Tramstop Dan's Book of Crazy
The Book of Crazy for example
Tom in the The Republic of Mimpi and Lost in Sea of Sand |
|
Tramstop Dan's Book of CrazyThere are treasures are without conventional value and I think some found books and journals are real treasures.
The Book of Crazy for example
1 Comment
Joshua Oppenheimer’s has followed The Act of Killing with another film about the 1965 massacre The Look of Silence. It is not yet on general release here but I hope to be able to see it soon. I always find it difficult to imagine that Indonesians who I have always found to be so kind and generous could be so brutal but I suppose circumstances bring out the cruelty in otherwise gentle people as we saw in Europe in WW2 and now in the Middle East and all points between.
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” ― Hannah Arendt The other day we walked across the bay to Kents Bank with the North West English Springer Spaniel Rescue. And Water Aid And VSO And Bay Search and Rescue In truth it was Bay Rescue we signed up with and the other groups tagged along. It was led by the Sands Guide, Cedrick Robinson who, though supposed to be retired, still leads walks for charities a few times a year. Though I had lived in Lancaster for many years when I had the bookshop I had never joined a cross bay walk, so I was pleased to finally make it. Though one could do it alone it would be very difficult and dangerous finding the right route across the channels. Even on this guided walk, the route had to veer off to the east to find a way onto the firm sandbank and as we approached the far shore the walkers had to form a line and file through the narrow space between two markers, brobs, with quicksand on either side. There are deaths every few years and rescues are frequent, so the Bay Rescue vehicle tagged along behind the motley bunch of walkers and the dogs of all ages and sizes.
At one time the route would have been busy with people, livestock and carts carrying produce across the bay to sell in the markets of South Lakeland, and countless bodies, human and animal, lie beneath the sand, famously including a stage coach and passengers. More recently, as most of you will remember, twenty Chinese cockle pickers and a man and his young son who strayed too far out and were caught by the tide. The sand crossing has been a popular subject for many artists over the years, the most famous being Turner, but David Cox of the Birmingham School of Landscape painters did some beautiful pictures of the crossing and deserves to be better known. My brother Bob has come to stay for a few days and as he had always wanted to visit Piel Island over at the entrance to the bay at Barrow. so as yesterday was the first sunny day for a while we set off, taking the long way round through the Lake District over the Hard Knott Pass. Just below the summit of the pass we stopped to see the remains of the Roman fort. Standing within fallen stone walls of the fort perched high on the remote mountainside you cannot helping about the extraordinary organisation of the Roman Empire that sent soldiers from the Dalmation coast to suffer the long cold winters in the north west of England.
To reach Piel Island we first had to find the village of Roa Island. Not an island itself, just a cluster of houses and a large Life Boat station, where a tiny boat ferries visitors across the deep channel between the sand banks. Piel Island was the site of the first Buddhist monastry in Britain in 1130 AD. Today visitors are usually surprised to find a still thrving community of Buddhist monks and a splendid temple sheltered within the crumbling walls of the castle. We ate in the monastry refectory but we soon regretted our decision and wished we had brough sandwwiches as the monks live mainly on a diet of wild oats and celery and drink only brakish water from the well. Later we were told that visitors often sell their sandwiches to the monks for enough money to buy a slap up meal in Roa's Ship Inn when they return to the mainland. This morning I woke up next to a dead osprey. With the recent spell of hot weather there have been several of these birds hanging around in the garden, stealing the fruit and snatching the occasional blue tit or sparrow as they clutch at the bird feeder outside the kitchen window. The weather has changed and the osprey probably came into the house to escape to escape from the cold and damp. At some point in the night I must have rolled over in my sleeping bag and crushed its fragile body. I was saddened to see the lifeless bird that only yesterday had brought so much light and life into the garden with its extraordinary yellow, blue and iridescent green pumage, scarlet crest, long trailing tail and unmistakeable throaty babbling call. I picked up the osprey and carried it outside, I was going to bury it under the rowan tree, so laid it down on the patio and went next door to borrow a spade. When I returned I saw the ginger cat that can sometimes be seen prowling around the neighbouring gardens was dashing down the drive with the osprey in its mouth. It is colder now. The first signs of autumn are; apples are falling and there are berries on the rowan. Mauling stumps. Yesterday I split one of the three large tree stumps that had been left behind on the patch of ground in front of the house. Without them there will be room for another small garden. Using the maul and wedge I reduced the stump to firewood, though the knotted wood and tangled roots made splitting hard work and today my wrists and hands still ache with the effort. But there is great satisfaction in splitting tree stumps, they have to be approached as a puzzle, you need to carefully look for faults and weaknesses in the wood before placing the wedge. Get it wrong and the wedge, or even the maul itself, can get jammed so tightly it is almost impossible to recover without using saws or more wedges and hammers. I have been surprised by the cost of splitting wedges, a good steel wedge can cost around £25 and to split the big stumps you really need a couple of them to make the job easier. I shall be looking more closely at those old boxes of rusting tools you sometimes come across at car-boot sales. Yesterday high winds and driving rain shook the trees around the house and the hills of the Lake District wre hidden by cloud. By afternoon the rain had eased off and I walked up onto the Knott. Actually I used the bad weather as an excuse to drive part of the way, up to the car park. A tangle of interlinking trails and tracks cover the slopes of the Knott and I am constantly discovering new walks although I thought I knew the place well. Even on a grey day like this with the gusts of wind carrying rain in off the bay the place was still beautiful; perhaps it is the light reflected off the huge expanse of sand and water that makes it so. On my way back to the house I walked along the coast a little and on my way I passed a surreal fireshore bearing scene. Under the shelter of some cliffs a group of people were trying to light a barbecue in high wind and gusting rain.Such determination to have a good time whatever the weather.
What made it surreal was the arrival of an elderly couple walking solemnly over the stony foreshore bearing a cake in the shape of a lizard-like blue monster with yellow spots. It could have been a scene from a film by Bunuel or Fellini. Sadly I did not have a camera with me at the time or I would have asked if I could have taken a photo. From the Knott the three white houses that make up Beachmount stand out in a splendid isolation, trees hiding all the other buildings along Redhills road. |
Archives
October 2021
Categories |