The Great Hole of Todmorden
The Great Hole of Todmorden |
It's been difficult this year to tear one's eyes off the screens - tele one side, mother's little helper on the other.
Facebook - ? What do you think of that?
Cranford? I didn't think I wanted to live in a 'community' and now I know why.
This is Civilization? Completely brilliant, eg Romanticism marks up bad feelings and good reasons as well as good feelings and bad reasons. And the point about the Mona Lisa is that she is an individual, not which individual she is (and certainly not why she is sort of smirking).
I've been to Preston once or twice, teaching, lunching, browsing the market.
The market! What a joy! A gigantic car boot sale a couple of days a week, on the rest, racks of phone jackets, piles of printer cartridges and big cakes of virgin DVDs, all reverberating to the exciting thump of lovely things falling off lorries.
On the train to Preston I'm reading St Augustine, properly for the first time. It's the right time of life to be reading it. Brilliant thinker, speaking across a lot of centuries, and quite clearly away with the Hippos. He has a sort of inverted paranoia - there's someone out there relentlessly looking after you.
There have been one or two destinations beyond Preston.
- Todmorden. Went with my partner to see the Great Wall of Todmorden, which is a sort of great brick wall holding up the railway. It has a Great Big Hole in it, to allow 'drainage' into the canal beneath - not so often remarked.
- Abbot Hall Gallery . Real art swank 427 km north of Tate Modern. Very satisfying.
- Fleetwood. You can get a tram from Blackpool to Fleetwood and when you're in Blackpool this seems like a good idea.
Riverain jalopy, Fleetwood |
When you get there you see Knott End across the Wyre. I think Fleetwood is probably the only place in the world from which you can see Knott End across the Wyre. Knott End - and then behind it, half way up a distant fellside, Lancaster University, like the architects intended, bless them, an Italian hill-town glinting white in the brilliant sun. (In my experience the sun is always shining brilliantly in Fleetwood.) Behind you, as you stand before the Wyre, the North Euston Hotel. Before Fleetwood's fish idea, London people caught the steamer at Fleetwood if they wanted to get to Scotland.
Now you can't find a boat of any kind, unless you count the riverain jalopy clinging to unconvincing pilings and announcing itself as a ferry. These days it's Knott End or Knothing.
- The Mason's Arms, Cartmel Fell or thereabouts. One of the finest, philosophically speaking.
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Cheltenham. Sophie Ryder fashions the most lovable hares - in unlikeliest
metal - and one of these gorgeous creations graces the main boulevard here.
Her consort is of course a Minotaur. What a treat! Ryder allowed Lancaster
to host another of her adorable pieces in the Market Square some time ago -
but it was abused and went away. Photo courtesy of Leibnizian Lloyd
Strickland.
In the past we have generally managed to have our pets die while in the temporary care of others, but this year, frustrated in our ambition for foreign travel, our small tabbyish cat broke with tradition. Her gift, not at all typical of her kind, was to abandon her body to anyone who cared to make play with it, a warm and generous animal. RIP.
Since just before my nominal retirement I have been trying to live the life of the eliminative materialist, which I interpret loosely to mean we haven't a clue why we do anything, though once - if ever - we understand how the brain works, all will be revealed. So far I have not noticed any interesting consequences, or apparent consequences, of this project, or imagined project, of mine.
As for Christmas and the year altogether likely to ensue, may they both bring you pleasure.
17:12:07
