Brief Update

To all my loyal visitors to my blog!
Sorry about my prolonged absence. Sadly I suffered a stroke at home here in Bristil on 9th December, b I have some residual problems with my eyesight and cannot now drive, but I'm getting around, walking wounded! But with some damage to my eyesight. I was taken to Frenchay Hospital and stayed there until the Thursday before Christmas.
I may not be posting to my blog very often but will try, as often as I am able.

I would love to hear from any visitors to my site by comment on the blog or by personal email to me at johnp@wega.org.uk
Some recovery expected but don't expect my typing to improve!
Love to all my loyal friends, relatives and any other visitors.
Happy New Year from
John

A blot on the Landscape?

Near the proposed site - Cefn Coch near Llanfair Caereinion

I have been preparing this piece for a few weeks now, trying to get together pertinent information and trying to come to some sort of rationale. One of my cousin had alerted me to the fact that at Cefn Coch, in the hills above Llanfair Caereinion in Montgomeryshire, plans are afoot to build a wind turbine farm in this particularly beautiful area of Mid Wales. Many local peopled had been demonstrating against the proposal and urging the planning authority to withhold permission. I considered protesting mytself, but I realised that I knew little about the main issues. It seems to me that the fundamental questions that need consideration are 1. Would this wind farm generate enough electricity to be cost effective? 2. Are the turbines a fatal hazard for near flying birds or bats? And 3, Does the noise or visual impact of this farm, placed on the Cefn Coch ridge detract from the natural beauty of this sparsely populsterd area.

I have seen various figures given for the vast amount of wind energy potentially available to us in the British Isles and turbines are becoming a common sight around our coasts and on ridges in hilly areas. I could copy various references, damning or praising wind turbines but would only be adding to the confusion. No one I think would deny that renewable energy must be used where and when possible though because of the noise and the scale of the plant some would say “Not in my back yard or spoiling our view!” I can sympathise with this view, I love this area of Mid Wales that my mother described in her book, A View of Old Montgomeryshire as: humped backed hills, lying like sleeping lizards in the sunlight.

As for a wind farm being fatal for migrating or flocking birds, according to this Eco-Myth and Healthlink articles the danger does seem to be mostly an urban myth, though I would like to see some evidence if there is any, of bird kills from around other wind farms. Some birds have undoubtedly been killed by flying into the blades of wind wirbines, but is the number greater than those killed by domestic cats and irresponsible royal shooting parties far more? I think so!

Any comments gratefully received!

Stop Killing Whales!

I am not one to avoid red meat from farmed sources if it is on offer, but I have little sympathy for the Japanese who are in direct defiance of international whaling bans under the excuse of "scientific research." and are resuming the killing of humpback whales with barbaric exploding harpoons after a forty year moratorium that has brought about a modest recovery in some species, but populations are still precarious, and will be made more so with the resumption of whaling. I can understand the cultural arguments of the Japanese apologists like Hideki Moronuki, of the whaling section in the Far Seas Fishery Division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries who says that, "If someone eats a cow, why should one object to a dolphin and whales being eaten; they're all mammals." He added, "If Australians want to eat kangaroos, we don't care. . . . Please do not care what Japanese do. . . . Eating dolphins and whales is part of Japanese food culture." Apparently the Japanese are eating less whale meat, but nevertheless, it is still a huge industry.
My own disgust at this matched by many people who believe as I do that the great whales are all still in great danger of extinction, are intelligent and worth protecting for future generation to marvel at rather than have the remaining few turn up on Japanese dining tables.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1686486,00.html

Apologetic Update

Several weeks have again passed by with no new blog posts from me and I begin to feel guilty! However I do have an excuse this time . For the last two weeks I have been experiencing headaches and eye problems, finding reading,and writing quite difficult. I thought it may be migraine and went to see my doctor but he could find nothing particular wrong but advised me to have an eye test to see if my glasses prescription needed changing. Anyway, I had the optician look at my eyes yesterday and because I have been reading and writing with a great deals of difficulty for over a week now she is referring me to the Bristol Eyer Hospital for further investigation. I don't know yet how long before the hospital can see me. Slightly worrying - as you can imagine! I will however attempt another post today...

My Photo of the Day

Sadly since returning from Madrid, my blogging activity has dwindled and I am anxious to catch up with at least one post per week and there are several topics going through my head.
I have been busy with many things and projects, not least a Journalism course at Bristol Uni, an Ebay business venture - details sometime soon, and various other things breaking into retirement gradually and getting used to the idea that i don't actually have to get up at 6:15 am every morning! Here goes with an easy photo of Cape Town with Robben Island in the distance. Taken from the top of Table Mountain

Polar Ice Melting

As a lifelong collector and historian of Polar Exploration; I have noticed an item that has popped up today. Much effort was made in the early years of Polar Exploration by many Sailors and adventurers to find a route around the north of Canada and down into the Pacific to China and India.

Finally the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen in the Gjoa took three years to complete the first voyage East to West in 1906 through the ice and Islands of the Northwest Territories in 1928, and the first West East voyage in the little Royal Canadian Mounted Police Vessel St Roch in 1941-1942. (See photo)

There has been record ice melt this year, and the normally ice-blocked channels are free as never before. due to Global warming according to the BBC. Stunning graphics show the retreat of polar ice in the high arctic over the last two decades. BBC Link.

If your home is near sea level

Inconvenient Truth

I have been aware for some time of Ex US Vice President Al Gore's personal wake-up call regarding global warming and its effects. I bought the DVD An Inconvenient Truth some weeks ago but only yesterday found the time to watch it from beginning to end. Immediately some starkly familiar images . The swirl of hurricane Katrina approaching the Gulf Coast in 2005, stranded boats far from the edge of the Aral Sea (See my blog), great calving from the edge of the Greenland Ice cap and many others that I have become familiar with over the last few years, but there were many new and thought provoking topics and Al Gore did a great job of presentation throughout, unafraid of naming and shaming the corporate polluters nor of upsetting the fundamentalists and deniers of evolution. It was certainly worth delving into the DVD extras after the main film to see various updates (as of late 2006) and the Director - Davis Guggenheim's own commentary. Well done Al Gore. If you haven't yet seen the film PLEASE do so soon! Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun wrote:

In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to. I agree with him!

Madrid

Took a few days break in Madrid to celebrate my rertirement! I'd never been before. Though the break was not without a few problems, like my credit cards not working for me! I now need another week to get over it! My hotel was very central, only a few minutes walk from Plaza Mayor. The pavements were hard as I tended to walk everywhere. Feet still sore 2 days after return. The highlights were the trips around the Prado where the current exhibition is the dreamlike paintings of Patinir [Painting of the Flight into Egypt at the Bournemisza]
, the Bourne Thyssen Bournemisza Gallery*- there, excellent Rodin Sculptures and many other famous artworks, sadly, photography not allowed. I missed by one day an exhibition of Etruscan art at the Archaeological Museum and was a little disappointed by the visit to the recreation of the cave at Altimira, the cave art was not in my opinion very well displayed or lit, but that musem was generally very good.
Generally Madrid was a great place to go and visit. Very busy, noisy, excellent food, even the beer was OK and cooled me down after a walk in he heat of the day.

Not my best set of photos, but here they are- click on link Picasa Madrid

Today has been wonderful for the annual St Pauls Carnival I hope these two photograpphs and the others taken today >>link here<< gives some impression of the colour and the passion. What my photos cannot convey though is thesound of the music and the smell of cooking from every street and private back garden. Street vendors were selling watermelons and fresh coconuts and sugar canes, jerk chicken saltfish and akee and other caribbean dishes and everyone was having a great time watching the dancers, the stilt walkers, children constantly blowing whistles and the celebrastions will continue well into the night - I wouldn't like the job of clearing up the rubbish tomorrow morning.

Madiba we love you

That wonderful elder statesman Nelson Mandela was honoured yesterday by the unveiling a statue yesterday in London's Parliament Square. There are many statues in our Nation's Capital, but this is, I think one of the most deserving to be remembered in this way.

Its creator, the British sculptor Ian Walters, did not live to see it being unveiled. He died last year.
Amid shouts of "we love you" from the crowd that thronged the road and hung from office block windows, the 89-year-old former South African president and his third wife, Graca Machel, made a dame for her own humanitarian work, were visibly moved at the reception.
Despite being supported by a cane, Mr Mandela took to the stage to address the crowd. He said: "We never dreamed we would all be here today. Though this statue is of one man, it should in actual fact symbolise all those who have resisted oppression, especially in my country."

[Daily Telegraph on line]

Mandela still has much to do, not least in trying to persuade his successor, President Thabo Mbeki who has been a scandalous failure to confront the scourge of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa. And there are worrying signs that the situation is about to get worse. Last week, South Africa’s deputy health minister, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, was fired by President Mbeki.
Madlala-Routledge was one of the driving forces behind a plan to extend anti-retroviral treatment to 80 percent of those with AIDS by 2011. This focus is exactly what South Africa’s AIDS program had been lacking. But now Madlala-Routledge has gone, there is a serious danger that the momentum toward this goal will be lost.

Back again to Wales

Another trip to the land of Wales earlier this month and hundreds of photos taken at or around Lake Vyrnwy, the River Vyrnwy, Pontrobert and Llanfyllin. Pontrobert Watermill was the retirement home of my grandparents, Bob and Margaret Jones and my regular holiday destination for most if not all of my early years. Here is the long pool on the Vyrnwy about 200m below the mill house.

The link to my Picasa collection is here. - Sheryl - look at the pic of the tapestry in the church at Llanfyllin!

My Tango Photographs

The sound and the sight of the Tango is all over Buenos Aires but particularly around La Boca near the old port and in the heat of the sun.

Demise of the Yangtze River Dolphin

Sad news today from various sources confirming the first large mammal extinction for many years and the first cetacean extinction through human activity despite recent and high profile efforts to save it. The species is the Baiji or Yangtze River Dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer). See New Scientist link. Other river dolphin species from the Amazon and from the Ganges are also on threatened species lists.

Tom Russell

Another excellent musical evening at St Bonaventure’s last night. We went to see the incomparable American singer Tom Russell who was accompanied by the excellent Michael Martin as second guitar and mandolin. The hall was packed, with chairs for only about half of the appreciative audience. Those without, sat on the floor or stood for the whole performance in a very warm and sometimes airless room. No one seemed to mind and we were encouraged to join in lusty and fun choruses. There can be no other singer-songwriters to come up with the one word chorus “Criminologist!” which refers to Tom Russell’s own early career.

My Antarctic Photos of the Day

The British base at Port Lockroy.

Designated as Historic Site No 61 under the Antarctic Treaty, 19 May 1995. Restored 14 Jan 1996-18 Mar 1996. Since Nov 1996 the station has been run as an Historic Site and is open to tourists and visitors during austral summer seasons.

Bristol Harbour Festival

A really nice weekend for ship, boat and people watching here on Bristol's Harbourside. Lots of photos taken and cheeses bought at the French market in Queen's Square. We also visited St Mary Redcliffe Church, that which Queen Elizabeth 1st called "The goodliest, fairest and most famous parish church in England" A selection of photographs are here on Picasa. Please click on the link.

In the lead photo the "Matthew" the replica of the ship in which John Cabot sailed from Bristol to discover Newfoundland in 1497

The Royal Welsh Show 2007

The annual Royal Welsh Show at Builth Wells had always appealed but I had never been to it before and so I was pleased to have chosen a nice bright day with no rain for the 80 mile drive through the South Wales valleys to the venue on the banks of the River Wye. The countryside looked magnificent until we joined a long and tedious line of traffic moving very slowly the last few miles into the show ground car parks. I took with me my visitor from Hungary and my son Stephen and we all had a great time looking at the excellent livestock and other displays, We were entertained by a sheep-shearing competition, Ukrainian riders, pole climbing, canoeists, Shetland ponies, and a man with a sheepdog which has been specially trained to herd his flock of ducks.
Some of our photos are here on Picasa.

My Antarctic Photo of the Day

Fur Seal families, Cooper Bay, South Georgia
Arctocephalus gazella

The Jurassic Coast

Ladram Bay - East Devon

Another trip organised by WEGA - the West of England Geologists Association and other Geological societies took us last Saturday to Exmouth and onto a Stuart Line boat, Eastward along the coast as far as Lyme Regis and back. Our guide to the area, explaining the varied and fascinating geology enroute was Dr Richard Scrivener BSc, PhD, CGeol, FGSDistrict Geologist for the British Geological Survey and is head of the BGS station in Exeter. He had picked a particularly fine day with only slightly choppy watrer on the return trip and an excellent time was had by all. My photos of the trip are here on Picasa.

Weekend disappointment

This coming Sunday we had been looking forward to going to a Folk Festival at Saul, a little village on the canalside near Frampton on Severn. Sadly the torrential rain in the last few days has led to the event being cancelled. We are told that we can expect, as the century progesses, many more extreme weather events. I am sad the Saul festival has been put off until next year, but there many other things to do, though some may involve putting wellington boots into the boot of the car as a precaution! Today the sun is shining (rather weakly) after another night of heavy rain. At least the rain guarantees a green and pleasant England.

Bristol and its artistic legacy

I am saddened this week to hear of further problems for two of Bristol's much loved but under used and under funded venues: our two theatres offering serious drama. I have written before of the Theatre Royal, known as the "Bristol Old Vic", our wonderful but somewhat dilapidated 240 year old theatre. It still needs another £2 million to complete the programme of improvements and there is now talk of its possible permanent closure. I can remember going to the theatre as a child in the late 1940's when my father was in the Old Vic company and have noted with interest the fortunes of, and have seen some of the productions at the theatre in the years since. Artistic directors have come and gone over the years, have tried hard to bring challenging drama to our city with little support from the City Council and a Bristolian audience that seems to struggle with such challenges. Popular opinion seems to be saying a root and branch overhaul of the articitic policy is required, bringing whenever the renovations have been completed, a schedule of plays with much more public appeal than has been offered in the recent past.

It would be tragic to see the demise of the BOV, my father and many other actors and directors of his generation like Stuart Burge, Newton Blick, Nat Brenner and Paul Eddington, to name just five men I have known, would be turning in their graves to hear of the theatre's current parlous state.

As well as the Old Vic, our other "fringe" theatre The Tobacco Factory in Bedminster is also struggling. It is an intimite venue at the top of one of the former Wills factory buildings in Bedminster. It has put on plays from Shakespeare to "The Wills Girls" and has had great critical acclaim, but has not been commercially popular enough to ensure long term survival without additional funding and/or an injection of more successful marketing.

I do my best to support and urge others to do the same!

A Welsh Wedding!

On Saturday, I was in Wales again for the Wedding of my cousin David's daughter Gwen at Llangynyw and at Powis Castle. There had been torrential rain in the area on Friday but despite river flood warnings and maybe because of a lot of people keeping fingers crossed the weather for the ceremony and for the reception was exellent as was the occasion.

As usual I took many photos which can be seen here: -

Gwen & Will's wedding.

Very best wishes to the newlyweds.

One of the Great Tragedies of Our Time

One of the Great Tragedies of our Time

One of the great tragedies of our time is that in our desperate incapacity to cope with the complexities of our world, we oversimplify every issue and reduce it to a neat ideological formula. Doubtless we have to do something in order to grasp things quickly and effectively. But unfortunately this "quick and effective grasp" too often turns out to be no grasp at all, or only a grasp on a shadow. The ideological formulas for which we are willing to tolerate and even provoke the destruction of entire nations may one day reveal themselves to have been the most complete deceptions....The American conscience is troubled by a sense of tragic ambiguity in our professed motives for massive intervention. Yet in the name of such tenuous and questionable motives we continue to bomb, to burn, and to kill because we think we have no alternative, and because we are reduced to a despairing trust in the assurance of "experts" in whom we have no real confidence.

Thomas Merton

Celtic Tales

My Photos

Today I have been away over the water into the "Land of My Fathers" - the Pricipality of Wales on a coach trip organised by my old friend and colleague John Vivian. We had excellent weather for the visits to two excellent places.

First we went to Castell Coch - the Red Castle, not old but in a lovely wooded setting in the hills overlooking the City of Cardiff. There were twenty-five former colleagues of the Bristol & West Building Society on the coach and we spent an enjoyable time looking around the castle, approaching it over a drawbridge above the dry moat. Built in the late 19th Century for one of the richest men of the time, the Marquess of Bute at the height of Victorian fancy for the medieval. Inside, the rooms are decorated and furnished lavishly in the most eccentric style with many wall paintings depicting scenes from Aesop's Fables (see above) and fantastic furnishings.

Further to the West of Cardiff is the wonderful National History Museum of Wales at St Fagans. I had wanted to go there for years and this was my opportunity to see it and also to see what they had done with my mother's "Ghost Bottle" or Witch Bottle (see second photo above). Back in 1983 my then little cousin Mark was playing outside my parents' cottage on the Welsh border near Oswestry, when under the old Yew Tree he found this jar or bottle, very heavy, as it is filled to halfway with lead. The story goes that a ghost once inhabited the cottage and so in order to remove the ghost, a priest or perhaps more likely a white witch was summoned in to pray the ghost down, into the bottle and this done, it would be sealed into the bottle with molten lead! Then the bottle would have been buried under the tree as Yew trees do have special mystical significance. So, there the bottle is, in the main gallery at St Fagans where it had been sent by my mother back in the 1980's for investigation. I was glad to see it again, and for the first time, the many other exhibits and houses displayed on the open air site. Houses, churches, mills, shops and many other representative buildings from all over Wales have been dismantled and taken from their original sites then put back together at St Fagans, now a working museum where carvers, millers, blacksmiths, farmers and other craftsmen and craftswomen demonstrate their rural trades for the visiting public. My Picasa photos show some of the highlights of our day.

Bristol's Little Rivers

Another good walk yesterday, this time with about 50 assorted Bristol Living Rivers supporters from Sea Mills, where the River Trym joins the Avon. We hiked upstream into Westbury where the Trym is joined from the North by the Hazel Brook, sometimes known as the Hen Brook which we then followed as far as its emergence from drainage pipes near the huge shopping centre at Cribbs Causeway.
My photos on Picasa tell the tale - but just to explain the gravestone in Henbury Churchyard! The boy was one of many young african slaves who had not been sent to the sugar cane fields of the West Indies or the Cotton Fields of America but was chosen to be a servant in the household of Bristol nobility. It seems he was treated well, though he must have been the object of much curiosity and novelty at the time.