Hereford Cathedral; Mappa Mundi

 Hereford Cathedral; Mappa Mundi

 

Hereford Cathedral has a couple of local saints (one martyred in Saxon times; the other generally holy in medieval times), a construction of tough red sandstone, and, among other more traditional memorials, a shrine to the SAS, whose “home” town is the city. (the SAS even get their own modern stained-glass window.) I suppose the SAS monument is in the long tradition of military church memorials, especially those of armoured medieval knights whose effigies rest in repose. The Cathedral is surrounded by beautiful gardens.

Highgate Western Cemetery

In Highgate East Cemetery

 Highgate Eastern Cemetery

 

 

I’ve become a regular visitor to Highgate Cemetery. By “regular”, I don’t mean frequent – rather, every two months or so. And by “Highgate Cemetery”, I mean the lower side (Eastern). I’ve yet to wander round the older, more gothic upper side (Western). Until recently access was only permitted by guided tour.

Making Up our Own Minds

 We’ll Mostly Make Up Our Own Minds 

 

 

March 2020. It all seemed very strange. We were in Spain, leaving a couple of days before the lockdown that had just been announced there. 

 

Given two days’ notice, the second homeowners of Madrid and other metropolises busted out in refugee numbers, fleeing to the Costas. At the time, it seemed that the Spanish authorities had badly bungled. This year, a similarly signalled lockdown in France was deliberately timed to allow people in Paris to escape to second homes… thus it goes. Nothing short of police state tactics is going to prevent the well-off from arranging their lockdown lives away from the cities, if they so choose, in spite of the hollow guidance of governments everywhere.

Lockdown Dissent

 Lockdown Dissent

 

 

One of the more curious features of the lockdowns and other regimes brought in to protect against the pandemic has been the emergence of do-it-yourself forms of anarchism.

Turning 70

 Turning 70

 

When I look back on significant anniversaries, my main impression now is that I had a sense of relief that nothing had suddenly changed overnight. A 40 I still looked and felt young. I had a young family. At 50 I looked youngish and felt reasonably young. In that decade I would take up triathlons. I enrolled for, and successfully completed, a philosophy MA. I was still working steadily and confidently. 60 felt okay – advanced middle age rather than old. To prove that, a celebratory last Olympic-length triathlon, and in the next couple of years, 2 half marathons.

Time & Tide Bells; Trinity Buoy Wharf

 Time & Tide Bells; Trinity Buoy Wharf

 

 

Antony Gormley is the pre-eminent artist of the tidal foreshore, where land and sea converge. He has positioned 100 iron casts of his body (as usual) on a beach in Merseyside, spaced out over 2 miles.

 

The figures are wholly exposed at low tide and fully submerged at high tide. The figures are neither waving, nor drowning, and they are certainly not King Canutes. They are poignant occupiers of the watery, sandy, liminal space