NOT The Charge of the Light Brigade

 

 

In a desperate attempt to get my mind some way away from the interminable “None Of The Above” election of a right-wing dingbat to head up what used to be The Conservative Party and therefore the Brexit Failure that is Britain, I turn to Art.

     Admittedly I can find plenty of examples of works that would reflect what is going on in Britain at the moment, with perhaps Goya’s etching of “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”, or perhaps Bosch with “The Ship of Fools” or even Lady Butler’s “Charge of The Light Brigade” (and yes, I do know that the title is wrong, the brigade is wrong, the war is wrong, the enemy is wrong, and the outcome is wrong for the original painting) but in the popular imagination (and we are, after all in the right-wing world of alternative facts) the painting shows the valiant and deeply stupid charge of horses against artillery, an exercise in Crimean futility and therefore all the more applicable to ‘modern’ Conservatism as exemplified by None of the Above.

     But I want to get away from all that.  I want escape from the realities of life and find solace in Art.

     Except, the more I study art, the less I find that I can use it to exist in that illusory world of appreciation that I thought that my studies would let me access.

     If you study Art History or Art Appreciation nowadays, the one thing that art courses force you to do is to link the art to its time and its society.  The Great Artist concept of creation where a supremely gifted Man (women have only relatively recently made it into the pantheon of greatness!) produces a Work of Art that transcends time and space and lives in a sort of artistic void where It alone exists and where the viewer can truly contemplate it as a separate entity, a calling of soul to soul.

     The concept of the artist as a lonely genius, existing only for their art and starving in a garret if necessary, rather than compromising integrity by bowing to the dictates of mere commercialism, is a tempting fantasy.

     Van Gogh we are told sold no paintings (or just a couple) in his lifetime, but he went on painting.  And he also went on being supported by his brother, Theo, so Vincent could go on producing the paintings that had so little (literal) currency while he was alive, and we also have the letters that the brothers sent to each other which are well worth reading.

     Artists have to live and they need money.  Blake did drawings for Wedgewood for a catalogue of china; Turner churned out popular prints for commercial exploitation when he was younger; atheists painted religious art for wealthy church patrons; portraitists flattered their sitters; Warhol, well, Warhol exploited exploitation and made Art out of artfulness, or something!

     I suppose that, for me, the ideal ‘absolute’ painting would be one of Monet’s water Lilly canvasses.  Living and being brought up in Cardiff and having access to the National Museum in Cathays Park meant that I could go (for free, except for the imposition of museum charges by the Conservative government under Heath of evil memory) and see the Davies Sisters’ Bequest to the museum.

     The Davies sisters were the daughters of coal owners who had an interest in art, knew Vollard the art dealer and bought extensively and then bequeathed their artistic riches to the nation.  In what I often take pride in describing as the greatest collection of Impressionist paintings outside London, I was able to enjoy Renoir, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Sisley, and more (and yes, I do know that not all of those painters are comfortably contained by the term Impressionist) at my leisure and pleasure.

     The paintings I always came back to were the three water lily paintings by Monet, with my favourite being the most abstract.  When I was younger, I used to think when I looked at it that it was a sort of solemn communion between the painting and my callow self.  Nothing else existed.

     Except, of course, things did.  And do.

      Quite apart from where the Davies sisters got their money and how it was made, there is the whole question of why they bought Monet when they did.  How did Monet get to be famous and his paintings collectable?  And why collect paintings at all?  What does a painting really show what does it really represent?

     Before we get bogged down in the philosophical questions about the production, sale and display of art, let’s just consider a simple, practical element in the mythology of Impressionism.

     In the series of paintings that Monet completed he chose subjects like the façade of Rouen Cathedral, haystacks, and lilies in one specific pond, trees.  He painted thee subject multiple times at different times of the day and with different viewpoints.  As opposed to the previously highly finished canvasses of the previous century and of many of his contemporaries his canvases often looked more like sketches, his brush strokes were large and obvious and there was rapidity to his work that made it look almost spontaneous.

     Previous artist had usually made sketches of details or scenes en plein air that they would work up later in the studio.  There could be pencil sketches, charcoal or pastel or watercolour, but oils were something that needed more effort as colours needed to be made when you needed them, the pigment being mixed with oil.  The sketching then was limited by medium.  It was the production of ready mixed oil paint in tubes that made it possible for artists to take oil paint with them into the countryside and produced oil paintings in the open air away from the studio.  Renoir is reported to have said, that without the invention of tubes of ready mixed oil paint, Impressionism would never have happened!

     So the sketch-like spontaneity of Impressionist canvasses is a direct result of the industrialization of oil colour production – the mechanical and prosaic having a direct effect on the artistic and rarefied!

    

And I have already typed myself into a calmer frame of mind.  Art wins again!

 

The Worst Is Yet To Come!

 

 

 

 

Johnson’s “government” has been described as a zombie government because of their almost complete lack of interest in what is going on in the real world where the mass of the population is not taking one holiday after another as a way of forgetting about the various disasters and their pernicious legacy that twelve years of Tory misrule have inflicted on Britain.

     However, the metaphor applied to the non-existent phantom “government” of the liar Johnson is about to become reality as Trivial Truss has, according to newspaper reports, threatened to bring the “real” living dead into government by giving roles to such luminaries (in the same way that rotting meat becomes luminescent) as IDS and Redwood.  I was going to end that sentence with an exclamation mark, but after twelve years of the unthinkable becoming the ordinary it really doesn’t deserve it.

     BBC Wales never tired of showing a short clip of Redwood (they couldn’t find any real Welsh Conservatives of sufficient “presence” [sic.]) when he was Welsh Secretary, trying to sing the Welsh National Anthem.  You can see it here, with other delights of National Anthem disasters:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2015/sep/16/when-national-anthems-go-wrong-video

 

I am quite prepared to believe that the hapless Welsh Secretary was “ambushed” by the anthem, somebody (anybody) should have told him that the anthem was a possibility and given him a cheat sheet with the words written out phonetically.  I myself have had “a person of power” hiss at me, “Stand in front of me and sing!” when he didn’t know the words when on stage and the anthem was about to start!

     Redwood could have stood and, in spite of his habitual look of crazed alien mania, maintained a stoic stance of motionless respect but, no, the loon had to produce a performance that summed up his character, his policies and his standing in Wales and beyond!

     And now this relic from another age is seriously being considered for any position of power?  As a prominent member of the BFG (Brexit Fascists Group) aka the so-called European Research Group (where every word in their appellation is ironic or a downright lie) that in itself should preclude his admission to any responsibility more onerous than as a part-time Greeter in a failing Wal-Mart in an insalubrious district of downtown Sleezeville.  In government!  It would be a joke if it weren’t a serious possibility.

      I could go through the other putative Truss choices, but that would be far too depressing.  I will just allow one to stand for all.  Coffey is being considered for a “senior role” in the “new” (12 years of Tory Misrule So Far) government. God help us all.  I have yet to see a television interview with that person where she emerges as coherent, articulate and thoughtful.  Or indeed displaying any one of those elements.  If she is the best that we have got in the hundreds of Tory misruling MPs then we are at a depth where the term “scraping of the barrel” doesn’t give any impression of depth of shallowness that is being trawled!

 

Does anyone remember a time when the present Tory Party (TYofTM) hustings for the next leader of their discredited party was not going on?  The joke has long worn thin, and it is fairly obvious that the real title of the interminable race to confirm the downward spiral since Cameron (that titan of political acumen) should really be known as The Battle of None of the Above.  Who (even in the Conservative (TYofTM) Party actually wants either of the shameless unicorn chasers to win?

     It shows up the goldfish-like memory of Conservative (TYofTM) voters, that giving a straight choice between either of the None of the Above and the Tousled Twat, that they would prefer the lying criminal narcissist.  Says something about the lot of them.

 

 

Having spewed the bile from my body, I can report that the sun is shining, there is a cooling breeze from the fan, I have just had a refreshingly icy drink of tinto de verano and I am prepared to Do My Spanish Lesson!

The Coming Storm

 

 

          

 

 

 

 

 

Are people in denial?  Do they really think that the winter is going to be just another season?  Why isn’t there much more outrage at the threat of heat/food/accommodation poverty that IS going to take out a chunk of the population not only in the UK but also here in Catalonia?

     It is easy in an affluent seaside resort like one in which I live to see little evidence of deprivation.  The shops are open and seem to be doing well, people are coming in their drove to the beaches and exclusive new development along part of the beachfront is full steam ahead.

     And I suppose that is part of the point.  If you have money then much of the hand to mouth poverty is going to pass you by. 

     Am I going to stop plonking my bum on my expensive opera seat for the next season?  No.  Not yet. 

     But do I notice that even casual spends in the supermarket now always seem to be 100 euros and above? 

     Yes.  50 euros used to be enough to fill my tank, now it comes nowhere near.     My rent will be increased by the cost of living rise in percentage terms; my income will not.  If I wish to continue my present standard of living, then my pension will have to be augmented by dipping into my savings.  I tell myself, that savings are there to be used not to be mindlessly horded – as if I have ever had wallet that didn’t have scorch marks on it from the money burning its way through!

     I am by no means rich, but I also do not want to plead poverty.  I am aware of the increasing costs of everything and acutely aware of the diminution in the adequate provision of those social services that I have paid for throughout my life through taxes etc.

     My expectations (as a complacent Baby Boomer) are for my path through life to be relatively smooth (free education up to university level; job for life; pension; health care etc.) and I have little to complain about when I look back.  But the future is different.  Fixed income and rising costs are not good companions – and as I am reliant on my pension, government talking about the difficulties of maintaining the present levels of payment and then talk of different rates and speculation about not keeping to past rules are all things that concentrate the mind.

     The crisis of Covid was, while it was going on (and as long as you were careful, and lucky!) a fairly placid disaster.  Stuck at home, washing your hands like a fully conscious Lady Macbeth, finding ways to stay sane and waiting for things to get better.  The worry was not paying for things, but rather getting your hands on them.  It was almost as if time and the economy were in abeyance.  It was a period of waiting and hoping for something not to happen.

     That was then and this is now.  The idiocy of Brexit and its inevitable deleterious consequences; the catastrophe of the pointless invasion of Ukraine; the failure of normal politics; the lingering after-shock of Covid; the stuttering and virtual collapse of social services – a catalogue of horror and despair. 

     Yet the sun is shining and people are on the beach and in the cafes having a good time.  Because now, during the holidays, the summer holidays, is not the time to be thinking about the harsh realities that are going to hit, hard, in the autumn.

      In T S Eliot’s much quoted (and more often misquoted) “Human kind cannot bear very much reality” from The Four Quartets, he accurately summarises the tendency for us all to avoid those things that are difficult to take in or accept.  We like our dystopias and Armageddons to be narrative devices in stories or films rather than what’s going to happen in the next few months.

     We are going to have to bear it!

Pointless power

 

There is always something exhilarating about an electric storm, especially in this part of the world, as they seem (when they happen) to be the showy Drama Queens of thunder and lightning with constant flashes and histrionic rolls of thunder.  As I open the door of third floor to gain greater immediate access to the shenanigans of the weather, I am reminded of what we used to do in my first primary school.

     We were not allowed to use ball point pens, but instead we were issued with wooden nib holders and a metal nib to use the ink that was portioned out into the inkwells that were part of the desks that we used.  The inkwells had a sliding metal cover which was put in place when the ink was not being used to limit evaporation and keep things from falling in.  During thunderstorms, as we had been informed of the propensity for lightning to find a metal conduit to “earth” itself, we very carefully put pieces of blotting paper over the metal inkwell covers so that we were not electrocuted by a stray branch of lightning finding its way into our classroom.  Even though, even at that age, we suspected that a small piece of blotting paper was unlikely to be of very much help, it seemed better than doing nothing, and gave a most pleasurable sense of danger possibly prevented to liven up we already storm-excited kids.

     The storm has now passed, with the rolls of thunder being more of the distant grumbling variety rather than the window shaking type that really did buffet us just a few minutes ago.  The lightning remains, but more as distant fading flashes looking like poor theatrical attempts to try and mirror the real thing.

     A storm like the one that we have just had has an immediate legacy in this district of Castelldefels.  The name of the district is taken from the number of pine trees that abound and any storm washes off quantities of needles from the trees which, unless they are removed with expedition block gutters and drains and produce almost instant flooding.

     We have no pine trees growing in our garden, but we are surrounded by them in other gardens and so our garden is covered in needles, all of which need to be gathered up and put out on the pavement on a Friday when the organic collection of rubbish takes place and the raked debris disappears.

     I must admit that in my first year of teaching, I vividly remember a lad giving a passionate and informed talk to the rest of the class about his dad’s job in the local sewerage works.  His description of nematode worms and their essential part in dealing with waste and his simple wonder about the worth of sewerage and waste management has stayed with me through my career and beyond.

     I do find the whole logistical exercise of waste collection fascinating and I never fail to be moved and astonished by the way that it is done.

     In Castelldefels we have had a system of rubbish specific bins that are emptied on a daily basis by the use of massive lorries with a hydraulic arm that picks up each (large) bin, empties it into its appropriate section and replaces it with amazing precision when it has been emptied.  It must all be computer controlled and the lorries must cost a fortune, but it seems to work.

     I’m now typing in silence, the storm ended, and only the sound of the two fans which more than cover the sound of a very distant thunder roll.

     There are several pinch points in Castelldefels where storm water accumulates and the drainage system is inadequate in dealing with it.  As I make my way to the pool tomorrow I åshould pass at least two of them, but on the bike, it is easy to find a dry way through and not have to plough through the massive puddles.

 

 

Well, all that was last night and now its the afternoon of the next day, so to speak - and the sun is shining and the fans are on!  Ah, what a joy to live in a country where the weather is not lingeringly spiteful!

     The results of the downpour last night were obvious in the amount of leaves, needles and small branches littering the streets, pavements and more importantly gutters.

     My cycle to my morning swim was uneventful apart from the new bumps of tree litter strewn along my way, but the more spectacular even was to turn into the leisure centre and see the new lake that had formed taking over a chunk of the seating area and part of the parking area as well!     

     The attempts of the technical staff to use an electric pump to get rid of the water at first resulted in a small ornamental fountain, but by the time that I had finished my post-swim tea, the water had gone.

     As will the rest of the organic rubble as tomorrow is the leaf collection day and the little piles that have now accumulated outside our houses will magically disappear.  I hope.

     If not then our parking spaces (because some people put their tree and grass waste on the road) will be limited for another week - and not everyone obeys the rule that no waste can be put out for collection until Thursday at the earliest.

     It is very difficult not to feel resentment against those people who Take Advantage.  And what do we saintly others who obey the rules do?  Grumble a little, but actually do nothing.  I have read that some parts of the UK have draconian rules regarding the sorting of rubbish into correct receptacles, and woe betide the recidivist who makes a second mistake about the placing of egg shells: punishment is condign and expensive!  So, I'm told.

     One of the pleasure of owning a bike was the ability to ride along the Paseo and see the sea.  That is now forbidden.  It was done in stages: firstly on the narrower part of the Paseo and then extended to all of it.  And I obey the rules.

     Except, each time I come back from my morning swim, I cycle along the road which runs parallel to the out of bounds Paseo, and I ALWAYS see a few cyclists enjoying the forbidden sight of the sea.  And what happens to them?  Nothing!

     I know that I should be satisfied to do what is right and that feeling of rectitude should be reward enough.  But it isn't.  If I may paraphrase and overused saying, "It is not enough for me to do good; I must see those who do not, suffer!"

     Another character flaw I have to work on!