News from Nowhere

Have I written before about the guilty pleasure of obituaries? I don't want to treat anyone's death as a good thing, but sometimes an obituary for someone I had never heard of makes me less sad that they have died, more glad to know that they lived in the first place.

Last Saturday's Guardian carried an obituary for sculptor Lloyd le Blanc (Why the delay between online and print, I don't know. It's just one of the Guardian's little foibles.). I admit, it was the giant bronze artichokes that caught my eye (another reason to dream of visiting Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons), but I also admired Le Blanc's career path: with a fine arts degree from Yale, followed by a stint as a welder on North Sea oil rigs, what else would you do but set up a foundry?

More pictures on the Le Blanc Fine Art website.

My newspaper of choice lets me down when I try to quote the counter-example of Nicole Hollander: I am a long-time admirer (my 1991 diary was 'The Sylvia book of days') and I was sorry to hear of her death. But it's possible, I suppose, that someone may read this who has not already encountered Sylvia, in which case the information might be a source of happiness. Since the Guardian is silent on the topic, here's The Chicago Sun-Times. And - not an obituary, but a reference work - Lambiek Comiclopedia is generous with examples of her work.

It is either the reward or the price for being a parish councillor (or both) that durham_rambler gets invited to all sort of stuff, and his default mode is to accept invitations. I don't always accompany him, but I did go last week to the opening of an exhibition of "Graphic Paintings" by Derek Slater, with the title "Time Changes Nothing" (there's a gallery of this work on the artist's website).



I used my phone to take some pictures, and they aren't great. Perversely, although this is disappointing, and I hope I will get better at this, I also take a degree of pleasure from it: I'm not planning to give up my camera. Anyway, here's a flavour of the event. The garlanded structure in the foreground gives away that the venue is within 'Bertie’s Play House', an under-used unit in the shopping centre, where management are being very creative about filling empty shops with interesting stuff.

( Yes, but what about the pictures? )

I also talked to the Parish Clerk, which is always fun, and all the more so right now as we had two things to discuss. First was the progress of his discussions of the Folk Festival Formerly Known as Hartlepool, henceforward the Furham Folk Festival - these are going well, apparently, and the Parish will offer support, and everyone is very pleased with everyone else: not something you hear very often, so hooray for that!

The other was progress on installing a blue plaque for Sam Green, which is also making good progress. Much of the organisation is out of my hands, for which I am grateful, though if Adam (the - very persuasice - Parish Clerk) has his way, I may end up playing a larger part than I had intended.

And yesterday Adam and his plaquqe fitter came along and screwed the plaque to the front of the house. I had assumed it would be hidden by some sort of curtain, but apparently that only goes up at the last minute, so for the time being it is complately visible.

On Thursday I went into Newcastle for my Reading Group, and as I had promised myself, I took my camera with me.



The town was heaving - the station was heaving, the train was heaving, and Durham station was pretty busy, too - mostly with people in black-and-white football strip. At first I thought there must be a home game, and muttered to myself about there being no closed season these days, but it turned out to be in honour of Sam Fender, local lad and superstar, who was playing that night, the first of three concerts at St James' Park. Much of this I learned from a lady who accosted me as I was sitting on a bench in the town centre: she told me I was the image of her sister-in-law, and wanted to take my photograph. It wasn't yet five o' clock, but the party had already started.

Even in Forth Lane there had been people (it's usually very quiet) but not enough to deter me from photographing the murals. I've started at the end, because that magpie is a detail of a mural which spreads across the wall at one end (the far end, if like me, you started at the Central Station): the lane is too narrow, and the light and shade were too extreme, for more than this detail of the picture, but it's an appropriate detail.

( The Forth Lane Gallery )

Then I went to the Library and had fun talking about comics.

A Guardian article describes the annual art exhibition in which the chosen works are displayed in front of the Pyramids. I'm ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I enjoy site-specific art, art designed to do whatever it is that art does wihin a specific landscape; on the other hand, osn't it cheating, using the Pyramids to make your art look good? But I liked the picture of Shilo Shiv Suleman's giant lotus blooms, and I scurried off to the internet in search of more pictures.

Well, the bad news is that the more I see of those flowers, the more I suspect that what I really lie here is the photograph itself (credited only to 'Forever is Now'); other pictures leave me confused. There's a good one on the artist's website (scroll down) all golden light and with a gaggle of cyclists included for scale; elsewhere, a clearer representation makes me wonder whether flowers are improved by being hugely magnified: I don't want to imagine the insects that they might attract ...

The Art d'Egypte website has more pictures of this and previous exhibitions: it is so designed that the pictures (one per artwork) are awkwardly cropped. This German site has some better images of the 2022 exhibition.

Pretty pictures: it's what the internet is for...

Fortified by a truly remarkable breakfast, we set off to explore Harwich, hoping to encounter some shanties along the way. A leaflet about a Maritime Heritage Trail (not identical with this one, but passing the same points in a different order) led us to a selection of interesting buildings, and we were never far from the sound of singing: mission accomplished.

If I have to choose a single image to represent the day, it has to be this one:



Esturiana, the Goddess of Creativity, Harwich and the Estuaries, stands on Ha'penny Pier: she is the work of
Anne Schwegmann-Fielding (whose award-winning toilets at Colchester Arts Centre look well worth a visit) and there's more information about the commission here. She was created by covering an old boat with broken blue and white pottery - exactly my kind of presiding deity!

We spent a day at Auckland Castle; it was ten days ago, but it's never too late to post, is it? We accompanied J. to visit the Walled Garden,the most recently opened component of the Auckland Project:



Unlike any other walled garden I can think of, it slopes steeply down from the castle towards the river, so I didn't have that sense of being in an enclosed space, even though the walls did block any view of the outside world. Well, almost: you might just see the top of the Faith Museum peering over the wall. I enjoyed pottering about in the sunshine, admiring the way flowers and vegetables had been planted side by side, here some orange trumpets contrasting with some purple cabbages, there some gleaming black tomatoes, and an abundant garlic harvest laid out to dry under the concertina roof of the glasshouse.

We lunched in the castle's café, which was fine - and very convenient - but not special: another time I'd go out into the town. But I wanted to spend the afternoon touring the castle, which I haven't done since - oh, well, since before the current renovation, anyway. J., who lives more locally, has, and wasn't tempted to do so again, so we parted company at this point.

Until 2012, Auckland Castle was the home of the Bishop of Durham (initially, one of his homes, but in 1832 Durham Castle was given to Durham's then new university): the Auckland Castle Trust renovation takes you thhrough a sequence of rooms, each presenting the period and activities of one of the bishops, from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. (You could stretch that, I supose, and argue that the chapel with its elaborate carved wooden screen is a nod to the restoration Bishop Cosin.) This is Quite Interesting - Hensley Henson appears to have been a force to be reckoned with; and it's a curious sensation to see events you remember presented in such a historical context (hhello, David Jenkins!).

There's a sequence of rooms which contain an actual art gallery, hosting temporary exxhibitions, currently 'Rare European Masterpieces'. I was surprised how much I did not like these. The still life with lizard which heads the linked article (sorry, I don't remember the name of the artist) was the only one I liked at all; the star exhibits, a pair of portraits allegedly by Rembrandt, were disappointing. I note in my defence that the label in the gallery described them as being from the workshop of Rembrandt - but possibly they were touched by the hand of the master, and it's just me.

These two themes come together in the Long Dining Room, set up as if for a dinner party in the time of Bishop Trevor, displaying the thirteen paintings which he bought in 1756, Zurbarán's immense Jacob and his Twelve Sons. I have seen these before, but for some reason was very much more impressed with them this time round: were they cleaned while they were visiting the States while their home was being renovated? Or is the lighting much improved? I don't know, but they have great presence. Here's some background:



And here is a Flickr album with nice big images of each one.

So now I'm confused. Am I immune to Old Master paintings, or not? Clearly we need to visit Bishop Auckland's Spanish Gallery and find out: and before mid-November, when our season ticket runs out.

Two years ago, I posted about seeing Luke Jerram's Museum of the Moon in Durham Cathedral. Yesterday we went back to see his new piece, Gaia:



Things I never expected to hear myself ask about the Earth: "Is it bigger than the moon? Or just nearer?" According to the dedicated websites, both pieces are seven metres in diameter, so if the Earth looked larger, maybe it's because it hangs at the west end of the nave, and you look up and see it as soon as you enter the cathedral (well, as soon as you've navigated the cash desk). People were treating this as an invitation to photograph each other standing beneath the globe, arms outstretched and partly raised, holding up the Earth.

( I didn't do that; I did this instead. )

I asked durham_rambler "What did you think of it?" After a short pause, he answered "I'm glad to have seen it." Me too.

It's been an eventful ten days, which is why there's been nothing from me but a piece of drive-by snark - and that's eventful not on the national stage, a rabbit hole I do not intend to go down right now, but here at home, where it counts.

Last weekend, then, as anticipated, family visit number one, durham_rambler's great-nephew and his girlfriend. I don't know which disconcerts me more, that we have a great-nephew (two, in fact, of whom this is the elder, and a university student) or that no-one else finds it in the least unexpected. They had been in Newcastle for a wedding, and took the opportunity to spend a couple of days with us. First visit to our house, we think, for Great-Nephew, first visit to his family for Girlfriend. We asked if there was anything in particular they wanted to do while they were here, and being well brought up young people, they asked to visit Durham cathedral.

I was hesitant about walking in to town and walking back (yes, I know; things have changed) so we took the car as far as Pimlico, and walked down and over Prebends' Bridge. So we came into the cathedral through the cloisters. Here's something I'd never noticed before:



( Detail - and more - under the cut )

Last night there was a very different family visit, my cousin A and his partner "up for the match". Once or twice a year they come north to see Sunderland play, and we join them for a post-game meal at an Italian restaurant in Sunderland. Saturday's match was cancelled, of course, but they decided that they had packed, and booked the hotel, and they might as well come...

On Tuesday, for the first time in a very long time indeed, I took myself down into town. We've been managing fine without Durham's increasingly limited retail opportunities, but I had a little list of errands, and since durham_rambler was busy addressing the planning committee at County Hall, this seemed like a good opportunity.

So I went to the market, and replaced my watch strap and battery (the battery had expired, with perfect timing, a couple of days earlier); while these were being fitted, I checked the bookstall, and although they didn't have any of the books I was particularly looking for, this did mean I could order them elsewhere with a clear conscience (and have done so). I went to the bank, who have locked my bank card, and established that I have definitely and incontrovertibly forgotten my pin, and they will put a new one in the post. I shopped half-heartedly for a condolence card, and didn't find one. And then I went to the cathedral, which seems to have captured a satellite:



This is Luke Jerram's itinerant artwork Museum of the Moon, which I had been looking forward to even before steepholm posted about seeing it in Bristol. Her verdict was "It won't keep you enthralled all day, but it makes quite a visual impact!", and I couldn't have put it better myself.

( Not better, but at greater length, ... )