Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Judith's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, July 18th, 2009
10:13 am	Writer's Block: Not So Genius Motor cars and the infernal combustion engine! Ban them now -- at least within city and town limits. (Comment on this)
9:16 am	#18 Purbeck, the ingrained island, #18 Purbeck, the ingrained island, by Paul Hyland (Dovecote Press,1978/1999) We're just back from a week in Purbeck, staying in the caravan my boss keeps in Swanage. We yomped some reasonably extensive stretches of the landscape that Hyland writes about. Purbeck is the youngest, Cretaceous, end of the Jurassic Coast world heritage site -- a recent designation that Hyland doesn't mention. He notes that it is the (still ongoing) pushing together of the European and African continental plates that crumpled and uplifted the ancient sea-bed strata -- the northernmost shockwave of the creation of the Alps. Hyland's narrative walks along the neatly distinct bands of the Purbeck geology, from the most recent heath-clothed 'Bagshott clays' and sands and Poole Harbour; then the hard chalk ridgeway belt that cuts the 'isle of Purbeck' off from the mainland, with the shards of Corfe Castle commanding its one gap; then fertile Wealden clays good for farming; then the coastal limestone and marble good for quarrying, and finally the oil-bearing Kimmeridge shale. We walked most of the limestone stretch of the Coast Path. First gentle afternoon stroll was up the cliffs at the north end of Swanage beach, up where the the great chalk ridge is meets the sea at Ballard Head and the spectacular white stacks of Old Harry Rocks stretching off towards the Isle of Wight, where their old mates The Needles stretch back towards them -- the same geological stuff cut through by the ancient Solent River (which over the ages swelled and joined with the ancient Bitham/Thames to form the Channel) and continuing over in France. Late lunch in the garden of the Bankes Armes in Studland, quick peer at St Nicholas Church -- a popular saint around here, as protector of those who go on the seas, and on in quest of the Agglestone out on the heath, and up again to the Obelisk erected by Victorian stone quarrying magnate George Burt on Ballard Down. Grand sweeping views over Poole and back to Swanage, including picking out our own little green caravan. And we made it back to base just before sunset, 21.00 -- about 17,500 steps on the day's pedometer reading. Day 5 we took the steam train to Corfe (Castle, The Rings, model village, Enid Blyton country shoppes, cream tea in the National Trust tea-room garden), then walked back along the Ridgeway: a hunting kestrel on East Hill that looks down on the Castle, then along the top of the world with the Poole lowlands laid out to our left and the sun, Swanage and Purbeck at large on our right, pausing to count on Nine Barrows Down, then down through Upwell to home, with brown hare grazing among the caravans. 18k steps. Day 4 the weather closed in, so we pottered around Swanage, getting sand in my toes along the beach (but JN kept his shoes on), strolling out on the Victoria Pier, and out to Peveril Point -- the hard Purbeck Marble seam resisting wave erosion that has carved away the softer layers around it. That gentle pottering racked up 16k steps. We took the bus for a day in Wareham, engulfed in the swaying reed-beds along the River Frome walk, then around the Saxon walls where elms survive, and visiting Saxon St martins Church with its TE Lawrence effigy (17.8 steps). The bus also took us out to walk the Coast. Bus to Langton Matravers, visited its small stone quarrying museum, explored towards the nearby Old Harry minsharft, then down to Dancing Ledge with our picnic lunch. Quarrying of the limestone there has left a handy sheltered hollow for picnickers, with faces used by abseilers, and a shallow swimming pool cut into the level ballroom of Dancing Ledge itself. After lunch, we yomped our way back along the path above more cliffs to Durleston Head, reaching Swanage around 1700 (a mere 13k steps) instead of our usual sundown finish -- in time to book in at the Ocean Bay restaurant and experience their exceedlingly gourmet repast. Our last) we alighted the handy bus at Kingston for St Adhelm's Head, where the path winds vertiginously around dizzying cliffs, with the C12(ish) St Adhelms Chapel by a Coastguard station up on the head itself. We sat out of the driving wind in the ruins of a WW2 radar station (which may well have taken advantage of a previous quarry) to much our sandwiches. St Adhelms seems the hinge of the Purbeck Coast: south and west the view shows the dark Kimmeridge shale replacing bright white limestone along the cliffs, and in the distance the limestone returns with the great triangular beak of Portland Bill lying out into the sea on the horizon (when we visit JN's parents in Lyme at the heart of the Jurassic coast, Portland Bill on a clear day lies along the farthest eastern horizon). Heading north and easterly, with the wind at our backs, our view was white cliffs, sea caves and coves along past Dancing Ledge towards Durleston Head, with the Isle of Wight on the offshore horizon -- peregrines hunting above the cliffs, stone-chats in vivid red, black and white on gorse thickets along the path. The mini-secateurs I bought in Corfe came in handy for cutting back prickly whips trying to reclaim the path space. Explored the old Winspit quarry, where coastal limestone was cut out to be dropped onto boats below. Then up to Worth Matravers, for cream tea in the Old Post Office cafe by the village green and duck pond: all the local villages are picturesquely stone-built, and along the Priests Way between fields or 'wares' and quarries to Langston Matravers where we took relief in the proper public loos at Putlake Adventure farm, and were picked up by the bus homeward. About 18k steps. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
2:42 pm	Life Aquatic, and other notes 1) Yesterday 120 lengths (3 km) in 95 mins -- first time I've managed it within the 100 min barrier. Today a mere 1 mile (64 lengths) in just under 50 mins. 2) Sunday: despite the dodgy weather 60+ turned out for 'Palace Gates Railway' walk I suggested to Tottenham Civic Society and co-led -- principally the stretches that now run through two allotment sites, one of them ours. Railway enthusiasts waved a slim vol on the 'Palace Gates to North Woolwich Railway' by JE O'Connor, and pics in a hardback vol titled something like Old Passenger Railways. JN was hero of serving refreshments -- raised £25 for the local Save Wards Corner campaign. 3) Last week: at Norderns Ark (the Northern Ark), a conservation zoo in Sweden which focuses on breeding and re-introduction of northern temperate species. I got to go in the wolverine enclosure while they were being fed (and given their cinnamon aromatherapy fix), and since we were very good, to then go in with the otters while they played with their food. Did not go into the Amur tiger or Amur leopard enclosures while they were being fed; and 'dinner with wolves' kept the wolves on the other side of a glass-wall, though their keepers did walk among them dishing out their scraps. Lots of charming 'groda' and 'pada' (frogs and toads) in new wetland area -- all under threat from pollution, the chytrid fungus, and habitat destruction. Bronze Age rock carvings of ships just outside the zoo boundary -- where fresh water runs down to what would have been the shore of the fiord at that time. We were there as a bunch of international experts invited for a workshop on why society doesn't value nature as it should, and what role Norderns Ark could play in remedying this: discussion highlighted new parents and their babies (training and follow-up 'club' possibly including birthday books for the first 5 birthdays); Young Ambassadors scheme; and hosting key political meetings in the zoo, so politicians make decisions where they are reminded why they, and other people, actually really love nature when they encounter it (feeding them to the tigers if they make wrong decisions wasn't discussed). Special star visitors to bring in press attention were Jane Goodall (the chimp lady) and Crown Princess Victoria, whose entourage included two very impressive Arnie-Schwartzenegger look-alikes). Sure enough: double-page spread in the main Swedish newspaper on the morning we said our goodbyes. 4) Week before: Provence -- Roman remains, picturesque medieval towns, Cezanne's delightfully peaceful studio a long climb above the town centre of Aix... Must write up properly... 5) Next weekend: walking bits of Hadrian's Wall 6) Hello garden? hello allotment? First swifts spotted here last Friday. Today, about half a dozen just-fledged great tits perched fluffily gormless all around the back garden. (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
11:30 am	#17 Miracle at Speedy Motors, Alexander McCall Smith We thoroughly enjoyed watching the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency on the telly, fine comforting Sunday evening viewing -- though Jill Scott as Mma Precious Ramotse struck me as insufficiently traditionally built compared to many of the ladies with whom I share the shower room at the local swimming pool here. I picked up the series with the first couple of books, having spotted a favourable review when they were first published, and have followed it since: I like my murders nice,quiet and comforting so McCall's affectionate approach to his characters and Botswana setting, using pretty simple (okay, thin enough to poke your finger through) plots to set a story running, suits me fine. With so much of what's written about the 'Dark Continent' grinding our noses in its real and pressing problems, it's good to have stories reminding us that Africa is not just issues of poverty, nor just a tourist safari destination, but a place of people living out their own lives -- and that are decent, warm and diverse personalities with individual life-stories. As JN commented, the TV series was the first ever shown on the Beeb with an all-black cast and at peak viewing time, for the mainstream audience. Quite a breakthrough. That said: the international development charities I recommend for your support -- all providing practical support and working with local staff and local communities -- are Practical Action (developing 'appropriate technology' solutions that local people can make and maintain themselves), Water Aid (providing clean water and toilets for the shocking number of villages and urban slums without these basic necessities for health and decency); Tree Aid (supports tree nurseries and growing of useful trees that provide crops as well as shade and firewood, as part of conservation agro-forestry 'greening of Africa'); and Concern -- which, like Oxfam, works as a fairly conventional development organisation with a strong emphasis on building long-term self-reliance through working with communities. (Comment on this)
11:28 am	#16 Ancient Frontiers: geology of Hadrians Wall Hadrian's Wall runs along the Whin Sill ridge, a snake of hard volcanic rock that whose eastern end is the Farne Islands: geology is the foundation of landscape, erodes into the soils that condition what plants will grow as natural habitats. My Grandma came third in geology for the whole state of New South Wales, she passed an informed interest in rocks and stones on to my Mum, who in turn brought home books about plate tectonics back when Wegener'theory was fringe maverick stuff, books about fossils, and picked up and theorised about interesting rocks. So when I started working for English Nature, I was charmed to find my colleagues included a band of enthusiasts paid to be proper geologists. They pointed me toward this slim vol which explains the story with maps and jolly coloured pictures. It starts 420m years ago, in the early Carboniferous, with the various bits of continental plate that now form Europe whirled into collision with the North American plate to form a new Laurentia (or Old Red Sandstone) continent lying rounghly athwart the equator: the collision zone underlies Hadrian's Wall, and became covered by a shallow tropical sea, with layers of sediment -- mud, sand, lime sea-life shells -- washed down and settling on the sea-floor. Around 295 m years ago, at the end of the Carboniferous, stretching of the earth's crust (as what is now North America broke gradually away? this pop report doesn't say) let a surge of magma seep through to the surface, which solidified as the dolerite of the Whin Sill, which being harder than the surrounding sedimentary strata, now stands proud of them as the fine defensive ridge the Romans used to define their frontier. (Ancient Frontiers: exploring the geology and landscape of the Hadrian's Wall Area, published by British Geological Survey) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
10:55 pm	Slow down, I want to get off Easter challenge at chez gardeners: re-building the backyard pond. Not as hard as the_gardener thought it would be, and he did all the work. Now just needs about 5 dozen emptied green wine bottles -- to edge bed around the front bank -- and it is finished. We have several neighbours, and the-gardener, duly sacrificing their livers in the cause. Feel free to contribute. Next weekend, I'm teaching a two-day Introduction to Permaculture course down by the canal. Bother -- I was hoping the numbers wouldn't materialise and I'd get the weekend off. When I agreed the date, I was planning to have the whole of the following fortnight off, with a week in Provence in the middle. But as its come near, Important Meetings have been landing on all my days booked off, and its just the week we're actually away in Provence I've managed to keep clear. And deadlines have been piling up faster than I can bat them back. Result: feeling all stressed out. Remember New Year's Resolution: refrain from getting enthusiastic about things, do not volunteer for anything new -- at werk or outside it. Cultivate one's garden... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
7:46 pm	Spring, part 2 This Easter is timed just right for a fertility festival, though a bit more sunshine wouldn't go amiss. Our seasonal observance this Easter is Re-lining the Back Garden Pond. The new pond-liner arrived just in time, on Maundy Thursday. Today, Easter Sunday, Joseph got himself exceeding muddy breaking up the old edging structure of coping stones and old bricks cemented to hold together, then scooping out ooze, mud and earth to widen and deepen the old hollow and build up the front bank. I rescued edging plants, and scooped out the seven frogs of various sizes that insisted on lurking in the old mud. No tadpoles found surviving in the water which had become v. murky. Then I had to pot up all the rescued plants -- fundraising plant stall fodder. Tomorrow, when its all dried out a bit (fingers crossed, touch wood) we tackle putting in the new liner and re-building the pond edges. So I still didn't get around to sowing parsnips and leek seeds in our accumulated collection of toilet paper cardboard inner tubes, nor brassicas. Friday, though, I pricked out tomato seedlings to grow on in individual pots. I thought I'd been very restrained in my tomato seed sowing: just four seed-pots per variety (double for Gardeners Delight and Tigerella), and just one standard size seedling module tray of tomatoes. All the packets were a few years old, so I scattered a few seeds in each seed-pot just to be on the safe side. I think almost all germinated: so the greenhouse is now crammed with: 24 Gardeners Delight, 26 Tigerella, and about a dozen each of (heritage seed library varieties) Salt Spring Surprise, Black Plum, and Big Rainbow. Seven sweet peppers (capsicum) are still in the electric propagator tray, which sits on top of the old fridge outside the kitchen door, under our new glass-roofed back porch. See, I only sowed five tomato varieties -- exceedingly restrained -- but still end up with nearly 100 baby tomato plants. Ah well, fundraising plant stall fodder. Get in touch if you want to drop in and adopt a couple of infant tomatoes... Out the front, we have tulips -- three window boxes of them. First out was the windowbox of Apricot Beauty in with a flame-orange variety and white daffs, while the Magnolia stellata was still doing its starry starry sky flowering impression. As the magnolia petals dropped, so did the orange tulips. But Princess Irene was opening up in her window box: rusty-apricot petals edged golden yellow with flashes of green running through, double-flowered -- she's looking pretty speccy, at her peak now. And below, alongside the continuing Apricot Beautys, bronze Abu Hasan and a dark purple red variety are still developing, still to open up and do their stuff. Grape hyacinths (muscari) all along the path, and indigo and coral lungworts rampaging across the garden. We're also knee-deep in forget-me-nots. Columbines have put up their heads and are just opening -- nourishing herds of greenfly (aphids) which are the base of garden food webs, food for the ladybird, hoverfly and (if we're lucky) lacewing populations -- then when the aphids take to the air, they are the 'aerial plankton' that is needed to feed summer swallows, martins and swifts. Kill off the 'insect pests' and you kill off the birds that live on them, as I wrote indignantly to Organic Gardening magazine a couple of days ago -- but let the aphids have their heads on mere ornamentals and you support the web of life. In a couple of weeks, we'll have baby ladybird 'alligators' and the translucent bird-poo grubs of hoverfly eating the aphids back into balance. Last weekend, I planted up a summer windowbox for the front: three varieties of ivy-leaf geranium, among dark-blue lobelia and yellow 'creeping jenny' (Lysimachia numularia). Today I planted up three varieties of purple pansies into a windowbox to sit outside the dining room window, a shady spot under the new glass roof; there's a large deep velvety purple black variety, and two small violas -- violet-edged creamy white petals of Magnifico, and Coconut Ice with purple upper petals and creamy lower petals. Spring Part 1 is crocus time through to early daffodils, frogspawn, and the magnolia stellata and blackthorn come into bloom. Spring part 2 is forget-me-nots, tulips and muscari, fruit trees in blossom, tadpoles hatch, and the magnolia stellata drops its petals. And broccoli broccles. Spring Part 3 will (if I remember right) be branches clothed with leaves, flowering of elderberry, hawthorns and lilac -- and Springwatch back on TV with lots of baby birds. This week, though, we've had a huge and fluffily downy just-fledged wood pigeon (with the white crescent moons still to appear each side of its neck) perched on the arch in the back garden -- as if its parents left it there as a safe spot where it could find its own feet, wings and food. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
7:38 pm	#15 Your home in a changing climate Sub-title Retro-fitting existing homes for climate change impacts, report for policy makers, by Ove Arup for Greater London Authority/Three Regions Climate Group. Focuses on three climate change impacts: flooding, water stress (ie shortage), and overheating, which are predicted to pose significant risks in London and the South East, with a chapter on 'urban heat island effect', and sets out available 'adaptation' options for the housing sector, indicating the relative costs and effective of the options available. The options distinguish between 'prevention' measures that need to be put in place ahead of the crisis conditions, and 'resilience' measures for riding out the crisis and recovering after it passes. Its main conclusions: that small changes can make a big difference, particularly when it comes to saving water and to reducing CO2 emissions while tackling overheating, and that many of the options have multiple benefits. Most importantly, we need to train up builders, developers and housing managers to ensure their 'skill set' includes understanding what to look out for and what to do about it. It's a slim report, which was propping up a Powerpoint projector at a meeting on 'environmental justice' at London Sustainability Exchange; I pulled it out and was flicking through it, so they let me take the copy away. Having spent last year getting our house climate-proofed, I was interested to see how the report clicked with what we'd worked through. Heat stress is what most affected us: a fortnight above 80F/23C used to turn our bijou Victorian terrace into a heat-trap, an effect exacerbated by the afternoon sun bouncing off the expanse of black tarmac outside without trees to shade it. The report points out that roof and wall insulation that retains winter heat inside also repels summer heat from outside -- which was the main thing we got dealt with. It suggests shutters or reflective blinds -- but neglects the simple behavioural fix of pulling curtains across the windows. It points out that air conditioning is a false fix -- high GHG and water use, and basically shifts indoor heat outside adding to the urban heat island effect. Air-conditioning half the 9 milliion homes in London and the SE would, it calculates, mean an extra million tonnes of CO2 emissions. By 2050, it is predicted that every second summer will be like that of 2003, which caused 600 extra deaths in London and 2000 across the UK. The 'urban heat island' effect exacerbates heat stress in cities: during the 2003 heatwave, temperatures in London were 9C higher than in surrounding rural areas, and summer night-time temperatures are regularly 5-6C higher in London than its surrounds. Greenspaces and water-bodies create measurable 'cool spots' within urban areas. Japanese cities found that the urban heat island effect was creating local thunderstorms (with stress on street drainage, increased damage, disturbance and disruption), and now require all large new developments to use green living roofs. Black -- eg tarmac -- which absorbs all the heat that hits it, is worst for 'urban heat island', with reflective white roofs a better option. However, a combination of solar PV or water heating panels and 'green roofs' plus water harvesting is what's needed for a 'sustainable city'. For water stress, the report suggests basic water saving behaviours and water saving appliances, shower heads and loos -- with the greatest projected saving coming from using a bucket and sponges, rather than hose, to wash cars. This it reckons as saving 15,643 litres per peron per year -- far outweighing garden watering which it reckons at a mere 5,000 litres/person/year (which is only just ahead of 'repair dripping taps' at 4745 l/p/y. These measures, it reckons, could reduce water use by 14%, saving 410 mega-litres/day or 150,000 mega-litres/year -- the equivalent of three cities the size of Birmingham's total water use. London and South-east already uses more water than falls as rainfall -- we are effectively living in desert conditions. Cutting hot water use (eg showers, washing machines, also of course saves the GHG and energy bills to heat the water). As a form of matter, water tends to be neither created nor destroyed -- but can be used many times over. We've gone beyond the report's basic prescriptions by fitting three water butts to catch roof run-off for garden and other use -- soft rainwater is particularly valuable in this hard-water area. It means I'm now able to grow acid-loving plants like blueberries, cranberries, orchids and carnivorous plants. We've also fitted a bathwater diverter, which runs bath, shower and hand-basin water through a 'leaky hose' irrigation run around the back garden. The report notes the potential for making more efficient, multiple use of the rain that falls on the region -- but its recommendations focus on simply fixing the most wasteful current thoughtlessness about water as a limited resource. On flooding, we're inclined to be smug -- we bought on the other side of the ridge above the Lea Valley, so are in the clear on the Environment Agency's useful local flood risk map. I'm pleased to be able to skip that chapter as it looks alarmingly complicated and expensive. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
7:34 pm	#14 Talking 9-5 by Deborah Tannen Sub-titled: How men's and women's conversational styles affect who gets heard, who gets credit, and what gets done at work. Tannen is a socio-linguist who has found that packaging work as about men v. women is a pretty sure-fire way for popular sales. This 1995 book focuses on how communication styles worked in formal organisations then, particularly in signalling and negotiating status. She describes 'male' styles, based on trying to be 'one up' by putting others 'one down, contrasted with 'female' styles that seek to create a co-operative group and de-emphasise status differences. Some of her most effective illustrative episodes recount how she, as a female professor, is again and again assumed to be a secretary or assistant while her male research students are treated as obviously the ranking boss. She warns that male/female style are generalisations -- and that individuals who don't conform are often perceived as strident, aggressive women or as weak and sissy men. She also points out that she is describing US work contexts, noting that (for example) British men have a downplayed, less aggressively competitive style US men, and also noting German and Japanese cultural patterns of communicating work status and differential styles and treatment of men and women in workplaces - and that different US regions differ too. No style is necessarily bad or good, she cautions -- it is not understanding the communicative styles and expectations that causes trouble, while understanding others' expectations enables people to play and negotiate effectively. How much has changed since 1995? One thing that has changed is the Tannen's description of 'female' managerial style has become widely recognised; another is that most managers now have spent their working lives in with 'career women' and so there is greater acceptance and understanding of 'female' communication and negotiation styles. But... it is still expected that women will be 'feminine' in their personal styles, rather than forceful and direct as men are allowed to be; there is still a tendency to assume that a male will be senior to their female colleague; and there is still marked disparity in gender ratios at top levels of organisations, and in salary levels even among men and women doing the same job. Which suggests that getting more used to women in workplaces, and understanding different styles, doesn't necessarily translate into equal treatment. (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
3:01 pm	joys of werking at home a pair of ring doves bonking on back fence outside the window Werk: comments for an internal evidence review of what we know, and need to know, about 'landscape', why it matters and how to protect and manage it. Then go swim. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
7:26 am	#13 Freakonomics Freakonomics, by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner Levitt spots interesting questions about human behaviour, looks at the incentives at work, and crunches the numbers to investigate what's actually going on. So why do crack dealers live with their moms? For this he draws on fieldwork info collected by Sudhir Venkatesh, who was sent to do a sociology PhD administering a questionnaire in the 'projects' housing estates of Chicago, found that this was a) inappropriate and b) nearly got him killed by a teen gang he walked into -- so he went back, and talked his way into hanging about with the gang as ethnography fieldwork, with the permission and thus protection of the smart and efficient gang leader, a business studies graduate. No other gang had their own pet anthroologist. One set of info that Venkatash was handed was the accounts of the gang -- number-crunching through these, Levitt found that the gang leader got to roll in moolah, but the street runners and other rank and file got peanuts for the risks they ran. So they lived with their moms. Least satisfying chapter focuses on abortion as causing reduced crime. Here, the Steves breeze through and dismiss other possible crime reducing factors -- but we have to take their word that none of the others stack up, since they don't show the data, or give only partial snippets of data. Sure, its plausible enough that legalised abortion will be taken up by poor, uneducated, young women who would struggle with motherhood and whose kids, if born, would therefore be particularly prone to becoming crime statistics. They point out rightly that abortions allow women whose current circumstances are insecure to postpone babies and give the women more chance to finish education, get a job, move on to a good secure relationship -- and then have kids who will be (statistically) less prone to fall into crime. But the policy change from abortion being illegal and less available to being made legal will generally be part of a wider socially liberal package of policies. So I'm not convinced that the correlation between change in legality of abortion and (15-20 years later) drop in crime figures is the overwhelming causal factor. The other chapters I remember look at the pattern of cheating in sumo wrestling -- A lets B win when A has a secure lead in the series and B really needs a win to stay in - followed by B letting A win a subsequent match, at evidence that lower-income, drop-out of education black kids tend to be given fancy names -- and job applicants with those fancy 'black' names are discriminated against when it comes to shortlisting for job interviews. As the cover claims, it's an enjoyable light read that pulls some fun out of economics, the dismal science. (Comment on this)
Friday, February 20th, 2009
7:06 pm	#8-12 -- various Cardiff area guidebooks Star of the bunch is 'The essential Cardiff Castle' (48pp, 2 fold-out site plans), with its photos of the exuberantly and inventively extravagant Victorian Gothic mansion by William Burges for the 3rd Lord Bute. In hindsight, it would have been well worth splashing out on the big book of Cardiff Castle with lots more pictures. The Cadw guidebooks of 'Caerleon Roman Fortress' and 'Caerwent Roman Town' (48pp and 60pp, each with a modern and a Roman fold-out site map as endpapers) are both good workmanlike summaries that put what's visible on the ground there in the context of wider Roman (and native British) history, with useful illustrations of finds now removed to museums, of past excavations and excavators, and recreation/reconstruction artists' impressions. 'St Fagans National History Museum Visitor Guide'(a chunky76pp, with fold-out site map and separate 'Map and Information' leaflet) provides a well-illustrated reminder of the buildings that make up the open-air collection. It's a tribute to the interest of the collection that I found the brief descriptive texts far too bare. Finally, 'The Jarrold Guide to the Welsh Capital City of Cardiff, with city centre map and illustrated walk' (29pp): again, lavishly illustrated, a handy reminder of what we saw where, and that what we saw was most of what's recommended as tourist Cardiff. What we didn't see: Castell Coch, Llandaff Cathedral, the natural history wing of National Museum of Wales, and Newport -- including Newport Museum where the finds from Caerwent are held. It would be nice to go back and see Cardiff again when there's not a bleak icy wind slicing through it, ideally during daffodil season. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
7:51 pm	Seedy Sunday We're running a 'Seed Swap Sunday' this coming weekend: Sun 22/2, 2-4pm, at Bruce Castle Museum. Free, with a sociable mini-cafe area. Do drop in if you're in the vicinity, and vaguely interested in gardening type stuff. Or in seeing the_gardener's pet museum, originally Tottenham Manor, associated with Robert the Bruce, with the country's only surviving Tudor hawk mews, and (for the fannish) associated with Rowland Hill who invented the penny post and an early form of duplicator... On Monday/Tuesday, we get our old and decaying back fence ripped down and a new one put up. Life, she's so full of excitements (1 Comment |Comment on this)
7:14 pm	#7 -- Prehistory: making of the Human Mind, by Colin Renfrew Part 1 is an excellent account of origins and evolution of the concept and study of 'prehistory'. Part 2 surveys what can be deduced of the evolution of human mind from the material traces available for study by archaeologists, anthropologists and historians. To a great extent this reprised the 'origins of anthropology' lectures I sat through in the first year of my undergrad degree, but with some fancy new jargon coined and more reference to actual archaeological examples. But until Renfrew pointed it out, the penny hadn't dropped that while people believed in the Biblical or Classical (Greco-Roman) creation myths and legendary histories, there was no 'prehistory'. Only after the early geologists showed how evidence of a very old Earth was written in the rocks and fossils, and Darwin and others posited a single evolutionary development of life, including humans, was there intellectual space to make sense of human cultures and remains that did not fit into the Biblical accounts. Renfrew deals fairly lightly with the various 'diffusionist' theories that sought to trace all civilisations back to a single, usually Middle Eastern origin. I really don't like Renfrew's term 'material engagement' for what emerged when hunter-gatherers switched to settled agricultural lifestyles. For one thing, hunter-gatherers like the Australian Aborigines or African Bushmen seem to me to be no less 'engaged' with their physical or material environment -- though clearly there are fundamental changes in the ways that material engagement is exercised. Calling it 'material entanglement' or 'material accumulation' would seem more accurate -- but I'm not sure that 'material elaboration' would apply. For a second thing, 'engagement' currently seems the all-purpose trendy jargon word for all contexts -- at work, we aim to 'increase engagement with natural environment', organisations are all earnestly 'engaging' their staff, stakeholders, the communities in which they operate, etc etc... Even earlier, Renfrew talks about transition from the 'speciation' stage of human prehistory -- biological evolution of our branch of the primate family -- Homo erectus developing into H. neandertal in Europe, the 'out of Africa' emergence of H sapiens initially around the south Asian coastline and down to Australia well before H sapiens made it across the deserts and ice into Europe -- into what he terms the 'tectonic' stage of human development. 'Tectonic' may well be defined as 'constructed', and so applicable to what we did with tools, language and learned cultures. However, it is now used for 'plate tectonics' -- the slow macro-geological processes of volcanism, earthquakes, mountain-building and subduction -- that trying to apply it otherwise just sounds wrong. Apart from these outcroppings of 'processual' New Archaeology jargon, it is a magisterial synthesis aimed at helping yer average trowel-in-mitt digging archaeologist to think beyond the material objects that can be reconstructed from physical traces left by past lives, and to have some confidence about the cultural patterns that may be deducible by applying social anthropological principles and patterns. (Comment on this)
Friday, February 13th, 2009
8:50 pm	Caerdydd in the snow To Cardiff last week for Festival of Archaeology and associated events -- our idea of fun. It was the two tours offered as part of the event that attracted me to sign us up -- a 'Roman' tour to Caerleon and Caerwent, and the other to St Fagans Museum of Welsh Life and a medieval village. Unfortunately, they were simultaneous so you had to choose just one. On the other hand, if we went the day before, we could catch a bus out to St Fagans and see that under our own steam. So, on Wednesday we entrained ourselves to Wales, leaving snow lying on our back garden and in the face of doom-laden (or at least snow-laden) weather forecasts. The B&B we booked off the web may be the perfect place to stay in Cardiff( Read more... ). So Wednesday -- Cardiff Castle and general orientation; Thursday -- St Fagans and Cardiff Bay; Friday -- Caerwent and Caerleon; Sat and Sunday -- fascinating Archaeology Festival lectures in National Museum of Wales and the University. ( Read more... ) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
8:37 pm	#4-6: Bird in the Tree; Herb of Grace; Heart of the Family, by Elizabeth Goudge I acquired these battered copies back when it seemed still possible to pick up Elizabeth Goudge's books in secondhand shops; it's a long time now since I've seen any on their shelves -- but perhaps the forthcoming Moonacre film will prompt some re-printings. I recall reading a biographical article about Elizabeth Goudge in some sort of school reading newsletter, well before I came across any of her actual books: a clergyman's daughter, who grew up around cathedrals, and suffered periodic spells of depression. My impression is that she wrote as a defence and defiance against depression -- writing of it as a 'blackdog' or a Thing. Her writing is characterised by warm affection, that casts a serene charm over what she writes about. Little happens beyond the ordinary -- but simply surviving, doing the right thing day by day, appreciating beauty and humanity, place, nature, dogs and gardens, she casts as heroic defiance against weaknesses and temptations. She writes, unfashionably these days, about religious faith -- often pulled back from embarassing sentiment by acerbic practicalities. These three books create and follow the Eliots of Damerosehay, their dogs and children, revolving around an idealised old house growing set among trees in the marshes at the edge of the village of Keyhaven at the south of the New Forest, looking out toward a Henry VIII-built castle and the Isle of Wight, and the Hard ship-builders village on the Beaulieu River -- a great pleasure visiting them after reading the loving gloss she casts on them. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 2nd, 2009
6:53 pm	#3: Consider the Birds, by Colin Tudge New Scientist's reviewer liked this, except for the long section detailing all the different orders of birds and their evolutionary relationships. It sounded like the sort of book I've been on the look-out for, ever since picking up scattered cryptic asides suggesting that Australia seems to have been a pretty significant site in bird evolution. Sure enough, I had great fun working through the avian orders, flicking back and forward between text and the two fold-out evolutionary trees at the back of the book. Sure enough, Australia seems to have more than its share of 'primitive' branches in the bird tree -- among the galloanseriae (ducks, geese, chooks) for instance, the magpie goose harking back to before the ducks split off from the geese, and the megapodes or mallee fowl family, lots of unique passeriformes harking back to before the great corvid and passerine species bushes. The other Gondwanan continents, South America and Africa, are also rich in stray evolutionary twigs of brilliant feathers. The tree of relationships still far from clear, with DNA showing that, for instance, swifts and humming-birds are cousins of the nightjars, at great evolutionary distance from the passerine swallows and martins, while grebes and flamingoes are closely related to each other but nothing much else. Tudge skips fairly lightly over the dinosaur-bird descent. Other chapters explore the different ways that different birds cope with key aspects of survival -- feeding, courting, breeding, migrating, etc. Excellent value acquisition to our collection. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
8:24 pm	#2: Europe Between the Oceans 9000BC-AD1000, Barry Cunliffe From the end of the Ice Age (Mesolithic) to the emergence of what are recognisably the emergence of the modern nation-states, the medieval feudal kingships. I noted Cunliffe's previous book, Facing the Ocean, in which he pulled together evidence of a strong 'Atlantic culture' based on trading contacts among communities from Cadiz to Brittany to Cornwall, Ireland and the Orkneys -- where the Neolithic megalith monuments originated, and where the (surviving traces of)'Celtic'languages are found. His new book widens the story, looking at Europe as a peninsula jutting off the western edge of the great Eurasian landmass and following the story of when, where and why different cultures moved across and through it, mainly from their archaeological traces. He's neither a diffusionist nor a migrationist: rather, he weighs up whether any given shift in material culture seems likely to result from an invading horde sweeping in from the steppes -- many of these, usually coming to rest in the Hungarian basin beyond the curve of the Carpathians, or was more likely a slow and fairly peaceful process of trade goods and gradual mingling of populations (as with the spread of Neolithic agriculture and associated fashions). Cunliffe and Colin Renfrew are the two pre-eminent 'grand of men' of British archaeological history -- Cunliffe shows his understanding of how the archaeological evidence fits together across time and territory, following the geographical logic of rivers, coastlines, currents, winds and the lie of the land. Good stuff. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
12:24 pm	Life aquatic Last two swims were both 80 lengths (2km) in 65 minutes; its a luxury having time to spend a whole hour in the water (plus at least 15 mins to get in there, and a good half-hour for showering and getting back into dry clothes afterwards). What I enjoy about swimming is feeling like a fish, cutting through the water with minimum resistance and effort. Coming up to breathe air is an inefficiency, to be kept to a minimum. Doing the crawl feels like a predator -- a shark, tuna or barracuda, a sleek power stroke. Doing breast-stroke, with several strokes between breaths which allows you to slide along submerged, feels more like being a ray gliding along just under the surface, a very smooth, relaxing stroke. I can't see the point of the modern version of the stroke that has people bobbing up and down with effort. Backstroke doesn't feel fish-like, but does let me watch the pigeons and sea-gulls that stand around on the translucent roof panels over the pool, presumably enjoying warm feet from heat rising up. Normal swim these days feels like 50 lengths in 35/40 mins -- any less feels like I haven't really started, just a warm-up. Guardian 'Get Fit' booklet on Saturday: interesting to see Rebecca Adlington's training routine, which includes 3km in 1 hour training swim (plus 30 mins warm-up + 30 mins warm-down) -- my achieving about 2/3 of Olympic rate seems pretty good to me. Admittedly, her other regular training swim, she says, is 8km in 2 hours, which is well beyond me. Huge gap between that and the G's recommended routine for not new swimmers but those on a plateau: 12 lengths in Wk 1 working up to a whole 16 lengths in Wk 4! Bleedin'ell: back last winter, 20 lengths was where I started. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 10th, 2009
9:49 am	#1: Dawn of the Dumb, by Charlie Brooker Brooker is not so much over the top in his rabidly inventive ragings against the stupidities of modern life, telly and people (what are they all about? what's their appeal?), as charging across the plain hacking all about, screaming himself hoarse. Compared to Brooker, my own dear the_gardener is laidback and of unimpeachable moderation; JN's reading of this book (a present on his birthday) was punctuated by eruptions of giggling and occasional outbreaks of rolling in his chair. Brooker reminded me why I find JN entertaining (but in moderation, dear): on the page, righteous raging makes no noise and can be turned off at will by closing the book. We've seen Brooker's Guardian columns as they appear -- and they stand up fine to re-reading. The video game so horrific Brooker is driven to doing the washing up to escape it, then tidying his flat sticks in mind as my favourite vignette of his chaotic life, followed by his terror at his rented flat being put up for sale -- faced with the arcane ordeals of looking for new place to live, contracts to be signed, all his stuff having to be packed and moved, the easiest way out seems to try to buy his old place. Some of the columns have follow-up epilogues -- but he doesn't tell us how this one worked out. Who couldn't sympathise with his loathing of having to be grown-up, with all the paperwork, especially financial stuff, it lands on you -- and of the garishly nastiness of cheap shops signs with their distorted typography. He takes fire at lots of TV rubbish, with what I found a very accurate instant take on the fatuity of Lost -- I find TV reviews exceedingly handy in saving me from having to watch stuff. Towards the end, the G. sends him to the mud and primitive loos and hippy dippy crowds of Glastonbury -- which, to his baffled astonishment, he finds he's enjoying himself. And he has a correct appreciation of David Attenborough. The man seems like one of the righteous. (1 Comment |Comment on this)