The return of the departed

Photo by Frank Cone on Pexels.com

Some legends of the exodus tell us it took place only a few hundred years ago, others that it was a thousand. I think it was nearer a few hundred, but we can’t say with any certainty because of the darkness that followed, a time when not even the sun would rise to be counted. And the archives tell us that long before then, the earth had begun a period of change, one that rendered the complexity of machine-life difficult. So, our ancestors built the last of their great machines, and rode them to the stars.

But the learned teach us a star is like the sun, and very far away, too far for machines to reach, at least within the lifetime of a man. It was to somewhere closer, then, we believe, most probably one of the wandering stars, they went, and which are not stars, but more like the earth, only barren, and where, without machines, a man could not survive at all. Such stories would remain stories, always out of reach of what is true, except sometimes the departed return, and because the stories have a power to them, we persist in calling them star-men.

They don’t come very often, though their frequency is observed to be increasing. The manner of their coming is always foreshadowed by the dark of the moon, so we are watchful at such times, watching for their machines as they streak across the sky. The machines are often left broken and burned, leading us to believe the star-men do not come of their own choice, that they are sent as exiles from their world, that indeed their survival on arrival here is far from certain.

Thanks to the archives, we understand much of the times before the exodus, but of course we know nothing of what happened to the star-men afterwards, whether they thrived in their new world, or found things hard. It seems foolish to us that you would sooner risk a barren place, than adapt to the changes of the earth, or seek to ameliorate those changes by such skill with machines as our ancestors clearly possessed. But the records also tell us there were terrible periods of instability, that in the decades leading up to the exodus many creatures and food-crops perished. And of the billions of mankind who once walked the earth, it is estimated only ten thousand souls survived the upheavals. Those who joined the exodus then had good reason to believe they were preserving man’s very existence. It was a rational decision, though one enacted at the expense of everyone left behind, who we presume were expected to perish.

All we know of them now is that they resemble us, as men I mean, though of those we have seen, in whole or part, they have grown taller, but much weaker than we are, and they are slower on the ground. Their world has changed them in other ways too, for they are also of such a violent nature, even to their own kind, we counsel they must be avoided at all costs, and not engaged with the limited arms, such as we possess.

Their armaments are powerful, warlike, unnecessarily destructive, and terrible in the wounds they inflict. The elders say it is our good fortune the star-men do not survive long, that it is sufficient for us to evade them, while we let the microbia of the earth – to which we are immune – do their work. It is fortunate, too, their weapons fade in potency to nothing over time, rendering them useless. Those we have recovered are dismantled by our craftsmen, and their materials either re-purposed, or destroyed.

There are no records of any interaction between us, other than of the violent kind. Indeed, it is believed civilised dialogue is impossible, and that all attempts are ill-advised. Certainly the archives bear this out in the accounts of those of our kind who have been lost to the star-men’s aggression. It is better, then, to observe, and evade util such a time as the microbia have felled them for us. But it does not stop one from wondering about their reasoning, for they are a cunning species, though they appear to lack the moral consciousness they must surely once have possessed when they walked among us as brothers. One wonders too about the reasoning of those who send them, and of course about the nature of their machine-world, which must by now be beyond all imagining.

The learned tell of how, before the exodus, our ancestors first used machines to explore these distant worlds. One wonders, then, why the star-men do not do the same thing, if they wish to know the earth once more, and how it fares. This rather supports the conclusion curiosity is not their intent, that these are men who have been banished, and perhaps are not typical of their kind. But if so, why inflict upon them a certain death, after the trouble of delivering them here at the expense of valuable materials, when a more efficient death could surely be arranged in their own world?

And so it is, news reaches us by breathless runner, of another machine observed coming down with great violence, in the mountains, to the north. There is word of burning, and of the forest peoples who live there, scattering in fear. It frustrates us we cannot ask the star-men what they want, and what they mean by these absurd incursions.

Riding out, we meet people on the trails. They speak of fire raining down, and setting the forest alight. The wise man, who rides with us, assures us it is the impact of the machine that has caused the fires, that we need not fear any new and fiendish weaponry. But he has the inner sight, this man, and tells us also that though he senses no living star-men will be found, there is still something of an ill omen about the fear in the eyes of those running towards us. We proceed cautiously, therefore, while remaining faithful in the knowledge our horses can scent a star-man from afar, and with greater ease than they can a bear, that they can differentiate even between the scent of living or dead.

So it’s strange when the horses are undisturbed, even when we ride them up to the crater’s edge. There are only small pieces of the machine remaining, and a scent of burning, though by now the fires have died out to a low fog of smouldering. Even under such cataclysmic circumstances, there are normally remains to be found, but after searching in a wide circle for many days, we conclude nothing living rode this machine to earth. We turn then to seeing what materials we might salvage.

It is the wise man then who begins to find particular pieces of machine, and uses his insight to bring them together in such a way as to reveal a truth that leaves us cold. He finds a torso, a limb, a hand, then a skull, but none of it is flesh or bone. All of it machine, fashioned in the human form. We count several such forms who have ridden in place of star-men, and this perplexes us deeply, but the wise man most of all. The departed, he tells us, have diverged so far from us in kind, that in their machine world, they have themselves now become,… machines.

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Hillcraft on the Dales High Way

Rannerdale Knots from The Attermire Scars

Around Langcliffe (and other) scars

My old copy of Eric Langmuir’s venerable “Mountaincraft and Leadership” book contains many a useful tip for the walker, and was a good companion, as a lad, getting me going in the hills. It tells you things like what to carry in your rucksack, what to do if you’re caught out in a thunderstorm, how to ford a river, and how to use a map and compass. But nowhere does it tell you what to do when there’s a bull sitting on the right of way.

We’re in the Yorkshire Dales today, among the many scars and crags above Langcliffe, in Ribblesdale. We’ve had a cloudy start, but the forecast tells us it’ll clear by 2:00 PM. It’s a dynamic sky, lots of textures, but so far the light is flat. Much has been made in recent weeks of the parched brown countryside of the South East, but here everything is green, and there are puddles. It’s warm, but not oppressively so, and there’s an earthy smell after last night’s rains.

We’ve left the car on the road up from Langcliffe, around the 1200′ contour. This little altitude booster brings the walk in at just under eight miles and gets us off to a good start, with some fine views over Ribblesdale.

For the first leg, we head south along the line of the Attermire scars. The plan is for a circuit of the moorland between Settle and Malham, making use of the Dales High Way, and the Pennine Bridleway. We’ll follow it nearly as far as Pikedaw, overlooking Malham, then head North-ish towards Malham Tarn, and finally west, back to the car. It’s not a day of peak-bagging, then, more one for the views of some fine Dales country, and to explore a circuit that’s been nagging at me for a while. First, though, the bull.

He’s a handsome beast, but he looks a bit – well – knackered, surrounded by recumbent cows. It’s that old question, then: can cattle be trusted not to flatten you? The answer to which is: not entirely.

The common sense advice is that, if in doubt, find another way round, but there are no other ways, and anyway this is pretty much open country. If they were in a mood to be frisky, they could be chasing us for miles, and I wouldn’t make a hundred yards. There’s a fence and a gate, a little way beyond, but for that we have to run the gauntlet. What to do? If you ask this question on the hiking forums, you’ll set the Internet on fire with unhelpful opinion. But just like life in general, you can only read the situation in front of you, and it feels okay, so we carry on.

I rarely have trouble with cattle, but it’s still a comfort to put that gate between us. Cattle roam the hills freely here, though, so this won’t be our last encounter. They do seem to enjoy congregating around stiles and gates. My usual approach is to speak to them gently as we pass. It doesn’t matter what you say, of course. It’s a different if you have a dog with you. Then cattle are best avoided, because they hate dogs, and you might find yourself collateral as they try to trample it.

The Attermire Scars and the Rannerdale Knots

The Dales High Way and the Pennine Bridleway coincide at Attermire, and take us up towards the remote Stockdale Farm. The light is beginning to break through a little now, making soft speculative sweeps of the hillsides. The outlook west, behind us as we climb, to the scars, and Rannerdale are especially striking. There are several parties climbing on the crags, by the deep gash of the Horseshoe Cave.

I read there’s a new revised edition of Langmuir’s book, published by The Mountain Training Boards of England and Scotland. I wonder if I should get it, and wonder in particular what it has to say about navigating by Smartphone, and GPS? Probably nothing good. My old copy from 1985 has a foreword by Lord Hunt. These were a hardy breed of men, unlikely to be troubled by cattle. Hunt trained commandos in mountain-craft, during the second war, but is best known as leader of the first successful expedition up Everest in 1953. Postwar there was a rush of people heading into the hills, many of them ill prepared and coming to grief for want of basic knowledge, so there was an effort to set standards, and Langmuir did a sterling job. The Insta generation has brought about a similar rush of ill prepared folk.

Stockdale farm and Ryeloaf Hill

Anyway, I think it’s okay to navigate by smartphone. Mine is waterproof, has OS 1:25000 mapping, a three-day battery, and I carry a spare powerbank. It tells me exactly where I am, all the time. A paper map can just as easily let you down, as anyone who’s tried to read one in a gale force wind will tell you. A compass too can be dangerously misleading in hills that are rich in iron ore.

There are, of course, no simple solutions to every eventuality. You think you’re sorted, well kitted out, got the proper togs, the tech, and you know your Langmuir back to front,… then there’s a bull sitting on the footpath saying: you didn’t see this one coming, did you? Life is never without risk. Venturing into the hills, one accept this, prepares as best one can and takes responsibility for oneself. But let’s not big this up any more than we need to. We’re just out for the afternoon, not exploring the Andes.

The view up the valley is dominated by Rye Loaf hill. This is a remote peak, not walked very often, with as yet no clearly defined route up it. You’d have to make your own way across open country. Through binoculars, I can make out a rough wind-shelter and a survey column on top, all of which is very tempting, but I’ve still got blisters from my last outing, so we’ll stick to the planned route, and no deviations.

It feels like we’ve come a long way, meandering eastwards, up to the high point – this being around seventeen hundred feet. There’s a huge cairn to set our bearings by, here. I’d say it was unmissable, but on another occasion I’ve walked past it in mist and not known it was there. It’s a mystery actually, not marked on the maps, and consists of what resembles builders’ rubble. It makes for good foreground interest in the view over the Grizedales, to the distant splash of Malham Tarn.

The Grizedales to Malham Tarn

The path takes us east of north now, over the Grizedales as far as the junction with the path coming up from Malham. We seem to have left the heat behind at this altitude. The air is fresher and the scent of it is intoxicating. The bridleway bears west at a signpost which carries the daunting news Langcliffe is still four and a half miles away. It’s a long section, this, easy to follow, probably better undertaken on horseback. But, lacking a handy steed, we must make do on tiring feet, the path snaking away over the moor, forever teasing us with how far we’ve still to go. It’s not long before I’m thinking this section has little to recommend it, but then the outline of Penyghent hoves into view.

I think it was Alfred Wainwright who said the mountain Suilven, in Sutherland, had to be seen to be believed, and I agree with him, but that may have something to do with its remoteness. When I saw it, it was after a three-day drive into a sparsely populated area of the UK, soon perhaps to be another country. There is a definite otherness about that region, the wildness, the light, the emptiness. Suilven is an awe-inspiring hill, even getting a mention in a Ewan MacColl song. But it’s recently struck me Penyghent is only around a hundred feet shorter, and equally striking. It rears up dramatically, has a prow like a dreadnought battleship, and is often to be seen sailing over Ribblesdale, on a boiling mist. Penyghent too has to be seen to be believed. It’s just seen a little more often than Suilven.

Anyway, bang on schedule, 2:00 PM, the sky peels open, the sun comes through, and Penyghent starts showing off. We take some time to enjoy the light, but the feet have had enough now, and the path brings us full circle, just in time, delivering us back to the car. Tea and cake in Settle then? That would usually be the next move, but I’m a bit of a tight wad these days, and I’ve brought my own. We open the top to the sky, and enjoy the air. It was a good idea to park up here. The tea tastes all the better for the view.

Days in the sun and the tempered wind and the air like wine
And you drink and you drink till you’re drunk on the joy of living

Ewan MacColl

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Around Eccleston and Croston

Maize crop, Eccleston, Lancs

A circuit around Eccleston and Croston, today. This used to be a regular outing during the Covid restrictions, when travel outside the local area was banned. I’ve not done the route since things opened up, so thought I’d look it up, on an otherwise slack day. On the downside, I clonked my toe getting into the shower this morning, so I’m hobbling a bit. I’ve also got the wrong boots on, again, still trying to wear these old army things in, even after what must be getting on for six months. I’ll give up on them, and switch back to the leaky Scarpas, especially for any of the longer walks into hill country. But then I forget and say: well it’s only a short walk and flat, so let’s give them another go – we’re bound to get them worn in eventually. We’re three miles out, now, and I can feel them starting to bite already.

Three miles out is also, usually, the highlight of the walk, this being a lovely old oak tree that stands alone at the head of a long meadow. It draws the eye from a distance, and is very photogenic. Up close, it centres a bucolic scene of pasture, thorn hedgerows, and sky. I have lots of pictures of it from the Covid lockdown years, and always something different on each visit – a different season, a different light, a different sky – and I’d been looking forward to seeing it again. Today, though, we discover the tree has been swallowed up by a vast crop of maize, and we can barely tell where it is, let alone get near it.

The maize is seven feet high, and fills a mile or so of formerly sweet open meadow. It swallows us up, too, and is something of a shock, the path disappearing into this dense, gloomy, monocultural jungle. It’s looking like it’ll be a claustrophobic struggle to make way. We can forget the tree until they harvest the crop, but by then the pasture will be in ruins. I hope there’s no one walking the path when they come with the harvester.

As well as rendering the right of way such a weary mess, it’s a worrying trend in UK farming, one that has begun to blight my neck of the woods in recent years. Maize is a controversial crop, but increasingly popular with farmers. They’re growing it everywhere around here now, taking land out of use for food production, and selling the maize for biogas. But it’s bad for the soil, depletes it, compacts it, allows the weather to erode it, and it transforms the landscape – a polite way of saying is spoils the view. But it’s more lucrative than food-farming, and who cares if a footpath is no longer pleasant to follow?

After a very sweaty trudge, then, we emerge gratefully from the maize, blinking into the light, to find there are still some cows about. Denied the opportunity of photographing the tree, we photograph a cow instead, having in mind the French photographer, Jeremy Piloquet, whom I read about recently, and who says cows are more honest, therefore preferable to people as subjects for portraits. Point a camera at a person, he says, and you never capture what they’re really thinking and feeling. Everyone pulls down a kind of mask.

I take his point, to a degree, but I’d also suggest the ease with which we anthropomorphise things – animate and otherwise – means we’re not really getting what the cow is feeling either, only what we’d be feeling if we had a face like that. As for “thinking”, it’s more of a comfort to me knowing they don’t think at all, or their short lives would be unbearable. This cow looks content enough, a little goofy, and obviously unconcerned the nation may be edging towards a de facto general strike.

And with that rather clumsy segue, we weave into our story a quote that’s had me tittering to myself all day. The Bishop of Durham typifies much of middling opinion concerning our current rash of industrial disputation by claiming to identify with the issues, while saying strike action is not the answer. To this delicious example of doublespeak, Mick Lynch, leader of the RMT says: “What is the answer? Do we pray, or play tiddlywinks, or have a sponsored silence?” I enjoy listening to Mick Lynch for his pithy clarity, and disarming honesty, something sadly lacking in public discourse, and not always easy for the more circumlocutious, or indeed the verbosely opaque to deal with.

I admit to beautifying that cow. Yes, I photoshopped it. Airbrushed it. Its face was full of flies, its eyes too, which it seemed admirably Stoic about in real life, but they were troubling to me, so I tidied them away. Piloquet is right, people have difficulty being honest. Mick Lynch is also right, and we should never fear upsetting others, by saying what’s really on our minds. It’s just making my mind up that seems to be the problem.

All I know is, I’m off to the Dales in the morning, and I’d better leave these boots at home.

Thanks for listening.

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Around the Anglezarke Reservoir

The Anglezarke reservoir

It seems a while since I made it out, the past few weeks having been spent sheltering from an oppressive heat. And even though today is much cooler, I didn’t fancy a hill, so we’ve settled on this circuit of the Anglezarke Reservoir, just to get us back into the swing.

It’s a cloudy-bright sort of day, still dry, with barely a drop of rain in ages. The paths are pot-hard, and wearisome. We’ve left the little blue car on the causeway, at the southern end, and are now approaching the halfway point, along the Heapey fold Lane. It’s an uninspiring stretch, all barbed wire, straight lines and miles of that electrified white tape the horsey people use, whether to deter horse or man is open to debate. As for the reservoir, it’s very low, as most of them are now, and, thus far, we’ve had only a few glimpses of it as the path veers shy.

There’s something wrong with my GPS tracker. Every time the phone goes to sleep, it forgets where we are, only to pick us up when I wake the phone again. Which is why our track is as the crow flies, and about a mile long, instead of all wiggly and about two. It’ll be something to do with how Android manages background apps, but this isn’t the time to be sorting that out. I know how far round this walk is anyway: Four and a quarter miles. Flat. Why I think I need the phone tracking us in the first place is a mystery, but we persuade ourselves it’s interesting to know these things, then all we end up doing is fiddling with the phone instead of absorbing properly what the walk has to offer.

We’re late season now, second half of August, and we have several trees along the way showing heat-stress, crisping up for an early autumn. And there are blackberries in the hedgerows, looking plump.

Just here, there’s a fine ash tree, and a good place to settle for lunch, before we plunge into the woods below Grey Heights, and Healey Nab. Heinz mushroom soup today, £1.40 a tin! I fancy the energy bills at their Kit Green factory must be getting on for the GDP of a small nation. I was also saddened to read the Coppull chippy, “Oh my Cod“, is to cease trading, due to the price of energy. I imagine many chippy’s are in the same boat; cafes, coffee shops, too, all victims of the killer watts.

Speaking of which, I’ve been trying to run an energy calculation in my head, one that’s vital to my own well-being. So: if it takes four minutes to boil water using a three kilowatt kettle, and electricity costs 28p per Kilowatt hour, how much for a cup of tea?

It’s taken me a couple miles to come up with the answer: 6p. Now, how many times do I brew up in a day? A lot, for if in doubt have a brew, and I am often in doubt, so let’s say six times. And six sixes are thirty-six, so thirty six pence a day! Times three hundred and sixty-five is,… em,.. calculator on the phone,… 13140. That’s pennies, so divide by a hundred, and we arrive at around £131 a year, brewing up. So, where I’m going with this is,… if we halved the number of brews?

No, wait a minute. Economies like that – like sitting in the dark – won’t even touch the sides. Anyway, when a man has to think twice before brewing up, he no longer lives in a civilised country, and I’d sooner preserve the illusion a while longer.

I’ve been sitting quite still by this tree, and maybe that’s why the ladies’ rambling group comes by and doesn’t notice me, or at least no one thinks to say hello. They’re a fragrant, and colourfully Lycra clad party, and very noisy as they enter the wood, sending up a flock of outraged pigeons. Which all goes to show, when you’re out with your mates, you’re not thinking about how much it costs to brew up, and maybe I should join a rambling group myself. Except, I never notice anything when I’m with a group, and I’m self-conscious lingering over photographs.

Anglezarke Reservoir, August 2022

Built between 1850 and 1857, the Anglezarke reservoir is perhaps the most attractive of its neighbours. But the best walking is along the east bank, where we’re closer to the water and get that lovely dancing light. Today we’re short of water, this northern end in particular, being shallow, emptied early, and is now green with an entire season’s worth of wild grasses and flowers. There’s just this narrow channel snaking down towards the southern end, which retains the appearance of a reservoir. Here, though, the land is reverting to its pre-1850 aspect. I venture down below the winter water-line, back in time, so to speak, to take a picture of the Waterman’s Cottage.

Waterman’s Cottage, Anglezarke reservoir, August 2022

Built in the mock Tudor style. It used to be one of those places I’d dream of living. It’s looking badly neglected now, though – sorry if you live there. But then everywhere’s the same, nothing heading in the right direction any more. It always made for a good photograph, reflected in dark waters, but is now suspended over a sea of green.

Waterman’s Cottage, Anglezarke Reservoir

Just past the cottage, we pick up the path below Siddow fold, and follow the pretty eastern shore towards the Bullough Reservoir. The views open out here, and we can see the deeper, southern end of the reservoir, where it still makes a good show of catching the light. This is the best section of the walk, even when we pick up the Tarmac water-board road, with the sparkle of water coming through mature plantation. Then we meet Moor road, where it snakes down from Lester Mill. The spillway of the Yarrow is dry, of course, and looks like it has been all summer, judging by the vegetation sprouting out of it. Then we’re back at the causeway, where we pick out the smile of the little blue car, waiting. A long four miles, somehow, and ready for a brew.

So we peel back the top, open the flask and enjoy a cup of sweet tea, relaxing in a cooling breeze coming off the water. Sixpence, remember? Or rather no,… forget that. Forget how much it costs to brew tea, for therein lies madness. A quick burst of data on the phone, allows the notifications to catch up. There’s one from Amazon letting me know they’ve dropped off my folding solar panel. That’s to keep my powerbanks and charged for, when the power-cuts begin. It’s another economy that’s not going to touch the sides, but it makes you feel like you’re at least doing something, stealing sunshine. So long as we can walk and write, all will be well. Less so, I fear for others. There is a real sense of teetering on the brink of something awful, but so long as you’re in the mood to read, I’ll be posting my way through it. And I might even finish that novel, before the year runs into Yule!

Thanks for listening.

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On my Bookshelf – Caretakers of the Cosmos – Gary Lachman

Living responsibly in an unfinished world

The idea of a purpose to the universe, and our individual place in it, has mostly lost out to a rational world view that relegates the whole of creation to an accident of nature. The only mystery left is how consciousness can arise from within a system of physical matter. This is called the hard problem, but lately there has arisen a breed of fundamentalist scientistic thinker claiming to have solved the problem by claiming consciousness does not exist. We only think it does, and by doing so, we are trying to make more of the cosmos than there really is. How depressing! The only miracle is how we do not all go mad, when faced with such pointlessness.

But there is a view that such scientific fundamentalism is actually dangerous, and in this book, Gary Lachman argues we urgently need to move ourselves back to the centre of the cosmos, and realise our role as its caretaker, before it’s too late.

As in all his other works, Lachman writes as a champion of consciousness. He assures us that not only is consciousness real, it is primary, and he reminds us of the reasons for such belief with the aid of a tour through a long history of ideas and thinkers.

While the scientific consensus has moved towards an ever more hardened and eliminative position, as if drawing the shutters on the light of consciousness, other thinkers have been trying to keep them open, and to let the light back in. The book opens with the Jewish, Kabbalistic concept of Tikkun. This views creation as imperfect, that man’s place, man’s purpose, is one of seeing to its ongoing repair.

The world is always going to hell in a handcart, have you noticed? But it could always be worse. We might feel we cannot affect significant change in the world, as individuals, but if we all did the little bit of good that we know, and feel, personally, then the world would be changed. This might sound twee, but as we work our way into the book, we begin to see the profundity of the concept. The question arises, though, what is good? Can man decide, rationally, and make laws to define it? Or is the idea of good something that comes from within, and an inherent property of a fundamentally conscious universe? Or is it neither? Is it not so much an action or a prohibition anyway, as a way of seeing, and being?

Another powerful idea is that of evil, and the perennial question: why does it exist? Here Lachman turns the argument around and asks instead: is evil, or rather an amoral “might is right”, “survival of the fittest” world, not the default position? And if so, why is there good in the world? His answer is that in all of evolutionary history, there was no “good”, until man came along.

There are so many references here, so many springboards for further thought and study, it’s difficult to know where to start, but one of the more striking quotes comes from the Talmudic scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz who says: “we live in the worst of all possible worlds in which there is yet hope.” The suggestion here is that the universe is an experiment in existence, an experiment that would be pointless unless carried out under difficult conditions. Similarly, it would be equally pointless if all hope were extinguished, for then we would be justified in taking the nihilistic position, simply giving up and lowering our necks to the block, bowing to the axe of an irresistible evil. But the world is not like that. It is always on the brink,… and we work, argue and even at times fight to keep it in balance and moving forward.

This is an idea also reflected in the work of Gurdjieff who once remarked that the earth is in a very bad place in the universe, almost the worst… that everything we do is difficult and costs a great deal of effort, but it may be the only place where we can get things done.

At this point we encounter the work of Ian McGilchrist, whose book The Master and his Emissary, describes the differences between the left and the right brain hemispheres, and the types of attention they each bring to the world. The right hemisphere is geared towards observing reality with a kind of patient, broad brush attention, while the left is geared more towards control and manipulation of details. As an example of this we’re given the grain of sand in which the poet Blake, in an extreme right brain mode of attention, sees a whole world of wonders, but which, in left brain mode, others might see more as being insignificant, or worse, an annoying piece of grit in your shoe.

The kind of attention we must bring to bear in order to realise the good within ourselves, is of the right brain variety. The act of Tikkun, or repair, then, is not so much a specific act, or an intervention, but a way of looking at something while we are doing it, and it doesn’t matter what it is we’re doing. It is the kind of attention we employ that’s the important thing, because the kind of attention we direct at the world, determines the kind of world we encounter.

In the Master and his Emissary, McGilchrist argues that the right brain is the proper, natural master. It is like a King who must rule a nation. The King has a broad grasp of many things, but favours and retains no specifics. When he needs to pay closer attention to something, he deploys an emissary, the left brain, to deal with the details, to summarise, and report back for the King to act wisely. But as time has passed, human consciousness has evolved in ways that have allowed the left brain, the emissary, to dominate. We have become immersed in details, we drown in them, and can no longer see the broader picture. Thus, the kingdom suffers as the scientistic emissaries shut the King out, and work against him, decrying him as incompetent, and fuzzy minded. The prediction of this kind of thinking, should it come to dominate, is pretty much the kind of world we have now, one that denies the very existence of consciousness, and treats people as objects, as dumb machines, to be exploited, dominated, controlled.

Returning then to the idea of “doing the good that we know”, this sense can only arise in us with a right brain dominance, also when our basic needs are met – food, shelter, warmth, intimate relationships,… once all these things are in the bag, so to speak, the way becomes open for a person to self-actualise, to become, in the words of Abraham Maslow, more “fully human.” Then the sense of what is good arises spontaneously from a kind of intelligence of the heart.

Of course a great deal of harm has been done by people imposing their ideas of good on others, but the more fully human “self-actualisers” tend to be less concerned with other people, and seek instead to apply their instinctive sense of the good in their own struggle to develop. And such development leads to the conclusion that while we are in the cosmos, in a physical sense, we are not entirely of it. Metaphysically, we are “outside” of it, looking in.

When we study the works of early civilisations, in particular their art, there is a sense that they did not differentiate themselves from their environment, or from nature, that self consciousness was as yet nascent. Their art is curiously two-dimensional, and child-like. Only later do we see a change taking place, and art separating man from his world by the use of perspective. The world and nature becomes “object” and through our sense of separateness, we start to wonder about our place in it.

Objectifying the world has had its downsides, and may yet bring us to self-destruction, but the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, and there can be no return to earlier, pre-conscious modes of thinking. Evolution does not run backwards, so the task facing us is both critical for our own survival, but also for the cosmos, since, in a sense, we are the eyes and ears of the cosmos waking up to itself. If we stuff it up, the cosmos, as we know it, and therefore as it knows itself, will cease to exist.

The way ahead appears to be to achieve a greater understanding of the powers that we have. This means re-orientating ourselves back to the centre of our personal universe, to become more fully human, then to recognise and to do the good that we know. We bring the kind of attention to bear that we would like to see reflected in the world.

A thought-provoking and uplifting work, broad in scope but engagingly written. Fully referenced and with a lifetime’s worth of side reading.

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Creativity and the energy cap crisis

Photo by Jem Sanchez on Pexels.com

Why creativity matters now, more than ever

My energy company tells me today there’s good news and bad news. First the good: based on current estimates, I can lower my direct debit a fraction, so I’m only paying twice what I paid for energy, compared with this time last year. The fact I’m also using half the energy, due to drastic economies, takes a bit of the shine off this small concession, and points to the damage caused by the first phase of our so-called energy crisis.

The bad news comes when we factor in what we know about that mysterious body ofgem, and their arcane ruminations regarding the price cap, and its upward trajectory, kicking off in October. The energy company illustrates this neatly with a graph, which has my balance going off a cliff, unless I double what I’m paying again. This applies to me, and everyone else in the country, but even more so to those who have shirked on economising. However, given the scale of this next price hike, I venture that any economising – short of requesting actual disconnection – is futile.

I can pay, though the bill for the year will be the equivalent of the purchase of a used car. Many will be unable to pay, indeed are saying they won’t, or that they will have to enter loan arrangements they’ll be a long time paying off, while still afraid to switch the lights on. It seems insufficient then to call it an energy crisis. It’s more of a social emergency, and our political system seems, at best, unable to avert it. At worst, it seems callously unconcerned by it.

Opposition politicians have been vocal this week in calling for the price cap rise to be scrapped, that massive profits should be investigated, and monies redistributed to hard-pressed consumers. But they can be as vocal as they like, when not in power. Even if we have a mild winter, it will be the coldest for generations, as the thermostats are dialled back, and the cold creeps in. The most sought after lifestyle bloggers and vloggers, will be those offering advice on how to keep warm on zero kilowatt-hours. If only we could bottle up the excess sunshine of this current heat wave, and warm our homes with it when we need it, later on!

In a broader sense it points to a collapse of the privatised energy market, as we enter territory that was predicted by those economists of a more statist bent, decades ago, this being one of runaway high prices for a utility no one can do without, while profits soar. And a service that is too expensive to use already, while becoming all the more expensive, is effectively broken. But where is the repairman when you need him?

These are strange days, impossible to make sense of. We seem to have lived through one crisis after another, for years now – and all of it is very unsettling. I walk through my home village after sunset, and the houses are mostly in darkness, people perhaps thinking to economise by not switching on their lights. Yet I hear the sound of TVs. Such economising makes no sense, given that even a bright bulb of the contemporary LED variety requires six watts of energy, while a big screen TV requires a hundred. Better to switch off the TV, turn on the light, and read a book.

This tells me the rules of the material world have become so opaque to people, we are no longer capable of saving our own skins. Who among us knows the wattage of their fridge freezer, their toaster, their kettle, their ceramic hob? Who among us knows how much their electricity actually costs – answer, in my case, 28p per kilowatt-hour. Such things will have to become second nature.

But much as it surprises me to have reached six hundred words already, the state of the energy “market” is not what I wanted to write about, and I present it only as an illustration of the paucity of warmth and meaning, and the diminishing returns we get from indulging our purely material natures. We surrender our well-being to the market machinery, to politics, and to the chattering of the billionaire presses, at our peril, but only if we believe in the totality of the materialist paradigm, and only if we believe we are robots made of meat.

We are more than that. There is an immaterial side to us, one we explore through the imagination, though this immaterial side is one we seem increasingly reluctant to indulge, indeed one we are even discouraged from exploring. Imagination, we are told, is for children, and something to be outgrown as quickly as possible, then we can take our place as reliable citizens in this rational, material world, in this “real” world.

Of course, imagining cheaper energy bills isn’t going to bring those bills down. But that would be applying the imagination to the level of the gutter, when what we’re going to need over the coming autumn and winter, is a means of rising above it. Anyone who writes or paints, or is into crafts, lives to explore the world of the imagination. They bring the inner world into being. They grant it expression, and are rewarded for it in intangible ways.

Politicians will not solve the coming crisis, and, materially we’ll all be a lot poorer this time next year. That seems to be inevitable. But you needn’t let it take your spirits down too. To this end we are better reading a poem by Blake, and pondering his meaning, than by scouring the Guardian for rays of hope amid the million useless facts of the material world.

Anyone who writes stories, goes out into nature and writes it up for others to follow, anyone who crochets and blogs their patterns, anyone who writes poetry, makes pottery, takes photographs, paints pictures, I beg you to keep doing so. Indeed, you must redouble your efforts. You are each a warrior wrestling the zeitgeist back from the materialist monkeys who have delivered us electricity at 28p per kilowatt-hour.

This is not as futile a fight as it might seem. It all depends on how you define victory. Those materialist monkeys might be raking it in, but they have already paid with their souls, and that’s not really a victory at all. Let’s make sure they don’t take the rest of us down that path with them.

Thanks for listening

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Days with Uncle Bob

A story of small beginnings

I didn’t know Uncle Bob, until that day I was ill. At family gatherings, he rarely spoke and always had this vacant look about him, like he wasn’t all there. He was pleasant when spoken to, but never seemed to join in the fun, and seemed a bit,… well,… embarrassed. Dad said he was odd, but Mum – Uncle Bob’s sister – said he was just a bit quiet, and always had been. Dad, being more of an outgoing sort, said that being quiet amounted to the same thing: odd. He seemed to forget I was a bit on the quiet side, too. Or maybe he didn’t.

I can’t tell you exactly what was wrong with me that day. I had a lot of problems, when I went up to big school. I’d been to a rubbish primary, one where they taught more Bible than maths and English, when at big school I discovered maths and English were the things they wanted, while the bible didn’t feature at all. I’d a feeling maths and English were what I wanted to get myself off the ground, but it was a bit late to be starting from scratch. So I was feeling like I didn’t fit in, and that I would never be any good at anything that was really wanted.

Some mornings I couldn’t face things, so I’d invent tummy aches. Nowadays, they’d be calling it mental health issues. I don’t know, maybe it was. All I know is I just hated school, and couldn’t work out how best to fit in, given the backward place I’d come from, and how not to feel like I was disappearing every time I walked through the school gates.

But anyway, this particular morning I’m quivering like a jelly outside the school office, where all the slackers and sick notes got dumped, and some poor teacher draws the short straw, and is told to drive me home. Dad’s at work, which is just as well, because he would have hit the roof, but Mum’s on the way out to work as well, and with a look of disbelief on her face as we draw up. And there’s no one else who can look after me except, maybe,… Uncle Bob.

I’d never been in Uncle Bob’s house before. Dad would never go round, you see? It wasn’t like our place. We lived in a semi on the edge of town. Mum and Dad had gone through it, made it all modern. We had a telephone, and a colour TV, and even some plastic grass instead of the real thing, so Dad didn’t have to mow it. They were well off, my parents on account of them both working. Both drove cars, which was rare in those days. Meanwhile, Uncle Bob lived in this place up by the moors. It wasn’t a big house but stood on its own, and was shaded by these big oak trees from the front, but open to the moors at the back. Dad said it hadn’t been touched since Adam was a lad, that it looked neglected, and creepy.

There was no TV, not even a black and white one, and worst of all, no telephone. If uncle Bob wanted to ring anyone up, he had to walk a mile down the lane to the phone box, not that he ever did – ring anyone up that is – and of course no one could ring him. You might wonder how anyone could manage, now, but in those days you could do everything you needed to do by letter. They were slower times, and no one expected an answer to anything straight away. It had electricity and water, but Dad said Uncle Bob used very little, and either lit candles or went to bed when it was dark. I don’t know if this was true. Dad said a lot of things about Uncle Bob, but I think this was more to reassure himself the way he lived was the right way of thinking about things, and Uncle Bob’s was wrong.

So anyway,… Mum can’t ring Uncle Bob to ask if he can look after me. She has to drive round on the off chance he’s in and not off out on his motorbike somewhere. She’s getting agitated because it’s a way out of her way, and she’s already running late, and frazzled by it, and I’m feeling like a burden, and dreading the thought of a day with my odd uncle Bob.

He looks surprised when he opens the door, me and Mum on the doorstep, and me unable to meet his eyes.

“Hello, Sandra,” he says.

I’d never heard him say mum’s name before. He spoke it warmly, like there was a person inside of him, a warm person, with feelings. But I could sense Mum was uncomfortable. I suppose it was living with Dad. Bob was her brother, and they’d grown up together, so there was a blood bond between them, but Dad was her husband, and though he never said anything rude to Bob’s face, he said plenty that was rude behind his back.

Bob was only a little older than Mum, but already retired by then, or at least he wasn’t working. When I asked Mum about it, she said it was complicated. Dad said it wasn’t complicated at all, that Bob was just a layabout. I learned later on Mum and Bob had inherited quite a bit of money, when Granddad passed away. Mum and Dad had used their share doing up the house, and changing their cars for newer ones, then going to Spain a couple of times. Bob had banked the money and given up his job instead, calculating that, if he lived frugally, he could make it to pension age without having to do another shift down the pit. It was some years later when I learned about his friend, Stephan, losing an eye and an arm in a pit accident, and Uncle Bob having to stop the bleeding, and Stephan screaming with pain until the deputy came along, with a shot of morphine. Things like that happened a lot in the pit. I wouldn’t have wanted to go back underground after that, and given the chance,… well,….

Anyway, from what Mum and Dad said, I expected Uncle Bob’s house to be falling apart, even a bit dirty, but it was all right. It was just a bit different, that’s all. He had a lot of books – walls of them. Books to read – stories and such, books that told you about stuff, and then lots of notebooks that he wrote in and, most surprising of all to me, he had a table set up in the back lean-to, where the light was good, and in there he used to paint little post-card sized pictures of trees and flowers, and chestnuts and leaves,… not to sell or anything. When he’d done, he just kept them all in a shoe-box.

I suppose we made a bit of a prickly start, that day, both me and Uncle Bob being of a reticent nature, and then me with my head full of the things Dad had said about him. I wondered if I was being punished, actually. I’d caused such a fuss, coming home from school like that, I imagined the grown-ups had conspired to make sure I wouldn’t be doing again it in a hurry, and how better to do that than have me spend the day with Uncle Bob. I heard Mum’s car disappearing down the road as she hurried off to work, and my heart sank. He stood there for a bit, like he’d not a clue what to do, and then he said:

“Do you like drawing?”

And I said: “I’m no good at drawing. ” Because, like I told you, I felt I wasn’t good at anything, and it was too late to be starting.

And Uncle Bob said: “That’s not what I asked.”

No. It wasn’t. And I did like it. Drawing I mean. But it seemed the world I’d entered needed you to be a genius at everything right away, or it wasn’t interested. “Well,… I like it, but,…”

“Liking it’s a start,” he said. “Liking’s it’s a good start. The best start. As for being good at it,” He shrugged. “Who cares? But that’s something we can sort out, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

He nodded. “Follow me.”

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Around Mellor Knoll,…. again

Mellor Knoll

A glimpse at the news this morning reveals the media’s sudden interest in a man’s shoes. The man in question is one of the contestants in the game show to become prime minister. He seems to be getting a kicking over the trappings of his personal wealth, which I find an odd line of attack, him being of the party of the rich, and what else does one expect? I have no wish to defend the man, no horse in that race, so to speak, but I wouldn’t expect him to be buying his shoes from the same place I buy mine. It’s a peculiar start to the day, but one that has already raised a smile. I think we’re on to a winner!

And speaking of shoes, it’s looking like a day of intermittent and lively showers, wet underfoot on the fell, even after such a long period of dry – and my best boots are occasionally leaky! We shall have to see how we go. The fell in question, or rather the hill, is Mellor Knoll. I attempted a circuit of this attractive Bowland peak, back in May, but ran foul of motorcycles from an adventure centre, in the woodland above New Hay Barn. They threw me off course, got me lost, and ruined the walk. It’s been a bit of a monkey on my back ever since, and today I intend putting it to rest by completing the route, without a hitch.

We come at Bowland by snaking around Longridge fell, through Hurst Green, Mitton, and Whitewell, then along the valley of the Hodder to Dunsop Bridge. There’s a fast changing light, bright sunshine backed by glowering curtains of rain that sweep down through the nick of the Trough. They deposit a great, glittering soaking, then move on, leaving the wet to steam in the sun. It’s waterproof trousers from the start then, which isn’t the most optimistic way to commence a walk, but the forecast is for a window of drier weather later.

Since I last did this route up from Dunsop, the season has matured, and the hills have taken on a deeper green, as the bracken swells. Last week I was struck by the emptiness of the Stocks’ reservoir, signs of serious drought everywhere, and still talk of rationing this morning. Now we’re climbing towards Middle knoll with a wind to our backs, and driving rain. The grasses are tall, the path little used and, in most places, no more than a faint impression across the steep meadow. Bowland is quiet today, the car park in Dunsop Bridge was empty, and I’ve seen not another soul on the route.

On Mellor Knoll

Instead, our ascent is observed by poker-faced cattle. They turn a blind eye, as we temporarily lose the path and find ourselves on the summit of the Knoll. This is technically a trespass, but it looks like a popular one. Even the cows have been up here to admire the view, if their copious doings are anything to go by. Like before, I claim navigational error, and no intention of taking up residence.

From up here, we can see an opening in the weather coming our way. The views stretch forever, a vast swathe of North Lancashire as it blends seamlessly into Yorkshire, all of it green and beautiful, and blinking in and out as the light moves, and the showers sweep it. We also have a good view of enemy territory, this being the patch of woodland where we were routed by armoured riders last time. A quick sweep with binoculars from our summit vantage reveals no riders today, so we gird our loins and make our descent, ready for battle.

It’s easy to go wrong with navigation. You think you know where you’re going, where you are. Then something happens. It could be an up-welling of thick fog that disorientates you, a sudden squall on a mountain that takes you off the path, or it’s an unmarked way, and you meander into a bog, or it’s motorcycles leaping around you in a forest where there should be only pedestrians. At such times, the brain stops working, and you no longer know which way round the map’s supposed to go. The instinct is to keep moving, even though the sensible thing is to be still a moment and think, to take a breath, re-orientate yourself, find north,…

The line of the path through the woods above New Hay Barn is still obliterated by scores of bike tracks, leading off in all directions, cutting up the land. But without the bikes around, I’m able to locate a shy marker post in the midst of the battlefield. With its help, we trace the line of the path and muddle through. Last time, I would have been mown down.

Totridge Fell

The footpath network is often derided by the landowning community. I’m sure they would sooner it was dissolved as an anachronism, and an impediment to progress. But it’s of great importance, granting us all a fine laced network of access to the countryside, one that’s the envy of other nations. Although we are clearly intended by our maker to live in the world, at least for a time, we are not fully of the world, and it’s the quiet places, the green spaces, the fells, the riversides, the forests that remind us of this all important, non-material side of our natures. Without that reminder, we are lost. We become machines.

For our part we ramblers keep the bargain by using the footpath network as it is intended – on foot, respectful of nature, and the ways of the countryside – and in return we expect the landed to respect our ways, and keep them open. We do not expect scurrilous, unofficial re-routing, down featureless ginnels, nor intimidation by aggressive signage, nor, on occasion, misuse by motorcycles.

Anyway, the monkey climbs down off my back, and the route continues where last time it ended in ignominy. We leave the views of Mellor Knoll behind, and enter into a greater acquaintance with the shifting shape of Totridge fell – quite a monster it is, too. We shall have to think of a way up there for another day, one our legs can keep pace with.

The rain eases off, and the sun comes out in celebration. Waterproof trousers go back in the sack, and we make a leisurely return over emerald meadows, along the Hodder from Burnholme Bridge. On the last occasion, I ended the walk having thought I’d lost my wallet on the fell – I’d actually left it at home. It took the edge off the coffee at the Puddleducks café. Today, though, I settle with that coffee, and enjoy every sip. A toasted crumpet is the crowning glory.

You can pay eight hundred and fifty quid for a pair of gentleman’s Prada shoes. I suppose your gentleman might also want them made to measure, which would jack that up a bit. It puts my walking boots into perspective, and I’d be tempted to stop whining, and finally replace them, except, in spite of the soaking earlier on, they’ve kept my feet dry. That’s more than those posh shoes would have done. No, even for eight hundred and fifty quid, they would have made a poor showing on Mellor Knoll, being made for a different kind of world altogether. One wonders, though, where they add the value. Does there not come a point where, beyond a certain level of quality, I mean, in terms of materials and construction, when a shoe is just a shoe, and the rest is a name? And is it possible to judge a person by the name of their shoes, anyway, or does it not tell us more about the person asking the questions?

Totridge Fell

I wonder what my shoes say about me.

Thanks for listening.

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