wide enough and the Norman invader met a battle worn army. Once again, all these centuries later I ponder how those events have affected my thinking.

Some wars are completely pointless, and indeed I might go as far as saying that most of them are. Some had their point but it is lost somewhere in the library. Some had clear causes while others like the First World War need a lecture course to explain, yet still leave you asking, 'Why?' My granddad was in the Boer War and my dad in the First but the reasons and the significance of the Second is at another level of understanding and justification. Election Night reminds me that it was a close run thing back in the 1940's and that it was worth the fight. That is why I will be an aggressive democrat, both in the sense of using it and criticising its product, till the day I die.

On Election Night we witness the re-constituting of a Norman institution which was teased out of a succession of Kings, including the despotic King John. We won't be having a King choosing that name in a hurry. Many great improvements have been won down the centuries but it must not be forgotten that at the centre of our Executive branch of government the vestiges of despotism still lurk in the modern equivalents of the contingency plan filing cabinets and , given the wrong conditions from the citizens point of view, are ready to be implemented by a latter day despot. Anyone who thinks otherwise has failed to understand the purpose of democracy, the rule of law, scrutiny and accountability. Worst still, they know nothing of the nature of our system of government or our history. Democracy is all very inconvenient to the bureaucrats but that is how it should be. That is why those bureaucrats who advocated the abolition of Election Night for administrative convenience are the unwitting, not to say witless, enemies of democracy. They also give an insight into how governments can become divorced from the people. A small example but nonetheless revealing.

This is my sixth reason why I will not only enjoy this General Election but both savour it and thank my lucky stars that it still happens. As the results come in I hope you will join with me in celebrating this fact of a decent life, and think of those in the world who are denied fair elections. Whoever wins, if we lose sight of the reason why we are going through this process, we are lost.

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010 : Pt.5

2010-04-27T04:36:00.000-07:00

Reason 5: Time for the House of Commons to Reassert and Reform itself

After the expenses scandal the House of Commons will be one of the least experienced in recent times. How will they adapt to the rigours of parliamentary life and more particularly the dreaded Whip System and 'toeing the party line'? There was a lot of talk by the time the Euro elections arrived of more independent candidates standing and there night be one or two. Not as many as I was hoping for back at that time and it will take a while to see how many party rubber stamps make it to the chamber. More importantly, how many of them wish to get promotion to the front bench via the many career moves towards a Government post and pension. It will take a while to establish who these are but if there are a great many of them the old old problem with Parliament will continue, namely, 'never mind the merits', think of your career'. As so many new MP's will have been on the usual political training routes and have not had established careers, saying 'yes' to their could well be an automatic response.

If this were not enough, the amount of legislation government's seem to want to pass has reached a ridiculous level. If it is true that a lot of EU material just passes though for approval with little scrutiny, why is it that the House of Commons so often gets passed by when legislation is being discussed. A great deal of rubbish reaches the statute book without our elected representatives getting much of a look in. If this is inevitable then there is either something wrong with the system or the amount of legislation is too great or is rushed through. Granted, the House of Lords does a lot of scrutiny in committee as does the House of Commons, but it is the Government which dictates the timetable, which amendments will be discussed and when the guillotine will fall to push the Bill through to its next stage. When measures involve civil liberties, criminal liability and human rights the missed provision can be disastrous in the long-term. Governments fully understand their short term aims are best enacted in haste, leaving the rest of us to put up with the results at our leisure.

All the parties are promising one form of constitutional reform or another. Having fixed term Parliaments is one such idea as is the reduction of the number of constituencies. I cant help feeling that many of the reforms that are out there are rather cobbled together without looking at all the variables which the present constitution embodies in its conventions. When a manual working system is being transferred to a computer based system it was always my understanding that a Systems Analyst was the person who set out what the old system did. I remain to be convinced that those suggesting constitutional reform haven't done any in depth analysis. As a half baked idea House of Lords reform will take some beating as it has ended up stalled, but with a second chamber that has excelled at delaying legislation with more legitimacy than the old hereditary dominated chamber. Any reforming government must come to terms that a second chamber that is merely a rubber stamp is a waste of money and a dangerous constitutional omission from the few checks and balances that are left, after it is realised that a Government can almost always on the House of Commons as its lap dog.

The problem to be confronted is how our elected chamber can acquire some credibility, sandwiched as it is between the remote Leviathan of the EU's institutions on the one hand and the emasculated local authorities of England and the aspiring Welsh and Scottish legislatures, on the other. How reducing the number of Parliamentary constituencies will help, inevitably making them bigger, is a puzzle. Distancing electors still further from their representatives doesnt seem a good idea in the light of the invisibility achieved by Euro MP's. Should the Westminster Parliament ever make provision for dealing with English matters without the interference of Scottish and Welsh MP's, representative proximity will be essential as will the need for a proper system of proportional representation so that one party will not predominate to the exclusion of all others.

In the meantime I will enjoy the coming election not only because it will prompt so many of these speculations but it will also be entertaining in spotting how many of these would be political animals have failed to understand the constitutional and political cage they are about to enter.

Dacier

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010: Pt.4

2010-04-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

Reason 4: A Democratic Parliament for the UK and England

Devolution in Wales and in Scotland seems to be working with growing confidence and self - esteem on the increase in both Celtic nations. Why this has come about can be traced back to a few by-elections in the 1970's and growing pressure from within both nations. Now that Northern Ireland has secured its own form of devolution only one part of the jigsaw remians to be put in place to give consistency to our nations formal title of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, no less than devolution for England.

Why did England miss out? Could it have been that Labour Governments have in the past owed so much to these nations constituencies to secure and retain power? Could it also be that the English have not only forgotten much of their traditional culture but have become rather shy in reasserting it. Thankfully no such inhibitions seem to be found in the English folk music community or among enthusiasts for English classical music. Sadly the nationalist lack of inhibition is also found in large measure at the mid to far right bearings of the political compass with more flag waving than even I feel is tasteful.

Nevertheless it is now a good time for the centre ground to start shedding these inhibitions. Firstly the lame attempt at a form of devolution for England, the Regional Assemblies, have now been abolished. The name was a misnomer if you think that they came into being by local elections. They were just another product of the nomination culture that brought us the Quango and the Regulators of the Offtrack variety. I wonder what they achieved
and at what cost? Present plans to have another go still look like a new fudge of the old culture which would leave voters cold should they be given a look in.

While Wales and Scotland were gaining control of their affairs the English were seeing their once proud local authorities being starved of funds while having to act more and more as mere agents of central government. Add to that a range of new decision making processes, different from one authority to the other, the import of the modern corporate manager with salary to match, and a huge consultancy dependency, and it is no wonder that the average elector is alienated from Town or County Hall. So much so that local election turn outs are way down among the 30 per cents. I am sure I am not alone in concluding from my own dealing with local government officers that they no longer seem to regard themselves as servants of the local community but slaves to the financial constraints created by central government imposing more and more work but without the funding. All this adds up to a loss of local control and a demeaning of function. Without adequate funding local authorities seem to spend much of their time explaining why they cannot act.

It is therefore time to bring some real power to the people. At a national level English MP's alone should decide English matters. I was surprised how attractive the English Democrats election broadcast was since it defined the problem very graphically. I had several reservations about their claims regarding the funding of Welsh and Scottish affairs and the inevitable objections to EU membership but the central argument makes sense. I cannot say that their website inspired with confidence with so many emotive symbols which made me feel rather uncomfortable, but why should Welsh and Scottish MP's ,who have an Assembly or Parliament back home dealing with devolved matters, be able to poke their noses in and vote on purely English issues.

There is still nothing in it for Labour but with the possibility of a new type of Parliament the time for the fudging to end has arrived. Many of the changes and reforms that Labour are proposing sound a lot like asking for a chance to clear up the mistakes they themselves have made or ignored in preference to some pet or half baked projects like the now abolished Regional Assemblies : an unnecessary extra layer between incompetent central government and emasculated, sometimes also incompetent, local government. A distinct English component within the Westminster Parliament would have a legitimacy which would give credibility to the delegation of real powers and duties and budgets to local authorities which could start to rebuild their local commitment and in return start to earn local loyalty and appreciation. This would be more about democracy and what you do with it than the business development that the Regional Assemblies seemed to be limited to. To think that they would bring decisions nearer to the people now looks like a conclusion promoted by the misguided for consumption by the gullible.

So, as the results come in on Election Night it will be interesting to see whether the figures will show how far England has been the poor relation in the culture of bringing powers back home. If Labour survive by the skin of their teeth due to their Welsh and Scottish victories the question of English Devolution will be buried and those protesting at the graveside dismissed as the eccentrics of the flag waving right.

Dacier

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010: Pts..2 & 3

2010-04-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

Reason 2: Exposure of the Electoral System

The first past the post system can work quite well in some constituencies. This will depend on how many candidates stand and what the predominant political views are. Take for example a constituency in one of the old coal mining areas where the sitting Labour MP could have a majority of 20,000 or more. If a Conservative stood there would be little chance that the Labour candidate would not be a clear winner with the Conservative getting a very small share of the votes. In more mixed constituencies with a three way split and possibly with several small parties, it can happen that the winning candidates will have had more votes cast against them, than for. If the total votes cast for the winners opponents exceeds the the winners votes, the split vote, rather than the winners popularity, has brought about the victory.

A similar situation can arise nationally with the total votes cast for each party There is much talk at the moment of the Labour Party winning the majority of the seats despite being third in the current opinion polls. There is a real risk that Gordon Brown will have to be asked by the Queen to form a Government because his party won more seats than the other parties put together despite being second or third in the national popular vote when all the votes are divided up between the parties. Lack of popularity does not always prevent a party winning.

It is these two forms of what may be called, 'the popular vote contradiction' which could be exposed by the coming election results one and for all. This always happens to varying extents in most elections but the present position of Labour in the polls and the growing popularity of the LibDems due to the Clegg effect, is raising expectations. Given that Gordon Brown has not yet been elected as the PM, not even by his own party, to return to power with a third rate popularity vote could be too much for many voters to tolerate. The popular vote contradiction will not just cause academic interest but public outrage and disillusionment in equal measure. Perhaps this is why PM Brown is promoting a watered down form of proportional representation to head the opposition off at the pass. Even this decision seems beyond him as he has promised a referendum. Where did I hear that before?

Granted, the first past the post system normally has the advantage of giving a clear cut decision but this is by no means guaranteed in this General Election. In any case more and more people will come to realise that a clear cut decision should not be achieved at the cost of fairness.

Reason 3: The Hung or Balanced Parliament

The British Constitution is a story of the Executive gradually conceding power from the top down. Often the concessions have been begrudging and have often turned out to have been rather thin. Starting with the Reform Act of 1832 it took just short of 120 years to arrive at one person one vote. Lets hope that we do not have to wait much more than the 170 years we have been enduring an unsophisticated electoral system which has favoured one branch or the other of the political establishment. On this occasion the usual model may not deliver that certainty and a House of Commons with no clear party majority will emerge. The Queen, acting as a Constitutional Monarch is perfectly well equipped to deal with this situation even if the Cabinet Secretary thinks it is necessary to have a special contingencies plan in place just in case some constitutional nightmare was about to be acted out on the black tarmac of Whitehall or the red tarmac of the Mall. The electorate may not understand the rarely applied conventions about choosing someone to try and form a Government but it will be the Queens task to find someone in the House of Commons who would enjoy sufficient confidence to form a Government. In such situations that person does not even have to a leader from any of the parties but would in such a case have to be an outstanding character. Unfortunately there are not likely to be many of them in the next House of Commons so one of the party leaders would be the most likely. I can however imagine Vince Cable being considered if the financial establishment gets the jitters at seeing the UK preparing a coalition government. This is rather strange since first past the post voting systems are the exception rather than the rule and probably has more to do with not having a Conservative government more than anything else. In any case the Constitutional Monarch has to tread carefully, lsien to the advice of her Prime Mister Mr Brown and then consult with the other party leaders. She can asl the advice of anyone she likes and has a large number of Privy Councillors to choose from. As most people have no idea that this is the only real political job she has it is bound to be misunderstood by many. Hence the need for caution and her long experience should provide it. That is why a Monarch is never out of the country when an election result is due. If a coalition works then electoral reform will be inevitable as the electorate will want a voting system in which such outcomes are more likely. If so there will be more work for the Queen.

So, will my enjoyment of the prospect of a hung Parliament be translated into seeing the actual thing come to pass. We will know whether it is likely by the small hours of the 7th May,but if it is really on the cards, the following week will be taken up with a lot of toing and froing between Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. Even if all of this is new to the Cabinet Secretary I can assure you that the Monarch will have seen much of it before. It is at times like these that I am pleased that our Chief Executive is not in place because of being an elderly political time server. We have had a glimpse of that model with Speaker Martin's career. Ironically, she is not only elderly but she is pursuing her specialist subject on behalf of her subjects because of an even more unacceptable political device from ancient times, the hereditary principle. Having seen the creatures that modern political systems too often throw up, so to speak, as Presidents, I am at lost to suggest a reliable alternative. Hey ho.

Dacier

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010: Pt.1

2010-04-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

Reason 1: The Internet

For once I feel I have a voice either via this blog or through Twitter. I have been interested in politics from the first time I heard my mum and dad calling to each other as another result was announced by the BBC Home Service. My parents were Conservatives and I now know that this was the 1951 election which brought Churchill back into power after the post-war Labour landslide had rejected his party's policies despite his wartime leadership.

Once the results came out on election night TV the whole process became much more dramatic and so by the 1964 election when it looked clear that the old grouse moor Tories would be bowing out the true election night tradition for me began. I had access to a TV! Where the Internet makes everything so much better is that if you have the time to spare you can track the election debate from start to finish. For those who have never engaged with the political process, especially those young people who feel elections will not make any difference to them, there is a chance that the Internet might just draw them in. There is certainly no lack of comment, from the comic through to the serious world of the political analyst, whether dealing with voting projections or the stature of the party leaders. The statistics for Twitter alone show how many go in for re-active TV viewing.

There will be those who say that the Leadership Debates have changed the election campaign into a sort of Pop Idol event to the exclusion of the traditional hustings and interviews. At the moment I see no signs that the latter will come to an end. What I do see is the possibility of previously disillusioned voters engaging with these new electioneering methods. Whether the leaders will agree to such debates again remains to be seen but with the arrival of the Internet, television is only one part of the democratic process . The Internet will have an increasingly important role if computer literate youngsters become convinced that an election can lead to improvements in their lives, rather than waste, ineffectiveness and broken promises. This is crucial because an election with few voters is meaningless and there are elites who would be very pleased to fill the vacuum thereby created. In five years time who knows where the Internet Election will be.Such speculations should make it interesting and intellectually enjoyable. To those who say that nothing changes I answer, 'Yes it does, and often for the worse. If you don't vote you can't complain, and one day it could have serious consequences if you did complain.' There is no benign circuit hard wired into our political institutions. I am therefore enjoying this election because it means so much for the future of democracy in the UK.

Dacier

Comments: Unfotunately many comments come through in code and cannot be moderated. If your comment does not appear it is unlikely to have been censored. It just couldn't be read.

Reflections on St.George's Day

2010-04-23T01:32:00.000-07:00

Flying the Flag?

Why is it that as a mongrel Englishman I feel uncomfortable while writing this note about our national day? The Celtic nations within the United Kingdom have no inhibitions about their various ways of celebrating their national day. I suspect it is something to do with not feeling the need because whatever the Celts might do, being English automatically meant that you were British and that was enough. This attitude seems to be echoed by our American cousins who often talk of England when they really mean Britain. With the promotion of Wales and Scotland through their devolved governments this is changing. With Northern Ireland now having a form of devolution the picture is nearly complete within our nation's formal title, 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.

A new Patrotism?

The reasons for this discomfort are many and various. Firstly, the embarrassment which many people have about talking about patriotism. Following your government, right or wrong, is not a good idea, but there is surely nothing wrong in saying that you love where you live, you like the people around you ,and you appreciate its wide ranging culture, its quirks and its eccentricities. I get particularly moved by both our natural and man-made landscapes and the histories they reveal and there is nothing wrong with being proud of an understood heritage. Nor is there anything wrong in saying you can't stand the government of the day whilst saying 'but it is ours' rather than that of an invading or colonial power. Even this brings on feelings of guilt to anyone who knows some colonial history But, that was then and this is now, and I have always found it a remarkable fact of post imperial life that so many citizens of our old colonies are more than happy to be on speaking terms, and I have always found great affection for Britain coming from the many Commonwealth students I have taught. That is why I feel that the present wars both bring out patriotic feelings for our troops but great doubts with regard to the judgements of our politicians.

English Devolution?

The movement for devolution has shown Englishmen like me, contrary to my initial fears, that bringing decisions and a budget nearer to Cardiff and Edinburgh has made, and highlights some difference, not least student fees and prescription fees. Although it seems an odd thing to say, decisions which affect only England, should also be brought nearer to London. The time must surely have come to exclude Welsh and Scottish MP's from votes which exclusively deal with matters within the borders of England. English MP's cannot vote on matters dealing with matters being voted on by the Welsh Assemby or the Scottish Parliament. The exclusuion of the Celtic vote would mean that for English matters the Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland could revert to its old title of the Parliament of England which was abolished with the Act of Union with Scotland in 1706. Matters of defence and Foreign affairs and anything else not within the remit of the devolved instutions would remain where they are now. There would probably be no need for yet another building but this would become clearer once the principle of English devolution was established. The nonsense of English Regional Assemblies, who knows what they are anyway, could fall by the constutional wayside. Futhermore the case for fewer MPs would be strengthened and the art of scrutinising the national executive branch of the national government might be rediscovered.

With an effective and accountable English Parliament in place there would be no embarrassment in flying a flag above its rooftops which at its simplest represents the triumph of Good over Evil.

Briefing Notes for Candidates and Electors on Rural Housing Issues

2010-04-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

i) What are the problems?

If we want to have viable rural communities they need a sound demographic spread. The outgoing youngsters and the incoming or remaining older ones will be the cause of an elderly community. National market forces mean that those who retire from high value property markets can down size and reap the benefits from the high value of the property they are selling. Young people starting out to make a home and raise a family will not be able to compete unless they can inherit a local property or have already established a means of high income. The only hope for buying a property depends on whether they can get a run down building or site and rebuild through their own resources. Those who have done this are fully aware of how lucky they have been.

The only way of stopping the imbalances of property values between, say London, and Herefordshire would be intervention through planning controls and regulating what properties can or cannot be available to outside purchasers. Add to this the increase of city bonuses and the differences in incomes and it is no wonder that some villages and even towns become deserts from September through to March as has happened in other parts of the country. If intervention occurs however local people who want to sell will be denied the opportunity to secure the best price under unrestricted market conditions. Intervention by national Government seems unlikely but it is the only way that market forces can be prevented from emptying the countryside of young people. In so doing government subsidy would be necessary to compensate present owners

The other problem is having something to make young people want to stay or settle. In France the process of ‘desertification’ has meant that more and more farms have been left to rot. The result, an influx of British ex-pats taking advantage of the much lower prices. This is not always popular with the French. The result? : a potential elderly British population in France.

The Consequences: A viable community depends on a range of ages so that various facilities can operate. An elderly populations will give employment to doctors, but the need for schools will fall. A house bound community will be dependent on others to deliver their supplies. Public transport is unlikely to be needed for older members of the community who cannot venture out, and not very convenient for those who would like to due to the difficulty of getting to a bus stop and so on.

Elderly residents may find it hard to shoulder the burdens of local civic duties, running a church or other social activities. Young people will look elsewhere to nearby towns for their entertainment and probably change to urban living where they have a better chance of earning a living and getting accommodation. Add to this the decline in agriculture and the ‘desertification’ process gains momentum.

Shops, Churches, Chapels, Pubs, Youth Clubs, Community Centres all need money and physical support from the local community if they are to survive.

ii) What could be done?

Schools need to be maintained as a reason for youngsters to find a way of staying or moving in. Although the bureaucrats will always tell you that a bigger better school many miles away will be much better, it rarely is, and the result of the closure of the village school is to rip the heart out of the community

If nothing is done to reduce the consequences of a free housing market by national government then local communities need to nurture the idea of cheaper housing through housing associations. Currently housing associations are being told by national government to reduce their rents in line with the fall in inflation, with the result that their building budgets will be reduced. Political pressure has to be brought to bear on national politics because there is little which can be done locally in this respect. The one thing which can be done is to try and establish the places where land might be available and where demand for the housing would fit in with employment and transport opportunities etc.

Council Housing may make a come back but this seems too far in the future to make a significant contribution to halting the drift away to the towns by the young and the creations of detached elderly communities.

Empty properties should be monitored so that the local authority should make use of its powers to discourage this wasteful use. 3% of the national housing stock remains empty for more than 6 months with 1.6% being from the private sector. 20% of the population live in rural areas. Government policy on their website.

This site gives a wealth of information regarding housing generally and how owners can be helped to bring their property back into the housing pool. Such properties should be identified and the Empty Homes Agency will try to involve housing associations and the local authority in returning such properties to the housing stock. Whilst rotting ruins may be seen as having some visual amenity there is a growing recognition that if the owners cannot make use of them as part of the housing stock, local authorities will have to intervene more.

Since 2006 local authorities may issue last resort enforcement orders under the Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMOs). For once there seem to be some intervention powers which could be used after a property has been empty for more than six months. In rural communities there are often properties which have been left empty for much longer. Rather than going on the open market perhaps the next stage is for local authorities to find ways to bring them into a social housing pool or to give assistance to local young people in financing their purchase. Is the return of the local authority mortgage well overdue?

The second homes problem should also be analysed and consideration be given to regulation but this is again a problem of national policy rather than local. It is also complicated by the restriction of choice that central intervention could bring about. The debate to date has been rather simplistic because the phrase in effect covers several categories.

Those who buy to let for the purposes solely of letting the property out as a holiday home on commercial terms should be discouraged in areas where there is a housing shortage. In some parts of the country where the local population has moved on the empty properties are at least used to contribute something to the economy for part of the year. Those who simply buy to let as all year round homes can bee seen as making a contribution to the local housing pool as long as rents and housing benefits are in a realistic ratio.

Second Homes in Transition could cover those properties where the owners have purchased a property with a view to retirement and may be taking advantage of the differences in national house values. Others may have purchased the property as their main residence as they are in tied accommodation and the ‘second home’ is their insurance or, as is more likely, their eventual residence on retirement. The same can apply to properties which have been inherited but the new owner has to seek their living elsewhere, pending retirement. In the meantime these properties are sometimes let out as holiday lettings while be the owner may visit for weekends or longer breaks in the winter months. Others may choose to keep the property unlet.

The Second Home as a bolt hole pure and simple is probably the least valuable to the local community in removing a potential home from the market. These maybe seen as the least complicated and where the property is isolated or without facilities may not be viable units in the housing stock. However, where they would be viable there is a case for intervening by way of legislation creating special planning permission and setting maximum quotas. If a perfectly sound starter home is going to be removed from the market for this purpose then present free market laws will not prevent it. Such a property might be an ex-council house situated in a viable community with a shop, pub and good communications.

Sometimes the owners of such properties will not have any intention of getting involved in the local community because that would contradict the rationale of ‘getting away from it all’ and their retirement plans may be centred elsewhere. These owners may contribute to the local community if they shop in the area and employ local firms for building etc. They now have to make a full contribution to Council Tax. Restrictions of selling for this purpose would have to involve compensation of some kind to the original owner if the restriction reduces the sale value.

Purpose built second home complexes such as those round water parks etc are not available for housing as such due to the planning conditions, rather like mobile holiday parks which cannot be use throughout the year, and so should not be a housing issue apart from questions of land use generally.

Improvements and extensions to existing properties to accommodate younger people do happen but the biggest bug-bear is the difficulty of getting planning permission for new houses outside the designated development zones. Again there is little that can be done at the immediate level of local government and the real decisions are made at higher levels. Classic reasons for refusing permission will be that the property would be out of keeping with the landscape (even where the proposal is to rebuild a property which had been in the landscape for many years before planning control was invented) or the access is restricted for emergency vehicles, or access onto the road is inconsistent with the highways policy etc. Within these rules it seems that conversion of barns into dwellings often seems to be acceptable in many cases as does, on occasions, the demolition of an old house to make way for a modern replacement. An additional house adjoining an existing farmhouse or nearby, seems to fall outside the criteria, while housing estates can gradually grow within designated development areas. It is very frustrating for people who have access to land for building but cannot get planning permission but is it equally frustrating to see green field building occurring in a way which would undermine the visual impact of the countryside. All this against a struggling agricultural industry and at a time when food security is becoming recognized as an emerging issue. Somewhere a compromise has to be drawn as a countryside with declining agricultural use and a population imbalance might look pleasant for a while, but it will not last as the people who used to keep it that way gradually leave..

What should be done? The bullet of rural housing needs to be bitten, as indeed does the national problem of a housing shortage. From the citizens point of view this means that the opinions in favour of housing initiatives in the rural community have to be expressed and organized with both local and national politicians. The present situation is destructive of the rural community in the ways outlined above and as a society we either have to accept the consequences of a free property market e.g., desertification and demographic imbalance, or develop equitable methods of intervention.

Dacier

Caravan Touring and Wasting Time

2010-03-05T03:53:00.000-08:00

In one way wasting time is a privilege which we should all occasionally exercise, although what might seem a waste of time to one person is valuable endeavour to another. I was checking out an e –bay entry for a seller of a caravan today and was advised that ‘time wasters’ would not be welcome. As I have difficulty in deciding what is a waste of time I promptly moved back to my inbox and deleted this impatient vendor once and for all.

My wife and I might ‘waste our time’ or spend it, by going off in our old caravan. Current value £300. Never shy of the controversial we would be prepared to go head to head with the devil incarnate of the anti-caravanning world, namely the national petrol head leader, Jeremy Clarkson. Why, because caravanning as has the potential to be a low impact leisure facility, it tends to cross seasonal boundaries, and it is democratic pastime: it’s said to be the national sport in Holland, now that is sad.

It is low impact because a touring caravan is not a permanent feature. Many of the locations where used are purely temporary, or at least, rather small and hidden, when compared with the vast aluminium cities of Porth Cawl or the east coast. It is flexible as to season as many of us choose to take our main breaks in early or late season or during the winter months, thus leaving room for the prisoners of the school holiday booking season free of us older types. Finally, it is democratic because our green and pleasant land becomes available to all, whether in a £300 van or in a gin palace on wheels. It is mainly a middle to working class pastime, although the touring caravan was invented by the upper class. Mr Toad of Wind in the Willows was recently cited by a spokesperson for the Caravan Club as a fictional example of an early enthusiast. It was also pointed out that he only went off the rails, and the road come to that, when he dumped his caravan (the horse drawn) in favour of the speed which could be achieved by the solo motor car i.e., when he joined the Clarkson Camp.

In addition to all these benefits it is a significant contribution to the rural economy. Large static sites are sometimes unfortunate eyesores, but not always, while touring sites can be very small, allowing a regular contribution to the income of a farm. In spite of these benefits there is a large body of snobs out there who would rather pay silly prices for the poor standards which often prevail in many of our hotels. We do not like hotels much anyway. They are usually too hot, the beds and bedding are unpredictable, and the regimentation of the breakfast slot is contradictory to our idea of leisure.

Of course last year’s rise in caravan and tent sales is reminiscent of the boom of the sixties. The bookings reported by both the Caravan Club and Camping and Caravan Club (we belong to the more flexible latter organisation as we occasionally use one of our many tents) will not last. As with the last boom, this will be ended by a series of bad summers. People who buy the dream need to acquire certain fortitude, and realise that leisure is not just about having relaxation provided but to a great extent working for it. I suppose to that extent it can become a sport when you travel light or the weather gets heavy.

The national speed limit for caravans and trailers is 60 mph on motorways and dual carriageways and 50 mph for the rest. This is safe for the caravan driver and provided he or she keeps an eye open for tail backs, should not inconvenience solo drivers any more than a heavy lorry. Granted, you will see caravans breaking all these rules, even using the outer lane of a motorway which is out of bounds to all trailers, but this is a question of enforcement in the same way as it is for those motorists getting away with the horrendous breaches of the Highway Code every day

Mr Clarkson’s real bug bear is his belief that caravans cause holiday traffic hold ups and he greeted with great glee the experiment on the M5 on the climb out of Bristol which confined caravans to the nearside lane. I have heard nothing of his views regarding the result of that research. This is not surprising as he, along with Jonathan Ross, is the cause of many a quick channel change when his presence spoils one of our favourite programmes. The research showed that most caravan drivers got into the nearside lane for the climb even before the prohibition came into effect and that the worst offenders were fully paid up members of the middle lane club and lorry divers who took up nearside and middle lanes while they seem locked together on conversation. Apparently the middle lane driver is seeking to overtake its stubborn competitor which sometimes seems to go on for 5 minutes.

Why caravanning is picked on by so many is something which deserves a PhD thesis. Motor Sport and luxury road legal sports cars with ridiculous top speeds are apparently perfectly acceptable. Likewise football and coarse fishing because thousands take part and so the disruption and pollution they cause is brushed away, usually at public cost . So before you join the Clarkson tirade brigade just examine your own motives and take a look around and put some toleration lenses in your specs. Failing that take a look at your own leisure footprint and impact before becoming an uninformed snob.

Tony’s Legacy: Will it be Blair or Bliar when the Jury Returns?

2010-03-05T03:38:00.000-08:00

With the sun at last shining and a General Election required within the next few weeks the view from my room is far from bleak. This is in contrast to the future which awaits the Blair Legacy. Tony Blair was seen by many as the antidote to Thatcherism and a way in which politics could return to principles of social cohesion and fairness. Of course, that is where the dream began to unravel since it soon became obvious that the principles which were to govern were nothing to do with political philosophy, but more to do with the principles of rhetoric, marketing and spin. Anyone who knows anything about this unholy trio will know that they are for the most part strangers to such principles, sometimes reserving the greater disdain for the principle of truth. For those who spin webs the fate that awaits them is often self entanglement. Such is the case with the Iraq War and it is that which will cast a shadow over the few achievements, whatever you think they might be, of Blairite New Labour.

About six years ago I was holding forth in a book shop in Hay to another customer about the shortcomings of Prime Minister Blair, when a homely lady emerged from behind an adjoining stack and admitted with some emotion, ‘ I’m so ashamed. I voted for that man: I feel betrayed’. I greatly admired her courage for speaking out as I suspect it has taken many of us sometime to approach the public confessional.

Tony Blair chose to play fast and loose with some fairly basic principles and institutions, including the Rule of Law, Cabinet Government, Collective Responsibility, Parliamentary accountability and International Law. Some of these featured in his own end of the Constitution Show that dreary Thursday morning of 29th January when he appeared before the Chilcot Inquiry. Outside the gathered crowd carried posters referring to him as ‘Bliar’, a point missed by the commentator I saw doing his bit to camera outside the building, while those with tickets filed in, in some cases in search of some explanation as to why their loved ones had died.

Before his appearance the case was forming in my mind that here was a man, whilst he endeavoured to be a ‘nice sort of guy’, was rather adrift in a sea of troubles unable to find neither guiding light nor sound anchorages to see him through. The book title which kept coming into my head on that dreary Thursday as I saw his robust debating technique gather momentum was that of ‘He knew he was Right.’ Of course Trollope’s character was far from being right and in Mr Blair‘s case he probably did sincerely believe that there were WMD’s beyond doubt. His problem now, like any scientist in the laboratory or lawyer in a court, is that we are now watching the process of seeing whether the facts on which it was based can be proved.

The justification he gave the Chilcot inquiry would seem to be no more than his assertion that he believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he believed this beyond reasonable doubt. This would not be enough for a jury to convict without a bundle of proved facts and inferences, the evidence, which removes all doubt from the mind of the jury: just one reasonable doubt should prevent a juror from finding guilt. It would seem however that Mr Blair is asserting that war was justified beyond his own doubt, period.

Whether or not the evidence was there to justify his certainty is what Chilcot should decide upon but in the meantime Mr Blair’s case presents several problems, some of his own making. If we run the clock back to Sunday 12th December 2009 he appeared in an interview with Fern Brittan. His expressed conviction at Chilcot as to the existence of WMD’s appears to have been undermined by his earlier frankness with Fern Brittan
I paraphrase the interview thus:
"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?"
Blair replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]",
Adding, "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.".... "I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons in charge, but it's incredibly difficult. That's why I sympathize with the people who were against it [the war] for perfectly good reasons and are against it now, but for me, in the end I had to take the decision." Guardian 12/12/09
No wonder the search for the number one justification, the existence of WMD’s, had been such a scruffy affair with allegations of alleged plagiarism, sexing up of documentation, and a bogus 45 minute deployment time. Oh, and by the way, since the Detroit bomber was charged in the US, we now know, if we are to believe the Federal charge sheet, that WMD’s can been hidden in undergarments. If only the UN inspectors had known that when they were trying to do their job.

I must confess that I forced myself to watch the Fern Brittan interview as I had not yet had breakfast and I didn’t want to be put off my grapefruit by an apologist’s master class. My self denial was however rewarded, not only by the admission of the backup reason for going to war but also by his claim that when making decisions on matters of life and death, like War, his faith didn’t appear to come into it. Oh dear I thought, so what is the point of your Christianity? O.K., perhaps George Bush would seem to have been informed rather badly in these matters but in his case I suspect it was possibly a matter of deficient critical reading skills. But in Tony’s case I remain somewhat puzzled as to why he bothered to go in for the interview given that the programme’s brief is within the BBC’s religious/ ethical Sunday morning slot. As a sometime Anglican and now a Catholic, can we really believe that his faith was irrelevant?

By the time he was questioned at Chilcot about the interview it seemed he still hadn’t realised that he was in a hole and that the time for digging had long since passed. Not a bit of it. What on earth was all that business about having had a great deal of experience in giving interviews but he hadn’t been prepared for Fern? Was his rather fumbled comment an admission that he had inadvertently revealed something he would have rather left out? He defended himself by saying that he had not used the phrase ‘regime change’. Of course he hadn’t: it was superfluous. He had said that even without WMD’s it would have been right to remove Saddam. Was it any wonder that some MP s who had relied on his assurances from the dispatch box were now feeling somewhat peeved.

In effect this all combines to show that in the absence of WMD’s he would not have been able to convince Parliament, not least because International Law does not allow one nation to go into another’s territory to remove a nasty person other than by way of self defence. In the absence a legal authority it is no more than an illegal act of war. This was probably why the international lawyers at the Foreign Office were also somewhat peeved when Lord Goldsmith’s advice to Cabinet was preferred to theirs. It was pointed out by one of them when before Chilcot, that the Attorney General was not a practitioner of international law.

This is clearly the weak spot in the Blair justification. Witness the crumbling of Alistair Campbell when asked by Andrew Marr ( BBC 1: Sunday 7th February), that if Chilcot fails to find unequivocal evidence to support Blair’s assertions from the dispatch box, the conclusion will have to be that the Prime Minister mislead Parliament. At this the ex-Cabinet Office hard case broke down and, breathing somewhat heavily, made a halting reference to the vilification of an honourable man. None of the debate away from the placards in the street had struck me as that, so this must have touched a nerve. Was the alliance with Bush, the dislike of Saddam’s ghastly psychopathic oil -rich regime and all the hype, so powerful that it swept Blair and his henchmen along on a self made wave of enthusiasm into an unjustifiable and illegal war?

The evidence of Clare Short on the 2nd February seems to support this theory. Unlike Blair’s performance the abiding impression was that here was a witness who had nothing to fear from Chilcot because all she had to do was tell the uncomplicated truth. It would seem that from Tony’s performance to date, the truth is anything but uncomplicated. Like Thatcher before him, he adopted a presidential role whereby he chose to exclude his colleagues from the decision making process to the point where he now tells us it was all on his shoulders. He apparently had no friend to turn to and not even his faith could help him with the decision. In a system which professes a convention of cabinet collective responsibility, constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy this need not have happened. Having for some reason felt that his shoulders alone were broad enough, it is on his own head that it now shall be. The time for vilification has passed: the word ‘pity’ comes to mind but doesn't quite make the journey.

Nearly all the Very Real Truth about Wood Burning Stoves: Possibly

2010-02-03T10:47:00.000-08:00

Having criticised a recent Guardian article ( see post for 5th January 2010 entitled, Wood Burning Stoves: The Truth? I dont think so ) I feel obliged to say a bit more about wood burning stoves. Over the years I have read several weekend supplement articles which skim the surface and so I thought it was time to write a more comprehensive piece. Wood burning stoves are not for everyone. They take a bit of work, wood supplies might not always be easily available and special care needs to be taken if you plan to buy a multi-fuel stove when you live in a smokeless zone. Having the option of burning coal can be seen as a comforting, but certainly not green, back up, should seasoned wood be in short supply.

Buying in wood fuels is no longer a cheap option as demand has increased considerably in recent years, but there is a lot of unmanaged woodland still in the UK and gradually this is being increased. Sadly you can still see ‘waste’ wood being burnt alongside roads and railways. Wood is no longer permitted as land fill but it is unclear where it now goes. There is a long way to go before woodland becomes threatened and in the meantime processed wood based fuels will become more widely available.

If you are wondering whether a wood burning stove might fit in with your energy requirements here is the story of our involvement with this method of heating. Whatever you do think long and hard about the costs and work out how you will keep it supplied with fuel.
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My first sighting of a wood burning stove was one of those box Jotol stoves which are designed to burn wood by slow combustion. Apart from some rather nice relief’s’ in the cast iron it was not much to look at, especially for someone raised in front of various open fires and glowing ranges. This was in the early seventies on our first visit to the Centre for Alternative Technology just after it had opened to the public.

From then on the number of models increased and our first stove was a Hunter Multi Fuel which we installed in a brand new house back in 1989. Unfortunately it was very difficult to get decent wood fuel and for much of the time we burnt Homefire ( coal briquettes) which we literally glimpsed through a glass darkly. It had a horizontal rectangular opening with two doors which made refuelling awkward and although it knocked out a good heat its drawbacks meant that when mains gas came through it was soon disposed of. We learnt a great deal from this experience and the open fire was still seen as a much more convenient means of warming the front room at grandma’s cottage in Hereford. Supplies of logs were easily available and we continued with the open fire when we took on the cottage in the early eighties.

Another reason for sticking with the open fire was that at the time the pollution was not much different between it and the wood burner. Take for example these claims from Conservation at Home: A Practical Handbook by Michael Allaby published in 1988,

‘Benjamin Franklin designed the prototype of the ‘modern’ wood burning stove...a stove like this may look beautiful, but environmentally it is a disaster. By burning wood very slowly with very little air, it produces a range of unburned hydrocarbons, many of which are known to cause cancer, together with carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, all of which are released into the outside air along with radioactive potassium 40.’

The open fire in contrast threw a bit more ash into the atmosphere but since it used much more air some of the pollutants were burnt off. Both means of heating also produce sulphur dioxide but the open fire lets 90% of the heat go up the chimney whilst causing doors to swing open in the drafts needed to supply the necessary oxygen. So the question always being asked was whether the big outlay on a stove was worth it.

You can still find versions of Franklin’s original design for sale and they are still used to heat many mountain holiday log cabins in North American. When you can cut vast quantities of big logs from your holding they can still make sense if efficiency and pollution issues are ignored. For those of us who have to buy in the bulk of their wood it is not a practicable option but the Franklin has the great advantage of being able to turn from an open log fire into a closed cast iron cupboard for slow burning overnight.

After our experience in the seventies I remained very sceptical about wood burning stoves even though stove design had moved on from the old smouldering versions. But in 1989 I discovered a new system ( explained below) when visiting the Clearview Stoves small showroom in Ludlow. I had not really got the point at that stage but then a good friend of ours bought one and he started his proselytising. Then we came across another installation and then another. In the end we had seen five different installations and were impressed despite several conservation and environmental reservations.

The crunch came when I had to check out the TV aerial when we went digital. The open fire had not been lit the previous day so all was cool in the fireplace. At the top of the chimney it was a different story. Much to my surprise I found that there was a nice lot of warm air being emitted. Distressingly I soon realized that the bulk of this warm air was being extracted by the chimney in the form of the heat stored in the night storage heaters as supplemented by the Yorkist Stove in the kitchen. ( More on the Yorkist Stove in a later post) So that’s what they meant when they said up to 90% of the heat from an open fire escapes up the chimney! Even when its not burning any other heat you have paid for will be sucked up up and away. It so happened therefore that this was my ladder to Damascus and from then on Sian and I started to take the prospect of a wood burning stove much more seriously

Energy conservation now started to be set against pollution issues and the process of conversion continued. By chance we visited the Clearview Showroom in Ludlow, now occupying a small mansion, and we concluded that this was a very good product. However, still being sceptical we put a wood burner well down the list behind upgraded insulation and a solar panel. We were also put off by the cost and started to look at slightly cheaper options which would offer a multi-fuel grate just in case our wood supply proved unreliable. We soon found out that the Clearview didn’t need any special grate. It was multi-fuel anyway. Most importantly, Clearview make a lot of the fact that their stoves burn in a way which keeps the glass front door clean so that the log fire can be seen. Other manufacturers offer similar systems with varying degrees of success so I had better explain the basic idea.

With old style slow burning stoves much of the by-products remain un-burnt because of the lower temperatures involved. The idea behind many new stoves is that the drafts of hot air within the firebox are made to pass over the glass window and burn off any deposits which have not already been burnt by the high temperatures in the stove. Ideally this works best when well seasoned wood is being used and there is no back boiler to reduce the temperature in the fire box. As a result you will be able to see a flaming log fire while reducing pollutants. Designs which need less air to burn hot will also reduce drafts. In any case, with no open chimney effect more heat is kept in the house whether the stove is burning or not.

After lots of thought we ordered a Clearview as we had concluded that this was the stove of choice among our contacts and we had seen so many of them in action. Another important factor was that it was a local product. There is a bewildering choice now available and there is a very wide range of prices so do nothing in a hurry. My advice to anyone considering a purchase is to go and see as many stoves in operation as possible, preferably in the homes of people who know what is involved in running a stove. Some might not bother to season their wood properly so if there is a smoked up window this does not necessarily mean the stove is at fault.

Dry wood obviously burns better than damp wood. Its heat output is higher and heat is not wasted heating up the moisture in the wood which goes up the chimney as steam to condense there or go into the atmosphere. A stove run like this will not give a good result. The window will be black and no fire will be visible and tars will accumulate high in the chimney where the have condensed. This causes a fire hazard.

Provided the heat is maintained throughout the length of the flu the risk of soot build up is greatly reduced. This is why manufacturer’s and good suppliers stress the need for a well insulated flu. This is achieved by means of one of the lining systems on offer. Unfortunately this can often double the cost of an installation. Much depends on the kind of chimney already in use for an open fire.

The high temperature which creates a secondary burn should, it is claimed, reduce the amount of tar and thus some of the pollutants. Carbon dioxide is still given off, how much is still subject fo debate, but if the sources of your wood are from sustainable woodland it will be doing a good deal to re-absorb it and thus making the wood burner carbon neutral. For overnight burning in order to avoid the worst consequences of slow burning the trick is to make the fire up sometime before bed time and run the stove with a good deal of flame. This burns off many of the pollutants so that by the time the stove is shut down for the night the fire continues in the form of glowing ‘char coals’.

Organising your wood purchasing to have seasoned wood is essential. Ideally wood which has been seasoned for 2 years should be aimed for. It is now possible to buy a handy moisture meter to make sure the wood is at the right moisture content. The number of wood suppliers is increasing and if you can find a local supplier who runs a sustainable wood then your carbon footprint shrinks greatly and keeps some people in work within your local economy. If you have your own woodland then a major element is removed from the process and you will know exactly what you are burning.

Is it all worth it? In our case the answer is a resounding yes but this outcome has only been achieved by following the points above. The most important point is to get the right stove for you and make sure it is a modern model. Don’t be tempted to buy on price alone and make sure you take advice from as many independent people as possible. The biggest advantage in comfort terms is that a closed stove can almost eliminate drafts. If you are buying a stove with more than a 5kw output an airbrick is required by building regulations so make sure that this is placed as near to the fire as possible.

The next advantage is in the savings you make when you no longer lose 90% of your heat up the chimney. These results will come whether you burn coal or wood. If you burn wood you should be able to reduce your carbon footprint and the amount of pollution involved in keeping yourself warm. Where we live we don’t have a gas supply and we would not install oil or LPG central heating on principle and price. That leaves us with electricity which is inefficient in the loss of energy involved in getting it to us and, unless consumption is at night, can be very expensive. Consequently we have night storage heaters and a night running immersion heater. The washing machine, washing up machine and the bread maker are all run at night whenever possible.

The wood burning stove when all the above factors are taken into account has made a great difference to our comfort, our carbon footprint and our emissions and brought our electricity bill down. It is our top ‘green’ installation after our update of the insulation and the installation of our hot water solar panel and heat store water tank. There is still quite a lot more to do but we manage to keep quite cosy at a reasonable cost.

See earlier posts:

Further posts will appear on sustainable fuel supplies, solar panels, the Yorkist ( or York) Stove etc

The Truth about Making fuel Briquettes from Newspapers

2010-01-08T05:54:00.000-08:00

Mary was here for Christmas and on walking through the garden I commented how much tidying-up we needed to do when the weather improved. Just at that point we were walking by the water tub which was full of wet newspapers waiting to be processed through our fuel briquette maker. Since the tub gives off a bit of an odour in warm weather I have been in denial that this was an urgent job for about four years. ‘Well, we can start right here!’ were the fateful words which uttered forth. Not even a pre-snows bike ride would tempt our offspring away from this smelly, cold and wet task.

I opened the shed door hoping that the briquette maker would have sunk without trace among the detritus I like to place under the heading, ‘it might come in useful one day’. Not a bit of it. There it is was looking at me smugly from the vantage point of the boxes which one day will bring forth a replacement tin shed for the old bomb shelter from Madley Airfield which serves as a store. It is more like a large colander when it rains, if you get my drift.

Unfortunately the cheap folding work bench I had bought in Wilko for this very purpose was also clearly visible nearby. So I performed my last task as tool setter and left Mary to her self -imposed suffering in the cause of renewable energy. I did however find a pair of rubber gloves as I suspected that the slime, if not infectious, would have a lot of unpleasant residues which had leached out from the news print and its ink. Unfortunately some of the dates were still visible on the now sodden papers which put the founding of this rotting sump back in 2004. (Mary called it, 'the bog of eternal stench'.) I, of course, was able to remember that I had been storing dry papers for a long time before they went in the water but this seemed to be regarded somewhat sceptically by both Mary and Sian.

Enough of this. What is the truth about this instrument of torture? Having observed Mary make all the effort I can now make the following observations.

Firstly, each newspaper should be slightly shredded by hand. Using electricity seems a bit self defeating. I had put the papers in whole with a view to later mashing. Since I now see this is a very unattractive proposition it should be done at the outset. I had also contemplated putting some coal dust in but who ever suggested this may well have never done it, so be warned. In fact, it is very hard to find out whether anyone who has a paper briquette maker ever uses it apart from during the initial rush of enthusiasm. The model we have was bought via a Guardian reader purchase about five years ago.

Secondly, the process of pressing down on the two levers becomes very painful, as the angle the leavers end up at is an awkward 45 degrees.

Thirdly, disengaging the mould from the frame which holds the handles is very awkward and can take some time.
Fourthly, you have to get quite a bit of space off the ground to place the soggy briquettes on once they have been disgorged from the moulding frame. You then have to find somewhere for them to dry. Since the ground was quickly turning very wet and muddy, a bit of hard standing would have been useful.

Fifthly, it is not a quick process. After about 3 hours Mary had produced 40 briquettes and they are now stored in some old bread baskets we acquired off a dump years ago. I usually use these to dry the shredded hedge cuttings which we use as a bio-mass fire reviver. I would think we will have to wait a while for the briquettes to dry.Perhaps freeze-drying in the present weather will help! In the meantime after a cook on the hotplate of the Yorkist Stove and time in its oven, which is always slightly warm, our two samples were dry enough to burn three days later.

Sixthly, bearing in mind that each briquette takes between 3 to 5 painful minutes to produce the heat output and burn rate are important. Compared with the glow of self satisfaction that Mary was giving off, the briquettes' performance could be seen as disappointing, but our preliminary test is too small to go by. The visual effect of the briquettes glow alongside the logs in the wood burner was very pleasing, and they certainly gave off some heat. Whether or not their calorific output was greater than that consumed by Mary in their production we do not have the means to tell.

Conclusion: This is a nice idea ideally suited for the advertising gadget mags and adds in worthy papers but as a means of keeping you warm, their effect has more to do with the process of production rather than that of combustion. Now we have newspaper collection for re-cycling, and possibly energy production, I think my time will be better spent cutting the large piles of wood from our own very small orchard. Nevertheless Sian and I extend our thanks to Mary for improving a very smelly corner of our domain.

Dacier

Look out for a further post on other methods of making this type of fuel.

Winter Cycling in the fifties

2010-01-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

I must have joined the CTC and YHA back in 1957/58. My first run was on a Sunday starting at 8.00 am for a trip to Eastbourne from Maidstone. A high mileage for a fist outing. It was summer and I had my swimming kit in the saddle bag. We met at the Corn Exchange where the Fire Engines used to dash from when called out. On a Sunday morning back then the town was empty and very few vehicles were on the move. I must say I miss those Sundays in town when I could go off and explore all kinds of new places on my junior New Hudson roadster. This was two bikes before this first CTC trip when I turned up on my six speed Dawes Clansman in bright yellow with tartan trim.

For a fifteen year old this was like a new world. There were about twenty of us and we were the only youngsters (a school friend had seen the CTC ad in the newsagents) but we were well looked after being placed midway along the line of paired cyclists. The leader and a rearguard cyclist would call out warnings of approaching cars, although the roads were very quiet for much of the morning. I soon discovered the joys of calling in at a CTC recommended cafe somewhere in the Weald and finding that older members would insist on paying for my coffee, toast and marmalade snack. It was later that I discovered the joys of the breakfast run. A Six a.m. start and a full breakfast (paid for in advance) at yet another recommended location. Similarly I discovered Marrow Jam and a whole range of other jams served with the then standard bread and butter tea, sometimes set up in an outbuilding of a country pub especially for us.

This was the early summer but winter runs are more memorable for colder reasons. The thought of a warm cafe and a Sunday roast lunch would keep us pushing on through the rain and sometimes snow. If the weather turned really nasty there was often a nearby station to get us home. I once gave up on a 9 hour ' tourist reliability trial' due to high winds and heavy rain. When I put my bike in the guards van I was pleased to find that I wasn't the only member that had given up with 30 miles to go. On another occasion high winds made the going hard when we were way out on the flat lands of the Isle of Grain in north Kent. My friend and I lost contact with the pack and only caught up when the route turned out of the strong westerly that was causing us such grief.

But it was the winter cold of Kent and Essex that really presented the big challenge. I always thought that everyone had cold easterly winds in winter but once I moved west I forgot this. Only to be rudely reminded when I occasionally returned in winter with the light clothing which had been perfectly O.K. in West Wales. For some reason we would all change to fixed wheel for winter. Whilst this meant you kept twirling away it also meant that your feet were out there spinning away in a centrifuge getting colder and colder. Soon all feeling would be lost and then the pain would kick in. Time for a walk and a hot drink and farewell to the toe clips for a while. Provided you could get your feet out before crashing to the ground!

Not all winter runs were like this. Our Christmas Party in 1958 was held at the YHA in Alfriston, not far from Eastbourne again. It was a happy warm affair and being brought up as a publican's son I had not really picked up on how 'ordinary people' enjoyed themselves at Christmas. Opening hours at that time of year always ran the risk of turning nasty, especially when a customer started drinking someone else's drink! I can't remember any alcohol being served at the YHA although there must have been some bottled Fremlin's Light Ale somewhere in a saddle bag. I was not aware of any trips to the pub either but I remember a load of silly party games and a lot of laughter. Although it was a cold start the run back on the Sunday was via some steep climbs through Ashdown Forest which kept us nice and warm.

Our trip out to Bradwell YHA was different kettle of fish altogether. I remember having to meet up at Rochester Bridge early on a Saturday afternoon. A fast run across to Tilbury soon had us loaded on the ferry heading for the land of my Dutch ancestors i.e., Essex. As the light faded we got colder and colder and there was nowhere open for a hot drink. By the time we got to Burnham on Crouch fears were growing that the hostel Warden might not welcome a late arrival of a party of 20, even though we had alll booked. Consequently, all the warm looking and inviting pubs had to be passed by. We made it just in time for a meal in the hostel kitchen and a cup of cocoa. The hostel was consisted of a group of huts which must have been an old military establishment. The blankets provided were not enough to keep me warm so I got dressed again and refitted myself into my sheet sleeping bag. In the morning there seemed to be more ice on the of the rusting Crittall windows than there was outside in the gloomy looking landscape. Breakfast was a good start, and our duties done, mine was washing up, we were soon heading back to the Tilbury Ferry and then up and over two lots of the North Downs and a very quick decent down Bluebell hill and home to my public house home right in the middle of Maidstone. Opening time in those days was 7.pm on a Sunday so Mum and Dad were still having their tea, which on a Sunday, would include crumpets, Marmite, celery and any other treats that had arrived in the box delivered on a Friday by The World Stores grocery shop just up the street from us. As we closed at 2pm there would always be time for a proper Sunday lunch. The only time when this was possible. How all day opening works for family landlords now I can't imagine. I must have had something for lunch somewhere but it was the cold and numb feet that I remember from that Essex dash.

Only once did I ride in a near blizzard and that was after a CTC meeting held at the Running Horse pub which is now hemmed in between the feeders to junction 6 of the M 20. It must have been about four inches deep when I started ( they didn't do metric snow in 1958) and although the snow was an obstruction I got back into town, albeit looking like a trainee yeti. There was no ice however and I cant ever remember going out on my bike when that was about. By the time the bad winters of 1962 and 1963 arrived my Kentish days had passed. Instead it was struggling with piles of snow and icy pavements on the way to the tube station. My cycling club days were also somewhere behind me in in my fond memories of growing up in a town, but having country lanes and orchards just a quick spin up the street. There was no such quick trip from any of my digs in London and it has made me a firm believer that if we lose sight of the relationship between town and country we will all lose out.

Dacier

Postcript: I have just had a look at the map for both the Eastboure trips and the Bradwell run and I would rather not think of what the traffic hazards would be like now. The reason I didn't do much cycling in snow was probably because in my part of Kent when heavy snow came there would be heavy drifting and loads of slush in town. I still have my old Dawes but it now shares its stable with an alloy Dawes all rounder bike which was definitely not made in Birmingham like the old timer by its side. They seem to get on OK though.