This is the story of meetings made while walking last year, on the oath to Saint Davids (Dewi Sant).

It takes place while Ed and Will were accompanied by Rose, and sees them arrive in Carmarthen, or Caerfyrddin, the City of Merlin.

It tells of Merlin and his Oak, of throwing axes, of Carmarthen Police Force, and of the most beautiful music we’ve ever witnessed in a pub folk-session.

And it has interesting recordings too. So please press ‘more’, and read on…

We were tired, as the day was already long. The night before’s sleep had been wet, and thorny, in an unkempt copse. Today Ed had a knee problem, causing him pain and worry, which he deemed the fruit of soul troubles.

unsettled skies

So we headed for the City of Carmarthen, source  of the famous black book of Cymraig myths, home of the historic Merlin, and hopefully a good place for rest and strengthening.

yawn and sneeze?

As soon as our feet touched the concrete pathways of the city outskirts, the rain, in warm lumps, began to fall.

ufos zapping trucks

As well as too wet, it was also too late  for busking, for the shops were starting to close, and the centre almost deserted. We took shelter at the friendliest inn we could find, and consulted our possibilities (we checked emails).

We soon discovered the invitation, kindly sent 3 months before, for us to join a small group of musicians, on any monday night, in a particular Carmarthen pub. Checking the calendar (for the weeks pass like clouds), we discovered that today was monday. We would make the meeting, and hopefully find some soul relief for Ed’s troubled patella.

But not wanting to spend the next 5 hours in the pub, we stepped out into the now gentle rain, and rejoiced as clouds cleared abruptly into strong new sunshine.

Sitting in a small park, we decided to benefit from this sun, and so we spread our damp sleeping bags and clothes over the bushes.

A policeman approached. He stepped up to Will, and asked: “So what do you lot think you’re doing?” He was using the words of authority, but with no aggression behind them, to see how well we would meet this challenge. He was guaging our reactions, and sounding our intent.

Such challenges we have met many times, and we know now that they are only tests to see if we will become angry, and seal our own unwelcome. Knowing this, but nonetheless slightly flustered, Will replied: “Well, we’ve walked here from Canterbury, and we’re just drying our kit a little bit. We’re travelling singers, you see, ans we collect traditional songs from people, to learn and perform back in the community. We’re not setting up a camp or anything, we promise. We’ll be off in an hour or two.”

“From Canterbury, eh? Singing old songs?” He may have been trying to sound credulous, but their wistfulness in his eyes was clear, as he muttered: “Men after my own heart”, and half-smiling, strolled slowly away.

trustworthy types

The second park meeting came a half hour later, as we were re-packing our now dry kit back into the nooks of our backpacks.

A young-looking man, with sunglasses and a bandana, had been hanging around on the other side of the park for some time, and as he slowly approached in a familiar looping trajectory (closer, but seeming further; curious, but cautious), we called greetings loudly. He seemed relieved, and came over, to release the questions he held.

His name was Cash, and as he removed his shades, we saw he was older than we imagined. We guessed his roots were from Bangladesh, which he confirmed. He set to gripping the details of our situation (“You’ve been walking for 6 months? And you’ve got no place to stay? No place to wash and eat?”), and then had a flash of inspiration (the kind we love), as he announced: “Why don’t you use my place? I’ve only just moved in, but the shower was plumbed yesterday, and you’d be welcome.”

So we walked to his flat, and took turns in the new shower. It is a sweet relief to wash the road from your body, with hot water, after a long day.

Cash asked Ed about his knee problem, and questioned its link to earlier foot pains, before massaging his leg for a half-hour, which Ed professed helped greatly.

And then we made dinner for us all, a huge salad, which Cash found to be an amazing revelation. “How do you do this? You have a gift…”

We told him our plans for the pub, and music that evening, and he asked for a song before we went. We sung. He nodded, happy. “But guys”, he asked slowly, calculatingly, “do you do any reggae?”

How could we say no? Tthree little birds, and chatty chatty mouth, with all joining in, made the whole flat rang. He was right, we thought. Traditional Folk, sometimes, is just not quite it.

Then it was farewell to our new friend Cash (although we were to meet him 3 months later, as we attempted to bicycle back from St Davids back to Canterbury).

And onward, to the pub, at the promised time, to make the next meeting, we went.

We won’t tell you which monday night pub is the one. If you’re in Carmarthen, listen out, and find it yourself. The gang who meet here go by the name of Elin and the Tribalites, and they involve one beautiful young girl on the harp, a tough lad on watchful violin, an older chap on epic complex guitar, and a fellow called Simon, playing sundry homemade stringed things, and singing.

And singing. With power we hear rarely in the ‘best’ of the professional performers. The second song they played together, about a local river, had us gasping for breath with the sheer beauty of it. Their music was awesome, huge and sweet and devestating. Small weeping seemed perhaps inapporpriate, but it was necessary to cope with the music.

We were overwhelmed as they ended their song, to the applause of 3 or 4 listeners. Ah, there is the quiet majesty of folk music, the unbelievable sublime heights, in the quiet backroom of a pub with no-one listening. We were lucky to be there.

At first, we had no songs to return, but we soon told a ‘Rolling in the Dew’, with Will as the girl character. They laughed, appreciating the comedy, and soon enough it was time to close.

“You’ll be coming back to the farm with us all, won’t you?” Simon asked. We would.

will and the ax target

And here we stayed for 2 more days. Simon taught us to throw the doubled-edged axe, and a solid war-cry to guide our efforts. He showed us his chainsaw carvings, which astounded us.

And the cherry of all was the carving of Merlin, from an oak which was said to be related to the now-fallen famous ‘Merlin’s Oak’.

Merlin’s Oak was the most famous of all Carmarthshire trees, and a prophesy protected it: “When Merlin’s Tree shall tumble down, Then shall fall Carmarthen Town”. It was indeed pulled down by an impatient council, at the turn of the 20th Century, and the year it went, Carmarthen, tallying with the 6th Centruy prophecies, suffered the worst floods it has ever known. So there you go.

But now Merlin in the Oak is returning. A shopping centre in Carmarthen has agreed to buy the statue, and display it proudly from the front of their roof, where Merlin can once more look out over his city, a good thing we feel. For whether or not you care a jot for the historical figure of Merlin (a well documented personage), or think there is anything in his written prophesies, you must know how important it is for a town or community to have its own story. This is not an isolation thing, to close doors to other people, but a handle, by which a community can identify itself, a secure context from which to welcome the world in.

While staying with Simon, we visited the town centre and made sure we sung for the wandering shoppers. This was the second time in town we caught police attention. Two PC SOs (support officers, unpaid volunteer uniformed people), saw us singing, and came over to cause trouble.

They started to tell us the law, and we held up a hand, while we finished the last verses of the song. You cannot stop mid-song, it would be bad DJing. This aggrivated the PCSOs, but it gave us the support we needed, as watching coffee drinkers applauded massively at the end, far more than they had done before the coppers turned up.

A little surprised at such a warm reaction from the seemingly indifferent crowds, the police people looked around again, a little more unsure now.

“Listen up, you need a license to sing here, and I bet you’ve not got one, right?”

“That’s right officer, we’re just passing through.” we informed him in politest gentlest fashion.

As this exchange was going on, a number of people got up, and came over to throw money in our now heavier hat. “Nice one lads” said one; “Best thing i’ve heard in hours” said another. “You’d better keep singing” said an elderly lady, looking firmly at the young police peoples as she spoke, “I like songs with my tea, and i’ve not heard enough yet.”

The police chap sighed, confused perhaps, but unwilling to cause a scene for no good reason. “Well, we’ll be back in an hour. You’d better be finished by then, ok?”

“As you say.” we nodded, “we’ll just sing a few more and get moving, shall we?”

“Right then.” And they left. Looking back quickly as if there were something more to say, but thinking better, the policeman disappeared up the street, looking for more illegals to hassle.

So on we sung, and good fun it was too.

We’ve no problem with police doing their job. It seems to us, however, that things like industrial pollution, dangerous driving, abuse and violence, racism and theft, should present a more pressing concern than a little unauthorized singing.

Anyway, that was that. We recommend Carmarthen as a place to visit. There are many good people to be sought. Be nice to the buskers there, you’ll have more influence on their day than you can know.

And look out for Elin and the Tribalites, and of course for Merlin in the Oak of Carmarthen.

Lastly, please enjoy these recordings made of Simon, singing his own songs, in his home. They are the proverbial marmite: certainly good for you, but something you’ll either love or not like. The instrument Simon plays is the creation of his own hands. The singing/playing style is, likewise, idiosyncratically his.

Ride of Green

Come Along

Thankyou Simon, and Carmarthen, and Myrddin Emrys too.

wizard carved the day we left,with Ed as handmodel

chain-sawn protection

We leave you with poems of Myrdin, ‘the fosterer of song among the streams’. c.573ad

He speaks of the fall of Celtia, the driving out of their traditions by the Saxons and the Roman church. He draws our distracted attention away from human concerns for power and wealth and directs our sight towards nature’s bounty.

Myrdin was said to be receptive to the new ideas of christianity when they first came to Britain, and for a time the Celtic circle and the teachings of Christ stood side by side in mutual understanding. It was when the Saxon church started to persecute those who did not adhere to the Roman doctrine and the church’s authority that trouble started, and the end of Myrdin’s time drew near. He is said to have ended his life at that time  in the wilds, lamenting a broken circlet of beauty as the poets are shunned and a new order is established in Britain, which he calls ‘the enemy of the city of the Bards’.

Listen, O little pig! Is not the mountain green?

Listen, O little pig! Are not the buds of thorns

Very green, the mountain beautiful, and beautiful the earth?

Listen to birds whose notes are pleasant.

Listen, O little pig! Hear thou the melody

And chirping of birds by Caer Reon!

Listen, O little pig! thou little, speckled one!

List to the voice of sea-birds! Great is their energy!

Minstrels will be out, without their appropriate portion;

Though they stand at the door a reward will not come,

I was told by a seagull that had come from afar.

To me it is of no purpose

To hear the voice of water-birds whose scream is tumultuous.

Thin is the hair of my head; my covering is not warm.

The dales are my barn; my corn is not plenteous.

]]> http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/people/interesting-folk/carmarthen-and-the-people-of-myrddins-city/feed/ 1 http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/people/interesting-folk/ryan-in-the-woods-a-digital-recreation http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/people/interesting-folk/ryan-in-the-woods-a-digital-recreation#comments Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:09:29 +0000 Branching Arts http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/

gosh

Ryan Weston. A name that strikes fear into those who watch the Canterbury skies at night. Young women quiver in pale delight, when this monster comes scalloping round the lofty corner.

mr Ryan at ease

Ryan Weston. A pal to us all. When Ed and Will were midst dreadful turmoil this winter, while living in the woods, it was the visit of friends like Ryan who brought the simple smile back to our faces.

Ryan and Alaric help us pack it all away

Ryan plays his banjo loudly, whooping yee-haws to the blue-tits, and he gets raucousfully stuck into whatsoever is going on. While staying in the woods, he made a bow and arrow, a hurdle, a sword, and he carved a fortress from a standing oak stump.

Chez Ryan

view from the top

motif

In Ryan’s honour, we enclose a video montage of his better bits:

And we also wish to share an interview we made of Ryan’s opinion, in response to some biting and poignant questions.

Please enjoy. And know that Ryan is available for building repairs, kitchen fitting, plastering, and general skilled labour. We use him…isn’t it time you did too?

twang

]]> http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/people/interesting-folk/ryan-in-the-woods-a-digital-recreation/feed/ 0 http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/people/projects/plaw-hatch-and-the-modern-farm http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/people/projects/plaw-hatch-and-the-modern-farm#comments Thu, 14 May 2009 12:02:24 +0000 Branching Arts http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/ Plaw Hatch farm is a place where farming still stands for something more than ‘yield’. Food is not something to be ripped from the animals and soil, the result of a bloody war of attrition and siege. Farming is not what happens when an unfair treaty is imposed on nature. All these metaphors are false. May we forget them.

Plaw Hatch farm offers a simpler, kinder alternative to these modern stories of ‘how-farming-must-be’. And if they have managed it, so can others…

Nestled in the trees beneath Forest Row is the future of farming. It is probably also the past, and it is certainly (happily) the present.

This farm follows bio-dynamic practises, as defined by Rudolf Steiner , the legendarily clear-thinking German chap who instituted those schools which seem to turn curricular thinking, and imposed normalcy, right on its boring head.

Plaw Hatch is funded by the local community, and has a farm-shop, which supplies local people with very good farm-grown veg, better than organic and fresher than the day itself.

Free range chickens, running about wherever they wish, milk cows with horns, pigs that eat good food and enjoy fresh air and clean pens, vegetables that are grown without petro-chemical enhancements – this is what Plaw Hatch provides. And the people that work here are aware of their role, and pursue it with integrity and solemn mirth, a giggling gravity that is astoundingly effective and beautiful in application.

A farm shouldn’t be defined nor understood as a food factory; it is rather a culmination of the intents of those who work upon it, an expression of growth, an agreement made and held, to further life on this planet, for our species and all others.

Farming today, however, is a slightly sordid affair – it is a salacious comment, an ill-wind, a blighted livlihood. Every kind of bad press has afflicted modern farming, and almost every type of ‘life-stock’ (a combination of lives and marketable products) has suffered a devestating flu or dis-ease of some sort. British agriculture seems to have been left out in the sun for a little too long, and has started to smell.

The problem, from our (limited and mayhap ignorant) point of view, has come the adoration of the God of Yields, the mantra of more, more, more production.

Some people tell us this is due to the opening of global markets, that farmers, to pay for their new machines, mortgages and all, need to sell at the cheapest prices, or they won’t sell at all. We’ve met farmers who have small mountains of potatoes, unsellable for the fact that they will always lose money, so the tatties are simply left to rot in piles. Even giving them away would cost more time and money.

Perhaps this is for the best, we think hopefully. Perhaps this situation will lead on to a new tender revolution in farming practices; but equally likely is a new intensification of old errors, of production as the sole watchword, and a further erosion of the old agreements of care and custodianship, those original adamic responsibilities we once bore joyously.

Add to this the new worries of sci-fi fiddling, the GM ‘stepping bravely’ to sever the unbroken chains of natural production (“which MIGHT lead to a great new patentable future…”), and we have a blighted image of the modern farm. Have you seen the calves lying dead in the concrete stalls? The pens, which look like prisons, the great beasts humbled and broken into concentrated subservience, the mothers unable to walk, swollen and screaming for their children? If this were humans, we would scar ourselves, we would create a history that forbade it ever to happen again, we would teach our children. Yet, for non-human animals, we are blind to see it. It is not a good thing we do…

Plaw Hatch farm falls into none of the traps of the modern agri-business. People do still get there by road, but this is soon to be remedied – by a donkey-delivery scheme, and a rick-shaw…

Plaw Hatch is a place of education, a living demonstration of the connection between food and its source, and a place where school-children and adults alike can learn that farming is not an act of strip-mining the resources provided by soil and beast – instead, that we need to respect the roots that sustain us, care for the land and animals, and enjoy better food, healthier living, and an eased soul, all in one easy process – buying from, and thus supporting, the right farms.

“But specialist food costs more!” we lament economically.

But the long term cost of supporting a system that will destroy our soil and mutilate the natural behaviour patterns of our animals, is surely greater.

The ASDA option might leave you with a few pitiful pennies in your backburner, but who is fooled by dirty old copper money? This is not wealth, this is not a reward. This is 30 pieces of silver, and the deed it justifies is treason.

Organic, bio-dynamic food is the food reward all humans deserve. It is not for the rich, but for the simple, wise, responsible people of this land. Everyone can and should eat REAL food, not the chemical simulacrum that is plastic-packaged and flown in from a genetic experiment a thousand miles away.

If you eat plain good food, you need less of it. A ‘real’ carrot fulfils the demands of the mouth and belly, while a watery orange lump of carrot-ishness does little or  nothing, except perhaps to provoke lament and nostalgia, a sense of ‘dark-future’.

Solid basic nutrition is NOT a only for the wealthy cadres of society. Proof of this fact is apparent in the new dreddlock classes, the semi-urban eco-rabbles who buy no new clothes, squat in old tenements, yet still refuse to eat the rubbish dressed in vittles’ clothing. Why impose self-denying class limitations on ourselves? Why semi-consciously burden our families and selves with such disadvantages? We are ALL here to be as good as we can be – and the first step must be eating well, growing well, to gain the power we need, to do what we can.

A bellyful of good food, which will maintain energy levels, concentration, growth, and life, is our birthright on this fertile and abundant land. Nature wants to feed us, and we need only clarify our desire to be well-fed, and understand more sincerely what this means.

We often walk past/through mono-cultural fields of a single crop – oil seed rape, peas, or whatever.  People sometimes say to us: “How beautiful the yellow flowers are”, and we mutter darkly, oft unwilling to spoil their pretty dreams.

But walking alongside these yellow plains, looking closely, you see dried desertified patches, dead soil, lost land. On the field margins, you see native wildflowers, nettles and bluebells, withered and faded by the massive doses of herbicides sprayed on. The fact is, as one Wiltshire farmer told us, without the chemicals to kill the native plants, and without the chemicals to provide nutrition now missing from the soil, nothing would grow at all. Our soil is incapable of producing food. Agriculture is dead. In its place is just a well-developed life-support system, with massive doses of drugs, so something like a result is still grappled from the near-rigid topsoil.

It is as though we have even forgotten that the earth itself is the provider, and we treat the soil as only a convenient medium in which the plants can sit, not expected to provide any nutritional input at all. When did this fallacy gain currency? Why is it so strong in our modern systems?
We remember working on a hop farm in Kent one year, and the police turned up to tell the farmer that he was making a mess on the local lanes, with all the mud. The farmer nearly exploded…”It’s a f*****g farm” he screamed, and the coppers were paralyzed for a minute, unsure what to do, till they realized that of course, he was right, farms and mud go together like rama lama lama. Chastized, the police sped away, down the muddy lane, back into town

Plaw Hatch farm is a community event, and has witnessed all the small and great crimes against life that farms are capable of accidently causing. Plaw Hatch knows well enough to act against these poverties of heart and deed. It realizes that the future of farming is in the ancient technology of care, in the ritual of custodianship that is central to humanity’s role on this planet.

WWoofing is an option here, and those who partake in this job/holiday/study, tell us that the mindset of the teacher/farmers here are uniquely educational, that this is not somewhere you are told to dig a ditch, and left to get on with it, without any idea of the reason for your work. Efforts are made to make everyone realize their part within the whole, so work is not blindly done, but is conscious, and aware.

Plaw Hatch also produces some of the finest un-pateurized and un-homogenized milk , cheese and yoghurt we have ever had the pleasure to eat and drink. We always suspected that milk was somehow a richer substance in days gone by. Well, at Plaw Hatch, it is still so…it is white gold, a foodstuff that is gained from a deal made with the cows, from an agreement neither forgotten nor reneged. We are not cows’ masters, but their protectors and carers. That is how we won the reward of good milk, not by a dark dream of dominion and imposition.

We like Plaw Hatch farm. If you want to eat well, and are anywhere near Forest Row, we suggest you go there. So much more there is to say, that we cannot. Please, just go there, with a fresh willingness to re-learn what food and farming are all about. Treat it as a pilgrimage, and while you’re there, muck in, help out. Be a part of the good work, of the happy process that is happening here, and is possible everywhere.

Chilling Cheese

HMS Bleasdale -

What Victor told us…

was the D-day flotilla, of which he was part, that landed at Juno beach. One of the officers on board, “the best of them all”, was Cedric Dickens, who was ‘the spitting image of his great-great-great-great-grandfather.” We were told how Cedric had met his wife, Elizabeth, when falling off his bicycle at the Portsmouth Docks.

The boat they were on was the Bleasdale, a destroyer LSO, Hunter Class. All destroyers in the fleet at that time were names after Hunts in Britain, which tells us something of the link between the Naval establishment and the landed gentry, perhaps. “O, a hunting we will go” sung Victor…

Victor’s was the first ship back into Portsmouth after the landings – “something odd had happened to British Summer Time” he told us, and soon after, on the Destroyer Faulkner, he saw Mongomery come ashore. He watched him on deck as he sailed in past the Boom Defence (built to keep U-Boats out), and then watched as he was transferred onto HMS Kelvin (“to hoodwink the enemy – there were enemy spies everywhere!”)

Victor told us that it was a German agent in the Cooper’s Arms who learned, from the garrulous Canadians stationed nearby, of the Aug 19 1942 Dieppe raid.

Victor saw de Gaulle, as part of the Free French Fleet, aboard the “Combattante”. “He was a great big chap” we were told. “When the French saw that ship come in, well then they cheered, cos it was their own lot, and they knew they were free at last.”

He recalleda  man he met, who ran off the “Combattante”, and who jumped aboard his own ship, shouting in a Cockney accent “anyone got the News of the World?” – he was half English and half French, and when it came to decision time, he threw his lot in with the Free French instead of the Royal Navy.

Victor loved being in the Navy: “wonderful cameraderie” – and he had joined back in 1941, in Derby market. He had previously been in the Chelsea Sea Cadets. He told us how he ‘stepped up to the recruiting officer, and said “I’d like to join for 22 years”. “You must be stark raving mad” the officer told him.

He was paid £1 per week, which was about the price of 3 pints of ale. But he didn’t drink. He saved up all his tots of rum, and put them in a bottle in his locker, and one Christmas, he drunk half a bottle. “How they laughed, the others, with me in the mess all laughing and bleary – cos they hadn’t never seen me like that before.”

Victor had found love, when he met a young lass at the Queen Cinema in Portsmouth, when on shore leave. He was 20, she was 19. She wrote to him twice a week: “a lovely little girl”. Then one day the letters stopped. “Well, i knew what had happened. She lived on the Sultan Way, all old houses, and i walked along there, and sure enough, her house had been flattened by a bomb.” Victor got misty eyed, distant in his memory, and silent for a moment. “Poor little darling. That broke my heart that did.”

After the war in Europe was over, Victor and his ship was sent to the Far East. They were “scared shitless”, of the Japanese, the diseases, the Kamikaze. They thought they’d won the war in Europe, only to go and die in Asia.”Then it was all over, quickly, of course, and we were bloody glad.”

Victor told us that many years later he visisted the graves in Dieppe, and he said it made him cry to read, on one grave, the message: “Tread carefully, my son lies nearby.”

He then wished us good luck, and said it was a pleasure to hear the old songs sung, and wished him the same.

The accuracy of the story cannot be confirmed, but anyroad, it goes thuswise:
Livingstone was a Scottish Missionary, a man with a great heart, and with the balls of an elephant. As a missionary, he was not hugely successful, being accredited with only one conversion to the Church. But as a hero amongst men, he was (as all heroes) uniquely spectacular.

So what did he do?

Born in Lanarkshire, he worked in cotton mills from the age of 10 till 26. He grafted and saved, until he became a minister, and was inspired to go to South Africa, to try to end slavery by the spread of trade and Christianity.

His prowess and zeal were more focussed on physical, actual freedom, than the theoretical liberty typically espoused by churchmen. Armed with a Bible (no loose term), Livingstone wandered in deep Africa from 1840 onwards, and in 1852 was the first European to see Mosi-oa-Tunya (the Smoke that Thunders), which he named the Victoria Falls. He learned the languages, studied the customs, and travelled lightly, with only a few helpers, so was not seen as a threat by the powerful tribal kingdoms.

The middle of Africa was uncharted to European civilization at this time. It was only 150 years past, but the maps were blank. There were no satellites looking down watching everything.

So Livingstone found the Slave kingdoms, where tribesmen from all over Africa were sold, by Slaver Africans, to the rest of the world. Britain in particular bought a great many of these slaves, for labour on her new colonies. Livingstone waltzed right into the Slaver Kingdoms, waving his Bible, and said ‘you must stop this’. They did not know what to do. Some said they should kill him, but most were so impressed by his bravery, which was a coin of unmistakable value in tribal Africa, that they let this crazy white man live. But the slave trade would continue uninterrupted.

One day, watching the slaves being led in chains toward the coast, Livingstone snapped. With his few helpers, he freed the handful of slaves, and started some sort of war with the local Slaver King. Returning to Britain for men and supplies, to fininsh this fight, Livingstone found he was both celebrated and unpopular – slavery was big business, but exploration was glorious. So, with the resources he could gather, he returned, by boat up the River Zambezi.

The discovery of unknown rapids forced them to turn back. A new boat was built, one that could be completely dis-assembled, and it was sailed back to the rapids, where two years were spent taking it apart, carrying it around the rapids, and re-building it, before the mission could continue. Such determination and patience defies modern standards.

So then battle could re-commence, and after some years of small melees, the slaver kingdoms around Lake Malawi fell, and Malawi became the first British Colony that was taken for entirely the right reasons, for freedom and humanity. Empire was not always a monster.

Then Dr Livingstone went missing, wandering in dark Africa, discovering places no European had ever seen. His exploits had become internationally famous, and were hugely popular in America, which meant they caught on in the British Press soon after.

An American journalist, called Stanley, realized that if he could track down the missing hero, it would be the Scoop of the Century. He resolved to do just this, with a huge retinue of bearers, guns, and equipment, in true American fashion.

Stanley was an Anglophile, which meant he was an admirer of the understated British mode of expression, perceived to be an inimitable style, rather than evidence of irritated reserve and gloomy self-awareness. On the voyage to Africa, we imagine Stanley, in front of the ship mirror, practising the words, till they sounded just dull enough: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

Stanley found his man, and the world got its story.

Livingstone eventually died in Africa, and his heart was buried under a Baobab tree, the spiritual temple of the Malawian people. Then, despite it being taboo in Africa, his body was carried off, wrapped in Bamboo, and for four years his faithful friends suffered drought, attack, disease, persecution and plague, before Livingstone’s body was eventually carried back to Scotland, to be buried.

A hero with the balls of an elephant; we say may men like this be born every day.

As an event, it always feels like a festival should, overwhelmingly beautiful and exciting, but friendly and local. It makes for a magnificent and timeless long weekend.

This year a new site, guaranteed to be dry and stunningly beautiful, has been found. It is bound to be a grand affair.

We ended our Southern stroll with a month working for the sunrise Celebration. We were volunteer décor co-ordinators and crew, and had a great time working like furies, trying to manifest an aesthetic from the air and ground.

This work has been continued, and last summer, when the site famously flooded, we had worked for 3 weeks trying to design and assemble the best site-art possible.

Our décor camp, which included our kitchen tent and all our stores, was perpetually stood in a foot of water. This made living tricky, and working for free required all the self-generating optimism our gang could manifest.

But we did it, with struggles that were laughably difficult.

As the last of the giant flowers was dragged over to the stage area, wedged and hammered into the ground, we stood back. All was finished. The décor was up.

Everyone had wet feet, sodden socks, and you were one of the lucky few if there was not a few inches of water inside your tent. It had been sublimely tricky, even to walk around the site and see how things were looking, but especially with a huge wooden piece of central decoration. But we had done it, and there were already thousands of people on-site, with no rain for at least a few hours.

Of course, the moment we felt hopeful, the rain came back harder. A half-hour later, the word went around from site HQ – the festival was off.

We expect it was difficult for everyone, and there was naturally a great sigh of disappointment. But we had no time to waste. Tractors were churning the earth up even more, in efforts to drag the stalls and stages out through the mud. We immediately got on with uprooting all our beautiful work, and trying to get it put away without damage. This took another 5 days in the mud.

It was a beautiful challenge, and a mighty struggle. When we did all take a night to enjoy the music and people who were here for a good time, no matter what, we found the peak of excitement generated by the festival was shining and huge, even after its official culling.

Sunrise. This year, when for the first time we won’t be anywhere near, will be the best event of the festival season. It was so close last year, and many lessons have been learned. We say: Go, go there, with your friends and family, and have a ball. It is educational, healthy, and joyous.

Protecting the hill of Tara from a four lane motorway.

The Ancient hill of Tara is under threat. A four lane motorway is planned to bulldoze right through it.

This is the centre of ancient Ireland, part of a huge complex of incredible sites. The Irish equivalent of Stone Henge.

For the sake of faster transport we are putting at risk our most ancient historical places.

Perhaps they’ll submit plans to convert Canterbury Cathedral into 2 bedroom apartments.

A petition to the Irish government.

More detailed explanations of present situation and how you can help at:

www.savetara.com

www.myspace.com/hilloftara

]]> http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/people/campaigns-and-causes/save-tara/feed/ 1 http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/people/campaigns-and-causes/dig-for-victory http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/people/campaigns-and-causes/dig-for-victory#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:22:20 +0000 Branching Arts http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/

Have you heard of Codex Alimentarius?

It is an attempt by the World Trade Organisation and World Food Organisation to control and manipulate the food chain.

The latest in a long line of attempts to make natural medicine illegal will
be imposed on the UK by the United Nations on 31 December 2009, unless the UK Government can be persuaded to reject it.

The WFO intends to change Codex from guideline to rule of law. The suggested implementations would classify all vitamins, minerals, herbs and
supplements as “toxins”, and will require that all foods are irradiated
and “made safe” with a cocktail of pharmaceutical ingredients (not
apparently “toxins”).

This may presage the end of organic agriculture and natural medicine.

With the “food shortage” which has suddenly and strangely hit the headlines, there is much more scope for things like this to creep through the net (a bit like anti-terrorist legislation after a bombing etc)……..There is much talk of GM food being the solution to the food problems. In a debate that i heard on radio 4, the person who suggested that all the food wasted in England could feed Africa was jeered at for giving away our countries hard won right to be wasteful. Complacency is what we’ve worked and faught for apparently.

So the implementation of GM benefits who? The huge companies like Monsanto who have produced lock and key seeds. This makes the farmer reliant upon buying more seed or the key to open the seed from the same company. There is no escape for the farmer once they have entered this. The plants are modified so that seed cannot be collected.
An example of its implementation is in a war zone, such as Iraq. The troops move in, crops are destroyed or farmers cannot work the fields cos of the bombs. The occupying force compensates these poor souls by generously giving them a bag of Monsanto seeds which the farmer happily plants. The next year when he tries to grow more crop from the seed produced, it doesn’t work………but don’t worry mr.farmer, here comes the nice American Seed Man with another bag of his seed. The farmer has to buy, and keep buying to produce his crop. In India this has caused a  wave of suicides amongst the farming population as they can no longer make a living from their crop. Here’s an article in The Mail about it.
The beneficiaries of such a scheme are the same lot that benefit from the Codex Alimentarius, the food crisis, the increased use of pharmaceuticals.

The depriving of nutrients to areas of society leads to the increase of certain diseases which will be treated with expensive drugs by the pharmaceutical companies that are integrally involved with the implementation of Codex. This has been running since 1963. The plan then was to bring it in as mandatory in 2009. It is upon us.

Effectively there is a large move to make our human right to eat good food and healthy vitamins and minerals into a commodity which is rigorously controlled by only a few people.

It is disturbingly  Orwellian.

We could learn a thing or two from the Norwegian Government who have built an ‘everything proof’ store for world seeds. It will help to slow the rate we’re losing many varieties of useful plant, mainly through intensive agriculture, big business,  and warfare.

Have a look into it (some links below to start), let us discuss and act upon it.

Dig for Victory…..Grow your own food

A video on Codex

An  article on Codex

A petition to the British Government

This was born some 20 years ago, when a few people clubbed together to buy a potato field. The week the transaction went through, the whole area flooded, and all the topsoil, and the spuds, washed down the valley into the stream.

So they had a field, with no soil, that was whipped by vicious winds, and notoriously unproductive. It has been used to grow potatoes for as long as anyone remembered.

They set to work, with the added difficulties of not being allowed to build on the land, or live there for more than 3 weeks per year.

As soon as the hedges started to grow, other plants could settle. And they did so, in tremendously fertile droves. PFAF is today a growing encyclopaedia of the edible plants of Britain and the world. There is very little they do not grown and know.

When we arrived there, we had both been walking separately for a week, for a little space. Will had met with National Trust rangers in a coastal village, with whom he stayed for an evening, prior to a solo busk in the morning. The ranger knew everyone from PFAF, and made the phone calls necessary. Now Will knew the valley, the red phone box, and the time, from which liaison could be achieved.

In the morning he busked, which was difficult but intensely good for him. And in the afternoon, he got to that red phone box, and made arrangements.

Ed, meantime, was walking as fast as he could toward PFAF, without knowing why nor where he was headed. He took the phone call from Will, and made carried right on.

An hour of being walked around the site with one of its caretakers, Will was saturated with varieties of hawthorn, mallow, and all the rest. Then Ed appeared, exuding fatigue. We completed the tour, were offered a floor to surreptitiously sleep upon. A brief catch-up, and we were asleep.

We stayed for two days with PFAF, helping clear brambles, tidying up old messes. We spent good time with Addy, one of the founders of the project. She taught us stretches to strengthen our limbs, lent us books to read, and generally flowed with solid plant knowledge.

PFAF is an unbelievable resource. It is so nearly the perfect project. What it needs… is people, good willing volunteers to go spend time, to learn and work, in their beautiful Cornish garden-forest. This place is the true Eden of Kernow, with no glamorous glass domes nor wide car-parks. It is the future, and if you are heading West, you should give them a call and go help out.

Also, the knowledge-base they have accumulated at PFAF has been built into a website, and is freely shared. We strongly suggest you go look, here.

Stamping the gusty sea-shore, the pathway is half-buried by drifting sand, and we almost trip over it. Along we go, stopping only to rest, curled up on the spiky tussocks that bulge from the seaside loam.

We soon reach Burton Bradstock, a merry seaside resort with a small stylish café, very much a Sunday Times Style territory. Its name reminds us of a 1930s film star, but whoever he was, he’s no longer around. We leave, away from the roads and up the hills, northward to Bridport. We find turnips, clamber round floods and over wire, and over wide agricultural landscapes, to suddenly arrive atop a horseshoe valley immediately west of the town. We loop down like skiers, to the left and the right, to enter the urbanity. It is raining, and late in the day, and we take shelter by the fire of the Woodman’s Inn, where we eat soup and sing when asked. We meet a performance poet called Angry Man, who offers for us to record with him. It sounds like a grand opportunity, and we take a number for the morning.

We are then given the name of a fellow running the open mic session in another pub, so along we trot. This turns into quite a night, for as soon as we enter, drinks ar given, and we are immediately invited to stay with a lady who is celebrating her birthday.

We say hello to a lively gang, then are given the stage, following from some ace tabla and sitar players, and a Jimi Hendrix cover band. We deftly refuse amplification, and the technicians are surprised, then pleased and relaxed. We sing, people dance, and it is lovely.
We are then bombarded with drinks and talk, and we follow the good birthday people to the next venue, for much more of the same. Then the birthday girl falls out with her boyfriend, with all explosions.
A cheery chap called Nick comes up, and tells us he has a fine place, with room enough for us to stay. Out we go, all oozing cheerios and drunk thanks, and 20 yards down the alley are taken into a car park, with a corner covered by a high tin roof. Unstoppable sodium light seeps through our eyelids, but the fine drizzle blowing sideways is a wonder for cooling our overheated faces. Good Night Bridport.

We awaken, and Nick, who led us to this shelter, is grinning with two big tins of sausage and beans for breakfast. We thank him, but cannot persuade ourselved to eat meat from a tin so early on. So we head to town, buy bananas and busk. At first we sing by the butchers, and then we move to the Post Office, where there is a constant flow of socializing people. The butcher runs after us down the street, with a bag of freshly cooked bacon sandwiches and pies. We thought he might was about to complain we were sounding rough this morning. Thank-you butcher. We take tea, and sing to a coachful of day-tripping old folk, and talk romance in a café with an OAP called Jill.

For recovery from our adventures, we find the Bridport health food shop, and buy fruit. We tell our tale to the ladies there, and they seem worried by Bridport’s effect. We are given directions to a community, not 10 miles away, that they say would be good for us. It seems a good tip, so we follow it.

A few hours later, with a short fast stretch along a whizzing deep-cut country road, we reach the place where we should find this community. We have no idea what to expect. We are lost, in the dusk, when we spot a painted wooden sign amongst the nettles, which points us down the lane. We follow, and come to a gate, a little after dark. Peering in to se if there is anyone about, we jump, as a cry rings out – “Wayfarers!” – and immediately a lady emerges to pull us into the house’s warm kitchen, to ask if we’re vegetarian, to tell us when dinner is eaten, and to show us our beds, before we’ve had a chance to say hello there.

We learn at dinner that this is a Christian guided dry-house, a safe rock for people to step upon, between trouble and the cold world. With subtle motifs of Christianity and work, it welcomes any who need succour.

We meet all sorts of people, each with many stories to tell. We are told of the Gorsedd sites, we sing to the assorted loung and chapelfuls of people, and we have space to read. Duringthe days, we join in the community labour, and find ourselves shovelling old donkey manure as fast as we can, determined to do more than is required. We find ourselves running, to speed our barrow-loads to their vegetable garden destiny.

We spend two nights here, which is technically against their rules, but no-one minds. We investigate their chapel, which has straw-bales for pews. Everyone is happy to get stuck in, and no-one asks questions of each others’ past. It is a refreshing and gentle time, a necessary breath after the recent madness. We didn’t really clocked how tired we were getting, till we stopped moving.

Many thanks to the good people of Pilsdon, for the surprising and beautiful support.