poliphilo

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

The YouTube feed threw up a nice little BBC film from 1990- in which Spike Milligan- comedic genius- wandered round East Sussex looking at archeological sites and deploring the modern world. I found I had some passing aquaintance with just about everything he visited. He flew over The Long Man, walked round the footprint of a Roman villa at Beddingham, got sucked into quicksand and nearly lost his boot alongside the wreck of The Amsterdam on the beach at Bulverhythe. He made the odd joke but mostly he was sad about motorways being slapped down over the ruins of the past. One laughs because otherwise one would weep. His parting words to us were "If I had my time again I'd be an archaeologist". Who knew?

1990, that's already 35 years behind us- and Spike has been resting under the auld sod in the churchyard at Winchelsea for much of that time, busily turning into archaeology himself....

I walk out into the garden to feed the birds at sunrise. The sky is still grey, the world is still grey, but next door's chimney stack is gleaming a rosy pink- where the slanted ray of the still invisible sun has struck it.

And I call to mind the first stanza of Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayham.

Awake, for morning in the bowl of night
Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight,
And lo, the hunter of the east has caught
the sultan's turret in a noose of light

See, I know it by heart. There was a time when every mildly literate British person knew it by heart. I doubt that this is the case any longer. In fact I'm sure it isn't.

But "noose of light" is good, isn't it. And the Rubaiyat is full of such felicities.

Edward Fitzgerald was, by his own admission an idle fellow who liked messing about in boats. He had private means and high-profile literary friends- most notably Alfred Tennyson. He published numerous translations and critical studies, but the Rubaiyat is the only thing of his that anyone still reads.....

The English Churches are wilting away- and have been through the course of my lifetime. One of the charities Ailz and I support is The Churches Conservation Trust- which owns and maintains over 350 historic church buildings for which the Church of England has no further use. It is continually adding to its collection- as building after building becomes unviable and is declared redudant.

There are, of course, evangelical congregations that buck the trend. I think of them as mushrooms- rising in the night and gone within 24 hours- which may be unfair- but they lack roots and depend on charismatic leadership and the whipping up of a kind of fervid religiosity human beings find it hard to sustain.

The Society of Friends- though it's not exactly a Church- and I prefer to think of it as something else- is wilting along with the rest. Yesterday, at our Area Meeting, we discussed the future of a local Meeting that is down to a membership of three and occupies a building it doesn't have the wherewithal to make economically viable. We also looked at the plight of a neighbouring area which may have to shut up all its Meetings because it cannot find enough trustees to maintain its charitable status. All the propoosed solutions to these related problems- barring a great spiritual revival- entail an acknowledgement of failure and a shrinking of resources.

The Society of Friends has been of some use in the world but it may well be that its usefulness is coming to an end. Less and less do people seek their salvation in institutions. If we lose our infrastructure there is nothing to stop us continuing to meet and function as Quakers in one another's homes or random public buildings or even the open air- as happened in the 17th century when the movement was getting underway. Call it a return to roots. On the othe hand a loss of resources is a loss of resources, if we close a building we're unlikely ever to replace it- and the fewer buildings we have the less easy we are for people to find- and the fewer we're likely to attract.

In the meantime, we carry on doing what we do because it seems worth doing even if it has no long term future. Longevity is no virtue. Change and decay in all around I see.

So off I go to Meeting. I'll be making sure the Meeting Room is set up for worship, that people are welcomed, that worship proceeds as it should, that needs are met, that community is fostered. I'm an Elder now (that status was confirmed at Area Meeting yesterday) and all these things I've been doing for love I'm now also doing as a duty. I shall carry on carrying on. There is no future- and no past either- but only the present moment- and we need to live in this eternal present as intensely as we can.....

At present we can't just step into the kitchen but have to go into the hall, out through the inner front door, into the garage by a side door and so through the garage (which is very cold) and down a short, dark, passage. It makes me think of the servants in big houses who had to shuttle continuously between the rooms where work got done and the rooms where the masters were- and how nobody questioned the arrangement....

It's one of the bones I have to pick with Jane Austen that she never casts a glance (I'm prepared to be corrected on this) at the people who keep her characters fed and comfortable.

Here's what the kitchen looks like today. Dodgy wiring and piping have been removed from the under the floor and the area properly prepped and then flooded with cement. Until this dries we have to access the working area of the kitchen by way of the garage....

The housekeeper at the Meeting House is a hoarder and uses the Meeting House to store overspill from her collection. This can't be allowed to get out of hand.....

But it's not just a logistical problem, it's also a pastoral one.

"Sigh".....

I have some sympathy with hoarders. I'm not far from being one myself. I love junk.

I live in an animate world- and don't like getting rid of things for fear of hurting their feelings.

However I don't extend my sympathy to packaging and old newspapers and worn out saucepans- stuff that has a certain function and can't ever have expected to continue in existence once it's done its work. This is what saves me....

Though there's an in-between class of objects- decorative biscuit tins, glass bottles in attrractive colours- that tug at my heart strings.....

Here's an idle wish:

I wish I had a native-speaker's grasp of German so I could read Rilke in the original.

The incoming president of the United States has said he wants to

1. Take the Panama Canal away from Panama

2. Take Greenland away from Denmark and stud it with military bases

3. Take Canada away from the Canadians.

4. Rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

I call this over-reach and think, if any of it is implemented, it's going to lead to no end of trouble.

A Third World War? Well, isn't that already underway?

And now for some high-end editorialising:

The Old World Order that wants to be the New World Order is losing its hold over people's minds- and is thrashing around in fear and desperation. In the incoming President it has acquired a spokesman whom it really didn't want because it prefers to proceed with subtlety and stealth and fine words- while he is someone who likes to bang the big bass drum. The next few months are going to be chaotic- and not just because of the carryings on of the politicians. There will be climate and weather events and all sorts of revelations of one kind and another....

And....and....

I'm an optimist who trusts the prophecies- and I think a better, kinder world world will be built over the ruins of Babylon.....

We've been eating out most days because of the state of the kitchen- and we're getting tired of it. Yesterday we bought a take away at a Chinese place in Norman's Bay and parked up by the roadside at Cooden Beach. We were congratulating ourselves on the cheapest meal of the week when a couple of very nice young people in uniform showed up to explain that we were parked illegally and slap us with a £90 fine. And so the cheapest meal of the week turned into the most expensive we've ever eaten....

Damian and Louis took up the kitchen floor and found a waste pipe from the kitchen sink had been discharging directly into the ground beneath the house and much of the substructure was sodden and rotten. One not insignificant, load-bearing, wooden beam- which Damian confusingly calls a "plate"- had been reduced to the consistency of potting compost. We knew there were problems with the kitchen; we didn't know they went so deep.

Here's Damian gazing into the abyss where the kitchen table used to sit.

I'd got it into my head that the Trump inauguration was happening yesterday- and couldn't understand why the media wasn't making more of a hoo-ha. Seems like we actually have to wait until the 25th.

My feeling is that if we're going to turn the world upside we'd best get on with it. The sooner we start the sooner we'll be finished.....

He asked me why we now had a bowl full of stones on the table in the Meeting Room.

And I found it very hard to explain- and found myself blathering.

The one thing I couldn't say was the truth- that the idea came not as a thought but as an inspiration.

Circumstances conspired, I made connections, I asked a Friend who does wood-turning to make the bowl, I collected the stones off the beach. I didn't really "think" about any of it.

But I didn't want to spell this out because it would have seemed like I was giving myself airs.

(Damn, I'm too modest!)

So I made up some reasons for him. Stones connect us with the earth, They're incredibly ancient. Handling one is like using prayer beads. But these are all rationalisations, afterthoughts and, to be honest- none of them are particularly Quakerly. I don't know if I convinced him because I wasn't convincing myself.

"Ah," he said, "I thought there might be some deep spiritual reason...."

And I said, "These are spiritual reasons."

But the deep spiritual thing is something you either see or you don't, either feel or you don't. As the poet said, "Had I been able to express myself in another way, I would have done so."

I'm rather given to doing things like this on the spur of the moment. Thus far I've got away with it, but the stones may prove to be a bit too much for the Meeting to handle. We'll see. Still, they're portable; if people don't want them on the table (which people are inclined to think of as an altar- though Quakers supposedly have no truck with altars) I can move them elsewhere.

One thing I wish I'd said to him- because it sounds so deep- is "stones are the bones of our Mother..."

As I was leaving Waterstones yesterday I caught sight of a copy of The Mirror and the Light displayed on a table with a bunch of other "modern classics". Dear God, but it's enormous! I doubt I'll ever read it.

I read the first two volumes of Mantell's Cromwell trilogy when they first came out. I admired them and enjoyed them but they sort of washed over me and I remember very little about them. Perhaps I simply wasn't paying enough attention.

But I have an appetite for well-researched historical fiction and I've started watching the TV version of the trilogy- and it's a marvel. Dare I say it's better than the books? Of course I dare, because who cares for my opinion anyway? Being a pedant, I can't help noticing anachronisms- like the 19th century monuments on the walls of unreformed medieval churches- but I recognise that an effort is being made and there's only much that can be done on a BBC budget. I particularly like how the clothes seemed lived-in- and how, for instance, Anton Lesser's Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, with his stringy chin and unhaven chin, presents like a bag lady in ratty furs and preposterous hats. The writing and acting are sublime. Is that pitching it too high? No, I'll stick by it. One understands the pressures and constraints these people are acting under. No-one is a hero and no-one is a villain. I've read that More is presented- in opposition to Robert Bolt and the Catholic church- as a bad guy, but he isn't. He's a man of principles (not at all for all seasons) and some of them are monstrous. Why he chooses to stick to them so resolutely is a mystery to all his well-wishers (and he has few if any actual enemies) and finally to himself.

More is dead now (at the end of episode four) and next for the chopping black will be Claire Foy's Anne Boleyn- a clever bitch who is trying to hold her own in a world of ruthless men who are all, also, trying to hold their own. One feels for her, as one feels for all these people, even for Damian Lewis's Henry, a man much betrayed and manipulated- and weaker than he'd have you think. To borrow a phrase from Rose Macaulay, "they were defeated"

I haven't yet mentioned Mark Rylance, but I will now. And I'll put an exclamation mark after his name. Like this,

Mark Rylance!

Picture Diary 77

1. Following

2. It's Sunshine Life for Me

3. They're coming, they're coming!

4. Thought does not exist where love is

5. Evading observation

I still think of fish and chips as a cheap, working-class meal but it isn't any longer and hasn't been for ages. We went to what is probably the best fish and chip restaurant in town (at least that's what the proprietor/waitress says it is- and I'm not arguing) and the bill came out at about twice what I'd thought we'd be paying. Still, great meal, and they're using a new lite batter that doesn't screw with my insides. The proprietor comes from Liverpool. She's been here 34 years "for my sins" and is still complaining about how unfriendly the locals are. She, on the other hand, is like a blast of a Hard Day's Night- all singing, all dancing, all scabrous wit. God, but how I love Scousers!

Yes, I know, I'm a vegan. But these days I'm a very bad vegan and, anyway, how can one live by the sea and not eat fish?

It was Thursday but I kept thinking it was Monday- and I didn't know why. "it's because the builders are back," said Ailz, "so it feels like the start of the working week."

The Christmas period was wearying. We drove up to London twice and always in bad weather. Today I mean to undecorate the tree.

All the channelers and psychics I lend an ear to say 2025 will be a year of trouble and change. Our friend Elisa, who is an astrologer, says we should look for something of great significance to happen on January 13.....

It's the evening of New Year's Day and a Tesla Cybertruck loaded with fireworks pulls up outside the Trump Hotel in Vegas, It begins to give off smoke and then explodes. No damage is done except to the interior of the Tesla and to its driver- who is killed.....

New Years Day, Trump, Tesla, Musk, Vegas, fireworks (which suggests a link with V for Vendetta, the Guy Fawkes movie): Surely none of this symbolism is accidental. But what about the absurdity- the positively Dadaist absurdity?

I wish I knew what it means.....

2024 ends and 2025 begins in stormy weather

Jiddu Krishnamurti is being interviewed before a live audience. He is very old, very frail and very distinguished.

"What do you think about the Buddha?" asks the interviewer.

"I don't think about the Buddha," says Krishnamurti.

The audience titters.

"Thought does not exist," says Krishnamurti, "where love is...."

I dreamed I was learning to play polo. I was sitting on my nag- a broken down Rozinante- and one of my teachers punted the ball down to me and I pushed and steered it into the goal- by which time it had turned into a cat that was reluctant to be pushed and steered. Then I dreamed I was in prison. I and my fellow old lags were sitting on metal seats round the inside walls of a small room eating a meal. People were being polite and thoughtful and it wasn't at all unpleasant.

Polo and prison- two experiences I've never had in waking life.

Profile

poliphilo

March 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Page Summary

Syndicate

Style Credit

Style: Ivory Alcea for Mobility by branchandroot
Resources: Mitsuba Aoi

Page generated Mar. 1st, 2026 04:27 pm

|

Recent Entries

Expand Cut Tags

Dear Spike

A One-Hit Wonder

A Mini Sermon

A Bone To Pick With Jane

An Update On The Building Work

Hoarding

An Idle Wish

Sticking My Neck Out

Pricey

Gazing Into The Abyss

Just Get On With It

Stones

Wolf Hall

Picture Diary 77

Fish And Chips

In Brief

Fireworks in Vegas

Stormy

Thought And Love

Polo And Prison

Profile

March 2026

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Syndicate

Style Credit