Bryan Islip's Blog, page 24
March 29, 2013
How sweet, how soft
I'm showing you this because Dee and I want to share it with you. Taken five minutes ago looking into the setting sun over Loch Ewe and the Isle of Ewe. We have experienced the most incredibly benign weather this so-called winter. Almost every day no or only light winds, mainly blue skies and sea, cold but not that cold.
The final pair of lines (December) in my recently published calendar 2014 ...
It
matters not! how perfect our world is,
how
sweet her blessing, soft her bedtime kiss.
March 25, 2013
There is no sunshine
This morning on the BBC's Breakfast the UK's Chief Scientific Officer warned us all about an approaching global warming Armageddon and its effects on land and sea and even in the air we breathe. He seemed barely able to contain his disturbance, very unusual for a government 'everything's under control don't worry' servant. With ill-concealed reluctance he added as a hardly-dare-mention-it footnote; "in ten yours' time there will be another one thousand million human mouths on earth, seeking food and water from a world unable even to sustain the seven billions already here".
Over-population of we over-consumers is not part of the problem; it is the problem.
The program presenters gave him about a quarter of the time they devoted to this week's snowfall, all gone within a day or two no doubt, and some guy that had been doing the dirty on his racing car team-mate. As the man said those four thousand years ago; "Those who the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad."
When shall we - all of us - realise that the only way out of this dark room is the exact opposite of our politically much sought after 'growth'. Starting with absolute population control. Or perhaps why the hell should I care, you may think. Live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself.
It will. There will be no sunshine.
Over-population of we over-consumers is not part of the problem; it is the problem.
The program presenters gave him about a quarter of the time they devoted to this week's snowfall, all gone within a day or two no doubt, and some guy that had been doing the dirty on his racing car team-mate. As the man said those four thousand years ago; "Those who the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad."
When shall we - all of us - realise that the only way out of this dark room is the exact opposite of our politically much sought after 'growth'. Starting with absolute population control. Or perhaps why the hell should I care, you may think. Live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself.
It will. There will be no sunshine.
March 21, 2013
Ardessie Falls
Five years ago when our dogs were still with us we parked the car by the roadside near the tiny village of Dundonnell. We scrambled for an hour or so steep uphill. Not easy going through the tangle and quite dangerous in places. Having attained our objective, which was the upper reaches of the little mountain river above Ardessie Falls we sat on a rock by the tumbling waters with our sandwiches and flasks. Down there we could see the cultivated fields, rare in these Highland parts, alongside Little Loch Broom. Across on the other side are the foothills below the twin peaks of An Groblach. I did some sketches there and took photographs.
I've just finished using these to paint a small oil on canvas (30 high x 25 cm). It will be hung with two more of same size in Connie and Mike's Bridge Cafe, Poolewe. And when the others are finished I'll also put them up here on my blog. Each of them for sale at £130.
Looking at this painting now, how powerfully I can smell the heather and the bog myrtle, hear the music of the waters, taste the peanut butter and the black coffee. I can see Mati and Sorosh, our lovely Hungarian Vizslas, having helped us finish the goodies, as they explored all the nooks and crannies alongside the river and lapped its crystal cold to assuage their thirst. Inexhaustible. Their joy transmitted itself then to Dee and I. And still today, remembering...
How little they needed from this life, this world, to be content. How little did we.
I've just finished using these to paint a small oil on canvas (30 high x 25 cm). It will be hung with two more of same size in Connie and Mike's Bridge Cafe, Poolewe. And when the others are finished I'll also put them up here on my blog. Each of them for sale at £130.
Looking at this painting now, how powerfully I can smell the heather and the bog myrtle, hear the music of the waters, taste the peanut butter and the black coffee. I can see Mati and Sorosh, our lovely Hungarian Vizslas, having helped us finish the goodies, as they explored all the nooks and crannies alongside the river and lapped its crystal cold to assuage their thirst. Inexhaustible. Their joy transmitted itself then to Dee and I. And still today, remembering...
How little they needed from this life, this world, to be content. How little did we.
March 20, 2013
William and Robert and what comes next.
The statistics tell me that 25,257 of my blogs have been downloaded (hopefully, read) and that the one blog seriously ahead of all the others in downloads - 952 of them - is the one I published on February 2nd, 2011. Here it is again, should you not have caught it at the first time of asking.
Thing is, I'm right now writing its sequel, or rather a continuation , and I'm getting quite excited about it. Another playlet. I'll be publishing it here sometime within the next month.
As one of my two guys wrote, "The play's the thing with which to catch the conscience of a king.' (I mean, of us all.)
Two Gentlemen in a FarOff Land.
A Short Play for The Wester-Ross Burns Club
This all
takes place in a land flowing with milk and honey, a land where all the
good folk go when they get tired of planet earth - or planet earth tires
of them. Two men meet up, greet each other warmly, sit down for a chat
on a grassy bank alongside the slow moving Milk river. The sun shines
just warm upon them and down this sylvan glen.
Don’t ask
what these two look like or what they’re wearing. They look as you want
them to look and they wear what you feel they should be wearing.
Most of the
language is here translated into modern English, or indeed any other
language known to or preferred by the listener. Note also that in a
land of milk and honey neither time nor distance exists at all. Let us
begin …
RB: Now then, Will, how’s she hangin’?
WS:
That’s horrible. And I’ve told you before, my friend, I’m William, not
Will and you are Robert, not Rabbie. But yes, as a matter of fact she’s
hangin’ pretty well. Having said that, I’ve just been watching my ‘As
You Like It’ being played on that television thing with the men dressed
up as those nasty old nazis and the girls as ladies of the night. Not at
all as I like it. Robert. Oh, what they do to us, once they think we’re
dead and gone!
RB: Right. (Chuckles) As You Like It indeed! You know how much I used to like it. (Sighs)
WS:
Strange, wasn’t it, Robert, how, ever since that lovely old Garden of
Eden, sex seemed to be everything for so much of the time. Seems such a
waste of your adult years there on earth, doesn’t it?
RB:
Well - it’s just the way of it. The way He put is all together, yes?
Pal of mine once told me; ‘it’ll pull you more than dynamite’ll blow
you’.
WS: Not too too elegantly put but yes … There was this dark lady …
RB:
I read all about her in your sonnets, William. Very discreet. Not like
my lassies at all. No sooner I bedded them than there they were - still
are - in my verse. But I don’t spend much time looking down there these days. Maybe just now and then I’ll look in on some of their Hogmanays -
WS (interrupting): Their new years eves, don’t you mean? No colloquialisms, remember?
RB:
OK - sorry - I mean yes. But there’s millions of them at it with the
crossing arms and holding hands and running out of words after verse
one. Of course we don’t do vainglory here, William, but if we did I’d
have to say there’s more at the auld acquaintance not being forgot, when
all the rest of it has been, than well, than anything else written or
sung by the live ones, poor things.
William holds out his hand, palm
uppermost. Bees zoom in on it from all quarters, alight to deliver their
succulent loads. A small pyramid of honey at once begins to grow.
WS:
You must be right about that. I often wonder why I myself didn’t do
more poetry in the form of song. Big, big impact. Oh yes indeed:
Greensleeves; Bring On The Clowns; My Heart Is Like A Red, Red Rose;
Ain’t Gonna Work No More On Maggie’s Farm.
William nods ‘enough’ and the bees disappear. He raises hand to mouth, licks up their sweet libation. Continues …
WS: Yes, strong stuff, that songbook of yours. By the way, I meant to ask you, when are all the seas due to gang dry?
RB: When? Honey, honey. Think I’ll join you with some of that.
Robert holds out his own hand. Bees arrive, get to work. He continues…
RB: The
seas are going to gang dry any time now, says the boss. When they’ve
warmed up their old planet enough there’s a critical point when all the
oceans suddenly evaporate. Too bad.
WS: Going to get a wee bit overcrowded for us here then?
RB:
Doubt it, Will - William. He tells me there’s not all that many down
there will qualify when the time comes. Oh, look here, my friend!
A beautiful young lady, floating
apparently on a raft of wild flowers and splayed out long blonde hair is
drifting slowly by, carried by the flow of the Milk river current.
WS: Ophelia! That’s my Ophelia, Robert. (Breaks into song) Isn’t she lovely, made for love.
Robert springs to his feet, flings his arms wide (forgetting the accumulation of honey which runs all down his arm) declaims …RB:
Ophelia, thy charms my bosom fire,
And waste my soul with care;
But ah! how bootless to admire,
When fated to despair!
Yet in thy presence, lovely Fair,
To hope may be forgiven;
For sure 'twere impious to despair
So much in sight of heaven.
WS: Heaven! That’s a nice one.
He’s looking down at his hand in the grass. A tiny fieldmouse has hopped on and is nibbling away at the last trace of honey.
WS: Hey, just look at this little chap. Is he not enjoying himself! Oh, but he’s gone in a flash!
RB: That was my wee timorous beastie, you ken? Oh, Timmy, little Timmy.
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken nature's social union,
And justifies that ill ‘ opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion,
And fellow mortal.
William rises to join his standing friend.
Ophelia is seen swimming ashore, climbing out of the river, smoothing
back her long golden tresses.
WS: But your tiny friend is not mortal, Robert, any more than are you or I. We are here all immortal, remember?
RB: She isn’t - wasn’t; your Ophelia, no? But I often wondered … she was, like, someone you knew, William? Down there?
WS:
Of course. Every character one created was like someone you knew.
Ophelia was actually Beatrice, a farm girl in the village where I grew
up.
RB: Laughs.
By the by, gentlefolk. I should have told
you: ‘human’ emotions are all here in this place - provided they’re the
positive ones - joy, satisfaction, love (non-carnal of course) etc. No
negative waves. No fear or hatred or anything downbeat, right?
Meantime the young lady Ophelia has taken
off her filmy dress and now stands there naked, wringing out the milk.
The two in conversation take little notice.
RB
continues: You know we were so much alike, William. You had a fancy for
this Beatrice / Ophelia? Of course you did. So alike. We both of us
impregnated young girls when still not far out of our minority. What was
it you had your Othello say? “One that loved not wisely but too well”?
And we both worked on farms before gravitating to the big city, both
earned a measure of fame in our own lifetimes, both learned so much from
books without doing overmuch in the way of schooling, etcetera.
WS:
Yes, and we both used things of long ago on which to weave what they
called our tapestries of words. You used Scottish traditional songs. Me,
I used Ovid and those other good old storytellers.
RB: But you ended up moneyed and comfortable and I died poor and most uncomfortable.
It’s very hard, even here, to think charitably about that doctor who
told me to swim in the sea every freezing day. Yes, you ended up better
than me. You were the better businessman, William. But it’s a funny
thing, I seldom had any money but never felt like a poor man, ever.
Hungry yes, but poor? Never. A man’s a man for all that and all that.
WS:
We are such stuff as dreams are made on. But comfortable in death? No,
sir. I died of exposure after a night out in an alehouse near Stratford
with my old compatriot, Mister Ben Johnson. You know, the one who wrote
my epitaph: “Not for our time but for all time”? Found in a ditch! What
an inglorious ending. Not exactly any flights of angels taking me to my
rest. I just arrived here all by myself. Don’t quite know how.
RB: Ah, William Shakespeare - Man of mystery! But all’s well that ends well.
WS:
One of these days we’ll have to write something together. Play, poem
and song all in one. By Robert Shakespeare and William Burns. Come on,
let’s go find some of the others. (Calls out) Come with us, Ophelia. No, no need to bother with the dress.
The three of them wander off across the meadow and into the trees, singing together, Should old acquaintance be forgot, And never …but no crossed arms.
The sun has not moved in the sky, nor will
it move in this land where the trees never shed their leaves and the
birds never cease to sing and where there are no noxious people nor any
of the trials and tribulations that come with noxious people. So there
are none of the human problems that William Shakespeare and Robert Burns
had spent their earthly lives trying their very best to explain,
justify or cover up with words of such an everlasting beauty.
Thing is, I'm right now writing its sequel, or rather a continuation , and I'm getting quite excited about it. Another playlet. I'll be publishing it here sometime within the next month.
As one of my two guys wrote, "The play's the thing with which to catch the conscience of a king.' (I mean, of us all.)
Two Gentlemen in a FarOff Land.
A Short Play for The Wester-Ross Burns Club
This all
takes place in a land flowing with milk and honey, a land where all the
good folk go when they get tired of planet earth - or planet earth tires
of them. Two men meet up, greet each other warmly, sit down for a chat
on a grassy bank alongside the slow moving Milk river. The sun shines
just warm upon them and down this sylvan glen.
Don’t ask
what these two look like or what they’re wearing. They look as you want
them to look and they wear what you feel they should be wearing.
Most of the
language is here translated into modern English, or indeed any other
language known to or preferred by the listener. Note also that in a
land of milk and honey neither time nor distance exists at all. Let us
begin …
RB: Now then, Will, how’s she hangin’?
WS:
That’s horrible. And I’ve told you before, my friend, I’m William, not
Will and you are Robert, not Rabbie. But yes, as a matter of fact she’s
hangin’ pretty well. Having said that, I’ve just been watching my ‘As
You Like It’ being played on that television thing with the men dressed
up as those nasty old nazis and the girls as ladies of the night. Not at
all as I like it. Robert. Oh, what they do to us, once they think we’re
dead and gone!
RB: Right. (Chuckles) As You Like It indeed! You know how much I used to like it. (Sighs)
WS:
Strange, wasn’t it, Robert, how, ever since that lovely old Garden of
Eden, sex seemed to be everything for so much of the time. Seems such a
waste of your adult years there on earth, doesn’t it?
RB:
Well - it’s just the way of it. The way He put is all together, yes?
Pal of mine once told me; ‘it’ll pull you more than dynamite’ll blow
you’.
WS: Not too too elegantly put but yes … There was this dark lady …
RB:
I read all about her in your sonnets, William. Very discreet. Not like
my lassies at all. No sooner I bedded them than there they were - still
are - in my verse. But I don’t spend much time looking down there these days. Maybe just now and then I’ll look in on some of their Hogmanays -
WS (interrupting): Their new years eves, don’t you mean? No colloquialisms, remember?
RB:
OK - sorry - I mean yes. But there’s millions of them at it with the
crossing arms and holding hands and running out of words after verse
one. Of course we don’t do vainglory here, William, but if we did I’d
have to say there’s more at the auld acquaintance not being forgot, when
all the rest of it has been, than well, than anything else written or
sung by the live ones, poor things.
William holds out his hand, palm
uppermost. Bees zoom in on it from all quarters, alight to deliver their
succulent loads. A small pyramid of honey at once begins to grow.
WS:
You must be right about that. I often wonder why I myself didn’t do
more poetry in the form of song. Big, big impact. Oh yes indeed:
Greensleeves; Bring On The Clowns; My Heart Is Like A Red, Red Rose;
Ain’t Gonna Work No More On Maggie’s Farm.
William nods ‘enough’ and the bees disappear. He raises hand to mouth, licks up their sweet libation. Continues …
WS: Yes, strong stuff, that songbook of yours. By the way, I meant to ask you, when are all the seas due to gang dry?
RB: When? Honey, honey. Think I’ll join you with some of that.
Robert holds out his own hand. Bees arrive, get to work. He continues…
RB: The
seas are going to gang dry any time now, says the boss. When they’ve
warmed up their old planet enough there’s a critical point when all the
oceans suddenly evaporate. Too bad.
WS: Going to get a wee bit overcrowded for us here then?
RB:
Doubt it, Will - William. He tells me there’s not all that many down
there will qualify when the time comes. Oh, look here, my friend!
A beautiful young lady, floating
apparently on a raft of wild flowers and splayed out long blonde hair is
drifting slowly by, carried by the flow of the Milk river current.
WS: Ophelia! That’s my Ophelia, Robert. (Breaks into song) Isn’t she lovely, made for love.
Robert springs to his feet, flings his arms wide (forgetting the accumulation of honey which runs all down his arm) declaims …RB:
Ophelia, thy charms my bosom fire,
And waste my soul with care;
But ah! how bootless to admire,
When fated to despair!
Yet in thy presence, lovely Fair,
To hope may be forgiven;
For sure 'twere impious to despair
So much in sight of heaven.
WS: Heaven! That’s a nice one.
He’s looking down at his hand in the grass. A tiny fieldmouse has hopped on and is nibbling away at the last trace of honey.
WS: Hey, just look at this little chap. Is he not enjoying himself! Oh, but he’s gone in a flash!
RB: That was my wee timorous beastie, you ken? Oh, Timmy, little Timmy.
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken nature's social union,
And justifies that ill ‘ opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion,
And fellow mortal.
William rises to join his standing friend.
Ophelia is seen swimming ashore, climbing out of the river, smoothing
back her long golden tresses.
WS: But your tiny friend is not mortal, Robert, any more than are you or I. We are here all immortal, remember?
RB: She isn’t - wasn’t; your Ophelia, no? But I often wondered … she was, like, someone you knew, William? Down there?
WS:
Of course. Every character one created was like someone you knew.
Ophelia was actually Beatrice, a farm girl in the village where I grew
up.
RB: Laughs.
By the by, gentlefolk. I should have told
you: ‘human’ emotions are all here in this place - provided they’re the
positive ones - joy, satisfaction, love (non-carnal of course) etc. No
negative waves. No fear or hatred or anything downbeat, right?
Meantime the young lady Ophelia has taken
off her filmy dress and now stands there naked, wringing out the milk.
The two in conversation take little notice.
RB
continues: You know we were so much alike, William. You had a fancy for
this Beatrice / Ophelia? Of course you did. So alike. We both of us
impregnated young girls when still not far out of our minority. What was
it you had your Othello say? “One that loved not wisely but too well”?
And we both worked on farms before gravitating to the big city, both
earned a measure of fame in our own lifetimes, both learned so much from
books without doing overmuch in the way of schooling, etcetera.
WS:
Yes, and we both used things of long ago on which to weave what they
called our tapestries of words. You used Scottish traditional songs. Me,
I used Ovid and those other good old storytellers.
RB: But you ended up moneyed and comfortable and I died poor and most uncomfortable.
It’s very hard, even here, to think charitably about that doctor who
told me to swim in the sea every freezing day. Yes, you ended up better
than me. You were the better businessman, William. But it’s a funny
thing, I seldom had any money but never felt like a poor man, ever.
Hungry yes, but poor? Never. A man’s a man for all that and all that.
WS:
We are such stuff as dreams are made on. But comfortable in death? No,
sir. I died of exposure after a night out in an alehouse near Stratford
with my old compatriot, Mister Ben Johnson. You know, the one who wrote
my epitaph: “Not for our time but for all time”? Found in a ditch! What
an inglorious ending. Not exactly any flights of angels taking me to my
rest. I just arrived here all by myself. Don’t quite know how.
RB: Ah, William Shakespeare - Man of mystery! But all’s well that ends well.
WS:
One of these days we’ll have to write something together. Play, poem
and song all in one. By Robert Shakespeare and William Burns. Come on,
let’s go find some of the others. (Calls out) Come with us, Ophelia. No, no need to bother with the dress.
The three of them wander off across the meadow and into the trees, singing together, Should old acquaintance be forgot, And never …but no crossed arms.
The sun has not moved in the sky, nor will
it move in this land where the trees never shed their leaves and the
birds never cease to sing and where there are no noxious people nor any
of the trials and tribulations that come with noxious people. So there
are none of the human problems that William Shakespeare and Robert Burns
had spent their earthly lives trying their very best to explain,
justify or cover up with words of such an everlasting beauty.
March 13, 2013
I saw this red kite
The other day on the way with Dee to Raigmore hospital, up there unmistakable, a red kite ... and it reminded me of a little poem I composed (wrote?) two years ago...
Along the wind
Fork-tails young and old
fly in from every direction
using fine the scuttling wind
that scythes and sighs its way
through bare-boned winter trees
‘cross Black Isle hills and fields
pregnant invisibly, yet green
with newly stirring life,
and a dual carriageway verge
sheltering furry twitch-nose
trembling, timorous beasties,
that always need the other side:
the lively red kite’s prey
not now, some other day.
They come more easily to feed
courtesy of the much feared race
that not so many years ago
would drive them from the earth.
All that forgotten and forgiven
in these more lightened times
when perfectly they gather
here, together aerobatic whirl
they loop, to swoop, to scoop
what is today on offer then
wing flutter up, together twirl
air dancing like the bagpipe skirl
and thus bring some strange peace
to we who wait on summer’s lease.
Bryan Islip
February 2011
Along the wind
Fork-tails young and old
fly in from every direction
using fine the scuttling wind
that scythes and sighs its way
through bare-boned winter trees
‘cross Black Isle hills and fields
pregnant invisibly, yet green
with newly stirring life,
and a dual carriageway verge
sheltering furry twitch-nose
trembling, timorous beasties,
that always need the other side:
the lively red kite’s prey
not now, some other day.
They come more easily to feed
courtesy of the much feared race
that not so many years ago
would drive them from the earth.
All that forgotten and forgiven
in these more lightened times
when perfectly they gather
here, together aerobatic whirl
they loop, to swoop, to scoop
what is today on offer then
wing flutter up, together twirl
air dancing like the bagpipe skirl
and thus bring some strange peace
to we who wait on summer’s lease.
Bryan Islip
February 2011
March 9, 2013
Three cheers for the rebels
From our upstairs bedroom window we can see all the way down Loch Ewe to Beinn Airidh Charr. In the middle ground a big green field rises from the shore line up to the left. Green fields are a real rarity in thse parts where the vast majority of any landscape is filled with the more sombre hues of the wild tangle: heathers, gorse, rank grasses etc. In season this green field harbours cattle, sheep - and uninvited but very welcome pink footed geese. In the dead of winter it is largely unoccupied. The other day we looked out and there were the sheep, dotted about contentedly munchihng away on new-growth grass, amazingly early and a sure sign of the benevolence of this non-winter past (or passing, for it's not too late!)
'But look', she exclaimed, and I looked and sure enough there was a single little lamb, unmistakable and maybe a couple of weeks old, therefore a whole two months ahead of when lambs up here are supposed to be born. 20th April is the accepted date.
So what's the story, morning glory? Clearly not everyone conforms, not everyone does as they're told. Hooray!!! Three cheers for the rebels.
'But look', she exclaimed, and I looked and sure enough there was a single little lamb, unmistakable and maybe a couple of weeks old, therefore a whole two months ahead of when lambs up here are supposed to be born. 20th April is the accepted date.
So what's the story, morning glory? Clearly not everyone conforms, not everyone does as they're told. Hooray!!! Three cheers for the rebels.
March 7, 2013
Less power to the people (2)
The other evening we suffered a power cut; not too unusual in these parts. It didn't last long. We swung rapidly into action with candles and torch - and of course our open coal fire lent its warm glow to proceedings. We also have a portable gas stove intended for camping but didn't need to use that, this time. The cut lasted no more than an hour or so but it reminded us of the time, some years ago, when all electrical power disappeared for four whole days.
'Funny', I said, 'Funny how quickly we became used to being without, funny how the conversation between us ratchetted up over those four days, once we had got accustomed to it, both in terms of quantity and of quality, funny how cooking on a little gas cylinder stove and boiling water for tea and coffee over the hot coals assumed a kind of romance.'
'Yes,' she said. 'And you looked out of the window, curtains wide, to see a sky shining with a million stars and you read, instead of gazing on the TV screen and whatsoever junk was on it, and you were somehow able to read that much more into your book. Best of all the telephone stayed silent.'
I guess the truth is that we have been indoctrinated, and have gown comfortable with the useof electrical power in whatever promiscuously wasteful ways we fancy right now, here and now this day. In truth we are using it like there is no tomorrow. Is it not, I wonder, about time to consider some kind of lawful economy, even rationing if that's what it takes to make sense of the future, of our future?
Less power to the people? Is that such an awful prospect? Physical comfort is but a minor part of the quality of life. Conflict between comfort and quality - no contest. Really.
'Funny', I said, 'Funny how quickly we became used to being without, funny how the conversation between us ratchetted up over those four days, once we had got accustomed to it, both in terms of quantity and of quality, funny how cooking on a little gas cylinder stove and boiling water for tea and coffee over the hot coals assumed a kind of romance.'
'Yes,' she said. 'And you looked out of the window, curtains wide, to see a sky shining with a million stars and you read, instead of gazing on the TV screen and whatsoever junk was on it, and you were somehow able to read that much more into your book. Best of all the telephone stayed silent.'
I guess the truth is that we have been indoctrinated, and have gown comfortable with the useof electrical power in whatever promiscuously wasteful ways we fancy right now, here and now this day. In truth we are using it like there is no tomorrow. Is it not, I wonder, about time to consider some kind of lawful economy, even rationing if that's what it takes to make sense of the future, of our future?
Less power to the people? Is that such an awful prospect? Physical comfort is but a minor part of the quality of life. Conflict between comfort and quality - no contest. Really.
March 5, 2013
Wild geese over Castle Eilean Donan
This is my latest painting - oil on canvas 45 x 74 cm. I call it Wild Geese over Eilean Donan.
This is one of Scotland's most famous and most visited castles. Although there has been a clan castle here, just south of Kyle of Lochalsh, since the 6th century, Eilean Donan lay in ruins for the best part of 200 years until
Lieutenant Colonel John MacRae-Gilstrap bought the island in 1911 and
proceeded to restore the castle to its former glory. After 20 years of
toil and labour it was re-opened in 1932.Castle Eilean Donan is also today one of the most photographed and painted subject in the Highlands of Scotland.
For some years I tried to find an aspect that's different, one that is not simply a replication what was and is. So my painting is as much about the flight of wild geese as it is about the sunset or the big sky or the sea-loch itself, or even the castle.
The painting currently hangs above the fireplace in Kirkhill House. When I come to think about it, the picture is also about the peace and quiet stillness of this, our adopted homeland. And it is a soft reminder that the saying, 'only Man is vile', does not always and of necessity have to be true.
March 1, 2013
Good morning!
This oil on canvas, just completed, measures 70 x 70 cm. It is called simply GOOD MORNING!
We have had the most astonishgly beautiful February here in Wester-Ross. I hope my picture and its title speak for themselves.
This is Loch Ewe as I saw it from Mellon Charles and the little fishing boat off to work for the day is Jane Grant's (I think!). Jane is part of the family - the only family - inhabiting Isle Ewe, the tip of which you see on the left hand side of the picture. She dives for scallops, and has done so for years. Cold and hard work, no doubt, but with what delicious results!
During WW2 an anti-submarine net was stretched right across the mouth of the loch, roughly in this view. Loch Ewe was a reserve base for the Home Fleet as well as the point of departure for the Arctic convoys, described by Churchill as 'the worst journey in the world'. This very week, and at long long, last the brave men, almost all of them gone by now, who manned those ships have been awarded overdue recognition in the form of a special campaign medal.
This must have been influenced by the vigorous, expert and ultra-determined band of Aultbea locals who are trying to raise millions of pounds for the erection of an Arctic Convoy Museum. Long may they prevail and long may those seamen of long ago rest in peace. I salute you all.
February 24, 2013
Population Matters
I have for some years belonged to an organisation called Population Matters. I was attracted to it in the first place by its Honorary President, Sir David Attenborough. If you've read much of my earlier blogs you'll know why. If you've read my novel
Going with Gabriel
you may even understand why.
I've just received Population Matters' latest quarterly glossy. As usual it contains a beautifully presented series of well intentioned, well reasoned articles and letters. All of them address the readership in the manner of an old tub-thumping country preacher haranguing a congregation of the already converted, if with more lassitude and less fire and brimstone, aka conviction, aka passion.
Unfortunately the difference here is that the message from Population Matters is critical to the future of humankind and 'our' world but it is not optional as it is with the message from all the pulpitss. Whether we want to know it or not (and the vast majority of us would rather not) the message is just a matter of fact rather than of simple belief.
THERE ARE MANY TOO MANY OF US! And there will be many more, and as a result there will be more pain and more destruction than we can today imagine.
I'm not going to go into all the evidence, all the statistics. We all - all who care to do any thinking, that is - must by now know all about it. Just say that if everyone on earth aspire to all the material things you and I have, (and why not, according to our materialist convention) three planet Earths woukld hardly suffice for the provision of enough raw materials, never mind enough food and, critically, enough water.
Fast forward just a quarter of a century; the blink of any eye although not my eye. Thank God I will not be around to witness, never mind take part in the fighting and the killing. I won't be around to cry over the dwindling away and acccelerating disappearance of this planet's life under the destructive scourge of unbridled humanity. I won't be around to see the increasing desertification of so much of Earth's wild green places. I won't be here to live with the rising bestiality of human behaviour that will inevitably accompany each one's fight for a personal share and eventually for personal survival. I will not have to live with the results of our wild sexual amorality. It is already evident, in my opinion, on the human genome itself. Thinkers in 17th century Britain including William Shakespeare himself believed humankind to have reached its peak in the time they called ancient Greecs. They believed us to have as a species been on the downwards slope ever since. I see nothing in 'the arts' to contradict them and I see science as a complete irrelevance in this context.
So, Milton's Paradise Lost, at last.
Why do we, the one and only species in the history of life on earth capable of reasoning and taking action to alter a negative course of future events, why do persistently refuse to take note and take action in terms of population growth? I mean action, not the futile, well-meant words of Population Matters.
Why do we not yet truly understand that such horrors as we today have all witnessed are akin to the suffering of a cancer. But we, you and I, are the cancer. A cancer on the world that supports our lives. The world that will be very pleased to be rid of us.
It need not be. Read Going with Gabriel.
I've just received Population Matters' latest quarterly glossy. As usual it contains a beautifully presented series of well intentioned, well reasoned articles and letters. All of them address the readership in the manner of an old tub-thumping country preacher haranguing a congregation of the already converted, if with more lassitude and less fire and brimstone, aka conviction, aka passion.
Unfortunately the difference here is that the message from Population Matters is critical to the future of humankind and 'our' world but it is not optional as it is with the message from all the pulpitss. Whether we want to know it or not (and the vast majority of us would rather not) the message is just a matter of fact rather than of simple belief.
THERE ARE MANY TOO MANY OF US! And there will be many more, and as a result there will be more pain and more destruction than we can today imagine.
I'm not going to go into all the evidence, all the statistics. We all - all who care to do any thinking, that is - must by now know all about it. Just say that if everyone on earth aspire to all the material things you and I have, (and why not, according to our materialist convention) three planet Earths woukld hardly suffice for the provision of enough raw materials, never mind enough food and, critically, enough water.
Fast forward just a quarter of a century; the blink of any eye although not my eye. Thank God I will not be around to witness, never mind take part in the fighting and the killing. I won't be around to cry over the dwindling away and acccelerating disappearance of this planet's life under the destructive scourge of unbridled humanity. I won't be around to see the increasing desertification of so much of Earth's wild green places. I won't be here to live with the rising bestiality of human behaviour that will inevitably accompany each one's fight for a personal share and eventually for personal survival. I will not have to live with the results of our wild sexual amorality. It is already evident, in my opinion, on the human genome itself. Thinkers in 17th century Britain including William Shakespeare himself believed humankind to have reached its peak in the time they called ancient Greecs. They believed us to have as a species been on the downwards slope ever since. I see nothing in 'the arts' to contradict them and I see science as a complete irrelevance in this context.
So, Milton's Paradise Lost, at last.
Why do we, the one and only species in the history of life on earth capable of reasoning and taking action to alter a negative course of future events, why do persistently refuse to take note and take action in terms of population growth? I mean action, not the futile, well-meant words of Population Matters.
Why do we not yet truly understand that such horrors as we today have all witnessed are akin to the suffering of a cancer. But we, you and I, are the cancer. A cancer on the world that supports our lives. The world that will be very pleased to be rid of us.
It need not be. Read Going with Gabriel.
