sighing for retirement

O take me from the busy crowd,
          I cannot bear the noise!
For Nature's voice is never loud;
          I seek for quiet joys.

We took the annual pilgrimage to the Trimley Marshes Blackthorn patch as Mrs Dave felt the call to make some Sloe gin. Now, we don't have a "secret Sloe patch of which (we) speak proudly and guard jealously" as John Wright writes in Hedgerow (River Cottage Handbook No 7) but we do have two regular patches that tend never to fail us.

One of the patches is over the river at Bawdsy. It's a tiny fenced off wild field but we've never been told off for entering and helping ourselves. The other is the Trimley one we went to yesterday.

As we walked along the track past the fields and marvelling at the rich Autumnal colours amongst the trees, we laughed about a previous trip a few years ago. We had done exactly the same thing but on a Sunday. The weather was okay but "threatening to wet" as Bill Caddick sings. By the time we had started to pick the Sloes the rain got heavier and heavier, eventually causing us to give up and trudge back to the car soaked. What made it so memorable was that an old lady in a car drove past (cars rarely traverse lanes) and stopped to give us a lift. She didn't mind that we dripped rivulets into her car's interior. Such is the kindness of strangers. As we remembered that time, spots of rain started to hit us occasionally. Mrs Dave took no chances and elected to wear her flimsy rain coat - of the 'pacamac' variety - but despite the clouds in the distance nothing much came of it. In fact, the sun broke through and the walk back to the car later was beautiful and quite warm.

We had a good haul of Sloes, we'd managed to time it just right and find plenty of juicy ones amongst

the dried and shrivelled fruits waiting around to rot. A trip to Lidl on Sunday to find some reasonably priced gin and next year's supply is secured. I'm not a fan of gin at all - it suggests golf clubs and weekend sailors to me - but Sloe Gin is another beast all together. I've found quite a few mentions of it in various recipes such as crumbles and gravy. It's a much more pleasant drink than normal gin and certainly comes into its own to sip as a postprandial tipple.

Near to the car park we stopped to look back over the fields and tracks that we have wandered across this past quarter of a century and admired the Stratocumulus clouds looming over the horizon. at least, I think that's they are. I'm sure someone will tell me differently. I'd left my phone at home updating so Mrs Dave took the picture above.

Bloody Apple had sent me an email saying that I had to update my phone to continue getting updates for Twitter - which I have continued to use although I'm not obsessed by it! Unfortunately that means that my iPhone screen now looks totally different and all modern. Obviously I can't use it properly and spend all my time trying to find things that were a doddle before. Welcome to the future, one where you're never allowed to stay still.

Whilst walking along the tracks yesterday we looked back over the past few months and hoped we'd made the right choices. Both of us going down to three days a week has meant a huge cut in income but we feel that the benefits outweigh the 'benefit' of earning full salaries but at the beck and call of our paymasters. The slight distancing from the everyday at school has meant a healthier outlook and the opportunity to feel more in control. We can afford to wander these lanes without guilt - the piles of marking are much smaller! This last point is a huge bonus for me now that I have dropped English teaching completely.

So, yes, we reasoned, we have made the right choice and we look forward to retiring from the classroom come August - well, July really - and can wander these lanes without any guilt whatsoever. Our days can be enjoyed away from crowds and noise and listen more intently to Nature's voice as John Clare wrote.

time was

Telephone exchanges click while there's nobody there
The Martians could land in the car park and no one would care
Closed-circuit cameras in department stores
Shoot the same movie every day
And the stars of these films neither die nor get killed
Just survive constant action replay

And nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before

There's nothing more likely to bring a wince than a cheesy synthesised organ sound or gated drums (fine on Kate Bush's Hounds of Love but think of practically anything by Phil Collins) or a clunky drum machine. Why? Because it reminds us of the eighties or nineties. I like Springsteen's Tunnel of Love album but the cheesy organ sound locks it in Time like the "freezers" from Christopher Priest's An Infinite Summer. It makes it slightly uncomfortable to listen to music that is heavily locked in Time, especially a time that you don't care for that much.

Whilst it may be obvious that certain records will bring back memories - good or bad - songs can be updated quite easily. My future son-in-law saw Richard Thompson for the first time recently and realised that he knew one of his songs (Beeswing) because one of his favourite bands have covered it. But to me, it's the lyrics that can sometimes be the jarring point. 

Whilst Robbie Robertson or RT himself may want to use archaic language or objects to evoke certain times, some writers use contemporary objects which may become totally alien to future audiences. For instance, a folk singer may want to sing The Old Changing Way that references Tinkers and fixing up "your kettles, please dear Missus, we'll sharpen your knives" and that sounds fine because it had already been designed to create a sense of time past. There are plenty of similar songs by RT - especially those on Henry the Human Fly and I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight* - that bring a sense of Thomas Hardy or A E Coppard. However, look at the lyrics by Justin Currie quoted above.

The lyrics come from the del Amitri song Nothing Ever Happens which records the general banality of everyday life (although the final line is a kick in the teeth to all of us in its reference to Kristallnacht). The song came up on my iPod the other day whilst I was driving along and the lyrics certainly lock it in Time as I mentioned above. There are various references in the song that are a snapshot of images that all seem to have happened in a life that is so different today, many younger listeners would not have a clue about. For instance, "Gentlemen time please, you know we can't serve any more" suggests those long-gone days of drinking up time and 10:30 closing times.

The lines above from the third verse mention that "telephone exchanges click" but they probably don't do that nowadays. The fourth verse does seem to keep fairly contemporary:

And bill hoardings advertise products that nobody needs

While "Angry from Manchester" writes to complain about

All the repeats on TV

Computer terminals report some gains in the values of copper and tin

While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs

For the price of a hospital wing

However, I guess not too many people write in to anyone to complain about "all the repeats on tv" given the choice of channels available now. If you want to watch endless repeats then there are stations like Dave that cater for that so it's easy to avoid them. Now we can all record programmes and not bother to watch them nowadays or only watch films and series by choosing Netflix, we can avoid advertising too to a certain extent. The implied letter writing is totally on the decline, too. That fact alone makes a mockery of the use of the letter form in English lessons and exams. Perhaps letter writing should now be the province of History lessons?

It's the chorus of Nothing Ever Happens where the song seems permanently frozen or locked into a particular time. Many youngsters would have absolutely no idea of what he's on about: "the needle returns to the start of the song and we all sing along like before". The song itself was first released in 1989 just as record players were being superseded by cds. So the action itself was almost already anachronistic. It's long been reported that many people nowadays don't pay for music, let alone buy it in any other form but digital.

But, interestingly, it appears that the sales of vinyl and turntables is on the rise. I read an article in the local press about how a second hand record shop is moving all its cds to the back of the shop and bringing all the vinyl forward. I also read somewhere of someone who had sold all of his vinyl years ago to replace his collection with cds only now to be selling them to fund re-buying it on vinyl! A few weeks ago I was in a record shop called Earwax Records in Williamsburg in Brooklyn who also told me that the bottom had fallen out of the market in cd sales about three years ago. Now they were selling mainly vinyl. That was good for me as the cd I wanted, Another Self Portrait by his Bobness, had been reduced. As the pound is quite strong, it only cost me about ten quid. Bargain.

Anyhow, so perhaps the act of a needle hitting the grooves of a vinyl record won't be so alien a concept to people in the future. I'm not sure whether or not modern turntables have the facility to leave the arm up for endless repeats like I used to do - John Martyn's One World was great for that. But somehow, the song still seems to be frozen in its time despite the acoustics and accordian as main instruments. Perhaps it's that video of them looking "all windswept and interesting" as Derek Brimstone used to say.

Right, I'm off to try to find out when the first usage of the mobile phones was in a song . . .

* Thankfully RT has recently started giving his albums shorter titles 

tonight the bottle let me down

I've always had a bottle I could turn to

And lately I've been turnin' every day

But the wine don't take effect the way it used to

And I'm hurtin' in old familiar ways

I've been absent without leave recently. After several years trying to get the Welsh Board to let me mark A2 Film Studies exams, they've only gone and asked me totally out of the blue to mark the damned stuff! Blimey, I thought I wasn't up to standard. Or they're that desperate. You choose.

Anyway, whilst the World© has continued to revolve, I've continued to do what I do. Now, that generally seems to be: go in to work, teach a few lessons, mark exams, cook, drink slightly more than the (safe level) figures the government pulled out of their various orifices of the air and generally laze about pretending to be and er, fantasize about retirement. Anyway, all is well. I have too much to do now but can just about cope.

A pleasant trip to London last week allowed me to relax a bit although marking actual A Level work is slightly more daunting than AS. After the last trip, I realised that wine was too expensive to buy in the restaurant so I went next door to Sainsbury and bought a 50cl bottle of red in their sale for £2:40. Probably as good as the Hilton's plonk. Still, a good day.

It was great to realise that most of what I teach day-to-day is on the right track. I have some scripts of Centres that have taught Surrealism and Early Cinema so a learning curve awaits. I used to teach Surrealism on the old syllabus so it's not all new. It seems that Svankmajer's Alice is still a go-to film. If you're not aware of it, try it out.  If you fancy putting the absolute sh*ts up yourself, watch his Little Otik and try to keep smiling. I've silenced a few classes showing that!

Anyway, just touching base really - it's that time of year. Hopefully, next year will seem easier going as it looks like a three day week looms. Funny that a three day week was a problem all those years a go - now it seems like a preferred option.

Still, Robert Plant was great at Glastonbury -  a great set. Most of what I've seen has been very ordinary and showy - well done, Bob!

rocket science

he's sitting back of the classroom
a million miles away
he's listening to the rock star on a cd
up front the old teacher
she's too tired to snag his mind
he's looking to the future, she's looking
way behind

Those 'messages in a bottle' suggest a few problems really, don't they?

As far as I know (and, indeed, what do I know?) a sailor of whichever Country/Empire/small fishing village off of an undiscovered island near the coast of Paraguay becoming stranded on a desert island - or indeed, a Hebridean one - many years ago managing to find a pencil and banana leaf/piece of paper would send a  message out for someone out there to find and, indeed, respond to. Imagine if a Robinson Crusoe type relied on someone finding his message. Or, imagine if we had personally found one. We would respond, of course, wouldn't we, gentle reader? We'd rally round and try to rescue the poor devil. Unless, of course, we had realised that we were at least 100 hundred years after the fact.

Anyway, my point here is that we would be able to read the aforesaid article. If we were able to at least recognise a word or two, we'd find an expert to decipher it.  All would be well.

Well, I have just spent the last three weeks marking AS Film Studies scripts and I can honestly say that it has proven to be the worst set of scripts I have EVER marked, and I've been marking for some twelve years*. I have had to spend hours deciphering poorly scribbled scripts. For my own sanity, I have realised that it is, of course, because students now write everything they do on iPads or laptops and never have to handwrite a damned thing. Oh, just one thing . . . the way they are examined and assessed is through . . .  wait for it . . . hand-written scripts. The lack of caring is what I find so disconcerting.

So, if we had found a message in a bottle, we'd assume that if we couldn't read it, it would be worth finding out what was written within. When we send out messages to outer space, we assume that an intelligent race would try to work out what might be being said. They, of course, may have a problem with Chuck Berry or Blur, but still, an effort would be made, and I hope that they'd earn a little more than £4.50 for their trouble.

* not this particular set, of course.

7 + 7 is

So you want to be a rock and roll star?

Then listen now to what I say

Just get an electric guitar

Then take some time and learn how to play

For obvious reasons, I was a little obsessed with 12 string guitars last week. After sending mine off to the repair shop on Thursday, Friday Night's BBC4 documentary and "Acoustic at the BBC" programme struck a few chords*.

Roger McGuinn was shown performing an acoustic Eight Miles High during the latter programme and for some reason I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. He was playing a six string but it sounded like a twelve string. A closer shot at one point made me think that perhaps old Rog was playing with a slightly more enhanced instrument than the rest of us have to hand**.

It looked to me like he had an extra peg at the bridge end. Here's proof at the end of this post that I wasn't a few miles too high myself. At least some musicians spend some of their hard-earned cash back into their art.

I understand from various sources that Mr McGuinn can be a curmudgeonly old bugger - well, who isn't? - but I thought he comes across as a bit of a laugh. Some nice playing there, Mr M. Shame about the camera work.

  * pun intended
** count the innuendos

perfectly good guitar

There oughta be a law with no bail
Smash a guitar and you go to jail
With no chance for early parole
Ya don't get out until you get some soul

It's been an interesting few weeks. The move to the new build has not been without its problems. When the new build was initially proposed there was to be some £36 million set aside for it. By the time it finally got the go ahead, there was £18 million on the table. Shades of the Spinal Tap Stonehenge leap to mind.

Still, in other news . . . back in January I decided that it really was time to change the strings on my 12 string guitar. It has always been a daunting task. For a while it sounded fine. However, I often leave it hanging on the wall for weeks at a time as it's more of a luxury item than a serious tool. When I picked it up one evening last week to tune it and have a quick strum, it seemed a little harder to play than usual. I shrugged and went to put it back on its hanger.

Something about it didn't look right - I wasn't wearing glasses so needed to get a bit closer to it. Imagine my language surprise when I realised that the bridge had practically lifted off the soundboard. "Oh dear," I thought - or words to that effect. Although I was aware of the tension being more on a 12 string than a 6 string but it's always been fine. I guess the new strings I put on may have been to high a gauge for it. I'd put what was called a "light gauge" set on but hadn't realised that they were too heavy duty for the model I have.

Now, the guitar itself isn't particularly an expensive model so it's made of laminate rather than a solid top. There's no point having a broken guitar hanging around so I checked on the internet about how to fix it. I watched an excellent video on bridge repairs on 12 strings. Having instantly realised that my DIY skills, such as they are, are far too rudimentary for such an undertaking, I decided to check around for a local repair man. Even here in a small seaside town such craftsmen exist. In fact, a year or two back I had met one at a local festival. Still, being unable to remember his name or find his card, I noticed that the first one that came up on a Google search was an old colleague of mine. An ex-Maths teacher who left the teaching world after a few battles with a major illness.  I know his work is well thought of and he was around that evening to pick the poor beast up. This man makes guitars and violins. A guitar made by him would cost two thousand beer vouchers.

He had told me to whip the strings off and he'd be around within the hour. Indeed he was. That was Thursday, and he had phoned a few times over the weekend to let me know what he'd been doing to it. It seems that the bridge had been pulled forward - the rather out of focus snap just about shows how bad it was getting. The glue had moved and the whole thing could have justflown off - given all that tension, I'm rather glad I spotted it first! Anyway, he returned it tonight fully repaired and looking much healthier. It seems to have been a bit of a major undertaking to get it back into a decent shape.

What Dave did was to take off the bridge, get rid of as much glue as possible - the laminate was slightly damaged - glue and screw the bridge into place. Where he's drilled into the bridge he's put mother of pearl over the screw-holes. This has finished it off nicely. There's plenty on the guitar already so it doesn't look out of place. Then he's put REALLY light strings on and suggested that many people tune down a whole step to help reduce the stress. He's also diddled about with the truss-rod and set it up better. Unfortunately, as it's a cheapish guitar, he was unable to totally match the lacquer but it looks fine. My Fylde is covered in scratches and dents.We're all showing a bit of wear'n'tear after all this time.

Of course, all this has nearly  cost an arm and a leg. I thought I'd go with the leg. There aren't too many one-armed 12 string players about. Mind you, that does offer the opportunity for job sharing.

Still, he's done a good job and it does sound and play better now. I'll have to find a source for really light strings. Maybe I'll try tuning down. It's not the end of the world.  

Late at night at the end of the road
He wishes he still had that old guitar to hold
He'd rock it like a baby in his arms
Never let it come to any harm

days of future past

Many years have passed me by, it’s true

Many dreams have vanished from my view

I've chased them all

But there has been no answer

Though I recall

My innocence and laughter

I'm feeling older now

But what comes after this is through

Time had traced its maps across my face

Signs and lines for you to navigate

And in the end

There will be no returning

Let’s not pretend

No regrets and no yearnings

Could keep and fill your heart

If all you've got is what you do

I've spent much of the past few years bemoaning the fact that we've been let down. I have written elsewhere about the non-appearance of jetpacks - Dan Dare was promising them when I was a kid. James Bond used one in Thunderball in 1965.  The idea has been around for nearly a hundred years, possibly longer. And here we are in 2014 and those dreams of personal powered flight are in the news again. The future is here and now - Oh brave new world . . . and all that. At last.

Alongside that, as of today, our house is now connected to the internet by fibre optics. Er, well, in Britain, evidently, that means we are connected about 80% via fibre optics. It's still copper wire into our homes. Still, it's all very exciting and much quicker. A bit like life generally, then.

I spent last week in France up a mountain somewhere near Switzerland often listening to lots of well-informed ski aficionados discussing technical gear. They are all very knowledgeable and up-

to-date with the way the modern world has made skiing such a popular sport. I'm informed that it is a sport despite my genteel approach. I'm sure I didn't glaze over too often. What was interesting though was that although we couldn't always get decent connections to the internet, we could mostly keep in contact with the rest of the world: emails, the BBC and Twitter were still available to us via free (slow) wifi. Holidays no longer seem to be a time to get away from the everyday world that we, presumably are trying to get away from by having a holiday in the first place.  Still, the French continue to manage to avoid reality through their, er, sophisticated take on the everyday. Here are some urinals that children have to use as well as adults as they are the only loos on that part of the mountain. Charming.

One thing about travelling is that whilst we can now carry phones, whole music collections, iPads et al around with us to stay connected and wired for sound, we also have to carry the means to charge the damned things! The amount of chargers needed now takes up a big section of our baggage.

I had bought - for the first time in many, many years - for the journey, a copy of New Statesman (due to a lack of interesting magazines about guitars or walking) which was a special issue about technology and the future. There was an article by Bryan Appleyard that made a few good points and says that, like the need for nostalgia, we also have a hankering for the future:

At another level, futurology implies that we are unhappy in the present. Perhaps this is because the constant, enervating downpour of gadgets and the devices of the marketeers tell us that something better lies just around the next corner and, in our weakness, we believe. Or perhaps it was ever thus. In 1752, Dr Johnson mused that our obsession with the future may be an inevitable adjunct of the human mind. Like our attachment to the past, it is an expression of our inborn inability to live in – and be grateful for – the present.

I must admit that I have longed for the day when jetpacks would be available. Now those days seem to be here along with hand-held computers and - it would appear - cars that drive themselves imminent, perhaps there is a longing for those days when things didn't seem to change so much. I recently acquired a lovely old-fashioned acoustic autoharp. Don't get me started on the appalling waste and throwaway culture that has developed over recent years. The Academy I currently work at has just moved two schools onto one site ( a new build) where there is no room or the past. I've gained this product of the past - one that has been ignored for probably 30 years or so. And I really do mean "gained." This will need some TLC definitely: a project for those quieter, slower days of retirement ahead, I suppose. 

Still, whether there are better gadgets around the corner or not, some of these older ones are still worth using. At least I don't have to charge it.