tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39417367419026385192024-02-06T18:29:57.031-08:00Map AddictMike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-13600879161555400972015-08-01T09:00:00.001-07:002015-08-01T09:00:11.132-07:00WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE LYKE WAKE WALK?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Kuwu9oT1Dh8twdNNITcbXDJ_etNIGjFVGdNGNgi2cdIACfFWUqFb6MVxY6nCeAUlb-1tDbykMiKj_U4JKP1LqAPIJcDj1QOGj1-7jcDhgYLiUGjka20DMxodIUcB26nu61o8GnpZsxaE/s1600/Lyke+Wake+walk+map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="475" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Kuwu9oT1Dh8twdNNITcbXDJ_etNIGjFVGdNGNgi2cdIACfFWUqFb6MVxY6nCeAUlb-1tDbykMiKj_U4JKP1LqAPIJcDj1QOGj1-7jcDhgYLiUGjka20DMxodIUcB26nu61o8GnpZsxaE/s640/Lyke+Wake+walk+map.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Lyke Wake Walk on a 1976 map, before Ordnance Survey was ordered to remove it</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(an edited extract from my book <i>The Wild Rover</i>, 2011)</span></div>
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The northern equivalent of the word lich is lyke, and
reading that, a distant recollection detonated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Lyke Wake Walk was <span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">a
name I’d not heard in years, and it instantly brought back memories of <i>Blue
Peter</i> presenters grunting and grimacing their way across the invariably
sodden North York Moors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the late
1970s, it had seemed that every scout pack, charity group, rambling society,
Rotary Club and TV beefcake was stomping through the heather from Osmotherley
to Ravenscar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, we were always told,
was far more than a mere walk; it was an endurance test, a challenge like no
other, for to qualify for membership of the exclusive club of successful Lyke
Wakers, you had to complete the 42 mile trek in under 24 hours, usually necessitating
overnight walking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even better, and even
darker, it was overlain with a neo-pagan patina of ancient ritual, for this was
said to be an old coffin path to the sea, passing as it does the odd Bronze Age
burial mound and stone cross.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some
groups even upped the ante by dressing as undertakers and carrying a coffin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my early teens, it had been the biggest,
most famous footpath in the land, yet it had all but disappeared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To paraphrase another great relic of the Age
of Beige, whatever happened to the Lyke Wake Walk?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The walk,
sometimes claimed to be the first named long-distance path in the country,
began in modest circumstances in 1955.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bill Cowley, a farmer from Swainby, between Middlesbrough and
Northallerton, had written a piece in that August’s edition of <i>The Dalesman</i>
magazine laying down the challenge of walking across the moors to the sea in
one day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea had come to him in a
flash, he said, earlier that summer when he’d climbed to the top of Glaisdale
Rigg, the ridge between Glaisdale and its splendidly-named western neighbour,
Fryupdale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the lofty top, he’d
suddenly imagined lines of the ancients trekking their way across the moor,
from one weathered old cross, standing stone or ancient mound to the next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cowley was an engaging and passionate
Yorkshireman, always able to join the most insubstantial of dots into a
seamless swagger of local pride.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’d
gone to Cambridge, where he formed the Yorkshire Society, led a 1957 Yorkshire
Himalayan Expedition and, since returning to farm his native patch, was active
in the Yorkshire Dialect Society. No prizes for guessing what he would have picked as his specialist subject if he'd ever made it on to <i>Mastermind</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">At noon on
the first of October 1955, Cowley and twelve others set off from
Osmotherley and headed east, threading their way along sheep paths through the
heather.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The party camped at seven that
evening at Hamer, and set off again at 3.30 a.m, reaching the coast at
Ravenscar, midway between Scarborough and Whitby, at eleven o’clock the
following morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Lyke Wake Walk,
and its irresistible mystique, was born.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFUmsV_hChPZvY050bi_FtbWUDHOGo7kiSyhSjh0veZlO6bTPbYq54fJ3qFpSiJl_jXEKaZycAvtz6fYBuIUrYOCyBhaajBIYRA09Ytn1yrgPh5nqIrXyWphRBtKUJ7CUZ4rCBSZhRRVB6/s1600/LykeWakeSign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFUmsV_hChPZvY050bi_FtbWUDHOGo7kiSyhSjh0veZlO6bTPbYq54fJ3qFpSiJl_jXEKaZycAvtz6fYBuIUrYOCyBhaajBIYRA09Ytn1yrgPh5nqIrXyWphRBtKUJ7CUZ4rCBSZhRRVB6/s400/LykeWakeSign.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Word spread
fast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the early days, it was almost
entirely local: the first log books of the walk, which were kept in cafes at
either end for people to sign in their times and experiences, are full of
entries by groups from places such as York Technical College, Middlesbrough GPO
Telephones Division, a Stockton-on-Tees scout pack, the Apprentice Training
Centre at ICI’s Wilton works, Selby Round Table and the Darlington Young
Liberals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The unlikely sounding outfit
of the East Yorkshire Mountaineering Club feature a few times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The few southerners who took it on fared
fairly dismally, none more guaranteed to make a Yorkshireman crack a thin smile
than a party from the London Region of the Youth Hostel Association, who, in
1961, curtly confessed to the log book that they “did not take magnetic
variation into account – ended up in Middlesbrough”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">At the end
of every year, Cowley would tot up the number of walkers who had completed the
route and scribe the result into the log book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Keeping to the funereal theme, he called himself the Chief Dirger, and
granted titles such as Anxious Almoner to his closest acolytes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any man who completed the challenge in the
requisite time could apply to become a fellow dirger, and to receive a
black-edged ‘condolence card’ to prove it at a shilling a pop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>191 did it in the first three years, and then
the numbers started to climb quite markedly: 112 in 1959 alone, 255 in 1960 and
790 in 1961. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over ninety percent of them
were men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Women who’d completed the trek
weren’t granted dirger status, and were simply called ‘witches’ instead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There was a
breezy levity to those early days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bill
Cowley himself did the route numerous times, including on skis during the
Arctic winter of 1962-3.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sounded at
his most spirited recording a trek in November 1961, when he and regular fellow
dirger Campbell Bosanquet left Osmotherley just after midnight, arriving in
Ravenscar at 2.40 the following afternoon, in time to catch the 3.16 train back
for an evening cocktail party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>En route,
he records, they’d enjoyed ham sandwiches and coffee at 3.30 a.m., sausages and
mushrooms at 8.15, “a pint of iced nectar at Beck Hole” at 10.45 and “another
at the Flask (not quite so iced)” at 1.40.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was all a bit of overgrown schoolboy fun, but that couldn’t last.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVx0brigsTvpnGCuhx4sZ2kV37s1UdJe_PrpJnBtsx8_x498QOpbMrg2S5ZdISlMrzoysUShYsosxjmR_bSHEeEsIuB1QcNp4FwZNW2jNRsUftILoMLXtLH9TtXja10bLTgL-GqYXAk8_G/s1600/Lyke-Wake-Walk-long-dista-011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVx0brigsTvpnGCuhx4sZ2kV37s1UdJe_PrpJnBtsx8_x498QOpbMrg2S5ZdISlMrzoysUShYsosxjmR_bSHEeEsIuB1QcNp4FwZNW2jNRsUftILoMLXtLH9TtXja10bLTgL-GqYXAk8_G/s400/Lyke-Wake-Walk-long-dista-011.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A month
before this crossing, the Lyke Wake Walk had been featured for the first time
on television, when a crew from the BBC programme <i>Tonight</i> came to film it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the next decade or so, other TV crews,
journalists and writers followed and soon, the Lyke Wake Walk was a national
legend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Numbers swelled exponentially,
peaking in the lighter months of May and June.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In June 1975 alone, 3141 people completed the route, including Louis
Kulcsar of Stockton-on-Tees, for whom it was the 110<sup>th</sup> crossing
(three of which were barefoot).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s
still doing it, and has now racked up around two hundred, the official
record.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s believed that 1978 was the peak
year, when anything between twenty and thirty thousand completed the walk, the
vast majority of them going west-east from Osmotherley, and most of them
starting in the dead of night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
muttering of discontented locals, furious at being woken up almost nightly by
excitable gangs of soldiers, scouts and Rotarians, became an inconsolable roar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">And as the
popularity of the walk grew, so did the hoodoo surrounding it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite there being no evidence whatsoever
that this had indeed ever been used as a coffin path (and it seems unlikely
that any funeral procession would carry the dead over forty miles), Bill
Cowley’s imaginative take on history was given as hard fact, and repeated
mantra-like across books, newspapers, radio and television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Merchandise, such as coffin-shaped
cuff-links, ties and headscarves for the ‘witches’, flew off the shelves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Regular gatherings were called Wakes, with
suitably morbid entertainment laid on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The highest accolade, allowing you to wear purple robes at Wakes, was as
a ‘Doctor of Dolefulness’: to qualify, you had to have done at least seven
crossings, one of which needed to be in the winter and one a solo unsupported
trek, meaning no teams of thermos-bearing car drivers to meet you at appointed
halts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Photos of the Wakes in the
seventies show a curious mix of grizzled Yorkshire farmers, a few bald bank
managers taking a walk on the wild side, some wiry fell runners and a generous
sprinkling of bearded progrock pagans getting quietly wassocked on real
ale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These took place against a backdrop
of black candles, coffin-shaped menu cards and skull-painted drapes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With its coterie of hardcore fanatics and
pedants, its pages of tightly-held rules and invented customs, the Lyke Wake
Club started to look distinctly cultish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNh7yVnoVGcCOPUqwQE2SB7o5TyWLTbKQKHhFZ6E8FhTMe-14wd5Xqs4iqjec0zPV7KJA9ZrxeK0w4inNAZx5XLg_cPC1ntgPUYSxEEKW6CA_kD_KWQ1X2Xz9CsB3ZM1hC7884L9sEeE8R/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNh7yVnoVGcCOPUqwQE2SB7o5TyWLTbKQKHhFZ6E8FhTMe-14wd5Xqs4iqjec0zPV7KJA9ZrxeK0w4inNAZx5XLg_cPC1ntgPUYSxEEKW6CA_kD_KWQ1X2Xz9CsB3ZM1hC7884L9sEeE8R/s1600/images.jpeg" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It was
increasingly obvious that Bill Cowley had created a monster, and the backlash
came quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the hot summer of 1975,
a fire on the heather-and-peat tinderbox of Wheeldale Moor burned for a
fortnight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As always, blame was swiftly,
and on no firm evidence, lain squarely at the feet of walkers; calls were made
for the Lyke Wake Walk to be banned outright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Richard Hamersley, Land Surveyor to the Duchy of Lancaster, slyly
pointed out that “the route of the walk is not a statutory footpath, and
serious thought will have to be given as to the legitimacy of this
activity”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was being disingenuous,
for much of the path was on recognised rights of way, the remainder, mostly in
the eastern half, on well-worn permissive tracks that had been used since
anyone could remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Hamersley’s
mind, there was no doubt who was to blame for the fire: “this week I collected
no fewer than 69 cigarette ends in a half-mile random stretch of the route.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If this is indicative of the whole length,
there must be some 5,600 cigarette ends recently smoked along the walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No wonder that during the recent dry weather
a fire of this magnitude has occurred.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The following summer, 1976, was hotter and drier still, and an agreement
was reluctantly brokered to suspend the walk for the duration of the drought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The first
winds of trouble only made the Lyke Wake Club retreat further into its
poundshop Hallowe’en grotto.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They put a
proposal to the Countryside Commission that the route should be recognised as
an official Long Distance Path (LDP), which was immediately rejected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Never mind, for it gave ample chance for the
polishing of Yorkshire chips on square shoulders; the Chief Dirger himself
denouncing the decision, and stating that it “reflects the typical Southern,
bureaucratic attitude of people who would not recognize a walk if they saw
one.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, the Countryside Council
had already plotted an alternative walk, the Cleveland Way, over much of the
same ground, combining it with a final coastal flourish from Whitby to
Filey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the Pennine Way, this had
been Britain’s second official LDP, opening in 1969.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that was dull and square, man,
authority’s preferred route and not for the self-styled swashbuckling dirgers
and witches of the Lyke Wake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As now
happens with Wainwright’s Coast to Coast walk (which shares some of the route,
and much of the spirit, of the Lyke Wake), the lack of official recognition
only seemed to make it even more attractive to some.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Numbers continued to grow, peaking at the
tail end of the seventies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The walk was
barely off the box, and it became by far the number one charity challenge in
the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was these that killed
the Lyke Wake more than anything, for they were often huge groups, walking five
or six abreast, prompting a member of the local National Park Committee to say
that “twenty years ago, the Lyke Wake Walk was just a sheeptrack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now it is wide enough for two tanks to cross
side by side.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Worse, every charity
sponsored walk came complete with a sophisticated back-up support system of
refreshment and medical teams, to be found bouncing around unfamiliar moorland
lanes in minibuses all through the night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Increasingly often, an ambulance would have to join the throng.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sensing only a thin scatter of population,
many walkers – already fired up with the shouty sanctimony of doing it all for
charity – were oblivious to their devastating impact on the taciturn local
community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIMTiDLNOBPMvTw0tSPr1igKlY4HNZEox6w5vDAk939knfBSpmRChAY2HRUgTXNwYwh9g5Wlq69vpEbZV1gpbqwJDmMizJdW4H1IIB4eKLhKDzEmuEfN4tGXx42ZKhqdtTV9sYVMC3_R2H/s1600/4266857669_e20cbe4eea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIMTiDLNOBPMvTw0tSPr1igKlY4HNZEox6w5vDAk939knfBSpmRChAY2HRUgTXNwYwh9g5Wlq69vpEbZV1gpbqwJDmMizJdW4H1IIB4eKLhKDzEmuEfN4tGXx42ZKhqdtTV9sYVMC3_R2H/s400/4266857669_e20cbe4eea.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In May
1982, the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, never the most radical of
organisations, set up a Lyke Wake Walk Working Party to investigate what should
be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The remit of the group was
clear and stated at the outset, that “it is stressed that if a substantial
reduction in use [of the Walk] is not achieved, the National Park Committee
will have to consider complete closure”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Dr Roy Brown of the National Park heaped up the hyperbole: “within a few
years the whole area will be a desert if something is not done quickly”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is an interesting one, for while the
track was undoubtedly eroding quite markedly in places, is this not exactly how
our much-loved ancient holloways and green lanes were initially created?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We wouldn’t have much to coo over now if our
ancestors had been quite so squeamish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The report
concluded that numbers doing the walk must be reduced by half, at the very
least.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Lyke Wake Club tried to do
its bit by creating alternative routes, the Shepherd’s Round and the Hambleton
Hobble, but they never really caught on, for people had bought into the myth of
the Lyke Wake that the Club had so assiduously nursed and weren’t prepared to
be fobbed off with sloppy seconds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ordnance Survey was told to take the route off its maps, which they duly
did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>TV crews were turned away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Charity teams were discouraged, while those
from the police, army and cadet forces – a significant proportion of the total
– were firmly told to go elsewhere and find other challenges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even Bill Cowley acknowledged the necessity
for action, saying “I feel very sad that it has come to this, but it is the
only way”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it worked: almost
instantly, the number of Lyke Wakers plummeted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">After the
drastic cull of 1982, numbers started to rise again, and when, a decade later,
the National Park Authority set up another working party to discourage overuse
of the route, one of the most vociferous of the Lyke Wake Club’s officials
fired off a tetchy letter to the <i>Darlington and Stockton Times</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In it, he told of an American tourist who’d
written to the National Park to ask about the Lyke Walk Walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The officer who’d replied had told him that
it wasn’t on official rights of way and that “permission should really be
obtained from the landowners”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He then
went on to criticise the creeping mentality of council-approved waymarked
routes, writing “for some reason, the vast majority of walkers seem to be
unable to place one leg in front of the other unless the route has a fancy
name, badge and completion certificate” – a very good point indeed, until you
remember that it was the Lyke Wake Club that pioneered such things, and were
still enthusiastically marketing them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Cowley died
in 1994, aged 78.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While his steady hand
was on the tiller, there was still – just about – a sense that the Lyke Wake
Walk was little more than boyish high jinks that had got slightly out of
control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of his lieutenants though
didn’t seem to share his easy-going sense of perspective, and furiously guarded
everything about both the walk and the club.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This came to a head as the fiftieth anniversary of the first crossing
loomed in 2005, when a tight cabal of ‘senior members’ decided to call it a day
and kill the club.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A splinter group
vehemently disagreed, and decided to launch themselves as the New Lyke Wake
Walk Club.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was inaugurated at a
dinner in the Queen Catherine Inn in Osmotherley on the first of October 2005,
precisely fifty years since Bill Cowley’s first walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forty-two miles away on the very same night,
at the Raven Hall Hotel in Ravenscar, the old Lyke Wake Club held its final
Wake and disappeared from the map.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not
entirely, though, for the commercial trading arm, purveyors of all that
coffin-shaped tat, the “fancy name, badge and completion certificate”, plus a
whole load more, continued and still trades today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It was not
an amicable divorce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The new group was
regularly characterised by the old as being full of southern softies who didn’t
understand the highly autarkic culture of the North York Moors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ghost of Bill Cowley was regularly
invoked in the spat, with both sides contending that they were acting as he
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and a few hundred people continue to tramp the route each year, there’s still
an acrimonious whiff hanging over the Lyke Wake Walk; never has its mournful
iconography looked more pathetically appropriate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-56419645979559129962015-01-29T12:55:00.000-08:002015-01-29T12:55:45.434-08:00A LEAP OF FAITH...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYpJdcxDhPx173-G4xYGjym6cKTbBCRQCy78QMvmMtjP5SwiwOLCBDlnBDHM0-wBC65wtfxD9kcQHvDMos3t38cPiin_-wnvCxLydvxy7TjDyoYDYuE6cyC0CH_XT5_p30UihclnIq9p7n/s1600/B8dsIP0CQAAvCAv.jpg-large.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYpJdcxDhPx173-G4xYGjym6cKTbBCRQCy78QMvmMtjP5SwiwOLCBDlnBDHM0-wBC65wtfxD9kcQHvDMos3t38cPiin_-wnvCxLydvxy7TjDyoYDYuE6cyC0CH_XT5_p30UihclnIq9p7n/s1600/B8dsIP0CQAAvCAv.jpg-large.jpeg" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">We hear a lot of chat about “a new kind of
politics”, usually from hardcore tribalists who have absolutely no intention of
doing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if we are to tackle the
escalating disengagement of millions from the democratic process, we have to try
things differently.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">This thought has been uppermost in my mind
in the last few days, as people have been discussing the informal collaboration
between Plaid Cymru, the SNP and the Green party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has resulted in Plaid officially
exhorting people in England to vote Green, even though it is a competitor party
in Wales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people are questioning
the wisdom of this as a strategy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I fully understand people’s doubts, and as
the Plaid candidate in Ceredigion, I’ve got more cause to think about it than
most!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, Ceredigion was where,
in 1992, the pioneering alliance between Plaid and the Greens vaulted what had
been the 4<sup>th</sup> and 5<sup>th</sup> place parties at the previous poll
into first place, and Cynog Dafis’ historical win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Less joyously, once the alliance had ended,
it was notable that the Green vote in 2005 (846 votes) was considerably larger
than the majority (219) that the LibDems squeaked in gaining the seat from
Plaid (and thus knocking out Simon Thomas, widely acknowledged as one of the
greenest MPs we’ve ever had).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">There had been some hope last year that a
similar electoral arrangement could be reached for the forthcoming Westminster
election in Ceredigion, but it was not to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While many Green party members in Wales wanted to unite behind me as the
Plaid candidate, more did not, and so a candidate of their own has now been
selected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve not met him yet, but I
look forward to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although there are
elements of the Green party in Wales (such as their apparent blind spots towards our cultural and linguistic sustainability) that cause concern, we have much in
common and, now more than ever, need to co-operate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">So yes, I’m in the strange position of
encouraging people across the border to vote for the very same party that is my
direct competition in Ceredigion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
not ideal, but that, I believe, is the price to be paid for being sincere about
wanting “a new kind of politics”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
a leap of faith.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The 3 Plaid, 6 SNP and 1 Green MP in this
parliament have worked together brilliantly, and have provided more effective opposition
to this miserable government than hordes of Labour and LibDem backbenchers
combined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our three parties are clearly
fighting this election on a common platform of saying no to continued austerity
measures, for serious infrastructure investment and the scrapping of the
Trident replacement, and for an absolute moratorium on fracking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Polls suggest that the Plaid-SNP-Green bloc
will be both considerably larger in the next parliament and potentially holding
the balance of power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">If that can happen, then we might begin to
see some real change in the clapped out politics of the UK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we can harness some of the energy and
engagement of the Scottish referendum campaign and the anti-austerity forces of
Greece, Spain and elsewhere, then anything is possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rest assured that we in Ceredigion Plaid will
be going all out to capture every vote, and explaining to Green-inclined voters
that I am the candidate they need to back as by far the best chance we have of
turning the tide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-2227167821319071492014-06-30T07:59:00.000-07:002014-06-30T07:59:19.491-07:00ON THE EDGE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXJBTjJ2vWkiCT9Ttgx-xJOrIIuCwdcBzsOpIPTBD721BoX8hg8WIkyOh-108ju-zf2SRrc71tTKXPfpSOTiSX6D10mRgH0B_ZD1g4BvOEq4ee_B26F3w1PgMhFhI8pGRKWeD7tsov_rp1/s1600/IMG_0301+-+Version+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXJBTjJ2vWkiCT9Ttgx-xJOrIIuCwdcBzsOpIPTBD721BoX8hg8WIkyOh-108ju-zf2SRrc71tTKXPfpSOTiSX6D10mRgH0B_ZD1g4BvOEq4ee_B26F3w1PgMhFhI8pGRKWeD7tsov_rp1/s1600/IMG_0301+-+Version+2.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can tell a lot about a place by
examining its edges. Those liminal
spaces, neither quite here nor there, are infused with the essence of identities that
pulse from the distant centre. They are,
however, far more than a faint homeopathic imprint of the personality of a
territory, for the process is an alchemical one and conjures up a whole new
identity all of its own, especially at land borders when two such edges rub
together.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The England-Wales border is a well-seasoned
example of the phenomenon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is one of
the most singular parts of our island, a furzey hinterland that manages to be
both Welsh and English, and yet neither of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It has always drawn me; spending three days last week walking in the
Herefordshire borderlands has only deepened that respect and love.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIU1h0xmEp4zWFDpRJeSyb8H9sR9ksUA7MNDnlXY5uXD2s6xtRXmIvxm2dW7_eoB_THSsRPNfOEVURofjBvvbZO1GKAYJQvLkXhq3YyAyQLXAq7XQGF8xWP0hXA-UBunYsCdA7_LcML3Y6/s1600/Mortimer+Trail.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIU1h0xmEp4zWFDpRJeSyb8H9sR9ksUA7MNDnlXY5uXD2s6xtRXmIvxm2dW7_eoB_THSsRPNfOEVURofjBvvbZO1GKAYJQvLkXhq3YyAyQLXAq7XQGF8xWP0hXA-UBunYsCdA7_LcML3Y6/s1600/Mortimer+Trail.png" height="282" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Mortimer Trail, with our extra few miles from the border added on</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two friends and I did the Mortimer Trail, a
thirty mile walk between Kington, near the border on the A44, and Ludlow, the grand and
gastronomic former seat of the Council of the Marches. It is a beautifully crafted route; you might
even say ‘curated’ (if that didn’t make you sound like some blue-sky-thinking arse). On the map, the trail looked erratic and
seemed to have little interest in reaching its destination. On the ground, all became clear. Destinations were secondary; the journey was
all, as the path steered us thoughtfully around optimum vistas, telling angles
and ever changing perspectives and moods.
It was a route as carefully calibrated as poetry.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a lovely symmetry to it too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whichever way round you do the Mortimer Trail,
you start by rising out from the plains and being afforded a lingering look back
at where you have come from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For us,
starting at the Welsh-English border to the west of Kington, this meant looking
towards home across the broad vales of the rivers Arrow and Lugg, to the sulky
contours of the Radnor Forest and the cheeky peak of the Whimble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wales looked dark and different.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the other end, approaching Ludlow, there
are fine, wide views across the gentler patchwork of Shropshire, Herefordshire
and Worcestershire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between these two
corresponding trailheads, you amble for many miles through what feels a little
like a very green and lovely No Man’s Land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hillforts, castle mounds, ancient tumps, turreted barns and fortified
churches all whisper their dark secrets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The deep forests, both ancient and conifer, spin further webs
of disorientation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are a few
straggled farms and loose, lonely hamlets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is profoundly stirring, brooding terrain.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4U_z7RBwXU4g8FwZnEA9zS0rtS3ZfhAPuF_IooBbvZ1lL1BXbFrG3b0FkcGcroQPxuf0Z3akYYHgIIPWoX4EA8NDDgjyTeJYKK52ctAeWFa68uRkX_TIYLv1O7uRQGPU6zTo4_mOiMTi/s1600/IMG_0242.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4U_z7RBwXU4g8FwZnEA9zS0rtS3ZfhAPuF_IooBbvZ1lL1BXbFrG3b0FkcGcroQPxuf0Z3akYYHgIIPWoX4EA8NDDgjyTeJYKK52ctAeWFa68uRkX_TIYLv1O7uRQGPU6zTo4_mOiMTi/s1600/IMG_0242.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Once the meeting place of three railway lines, the former Titley Junction station slumbers away in quiet fields</span></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even though it looks like the essence of
timelessness, change has come, of course it has. A few locals we bumped into delighted in pointing
out their parvenu neighbours behind security gates and lakes of Farrow &
Ball. The bankers, and their bonuses,
have burrowed their slippery way into even this old Marcher rock. Ludlow was the catalyst (but still mostly the exception). The handsome but earthy town
that I knew as a child has long since traded in its cack-crusted overalls for two hundred quid jeans and
some hand-stitched brogues. Yet the other
trailhead, Kington, remains little altered, and distinctly recognisable from this description by
John Hillaby in his 1968 walking classic <i>Journey
through Britain</i>:</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kington is a little, squashed-up, narrow-streeted
market town on the Welsh frontier where they sell cartridges and sheep dip,
fertilizer and men’s flannel underwear.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Welsh frontier!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a far meatier word than the rather
mealy-mouthed ‘border’, and it fits the flavour of the dusty little towns on
the savannah, against their backdrop of Wild West hills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Think of Kington, Knighton, Presteigne, Bishop's Castle, Clun, Longtown, even Montgomery and Hay, as frontier towns, and they suddenly make a new kind of sense. </span>This <i>is</i> a frontier, and it has been for two
millennia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not some folksy
quirk for the tourist board, a relic with no significance to the modern world;
it is very much a demarcation between distinct countries, landscapes, histories
and cultures.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This midsummer pilgrimage has helped me ponder
the murky waters of the question I’m getting asked a lot these days: “so you’re
standing as a Plaid Cymru candidate – you must believe then in Welsh
independence?” Walking along and through
the edges of both England and Wales has reaffirmed to me that yes is my
unequivocal reply. Yes to Wales owning
its own resources and making its own choices.
Yes to England doing likewise. Yes to Britishness (a glorious fact of geography) but not its bastardised cousin, UK-ness. And yes to a new age of neighbourly comradeship, a coming together in
this potent countryside, a eye-to-eye meeting - at last - of equals. I can understand the doubts, when placed in
the context only of the version of the world that we have grown up with, but if
you take a longer look, the bottom line is that there <i>is</i> a line. We cannot wish it
away – and neither should we want to. It
is far too deep, far too powerful, and far too beautiful, for that.</span></div>
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Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-38976693015503210422014-02-03T03:44:00.000-08:002014-02-03T03:44:13.077-08:00"BURN, YOU BASTARD, BURN!"<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">[an extract from my 2011 book, <i>The Wild Rover</i>]</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHUr-6oZeFyunejyRW6l7aQiJXw3IzuMDfh2-IeWWKm8gwiJJ09yZ3Qcb1xF96D5fI-Aajm24kts_EMjTj1STbiHB38O889EijKp0IzjU5u6ySAuri12degn9H4h0YehzcScSm7D8qIO7-/s1600/800px-Witley_Court_Fire_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHUr-6oZeFyunejyRW6l7aQiJXw3IzuMDfh2-IeWWKm8gwiJJ09yZ3Qcb1xF96D5fI-Aajm24kts_EMjTj1STbiHB38O889EijKp0IzjU5u6ySAuri12degn9H4h0YehzcScSm7D8qIO7-/s1600/800px-Witley_Court_Fire_1.jpg" height="281" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A newspaper image of the 1937 fire</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Growing up in
1970s Worcestershire, by far my favourite outing was to Witley Court, less than
ten miles from home. Originally a
medieval manor, it had been added to by successive owners, eventually becoming
one of England’s most extravagant stately homes in the late Victorian age, when
it was owned by the Ward family, the Earls of Dudley. Witley was famous for lavish living, for
parties where royalty, aristocracy, politicians and celebrities mixed in the
orangery, the parterre gardens or draped themselves over the sides of the
massive ornamental fountains. Two
hundred staff oiled its wheels, and it took fifty tons of coal a day to keep
the monster warm.</div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Even more than most stately homes, Witley’s progress mirrors that of the country at
large.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Wards’ fortune was eaten by
its opulence, and after the Great War, the much battered family put the estate
up for sale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was bought by the
epitome of new money, Kidderminster carpet baron Sir Herbert Smith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From humble beginnings, he’d risen to become
the most powerful man in my home town, where he was known as “Piggy”, thanks to his
portly stature and shaved head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though
he loved life as lord of the manor, he was ill-prepared for the costs, and ran
the house and estate into the ground, skimping on maintenance and keeping only
a skeleton staff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like an earlier Nicholas
van Hoogstraten, he caused fury by blockading all the footpaths that ran across
the estate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">On 7<sup>th</sup>
September 1937, a fire broke out in the basement of the court, quickly
spreading to the ballroom above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks
to Sir Herbert’s economies, the fountains lay unused, and the reservoir that
fed them was almost empty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that it
would have helped had they been full, for the water pumping equipment had
rusted up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The staff battled valiantly
to save furniture and pictures, but it was too late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1939, with the country on the brink of
war, Smith sold the house to a demolition contractor, who stripped it of all
its finery, leaving it as a roofless shell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">It was in that
state that I first encountered Witley Court, with a few further decades of
plundering and weather-beaten decay etched into its gaunt frame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It excited me like nowhere else, from the
moment you passed one of the lodge houses on the main road and bumped your way
up the rutted track, the skeletal ruin growing ever larger on the skyline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back then, you just nipped over the fence and
had free run of the place, up crumbling staircases into the bedrooms, down into
the dark, mouldy cellars, galloping along the broken balustrade of the grand
terrace steps, even jumping into the vast, wrecked fountains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there always seemed to be crows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">One day, at the
age of about twelve, I had persuaded my dad to take me there, ostensibly to
walk the dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Standing in the ruins was
an elderly lady, muffled up against the cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We got chatting, and it transpired that she had grown up in Great
Witley, the nearby village once transplanted out of view by the lords of Witley Court and
where most of the house’s army of staff had lived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the night of the fire, she said, villagers
– few of whom would still have been employed at the Court, thanks to Sir
Herbert Smith’s swingeing economies – came out into the street to watch the
flames dancing in the sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They cracked
open bottles of beer, and chanted “burn, you bastard, burn!”.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjco9hhAzvFeobqUv4Keqr3VsvKwMCr5BtFVP1OZtJ79Tk7VR_GSBw-wyYNce6ZWYvpLezchKS0fNMrx_WKTNgqv7jF0w9-fBMonx5z-q0AVv9wvkgm0w0Hy6q5vyWPZKm7c2V5vC_BGKm5/s1600/800px-Witley_Court_from_Morris's_Seats_of_Noblemen_and_Gentlemen_(1880).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjco9hhAzvFeobqUv4Keqr3VsvKwMCr5BtFVP1OZtJ79Tk7VR_GSBw-wyYNce6ZWYvpLezchKS0fNMrx_WKTNgqv7jF0w9-fBMonx5z-q0AVv9wvkgm0w0Hy6q5vyWPZKm7c2V5vC_BGKm5/s1600/800px-Witley_Court_from_Morris's_Seats_of_Noblemen_and_Gentlemen_(1880).JPG" height="281" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An 1880 engraving of the Court in its lavish heyday</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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She said it in
such a deadpan way, a look of resigned indifference on her face, but the shock
electrified me. It was partly hearing a
little old lady swear, but there was more to it than that. To the twelve year old me, history was dates
and kings and battles and the invention of the spinning jenny. It was cause and effect, question and answer,
a smooth, smug progress through the ages to the zenith of civilisation that was, we were regularly assured, late 1970s Britain. For the first time,
I got a glimpse of the real story behind the textbook, and it both confused and
thrilled me.</div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">[To see the gothic dereliction of Witley in the 60s and 70s, look at the original promo video shot there for Procul Harum's monster 1967 hit, <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale: </i></span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PmisbzxwoQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PmisbzxwoQ</a>. It was never used at the time, because it interspersed footage of Witley with that of the Vietnam war. The BBC refused to show it, and so the group had to shoot a new video in London.]</div>
Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-70959455416067942022014-01-28T12:32:00.000-08:002014-01-28T12:32:35.248-08:00MEN ARE FROM MARS...<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>So many in Welsh lit over yrs have cited
Nigel Jenkins as someone who had inspired, helped, been kind to them. That,
friends, is success</i>: these wise words from Kathryn Gray plopped into the muddy swirl
of my Twitter timeline earlier today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I nodded in silent
agreement, though the thought did flit across my mind that it seemed a faintly
random sentiment for a wet, workaday Tuesday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The sucker punch truth that it was a 140-character obituary only dawned
a few tweets later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">At 64, Nigel was too young to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fire still roared within; it burst out in
his poetry, prose, politics, lecturing, psychogeography and music; it combusted
all around him and brought light and merriment; it scorched even through the
hallowed chambers of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Encyclopaedia of
Wales</i>, a project that ate seven years of his life as one of its editors,
and which he wearily nicknamed ‘Psycho’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His inability to stand the sickly cant of sanctioned public discourse
brought untold admiration from many of us, but brickbats galore too, none more piously hurled than when
his furious eulogy to ‘Viscount No’, George Thomas (“The Lord of Lickspit / The
grovelsome brown-snout and smiley shyster”) landed him on the front of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian</i> and booed on the letters
page of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Western Mail</i> for months
on end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As ever, he was proved entirely right
on that one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAmf59cBmdoOHczlROj1jrBoc-XugiO6yP4XdTptR-19Pl9ApmGO6Boeu6sAgmaVCh8A2X16HAmpRkeQUugVoqzZdAto1hyphenhyphenYauDS-tTqebhn12eCYwrrhIMdES9BaKUXJZxIEY5UUvdCdz/s1600/Article001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAmf59cBmdoOHczlROj1jrBoc-XugiO6yP4XdTptR-19Pl9ApmGO6Boeu6sAgmaVCh8A2X16HAmpRkeQUugVoqzZdAto1hyphenhyphenYauDS-tTqebhn12eCYwrrhIMdES9BaKUXJZxIEY5UUvdCdz/s1600/Article001.jpg" height="640" width="404" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How green was my bile…and how true</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span lang="EN-US">The last time I saw Nigel was at a hugely
convivial event in Aberystwyth rugby club to mark <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Planet</i> magazine’s fortieth birthday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was music, poetry, prose and speeches
from a glittering cast that included Ned Thomas, Jan Morris, John Barnie, Gai
Toms, Jasmine Donahaye, Damian Walford Davies and Samantha
Wynne-Rhydderch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As compere of the
evening, I’d come up with the idea of ascribing a different planet to each
performer, a conceit that became distinctly strained on occasion (Jan Morris,
suffering an injured foot, hobbled up to the stage after my introducing her as Mercury, fixed me with a baleful eye and murmured “well, I certainly don’t feel very Mercurial
right now”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">While some were highly
tenuous fits, there was no question which planet to give to Nigel: Mars, the red
planet, named after the Roman god of war, the near neighbour that’s fascinated
us for generations, famous for its eruptions, its volcanoes and its elliptical orbit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cringe to recall this now, but
my last words before bringing Nigel to the microphone were “so, is there life
on Mars?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There certainly is!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">And now there isn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sky is a far darker place without him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">[Here is Nigel filmed reading one of his loveliest poems, <i>Snowdrops</i>, written about and for this time of year: <a href="http://www.nigeljenkins.com/aa_film/film008.htm">http://www.nigeljenkins.com/aa_film/film008.htm</a>]</span></div>
Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-25400234755401241162014-01-02T13:35:00.000-08:002014-01-02T13:35:40.383-08:002014: NEW YEAR,OLD FEARS<div class="MsoNormal">
As a young child in the 1970s, I well
recall being regularly bored and mystified by the never-ending fascination with
‘the war’. Adults seemed to go on about
it all the time, hurrah-for-our-boys black and white movies filled the TV
schedules, and even sitcoms knew that jokes about Jerries or Japs were surefire
substitutes for proper humour. It was
all <i>so</i> long ago, I remember thinking
– won’t they just shut up about it?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Now I realise that the passage of thirty
years is but the blink of an eye (as my recently rediscovered record collection
rather disconcertingly demonstrates). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore,
at the outset of 2014, the centenary of the beginning of the First World War, I
think we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i> to look back and learn
a great deal more about the 1914-45 period, because we are in grave danger of
repeating its mistakes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say 1914-45,
as we need to take the whole period bookended by the two world wars, for the twenty
year lull between them was very much unfinished business that reached its grim,
almost inevitable conclusion in Hitler and the Holocaust.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">It is a horrible irony that 2014 is likely
to be a year in which people soberly commemorate the centenary of the Great
War, while simultaneously voting in droves for various shades of tub-thumping bigotry
in May’s European elections. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Across the
whole continent and beyond, such sentiment is gaining ground, fuelled by idiot
politicians and a craven or timid media.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxoobNJjt_spvhCmSJh5gvow_oX6nKBdWSbzID_yfBaf3oHnZqApzlErf_6HIcA4UHSTZCSDPjqw5yCL3j-JTNSL_MJoicCrQE3RfOZjEfIXfFxmosDzb0t28R7XaPE0vbTp5VBbJlIob0/s1600/Image+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxoobNJjt_spvhCmSJh5gvow_oX6nKBdWSbzID_yfBaf3oHnZqApzlErf_6HIcA4UHSTZCSDPjqw5yCL3j-JTNSL_MJoicCrQE3RfOZjEfIXfFxmosDzb0t28R7XaPE0vbTp5VBbJlIob0/s400/Image+3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Birkenau extermination camp, Poland</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In the run-up to Christmas, I was fortunate
to have two trips abroad, one to Berlin and one to Krak</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">ów in
Poland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both hammered home the dangers
that we seem to be sleep-walking back into, especially on the latter trip which
included a day at the Auschwitz and Birkenau Nazi concentration camps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing can prepare you for the experience,
and the sheer numbers who died there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
reeled from there back to </span><span lang="EN-US">Krak</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">ów, where I
picked up a copy of the local English language newspaper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It told me that Nick Griffin, leader of
what’s left of the BNP, had recently been in town and warned a rally that “powerful
Zionists want to destroy us. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We, the
nationalists, must stand together to fight for a white, nationalist and radical
Europe”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was it 2013 or 1943 outside?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">We can mercifully dismiss Griffin as a truly
crap (and fading) demagogue, but the rally at which he spoke was an offshoot of
another organised by Poland’s Law and Justice party (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prawo i Sprawiedliwość</i>), who hold about a quarter of the seats in
parliament and form the official opposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Griffin’s rally was mainly a showcase for a belligerent fringe movement
called the National Rebirth of Poland (<i>Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski</i>), whose
slogans include the ever-catchy “gas the queers” and “there will be a baton for
each queer face”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">The Holocaust did not emerge fully-formed from
thin air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People had to be broken down
into submission to a political ideology that turned them into acquiescent
murderers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The key part of that process
is always the same: others have to be comprehensively dehumanised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it is always the same ‘others’ – gypsies,
gays, Jews, people with disabilities – that get picked off first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was then, and it is now (with Muslims latterly
added as the scapegoat group recycled from even earlier times).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">It might seem crass to place on this gruesome
spectrum the beer’n’fags populism of UKIP, the Groundhog Day hysteria of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mail</i> and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Express</i> or even the default media inflation of daft young lads into
holy warriors and terrorists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe
that they all belong there, however.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When researching my last book, I was gobsmacked to see how close the
parallels were between now and the 1930s, even here in Britain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not just in the obvious rise of fascist
thuggery and quisling politicians, but in the prevailing mainstream, which
chose to wish away the warnings and faff around instead with its new gadgets, its
folksy pastimes and its obsession with home’n’hearth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today, as then, we seem addicted to the soft
poison of nostalgia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Same shit, different day</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">This is, by the way, another reason I’m a
candidate for Plaid Cymru.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those who
know little of the party might assume it’s a Welsh UKIP, but that’s very far
from the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plaid has always been a
firmly internationalist outfit, rooted in Welsh radical and pacifist
traditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its first MP, Gwynfor Evans,
was a lone voice in the 1960s House of Commons against Britain arming the
Nigerian government in Biafra; his vocal opposition to the Vietnam war was
informed by going there to find out for himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its MEP since 1999, Jill Evans, leads the
European Free Alliance (EFA), who are in a joint block with the Greens in
Brussels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">I’m sorry to those many now dead relatives to
whom I moaned when yet another war film flickered on to our telly all those
years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that we’ve lost nearly
all of them, the generation who knew wartime as young adults, it feels to me
that we have lost something anchoring us to the bitter reality of its
first-hand experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as our anchor
slips away, the danger is that we will once again career off into the same
blind alleys that brought such terror to our continent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">The EU is far from perfect, but its creation as
a response to the horrors of two wars is something we should never lose sight
of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must make it work for us
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the famous George Santayana
quotation has it on the wall of one of the blocks in Auschwitz, “the one who
does not remember history is bound to live through it again”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let 2014 be a year when we learn once again
our common history, and make an iron resolution not to repeat it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVYUL2y-azpx-Gq6PyLJ2OwIwSyNBLlgv9Ei3wmKpldWhcU4Rtnl07sJj4uUXoIqED4WPXk0cSCFqj3dHhpkiwR_0UJd2-rNBRI_0CYWpAMWLGZH4HBOny77BoKrwFQpmEUH3i_JOZS-o2/s1600/IMG_0528.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVYUL2y-azpx-Gq6PyLJ2OwIwSyNBLlgv9Ei3wmKpldWhcU4Rtnl07sJj4uUXoIqED4WPXk0cSCFqj3dHhpkiwR_0UJd2-rNBRI_0CYWpAMWLGZH4HBOny77BoKrwFQpmEUH3i_JOZS-o2/s400/IMG_0528.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-71795197936782870252013-05-14T08:03:00.000-07:002013-05-14T08:03:27.822-07:00MP MP?
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Slightly unexpectedly, I’m in the running
to be adopted as the <a href="http://www.english.plaidcymru.org/" target="_blank">Plaid Cymru</a> candidate for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceredigion_(UK_Parliament_constituency)" target="_blank">Ceredigion</a> at the next UK
general election. This might seem like a
strange career move, but it is something I am deeply committed to, and even
quite excited about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The political tectonic plates are shifting
fast these days, and at every level: global, European, British, English,
Scottish and Welsh. Yet the level of
debate in this country about these seismic shifts is derisory. Politicians and media alike seem content to
stir the disenchantment, while offering neither useful analysis nor any real
alternative. Unsurprisingly, this is
leaving people thoroughly exasperated and with a growing sense of rage – the
‘plague on all your houses’ response, a.k.a. ‘politicians are all the bloody
same’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">But they are not. Really, they’re not. There are genuinely decent, honest people in almost
every party (some more than others), but it is in Plaid Cymru that I’ve found
by far the greatest concentration. Ever
since I first encountered Plaid, as a member of the NUS national executive
twenty-five years ago, I’ve been impressed by the vision, erudition and commitment
of its members, and their ambition for Wales – and the world beyond. Although lazily derided as “the nationalists”
by opponents, Plaid is firmly internationalist, progressive and co-operative in
its outlook. When I moved to mid Wales
thirteen years ago, I joined Plaid immediately, and have worked on their behalf,
with varying degrees of success, at every election since.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAEIrZKztpUNmeHj7VNgDLZNHRqufwhwE3Es1l7fLU4iR52y7QF_V-FakijYxCYGTot-FxtRiOYifCAiYMf2Dayki8LjMY_VBAedbVanLSEcRQy6RxwtiZYO3srNvRE8vIvLO07-Ehz1Sr/s1600/Ceredigion-20120215-00619.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAEIrZKztpUNmeHj7VNgDLZNHRqufwhwE3Es1l7fLU4iR52y7QF_V-FakijYxCYGTot-FxtRiOYifCAiYMf2Dayki8LjMY_VBAedbVanLSEcRQy6RxwtiZYO3srNvRE8vIvLO07-Ehz1Sr/s400/Ceredigion-20120215-00619.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aberystwyth Mon Amour</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">When <a href="http://www.english.plaidcymru.org/leader/" target="_blank">Leanne Wood</a> was elected as Plaid
leader just over a year ago, it was clear that there were some exciting times
ahead. I’ve known Leanne for years, and
have always been inspired by her passion, her integrity, her absolute
commitment to social and economic justice and – rare indeed in a politician – her
utter lack of ego. To her, the idea of a
self-governing Wales is not an end in itself.
It is a beginning; the much-needed chance for Wales to work out its own
priorities, on its own terms, and to go for them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">After twenty years of writing and
broadcasting about Wales, and of studying in depth its history and culture, it
is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that no Westminster
government, of any political persuasion, is going to look out for us. Wales will always be an adjunct or an
afterthought. Policies designed for the
overheated economy of south-east England are never going to succeed here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">This logjam has to be broken. Here in Wales, we have all three of the UK
main parties in power: the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Westminster,
Labour in Cardiff Bay. As they bicker
and squabble amongst themselves, egged on by a breathless, blinkered media, it
is hard to see much difference between any of them. And as
they do so, our economy totters, our high streets start to look like rows of
rotten teeth, cuts scythe through our cultural landscape, our hard-won health
service lurches from one crisis to another, and our communities feel
increasingly beleaguered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m keen to be part of building Plaid Cymru
towards becoming the government in our devolved Senedd. We so desperately need that to happen. So why am I taking a tilt at a seat in
Westminster? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Well, that’s because one of the ingrained
problems facing Plaid is getting any attention on the other side of Offa’s
Dyke. Despite having been represented in
parliament since 1966, and despite having three MPs (i.e. three more than UKIP!),
you’d barely know of their existence from the London media. And yet, with the Scottish referendum next
year and the ongoing Euro-ructions, the constitution of our country is facing
changes bigger than anyone alive has ever witnessed. We need to start having grown-up
conversations about this, and Plaid is keen to play its part. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh957RTpDYeafhHWDunF3A-4uj9GhyphenhyphenzRGuGGDgMp7iyVHOChLY3gl8ajKP-GxhMhdW3eWaL5GBowmFu19VGdMh87oCXSfHlG3LkT8PrBYn5sL5dd2zNbfXGrSve6zQGj_qPNbrG4Snlg9Hp/s1600/IMG_6724.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh957RTpDYeafhHWDunF3A-4uj9GhyphenhyphenzRGuGGDgMp7iyVHOChLY3gl8ajKP-GxhMhdW3eWaL5GBowmFu19VGdMh87oCXSfHlG3LkT8PrBYn5sL5dd2zNbfXGrSve6zQGj_qPNbrG4Snlg9Hp/s400/IMG_6724.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cei Newydd / New Quay last summer, when I walked the Ceredigion Coast Path</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To that end, I think that I could be a good
ambassador for Plaid, and for Wales, in Westminster. I want to help take on the kneejerk
assumption, routinely heard in every debate on, for instance, the Scottish
referendum, that to be an advocate of a different constitutional
settlement, you have therefore to be inherently ‘anti-English’ in some
way. My life and my writing both give
lie to that one. It is perfectly
possible to love both England and Wales, love them with a passion, but also to
believe that an eighteenth century structure, one created explicitly for gung-ho imperialism, is not the best way of running either. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Although I’ve settled just outside the
constituency near Machynlleth, Ceredigion feels very much like the right place
for me to try this. It’s where I first
moved to when I came to mid Wales thirteen years ago, where I first joined
Plaid and where I learned <i>Cymraeg</i>. Like all mid-Walians, I rely on Ceredigion
for healthcare, leisure, shopping, education, research, culture and
recreation. It has the one of the
highest proportions of self-employed people of any constituency in the country,
is home to two universities and the National Library, and has always been a
cauldron of entrepreneurship, quiet radicalism and profound cultural expression. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Of the dozens of TV travelogues I made for
HTV, many of the best were in Ceredigion, from a <i>noson lawen </i>in Tregaron to a night camping with my dog by the
lonely Teifi Pools; from a tootle along the coast road in that beautiful 1950s
bus you see parked in Llanon to sailing into Aberaeron on a wooden Edwardian
ketch. The thought of representing this
very special part of the world excites me enormously.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHNCxdVu8B7haPZ64EoYn9wG-_S_dG9FAl8fu3sf9h625ApffKQoRrnBWcwgNy1g0v7wca_cK_AKMYSJxygzRBFeTwq0J_kTxFKCNLtY2WEBt1ev4jYpm0VB3j3F3as_6M66vgceu68eIs/s1600/P1010571.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHNCxdVu8B7haPZ64EoYn9wG-_S_dG9FAl8fu3sf9h625ApffKQoRrnBWcwgNy1g0v7wca_cK_AKMYSJxygzRBFeTwq0J_kTxFKCNLtY2WEBt1ev4jYpm0VB3j3F3as_6M66vgceu68eIs/s400/P1010571.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Filming <i>Great Welsh Roads</i>, with my late, lamented co-presenter Patsy, at Llyn Brianne<br /><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">It’s going to be a tough fight though. Ceredigion provided the most sensational
result of the 1992 general election (and a rare flicker of joy on such a
depressing night), when Cynog Dafis went from fourth place to win it for an
alliance of Plaid Cymru and the Green Party.
When Cynog went instead to the infant National Assembly, Simon Thomas
won the ensuing by-election for Plaid, and held it in the 2001 election. The LibDems (it had been a Liberal seat since
1974 before Cynog) nicked it back by a few hundred votes in 2005, but then in
2010 upped their majority to a meaty 8,324.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">That’s a lot of votes to overcome. But Plaid did it before; when they first won the
seat in 1992, they’d taken just 16% the previous time. In 2010, Plaid won 28.3%. More to the point, we’ve had the sorry sight
of the LibDems in government, so we are all too familiar now with what their
smooth words look like in practice. It’s
not pretty. If I win the nomination (to
be decided over the next month), then I will relish taking them on their
appalling record as part of this hollow, cynical shambles of a government. I cannot wait.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-32304781779196991722012-11-19T14:07:00.000-08:002012-11-19T14:08:54.420-08:00HEFIN ON EARTH<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAG-KhhLPF-m2Ah0EbwWo-LxTXRdCJ325O2J7mZykKWV4HOTfDZjcICH04l5hmD2TzBb15enAOAEvJ7302mEEHfMbsOqvCe8vRQs0bSnVdK06vcQ-ff995SOPkC_CyQ19ybprFHxFIMv87/s1600/_61285433_johnhefinprifysgolabertawe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAG-KhhLPF-m2Ah0EbwWo-LxTXRdCJ325O2J7mZykKWV4HOTfDZjcICH04l5hmD2TzBb15enAOAEvJ7302mEEHfMbsOqvCe8vRQs0bSnVdK06vcQ-ff995SOPkC_CyQ19ybprFHxFIMv87/s1600/_61285433_johnhefinprifysgolabertawe.jpg" /></a></div>
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I don’t know whether either would thank me
for the comparison, but an afternoon spent interviewing John Hefin and David
Meredith reminded me most of trying to referee Statler and Waldorf, the two
cantankerous old gits in the balcony on <i>The
Muppets</i>. It didn’t help that we
were holed up in a ghostly pub in Ponterwyd, the proper boondocks of
inland Ceredigion.</div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The interview was for one of my ITV Wales
travelogues, <i>Great Welsh Roads</i>. This edition was filming the A44 route into
Aberystwyth, and I was keen to do an item about the Elvis rock, that infamous
landmark at the county border. Over the
years, there have been several Elvis rocks, but the original dated from spring
1962 and the Montgomeryshire by-election, following the death of the area’s
Liberal MP since 1929, Clem Davies.
Plaid Cymru, never yet elected anywhere, had put up that fine specimen
of Welsh literary priesthood, Islwyn Ffowc Elis, as their candidate. Down in Aberystwyth, that distant seaside gap
in the hills, two ardent young nationalists had an idea…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">“We borrowed David's father’s car, smuggled a
couple of pots of paint and a brush into its boot, and then crept
out of town after the pubs had shut and up to Eisteddfa Gurig”, John told
me. This was the border with
Montgomeryshire, and the Aber Two thought that if they painted a big slogan
somewhere to fire up the Rev Ffowc Elis’ chances, he would be practically lowering
his backside onto the green benches of San Steffan. “We went back home that night, so cocky and
excited. We were absolutely convinced
that we’d done all that was needed. He
was as good as home.” Not quite how it
turned out. As has been the case on most
occasions since in the <i>mwynder Maldwyn</i>,
Plaid limped in fourth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgosJttMMjGWMQHzgf4XfLy0NMhlvlW9f8wzx6TR5JZokJ13zmSzO2_dcMsXLtS-n7WtTrgHqHmZW5r5ONrdsvVbF0asHhVOhHtNpCMoNFdFpHRmsr3ydCVesIaCqbw5IFkBhx5UdT9xYT/s1600/1390255_d70a1291.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgosJttMMjGWMQHzgf4XfLy0NMhlvlW9f8wzx6TR5JZokJ13zmSzO2_dcMsXLtS-n7WtTrgHqHmZW5r5ONrdsvVbF0asHhVOhHtNpCMoNFdFpHRmsr3ydCVesIaCqbw5IFkBhx5UdT9xYT/s400/1390255_d70a1291.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The provenance of the Elvis rock had been a
bit of a mystery – legend even – for decades, and I was thrilled that John and
David had finally agreed to fess up after so many years. The original intention had been to film the
interview by the rock itself, but it’s a cheerless, inhospitable place at the
best of times, and that cold October day was far from that. So we’d decide to film footage of the rock
and the road, and then retire to the George Borrow Hotel in Ponterwyd for the
interview. We were all freezing; coffees
and brandys were quickly downed. I thank
the brandy for the appearance of Statler and Waldorf, for John and David, as
soon as they sat down and relaxed, mateamorphosed into one of the funniest, and
most natural, double acts. It still
stands out as my favourite ever interview, though I doubt that my editor, who
had the impossible task of slicing down the rambling hilarity into
broadcastable bite-sized chunks, would have felt quite the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Like all good comic duos, there was the jester
and the straight guy. David, in all his
lugubrious magnificence, was the erudite clown, mugging to me and acting out
the absurdity of painting a slogan on a lonely rock in the middle of the night. When he had raised himself to near crescendo,
John would quietly cut in with a contrary memory or an arch observation, which
had us all in fits of laughter. They
riffed so beautifully off each other, and could affectionately bicker for Cymru.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The punchline to the story was all John’s. “Well, you see, I was a good grammar school
boy, brought up in the Queen’s English, so when it came to painting ELIS on the
rock, it never occurred to me that it didn’t have two Ls.” ELLIS it was, until some time shortly after
when the middle L was deftly overpainted into a V, and the Elvis rock was born.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Like every encounter I ever had with John,
I remember it with pinpoint precision.
My boyfriend, who met him separately on three or four occasions, said
the same just now. That was John. He had such a luminous presence about him
that you savoured every moment in his company, knowing that it would continue
to nourish you long after you’d said goodbye.
He was genuinely interested in seemingly everything, and just as
genuinely modest about his own multiple achievements. To a zealous convert like me, John Hefin was
the embodiment of all that made me fall in love with Wales: wit, wisdom,
warmth, passion, a depth of culture and breadth of thinking, and an apparently
bottomless pit of creativity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I last saw John at the Hay Festival in
early June this year. He was obviously
not so well, but he was still so full of life that it did nothing to dent my
hope and belief that he’d go on for ever.
Elin and he were spending a couple of days at Hay, “going to
everything. It feeds me for the whole
year,” he said, grinning with boyish delight.
As we parted, we shook hands, and held it for ages. “Come and see us sometime soon, won’t you?”
he said. Yes, of course, I said. I am so very sorry that I didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Nos da John, a diolch am bopeth. Cysga’n dawel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Monday morning, the head still whirling
from a weekend of utter joy (amongst other intoxicants): the inaugural Festival
Number 6 at Portmeirion. Out of the
corner of my eye, I kept seeing ghostly flashes of yellow stockings striding
by, as Clough Williams-Ellis pounded his <i>trompe
l’oeil</i> manor, thrilled to see it come to such exuberant life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Take Sunday as a dipstick into my oily sump
of fun. It kicked off with a reading by
Jan Morris, who fluttered as she sat down “well, I never expected to be
performing at a rock festival at the age of eighty-six” before blasting a
capacity audience into the stratosphere with an elegant, witty memory-monologue
about Portmeirion itself, Clough, the jet set who made it their second home and
the joy of Welshness. On the same stage,
tucked in by the swimming pool above the shifting sands of the Dwyryd estuary,
surf rockers Y Niwl took it up a notch and glided us into the day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">A walk up into the village’s central
piazza, by now cowering under curtains of rain, and to the undercover stage at
the back of Castell Deudraeth. We were
after seeing Jerry Dammers do a DJ set, but arrived in time to catch a chamber
quintet playing Mozart, followed by the sublime soundscapes of Rae Morris, a
wild-haired elf from Blackpool, who, following a quick google, I now know to be
only nineteen. Cow. Mr Dammers bumbled on stage next, all hat and
no teeth, and cranked an aching, damp, middle-aged crowd to fever pitch with steamy
dub, ska, reggae under a unexpected patina of pure camp. A quick detour to catch comedian Marcus
Brigstocke rant about Jimmy Carr, George Osborne and the <i>Daily Mail</i> (yay! Guardianista
bullseye!), and it was time for home.
Had we been able to stay, there was plenty more, culminating in a set by
New Order, that, judging from the reaction on Twitter, was actually rather
good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Ah, Twitter. Festival Number 6 was a multiple shuddering
Twittergasm. I spent large parts of
Saturday afternoon being thoroughly entertained by Grace Dent, Stuart Maconie,
Andrew Weatherall, Caitlin Moran and John Niven in various conversational
combinations on the main piazza, and the number of people live tweeting the
references being made to tweeting fused into a perfect circle of digital
onanism. “Twitter good, Facebook bad!”
we were told, and a thousand thumbs flew across virtual keyboards in silent
agreement. When, just before sunset on
Saturday, the sun finally broke through to illuminate the far side of the
estuary in a buttery glow and a perfect rainbow, you could barely see it for
the wall of iPhones capturing the scene.
For a moment, I was worried that Instagram might explode.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">A truly brilliant weekend, and a huge hats
off to the organisers. To pull off a
first festival this good was a hell of an achievement. Portmeirion was born to host it, and even in
the horizontal north Wales rain, it shone like the jewel that it is. My one caveat, and it’s one that echoes a few
other festivals held in Wales, is that the Welsh content of the festival was
shoehorned slightly awkwardly into the proceedings – a token off-peak stage
here, a (delightful) male voice choir there.
The organisers hail from Manchester, and it showed throughout. No criticism of that, for Manchester and the
north-west of England have much to say, and it’s always good to hear. But the joy of this festival was that it felt
like all kinds of dialogue was going on – musical, political, cultural, social. For many English visitors, it was the first
time they’d come across any real Welsh culture, the stuff that barely ever
crosses Offa’s Dyke. This was a festival
full of the finest people from both sides of the border; things could get
really exciting with a little more exchange of views and swapping of culture,
to everyone’s mutual enjoyment and benefit.
As Gruff Rhys sang from the Welshie
stage on Friday night: “paratown am chwyldro, achos ni yw byd” (“get ready for a revolution, because we are the world”).
By god, I hope he’s right. So let’s
talk to each other and make it bloody happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">(PS – my favourite Portmeirion anecdote:
when filming one of my HTV travelogues, I was lucky enough to interview the
late <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micky_Burn" target="_blank">Micky Burn</a> (1912-2010), poet, playwright, aesthete, Military Cross holder,
enthusiastic bisexual and last living Colditz survivor. Even at the age of 95, he was wonderful
company. Since the 1940s, he had lived
just below Portmeirion on the estuary and become part of the glittering set
that frequented it. He recounted a tale from
the early 1950s when a gold Bentley full of wealthy Londoners had got a little
lost trying to find Portmeirion. In
nearby Penrhyndeudraeth – a slate-quarrying village of chapels and coal smoke –
they’d spotted an old boy hobbling down the street. They slowed down in order to ask for
directions. “Excuse me my man”, said one
of them through an open window, “would you be so kind as to tell us the way to
The Village?” The old boy crouched down
and peered in through the car window. In
an accent as thick as Gwynedd rain, he carefully said, “The Village is far from
God”, and then shuffled off into the gloom.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-54080148757739457832012-08-30T10:23:00.000-07:002012-08-30T10:24:09.451-07:00<h2>
YOU CAN JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER</h2>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A friend recently sent me a photo from a
branch of Waterstones, of my book <i>The
Wild Rover</i> nuzzling up against Stuart Maconie’s <i>Never Mind the Quantocks</i>. Both
are ostensibly about walking, but even so, surely there is more than one way to
suggest that? No, it would seem, for the
covers are nearly identical, and both from the pen of the same designer. Two different publishers paid her for what is
basically one design. And a terminally wet one at that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hate that cover. I’ve hated it from the minute it was first
shown to me, at a meeting deep in the gulag HQ of HarperCollins, my book’s publishers. I’ve begged for it to be changed, literally
begged and begged until I felt like crying (not a good look in a business meeting).
I’ve bombarded them with alternatives,
cajoled graphically-minded mates to do the same and been promised by the
publishers that they’ll think about it.
They didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Decisions on such matters are like the old
school trade union block votes at the Labour party conference. As the author, I’m the Worshipful Guild of
Piano Tuners, listened to, politely applauded but with my puny couple of votes
quickly ignored. Then along comes Fiona
from Marketing, the Transport & General Workers Union of the meeting, with
her 4.6 million block votes. Fiona from
Marketing loves the cover, so she wins, every time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fiona from Marketing loves the cover
because it’s just like all those nostalgia-soaked we-love-Britain books, designed
to evoke warm thoughts of 1950s Shell Guides and saluting AA men. It’s been the default design for books about
Britain for years, and so, they think, why change a format if it’s still
selling? And if the content is as wistful
as the cover, then it’s a fair argument.
The reason I hate those covers is that they paint me into the same
pastel-hued corner, next to the Keep Calm memorabilia and Union Jack
tea-cosies, and I don’t think that’s what I write. Of course, Fiona from Marketing has never
actually read any of the content – not that that makes a widget of difference
to the outcome.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So I’m left with a book of which I’m hugely
proud, packaged in a cover that makes my eyes hurt. It’s not a good combination. It’s not good for readers either. Those that buy the book expecting another cuddly
cornucopia of eeh-bah-gum landscape loveliness are generally disappointed. Sometimes they’re even angered by my politics,
my opinions, my language or any reference at all to my sexuality, and then leave huffy reviews all over the
internet. Worse, those that would
actually like the book take one glance at the cover and go no further. It’s very nice to be sharing a shelf with the
redoubtable Mr Maconie, but I wish we both looked as if we had a little more
lead in our pencils. </span>And that they were
different pencils.</span></span><!--EndFragment-->
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Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3941736741902638519.post-58188490783902487812012-03-31T04:45:00.000-07:002012-03-31T04:55:40.350-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: small;">Watch this space... </span></h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7rHg68WsO-Kq9h2muvhVzlZOOzD11upAgWmWG2bsUJBCrBxQnUJWkYHwj-0cWoF7E921ifUay9dSMRYLwxAXeundnqqgNuCJe5mr-01TmIPoW9c0aEt8_N2bB29SGRuWRYg3qrpTIk_aw/s1600/mikepoint1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7rHg68WsO-Kq9h2muvhVzlZOOzD11upAgWmWG2bsUJBCrBxQnUJWkYHwj-0cWoF7E921ifUay9dSMRYLwxAXeundnqqgNuCJe5mr-01TmIPoW9c0aEt8_N2bB29SGRuWRYg3qrpTIk_aw/s400/mikepoint1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mike, Jane and Taff pose for the cover of an OS map</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: small;">Hello and welcome to Mike Parker's new blog. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">You can look forward to Mike's musings on maps, walking, life in Wales, dim but loveable dogs and trends in flat cap fashion, just as soon as he's worked out how to log on to Blogger. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>- Helen the Web x</i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>Mike Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14320916870158547268noreply@blogger.com1Machynlleth, Powys SY20, UK52.590273 -3.85348552.5806265 -3.873226 52.599919500000006 -3.8337440000000003