new year reflections: december 2017…

Another year’s reflections (as always - a reminder to ME!):
It’s been a good year, DESPITE the fact that I’m regularly still feeling depressed about the repercussions regarding Trump and Brexit… and the continuing struggles of austerity and the widening gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of this world.

Anyway, on the more positive things:
WONDERFUL BOOKS:
My top FOURTEEN (yes, I know… sorry!), in some sort of order!! (I’d intended to limit it to just FIVE, but found it impossible): Ink (Alice Broadway)(you bet!); How To Disappear Completely (Si Smith)(brilliant!); Please Mr Postman+The Long and Winding Road (Alan Johnson); The Summer Game (Neville Cardus); Venice (Jan Morris); The Broken Road (Patrick Leigh Fermor); Eating Pomegranates (Sarah Gabriel); Love Nina (Nina Stibbe); Long Live Great Bardfield – Autobiography (Tirzah Garwood); Seven Brief Lessons On Physics (Carlo Rovelli); Signs for Lost Children+Bodies of Light (Sarah Moss); and Honourable Friends? (Caroline Lucas).
GREAT FILMS:
My top eleven in vague order (sorry… I tried to get it down to five, but found it impossible): Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool; My Life As A Courgette; On Body And Soul; Final Portrait; Loving Vincent; The Red Turtle; Manchester By The Sea; The Death Of Stalin; Silence; La La Land; and Dunkirk.
LOVELY LIVE PERFORMANCES (broken down into various categories):
THEATRE:
Peter Pan (National Theatre); Vice Versa (RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon); Up Down Man (Tobacco Factory Theatre); Golem (Bristol Old Vic); Racing Demon (Theatre Royal, Bath); Question Mark (Bristol Cathedral); and Tartuffe (Tobacco Factory Theatre).
CONCERTS:
Ricky Ross; Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla and the CBSO (Beethoven’s Fifth); Graham Gouldman; O’Hooley+Tidow; Phil King (Live); Ligeti Quartet (Remembering The Future); and all the excellent Monday lunchtime concerts at Saint Stephen’s church.
EXHIBITIONS:
Not as many as I’d intended (maybe I’ve missed out one or two?): Modigliani at Tate Modern; Grayson Perry at the Arnolfini; World Turned Upside Down, Leeds; Simon Fujiwara etc at Leeds Art Gallery; the Annual Open Exhibition at the RWA; and Degas at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
SPORTING MOMENTS:
“Live” sport this year, included: County cricket at Taunton and Bristol (which I really enjoyed – and I’ve resolved to watch more games in the coming season); Bristol Rugby at Ashton Gate (including winning against Bath) and at Exeter (narrowly defeated)… despite subsequent relegation. 
FRIENDS:
Once again, we’ve been blessed to be able to meet up with many of our lovely “special” friends (they know who they are!) on a pretty frequent basis during the course of the year… always special occasions – there have been a LOT of sixtieth birthday celebrations (always good to have friends that are much younger than you!)… and have also really enjoyed making new friendships.
ART STUFF:
Another really enjoyable, busy year, including:
1. I’ve still very much enjoyed continuing to post a drawing or photograph every day as part of my “One Day Like This” blog (now more than 950 drawings and 950 photographs since I started in September 2012).
2. The brilliant Drawing Group I joined last year – organised by the wonderful, talented artists Charlotte and Alice Pain with the support of the Churches Conservation Trust – continues to bring me great joy. We meet for two hours most Tuesdays (and also occasionally go “on tour” to draw other churches).
The Group also held exhibitions at St John-on-the-Wall and Saint Stephen’s churches, Bristol.
3. We had another successful Arts Trail at number 40 (I think this was our 14^th consecutive year)… and attracted some 700 people into our basement over the Arts Trail weekend! At one stage, it looked as if there wouldn’t be a 2018 Arts Trail (due to lack of organisers) but, apparently, volunteers have come forward. Well done them!
4. Iris, Rosa and I combined to produce some large window art as part of another very successful Window Wanderland in February.
5. I provided a ‘Sleeping Rough’ photograph for the wonderful ‘World Turned Upside Down’ exhibition in Leeds.
6. I supplied cards for the HOME shop at The Architecture Centre, Bristol (twelve cards from my ‘Ordinary Lines’ series).
FAMILY AND SIMPLE PLEASURES:
Cafes, reading, drawing, photography, walking, cinema, living near the sea (well, sort of…) and, of course, looking after our Bristol grandchildren remain very important aspects of my life (although, now that they’re all at school, our time with them is sadly a little reduced these days… but school-runs and child-sitting partly make up for it!).
Feel SO lucky to have the family we have… and great that we all “get on” so well and are able to see each other regularly (even if we don’t see the lovely Chorley/Lancashire contingent as often as we’d like).
I continue to spend a fair amount of my café time at the wonderful Mokoko on Gaol Ferry Steps!
SOMETHING YET TO BE CREATED:
Definitely need to give more thought to this… lots of things I’d earmarked last year remain untouched, so maybe I need to re-visit them? There’s part of me that would like to do a couple of large paintings – perhaps based on my ‘ordinary’ coloured drawings? HOLIDAYS/LEISURE: 
We’ve tightened our belts again this year, but have been delighted to enjoy a few odd excursions and stopovers to Oxford (50^th anniversary college reunion!); Cambridge; Salisbury; and Leeds (well, for me at least).
Sadly, we were also due to have a few days at Drimnin in the Western Highlands – but had to cancel at the last minute because the builders had failed to complete in time.
Not a single game of golf this year (and only one or two the previous year). I think I’m now officially an ‘ex-golfer’!
SPIRITUAL LIFE:
We continue to be part of the Community of Saint Stephens (St Stephens Street in the heart of the city) and it really does now feel like our ‘spiritual home’. We’ve made some really good friends with the very special people there and, although my own faith-life continues on its rather meandering course, it all feels pretty good, hopeful stuff…
I meet up most Wednesday mornings in Dom’s Cafe at 7.30am with a small group of great mates for “Bloke’s Prayer”… which has proved to be pretty brilliant.
HEALTH:
I had quite a SHOCK just before Easter. After my slight “breathlessness” and atrial fibrillation issues of the previous year, I’d been continuing to attend hospital appointments to monitor things… 6 minute walk tests and lung function tests plus various consultations. I’d previously had a CT scan which had highlighted some shadowing on my lungs. The long and short of it all is that a multi-specialist team had met to discuss my ‘case’ and had concluded that I had Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF)… and, at a subsequent appointment, the consultant went on to explain that this was a “serious” condition and that, historically, life expectancy for someone in my condition would be in the region of 3.5-5 years - which, given the time since my previous CT scan, meant closer to 2.5-4 years (it turns out that Keith Chegwin, who died very recently, aged 60, had IPF). Blimey!! There followed more tests and a further CT scan… and, somewhat miraculously (because it seems such things simply don’t happen), the results now showed only minimal lung shadowing. My test results were similarly very positive and, as a consequence, the multi-specialist team was “no longer convinced” that I had a fibrosis… and I’ve now been given an appointment for next August – merely as a monitoring exercise. So, as you can imagine, HUGE relief all round!!     
In other, minor, health matters(!), my cut/inflamed right shin (I mentioned it last year) has now more or less healed… but, for much of this year, I’d also been struggling with painful plantar fasciitis and Morton’s neuroma in my right foot. Touch wood, these now seem pretty much under control/sorted (well, almost). My teeth continue to fall out… and I’ve now got hearing aids (which, of course, I hardly use!)… but, hey, I actually feel in good health and walk more than 3 miles every day, relatively pain-free (touch wood, as you do!) – which is pretty wonderful.
OTHER STUFF:
1. After four very enjoyable years, I’ve now retired as a Trustee at the wonderful Windmill Hill City Farm – although I continue to be involved in minor ways.
2. I now serve on the PCC of Saint Stephen’s church.
3. We are no longer car owners! Living in the city, and within a 10 minute walk of the harbourside (and with our bus passes for other local journeys), we found that we hardly used the car… so, when our old Citroen finally needed expensive repair (which we couldn’t really afford), we decided to bite the bullet and get rid of it. Instead, we’re car club members (Co-Wheels – with three car options within 0.3 miles of our front door)… or, for longer trips, we hire a car… or travel by rail. We still haven’t fully adapted to the change (we need to get better at planning impromptu trips to NT properties, the coast and the like… we’ll no doubt adapt over time).
For us as a family, it’s been another good year… and we continue to count our blessings. We wish you (and all yours) a very happy, healthy and peaceful 2018!
Photo: Christmas Steps drawing from my 2017 Bristol Calendar.

december 2017 books…

Modigliani (ed. Simonetta Fraquelli and Nancy Ireson): This is the excellent book that accompanies the Tate exhibition. Like the exhibition itself, the book follows the artist’s journey through his adopted city of Paris in the early years of the 20^th century… his influences, his friends, his fellow artists, his patrons, the sense of excitement and creativity, the café culture, the changing attitudes to sex and the way people dressed, the influence of early cinema, the First World War etc. Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis in 1920 at the age of just 36. It’s a very lovely book.
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (JK Rowling): My third Harry Potter book(!)… and my admiration for JK Rowling’s writing continues… intelligent, hugely inventive, dark, excellent characters and a brilliant joined-up plot. I could go on… but you’ve probably already read the book yourself!
Bodies Of Light (Sarah Moss): As I’ve previously blogged, I’d mistakenly read Moss’s “Signs For Lost Children” out of order… so I’m now ‘catching up’ by reading its predecessor (published in 2014)! When I first started reading it, I thought I would find it all pretty frustrating – reading about past events knowing, in many instances, how things would eventually pan out. But, actually, it gave a rather interesting insight to this family saga. It’s an incredibly powerful story (set in the 1860s and 70s) about a family in Manchester. The mother is a zealous social campaigner, who offers no hint of warmth+joy and inflicts domestic cruelty and control on her daughters (particularly eldest daughter Ally). The central character, daughter Ally, breaks free from the family to study in London as a medical student and, in 1880, becomes one of the first women physicians in Britain (the fictional Ally and her small band of peers is apparently loosely based on the ‘Edinburgh Seven’ - the first British women to bear the name of "doctor"). It’s a brilliant book and a constant reminder of the shameful attitude of male-dominated society towards women of that time… and how, indeed, such issues exist even today. I’ve also become aware that there is another, earlier book about this family, featuring Ally’s sister May, entitled “Night Waking” (published in 2011) which I also need to read… obviously!
Women+Power: A Manifesto (Mary Beard): Mary Beard is a bit of a hero (heroine?) of mine… I’ve been incredibly impressed by the way she’s handled the awful social media abuse she’s received over the years (but equally appalled that we, as a society, could act in such disgusting manner). This short book is based on two lectures Beard delivered, courtesy of the London Review of Books, in 2014 and 2017. In it, she traces the roots of misogyny to Athens and Rome (not too surprising, given her classicist background) and draws attention to the deeply embedded mechanisms of Western culture that silence women, that refuse to take them seriously, and that sever them from the centres of power – a very appropriate book to follow Moss’s “Bodies of Light”. What she says is powerful and pragmatic (sometimes depressing, but also frequently funny – she has a gift words) and she speaks not just for women, perhaps, but also for those who feel they have no voice.
Some Small Heaven (Ian Adams): Although this Advent book actually runs until Epiphany, with its daily reflections, I’ve already read the book a number of times (as well as using it for daily reflection) – so it seems reasonable to include it in my 2017 books, rather than over-running into 2018. I always find Ian Adams’s writing thought-provoking and challenging and this book is no different – exactly what I needed for this Advent period (I also used it as a basis for an Advent Walk around Bristol). Excellent.

Well, that’s it for another year… I’ve just added up the number of books I’ve read in 2017 and, somewhat ridiculously, it amounts to 80 in total! Essentially (and, yes, I know it’s not a competition!), that’s more than a book-and-a-half EVERY week… I think it’s called ‘retirement’!

paddington 2...

Mrs Broadway and I went along to the jolly Watershed this afternoon to see Paul King’s “Paddington 2”. We’d seen the first Paddington film with a couple of grandchildren, but today it was just us (plus a few other parents and grandparents and their children!).
And, I have to say, I really enjoyed it… maybe it was something rather traditional about us going to the cinema on the run-up to Christmas?
I thought it was much better than the first Paddington film… the original characters were all still there (Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins as Mr and Mrs Brown, plus Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent and Peter Capaldi… amongst others), but alongside a wonderfully over-the-top Hugh Grant, who plays a villain, ‘showboating actor’.
It’s very good fun, heart-warming… and contains lots of marmalade!
PS: the film also includes a sequence on a steam train from Paddington to Bristol - across stunning countryside, lakes and viaducts. After seeing the film, there are going to be an awful of people booking train tickets for this route... who are going to be very, very disappointed (Didcot and Swindon are just two of the actual highlights!). 

la nativité du seigneur in bristol cathedral…

I’d be the first to admit that organ music is not a particular passion of mine.
However, last night, a small group of us went along to Bristol cathedral to hear Oliver Messiaen’s “La Nativité du Seigneur” (The Birth of the Lord: nine meditations for organ), played by Paul Walton and David Bednall. … and it was rather lovely.
The cathedral lights were dimmed, candles were lit, there was incense in the air… (you get the general idea).
The work - written by Messiaen at the age of 27 (in 1935) whilst he was in residence at Grenoble near the French Alps - lasted for just over an hour… and it was an excellent opportunity to hear this significant work. Something of a meditative alternative to the flurry of carols at this time of year. The piece is considered to be one of the great organ works of all time… and, certainly, best heard in a large cathedral with a suitable organ and acoustics.

We sat in the choir stalls – immediately below the cathedral organ – and, believe me, I don’t think I’ve ever FELT music in such a profound way before in my entire life! The volume of sound filling the huge, soaring spaces of the cathedral and, literally, ‘feeling’ the sound vibrate through one’s body.

Quite an experience and a lovely, hugely impressive, evening.
Photo: looking east from the Choir.

some small heaven: advent walk…

This Advent I’ve been using Ian Adams’s excellent book “Some Small Heaven: Seeking Light in Winter”. It explores a path through Advent, Christmas and Epiphany and seeks to discover the light within the darkness of winter through a series of daily reflections.
Although I have indeed been using the book on a daily basis, I also decided to use it for an Advent Walk around Bristol – relating some of its words to places on my walk, to the people I encountered and to my own somewhat confused (and sometimes pretty bleak) thoughts during this festival period.

As Ian writes in his introduction: “Winter tests our hope and resolve… Some Small Heaven  seeks to discover the light within the darkness of winter – and within all our winters – to find some small heaven each day, even when life comes at us tough, hard and bleak”.

I undertook my walk around Bristol over the course of two days – with no particular planned route, but all the time endeavouring to relate ‘stop locations’ to places and situations I’d been reflecting upon in the book (I’m well aware that I’m posting this well before the end of the Advent, Christmas and Epiphany festivals, but I’ve read the entire book several times over the past couple of months!).

Here are just a few extracts (not exhaustive by any means) from Ian’s book - incidental lines that have particularly struck me in the course of my contemplations and the things that happening in my life (as a reminder to ME, the numbers relate to reflections in the book):

03: “In the valley of shadows you were fearful. You felt alone. Was anyone looking on you with favour?”
04: “You can feel overwhelmed by the hate in the world. By the bitterness. The cynicism.”
07: “Your breathing is hard. Fast. Erratic. You flail… Begin with the breath. Deep, long, slow. And a pause…”
08: “To speak tenderly to others first speak tenderly to yourself.”
09: “When the powerful manipulate the truth, when the powerless are exploited, and when we who seek good seem incapable of bringing change, where is hope?”
13: “It’s about choosing not to allow fear to shape you.”
15: “You keep looking down. And looking back… But you are looking in the wrong direction. Turning in a way that is sending you off balance.”
27: “Resolve to create more sacred space like this. To Listen, to explore, to allow the spirit of creativity to surface.”
30: “What if your task today is to see, and to bless?”
33: “Study the sky. Keep on looking up.”
35: “And if on this pilgrimage you are no more than a sign pointing towards the Love, this will be enough.”

I found my “Advent Walk” hugely valuable, insightful and, at times, quite surprising. As you might recall, I’ve undertaken a similar exercise in the form of a Bristol pilgrimage (adopting the pilgrimage format and reflections I used when I stayed on Iona for a couple of months in 2012). Unlike my ‘pilgrimage journeys’, undertaking a walk around my city in cold December meant that I generally kept on the move and didn’t sit and reflect for 30 minute periods(!), but nevertheless it worked very well.

I’d highly recommend Ian’s book (in fact, it can be read and used at any time, not just for Advent)… he wrote the reflections each day in real time in Advent, Christmas and Epiphany a couple of years ago – through his own challenges and experiences of that time. Powerful and beautiful.
Photo: I took photographs on my walk (surprise, surprise!) and have used some of them to compile a montage as a vague visual backdrop to my experiences.

november-december 2017 books…

The Novel Habits Of Happiness (Alexander McCall Smith): Apparently, we’ve got 11 McCall Smith books on our shelves (I’ve just checked!), but this is the first one I’ve read (he’s one of Moira’s favourite authors). This one is “an Isabel Dalhousie novel”. For the first few chapters, I found myself asking “what’s the point of all this?” – it’s about a well-off, middle-class philosopher, living in Edinburgh, with a perfect husband and a well-behaved, equally perfect 3 year-old son… living an ideal, well-balanced life. But, during the course of the book (which raises questions of reincarnation, the nature of grief, squabbling academics… and more), I became drawn in and fascinated by the intelligent, moral curiosity and kindness of Dalhousie’s world.
Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone (JK Rowling): This is my first Harry Potter book (yes, really)… I’m reading it with the enthusiastic encouragement of certain grandchildren - who have long expressed sympathetic incredulity at what they see as a huge deficiency in my knowledge/life experiences! Well, I have to say that I think Joanne Rowling is a bit of a genius… incredibly inventive, funny, clever and, clearly, with a wonderful ability to conjure up memorable characters and thriller-like stories. I think she might do rather well! I enjoyed it a lot.
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets (JK Rowling): My second Harry Potter book (see above!)… and another very good read. It even featured an old Ford Anglia car – owned by the Weasleys - identical to the very car in which I passed my driving test (we had a two-tone blue one with an intriguing Monte Carlo Rally sticker on one of the back windows!).
The Potter’s Hand (AN Wilson): Yes, I know… a lot of Potter-related stuff! This is a novel about Josiah Wedgewood and his family and, I’m afraid, I really do dislike this kind of historical fiction… with lots of made-up characters, ridiculous invented scenarios and imaginary conversations. Yes, it tells of a remarkable time in this country’s history – the industrial revolution, the scientific inventions, the coming together of men with very different skills that were to transform so many lives… but I would much have preferred to have read a history on the subject or a biography, rather than this long (over 500 pages) tale. Wilson (whose father was in fact Managing Director of Josiah Wedgewood and Sons) is obviously a gifted writer… but I’m afraid this book was definitely not for me (and don’t get me started about the totally made-up story of Blue Squirrel, a Cherokee woman who fell in love with Wedgewood’s nephew and who just happened to be an exquisite potter in her own right and who came over to England and played a leading role in the creation of Wedgewood’s ‘Portland Vase’ and married Wedgewood’s boatman on the canals… all utter tosh!!).  
Signs For Lost Children (Sarah Moss): This is the first of Moss’s novels I’ve read (I’d previously read “Names For The Sea” – a memoir about her time with her family spent in Iceland – a lovely book). This is a follow up to her novel “Bodies Of Light” – which, of course, I haven’t yet read (rather typical of my recent ‘out-of-order’ reading experiences!). It’s set in the 1880s and tells the story of a couple (Ally and Tom) embarking on married life in a white cottage in Cornwall… Idyllic, but Tom is soon given an opportunity to build lighthouses in Japan (an opening he feels he can’t turn down) and, meanwhile, Ally, a doctor, takes up a post at Truro Asylum. It’s only for six months (“letters only take a few weeks now”), but the pair have known each other barely longer than that. It’s a story of individual exploration for both of them but, with separation comes, new challenges, opportunities and realisations. It’s a great shame that I hadn’t initially appreciated that the first book even existed(!) and therefore feel that I missed out on knowing more about Ally’s background… although perhaps the lack of her background story meant that I was able to take both their lives more at face value? It’s a beautiful, powerful, sad-but-hopeful book which highlights (amongst other things) the role of women within the family – I thoroughly recommend it (and wonderfully, elegantly written). I now need to read the first book!