News from Nowhere

She spells it 'brock' but just look at it (you'll have to scroll down) via, via Shetland Library.

A visit to Lotte Glob (some of the works don't appeal to me, but these are wonderful...)

I'm in no hurry to rush out and enjoy the new freedoms the government has given us: I'll spare you the scare quotes in that statement, but feel free to envisage them pretty much anywhere, and you won't be far wrong. I'm lucky enough to have a life which can continue comfortably in lockdown, and the things I miss are not the things which have been restored this weekend. Nonetheless, I'm seeing changes, for us and for others:

Friday

durham_rambler went shopping - for the first time since the lockdown started, and shopping solo is not something he did often, even before. This was for essentials: he had to collect his beer order from Fram Ferment. But he asked if I needed anything, and since I had strawberries, I asked for cream, so he went to the Co-op - and bought crisps and whisky while he was there, because he could.

Saturday

The students have returned to the house next door. There are five of them, and while you could argue that they were a single household back in March, before they scattered to their various homes, I don't think the rules allow them to resume that status as if it hadn't been lost. They sit on the decking in the garden, and talk loudly, which is probably healthier than sitting together indoors, but is also more annoying. But does it actually matter? I don't know. It may be trivial, but then all we can do is stack up the details to nudge the odds in our favour. I think it bothered durham_rambler more than it did me, and he talked about phoning the police. Eventually, we settled on calling the university's liaison person (who recommended calling the police, but we let it go).

On Suday, though, they had visitors: there were a dozen of them out there, and durham_rambler did call the police (who said they would come and have a word with them, but Sunday night is music night, and I don't know what happened). To judge by the noise from the back lane, though, Monday night is party night...

Sunday

We had been talking about local sculptures: the County Council has announced that it is carrying out an audit of monuments and statues in its care to ensure that they are consistent with its values (I suspect that Durham doesn't have many monuments to slave traders but might want to consider contextualising its monuments to mine owners - and that's not entirely a joke). Anyway, durham_rambler told me that there were some sculptures I hadn't seen, not far away, and we went out for a walk to look at them. Before we were even out of our road, while I was busy photographing a flower:

we met a fellow-member of the pub quiz team, and were able to do actual, unplanned, face to face conversation, which was very pleasant in all sorts of ways.

( Sculture: words and pictures )

On our way home, we paused to chat with a neighbour who was in her garden: a day of two unplanned conversations, things really are changing!

Monday

The Prime Minister informed us that now shops were beginning to open again, it was our patriotic duty to get out and buy inessentials. I'll consider going into town when the market reopens, but just to show willing I ordered a couple of Sunday Night at the Hove Palladium t-shirts: I love the idea of a gig t-shirt for a virtual gig.

Tuesday

This morning, over breakfast, durham_rambler announced that he had a meeting this evening, at seven o' clock. Since I had Reading Group at six o' clock, this completely scuppered any plans I might have had for the catering. Now, that really is like old times!

We took Thursday off, and went to see a temporary art installation which is coming to the end of its time:



This oughtn't be such a big deal: we work for ourselves, we control our own time, but we don't often drop everything midweek, even though we can. As it was, durham_rambler spent the beginning of the morning in a meeting at County Hall. But he was home by mid-morning and we set off, down to the southern border of the county, the river Tees.

( And this is what we saw... )

We decided we needed a day out over the long weekend, and the forecast was the Sunday was our best bet. This - with the caveat that the weather wasn't brilliant, but that the rest of the weekend was worse - turned out to be the case. durham_rambler asked me where I wanted to go, and since I didn't have anything in particular in mind, I gave him my default answer: the seaside! He had come across references to some additional sculptures in the vicinity of the St Peter's Basin sculpture trail, and we decided this was a clue worth pursuing (spoiler: only approximately true, in both respects - but if we didn't find what we were expecting, we found things we weren't expecting...). Plan A was to head for St Peter's metro, and walk along the river from there to the sea - with a detour on the way in to Sunderland to see if we could get a decent view of the new river crossing (not really: you can see the spire from all over, but getting close would have been more of a diversion than we wanted). Down to the river and under the bridge:



( You have been warned... )

D. and valydiarosada are with us, as is only right and proper, for the New Year. Our initial plan for today was to visit Dunston, where D. has an appointment to see a man about a wheel, and then go on to lunch with D.'s sister and brother-in-law. But they thought better of the invitation, having both succumbed to winter colds, so instead we went to Seaton Sluice for fish and chips at the Harbour View - and sculpture. The Gallery which I enjoyed in August was closed, but the many sculptures of Tom Newstead survive -



Here's Neptune in all his Christmas finery - and proliferate. There is now an exhibition space - it may look like a shed,but it's definitely an exhibition! Here's one tiny corner:



because I particularly liked the blue whale with teaspoons. There are more sculptures outside, though the sun was low and bright and made photography tricky. Nonetheless, have a Viking:



And now I must go and attend to my guests. I am neglecting them shamefully, and anyway, it's cold up here (we have a problem with the heating, which is not reaching the bedrooms or attic - though fortunately the rest of the house, and the hot water, are fine). I wonder if they've lit the fire yet?

On our way home from Kendal, we made a detour up to the Wall to see the Milecastle built of books by artist Dawn Felicia Knox.



The piece is called 'Simulacrum', and according to S., who knows about such things, is a reasonably accurate half scale model of a milecastle. The Hexham Courant quotes Lindsay Allason-Jones, who is, among other things, Chairman of the commissioning body, the Hadrian Arts Trust (they have a website, but it hasn't been updated lately). The idea, it seems, is to celebrate the introduction of literacy to Britain by the Romans. "It is because they did so that we know so much about Hadrian's Wall and those who lived here."

In this case, how should we interpret the temporary nature of the piece? Simulacrum is only intended to last a month. The same piece in the Courant quotes the artist: "The sculpture will begin to decay almost immediately - rain will permeate the books, the sun will crack the book covers and plants will begin to take root." Not yet:



The books are a bit windblown, a bit battered, but most of them are perfectly serviceable. I had to be firm with durham_rambler: "Look, here's something by Jean Cocteau - Les... something..." "Les Enfants Terribles, we have a copy." (Do we? I'm pretty sure we do...). The literacy handed to us by classical antiquity has not composted down into our national psyche, it remains a defiantly undigested lump, the imposed culture of the colonial power.

Or something. I suspect I'm overthinking this. It's art, and isn't improved by being squeezed to extract the message. Have some eye candy:



One last twist, though. Simulacrum is a scale model of a milecastle, but it's about the actual size of a turret; and it is situated in Walltown Quarry where turret 45B is, in fact, missing, destroyed soon after 1883 by the operations of the Greenland Quarry. Because the Victorians may have placed great value on a classical education, but they weren't going to let that stop them quarrying this useful rock.

Yesterday was bright and sunny, and since today promised to be the same, I suggested to durham_rambler that we should go out; and since he had mentioned that the Council had created a new route called the Locomotion Way, which wasn't long and wasn't difficult, we thought we could probably manage that. (It is altogether too long since we have done any walking worth the name; even our lovely pre-Christmas walk in London was only a couple of miles, though we spent all afternoon over it).

The Locomotion Way runs alongside the railway between Shildon and Newton Aycliffe, and is being presented as primarily utilitarian: "The three-metre wide Locomotion Way is a fast track for commuters by bike or on foot to get to work or school being exactly half the distance of the road route between the two towns." We agreed that we'd park at the railway museum in Shildon, and see whether any of the paths on the map would be a practical alternative to walking the same route there and back. This is something on which we continually disagree: durham_rambler hates to turn round and retrace his steps, and I think that sometimes it's preferable to the alternative. Also, that a route looks entirely different when you are walking in the opposite direction. Noetheless, on this occasion he was right.

We found a footpath that ran along and above the railway, along the field edge:



It had been frosty enough overnight that what might have been mud was still frozen to firm walking, not icy but there were still very occasional patches of snow, and the puddles were crunchy. The path descended to the edge of a quarry (this was the slippery bit), then we turned up a lane where a few snowdrops were emerging, and so out into Newton Aycliffe. A brief walk along the road brought us to the point where by squeezing round a gate and ignoring a notice telling us that this was not a dedicated highway, we were able to pick up the Locomotion Way without going all the way to the station - and from there it was an easy but not very interesting walk back to Shildon.

durham_rambler calculates that we walked 7km or 4⅓ miles: he made a map.

We dropped in on the museum, mostly just for bacon sandwiches at the café, though we did admire the film star - an engine in fake livery, which had starred in The Railway Children. And we made a detour on the way home to get a better look at a sculpture we had once seen from the road and wondered "What is THAT?" - and discovered that since it stands in the middle of a thicket and is completely inaccessible, it must be the artist's intention that you see it from the road and wonder "What is THAT?"

So, going out: a success and we should do more of it.

It's a sunny Saturday evening and I feel a little lazy, a little unfocussed - maybe I could tidy up the old travel supplements that are littering my desk: nothing as demanding as making travel plans, but dream a little of places we might go, sometime... And idleness has been rewarded, because underneath the newspapers I found a book I've been meaning to return to A. next time we see her - and we will see her on Monday, and I would have forgotten it was there. Does that in itself make the process worthwhile? No, on with the links:

The Centre de l'Art et du Paysage is on an island in a lake in the plateau de Millevaches, in the Corrèze (a thousand springs, etymologically, it seems, and not a thousand cows): you reach it by crossing a footbridge. Its website is uninviting, but if you read the Guardian article first, you have some idea what you are looking for, and the Bois des Sculptures soundslike my sort of place (there's an Andy Goldsworthy, which is always a good start).

I can't really see us taking a holiday to savour slow food in rural Turkey: but it does sound good...

Why do I have a copy of the books section here? And why do I not have last week's article about wine tourism in Sicily? (Never mind, I found it!)

This isn't much to show for several months worth of weekly supplements. Most of what they publish just isn't for me: skiing holidays, cycling holidays, how to amuse your children, city breaks... And sometimes I may be a bit dismissive of this material. "Hah!" I might say. "Who on earth plans a trip around recommendations for an outdoor cinema?" Let this be a lesson to me not to be so hasty - because the Cromarty Film Festival sounds rather wonderful: outdoor screenings in Scotland in December night be a challenge, but "Join the audience near the shoreline for mulled wine and watch the opening film as it is projected on to the lighthouse..." (mulled wine? the Festival's own website talks of Glen Ord...)

And one that's not from the Guardian: Britain's most northerly accommodation property (it's on Unst).

Beside Kielder Water, there is a conical stone hut.
( Wave Chamber )
The form of this piece owes more than is strictly desirable to Neil Gaiman's splendid Instructions. But the Wave Chamber is real.