Some aphrorisms

Years ago, the questing spiritual side of me started "writing". For a while it was a page on my own website. I took it down when we had Clare. I was too busy to want to deal with "hassle" that my troublesome views might engender. But I carry on writing in a genre that is simply me and as soon as you label it morphs. Over on Facebook some of our photo captions hint at it. I wonder if the blog can stand any of it. Here are some short aphorisms which started the old page.
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The transforming power of love

Appears to me the only basis

By which the Church and Christ

May re-establish themselves.
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Academic research

should not be a methodology

but a drama.
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If the world cannot order itself

To treat its citizens aright

Is it my fault if I cannot cope with it?
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What makes humanity?

That we can do things better.

What might be grace?

When things are done better.
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If Society does not owe you a job

What do you owe Society?
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I would rather be my wife's sex slave

than anyone else's wage slave.
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If Fiona was all gold and mine

I would weep with bitterness.

I should rather die prematurely

than get divorced.
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1+1=1

1+1=2

1+1=3

Discuss in what circumstances these statements might be true.
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Man has always sought a virtual world.

It is the religious driver.
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Women priests are a Biblical impossibility

So also is homosexual marriage.

Grant one and the other might follow.

Two perversities for the conservative.

Why should Christ's grace not liberate us

From the strictures of gender?
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The price of freedom in creation is the price of pain

However for many that may seem a price

Too heavy for the reward.

A disturbing discovery is that Nature bullies.

Vulcanism and glaciation were hardly man's fault.
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Lie

When we both realise
we might be living a lie
then we might make
some progress

said
the catholic to the protestant
the believer to the unbeliever
the christian to the muslim
the woman to the man
the communist to the capitalist
the straight to the gay

When good is not good enough.

The Prudhoe redevelopment debate rumbles on. It has been previously explored at http://robertatforsythe.blogspot.com/2010/10/hanging-gardens-of-prudhoe-aka-prudhoe.html . Two things brought it back into view for me. I took this photo and the Hexham Courant appeared last Friday 13th May 2011. I think it was the previous one that contained a long anti letter. This time the first two letters at some prominent length reflected the views of one anti and one pro campaigner. Both are well known citizens of the town. As I read them a sense of profound disappointment passed over me. Here were the good citizens of Prudhoe washing their dirty linen in public and in best Glasgow Edinburgh fashion it was a Hexham organ that was able to delight in our discomfort. The quality of argument in the letters was not especially good and rather it felt as if in the exhaustion of the saga mud slinging had become the last resort.

This then is what our landlord has achieved. The total division and polarisation of the community. It is not me who judges it thus. Read these letters in the Courant and make your own minds up. But I will clearly say why I think this had happened and should the Duke of Northumberland read this, I hope he will be hot under the collar. One man wields for the 21st. century an unusual amount of power in this town of 12,000. He is answerable to not one of us but he is the person who can set the tone of the new town centre. Here then is where our heading phrase comes from. When good is not good enough. My wife tells a tale of the institution where once she ran library services. A new supreme manager arrived. A department head had to speak to a proposal. He started out by saying "this is a good proposal". Before he went any further the boss interjected "that is not my style, good is not good enough for me, take it away and come back when it is excellent". A lot of pain followed this person's arrival at this institution but years later both the institution and that individual continue to thrive and gain recognition.

This should have been the story at Prudhoe. The plot was simple. A growing hillside town in Northumberland surrounded by woodland and beautiful landscape. One last green space left in the centre of the town. It would clearly face developmental pressure. The person who owned it has come to national prominence with the Alnwick Garden. Expecting that a marriage of the two would equal excellence is natural. But what Prudhoe is having foisted on it is just good. Would you even award good to the people who will be remembered for having built the first multi storey car park in Tynedale? Yes, not dug underground into a hillside but sprouting out from it in as prominent a place as you might imagine. Is it any wonder that aside from the business mechanics of this, aside from the supermarket rivalries (we already have a Co-Op superstore), aside from my gripe that we still will not have an independent butcher, aside from this, that what looks like something from the 1970s or 1980s, (perhaps from the Duke's Cramlington development?) translated to this magnificent hillside has succeeded in dividing the community? At the last count the town council voted against 4/3. There are many 1000s of objections lodged from a community of 12,500. It is a very sad situation and it could and should have been avoided. What would have done that is inspired leadership from the top. A thorough going committment to the Hanging Gardens of Prudhoe which would have left the community itching to see it happening instead of preparing for a Friday public brawl.

Passengers Go Away

Seen at Prudhoe Station May 2011. Just about the worst case of an own goal one could imagine. Huge business opportunity enters the mill of railway bureaucracy to become passengers go away. So symptomatic of Britain in the 21st century bereft of enterprise at least in this industry. A much fuller and interactive discussion took place at http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=144426282297802&set=a.137068286366935.31421.100001912940850&type=1&theater . Or try http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=316916&l=db39f6947e&id=100001912940850 .

Nene Valley Railway Edmondson tickets

Does anyone know how to get issued NVR Edmondson tickets? Week before last I made a return journey from Ferry Meadows. The office was staffed and a large assortment of Edmondsons on view. I worked out that with myself and child I could get four different tickets. I explained to the clerk how much I wanted the tickets and was prepared for this more expensive option than a day rover. He took the money and still issued me a ticket from a pad with an Edmondson souvenir! I was furious.

Holiday on the Buses

An evening of the on the buses films. If you want to be reminded of c1970 Essex just the stuff. The buses were Bristol KSWs from the Eastern National company. An OPC book called The Bristol KSW dated 1985 gives the exact details of the four vehicles used (plate 74). Holiday on the Buses came last and somehow or other I felt I had missed this previously. It is evidently filmed at Pontins Prestatyn and used a Crosville open top Bristol Lodekka. However for my tastes there is some extra-ordinary footage of storm tossed Sealink ferry. Clearly bought in and very dramatic. Was the vessel Holyhead Ferry 1 see http://www.sealink-holyhead.com/railway/ships/ferry1/home.html ? An answer to that does interest me.

Opencast Mines I have known

Opencast mines I have known. Now there's a thought. This is the Glenmuckloch opencast near Kirkconnel which thanks to the Dumfries and Galloway Wildlife Festival, the good offices of ATH Resources and the GeoD group led by Diana Turner, I was fortunate enough to spend some hours in on Saturday past. With the mine's geologist and four keen Land Rover drivers from the workforce, our party explored the site from top to bottom. Once this was where the National Coal Board's Roger mines had worked which closed in 1980. This site started I believe in 2006. It excites a whole range of emotions. Wonder at the sheer technical ingenuity of it all. The geology is extremely complicated as the picture shows. The seams have come hard up against a volcanic dyke at the back of the site so the layers twist and turn and break and fault. A coal seam is prominent in the picture and it is anything but horizontal. Definite admiration then for those acheiving the job and who have also laid in Britain's longest conveyor to get the coal to a rail loading point so that lorries are not used outside the mine. There is also wonder and excitement at seeing the geology laid bare. Privilege at seeing something so rarely exposed. Sheer awe and fear too, partly at the creative forces exposed, partly at the sheer sight. It is a rare opportunity to wonder at the conjunction of nature and man's industry which creates a sublime vision. It is the sort of thing which inspired the Auden's, Blake's and Martin's of this world and which nowadays everyday Britain does not see so much of. Some might feel repugnance. The word exploitation crosses the mind. There is a huge price in man's addiction to fossil fuels and seeming unwillingness to exploit to the full all the endless sustainable energy around us. However on the opposite side of the Nith a new windfarm was hard at work. And in reviewing: were'nt we lucky with the weather? The conditions up here this last winter must have been abominable.

Whilst with opencasts and coal, I can quickly review past encounters. Opencasts have been officially visited at Chalmerston Ayrshire and Plenmeller Northumberland in the 1990s. They have been legally viewed from public highways most impressively near Widdrington shortly before said road through the middle of the site was closed and bullzozed away (Maiden's Farm OCS). As a public event this was right up there with a 1983 underground visit as part of Cumbria County Council's Guided Walk programme to Claerghyll Licensed Coal Mine near Alston. The scale of that could not have been more different.