Carbon savings

This is a property in an adjacent road to us, perhaps with too many PV panels: I took the photograph at just after 3.30pm towards the end of last month, and already the sun is off nearly half of the array. Our decision last year to go down the solar thermal route, rather than have PV, was governed by similar considerations of shading.

12 months having now elapsed since we finished with the plumbing firm that did our work, we can look at what a difference it's made. Not only did we instal three roof panels, but we upgraded the gas boiler and the radiator system. The result? Gas usage is barely more than half what it was before; daytime electricity about two-thirds, and night-time units about three-quarters. Of course, the 2011/12 Winter has been milder, but that's still an appreciable saving, in my book!

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin"?

We spent the best part of today in the Old School Rooms, Stoke Gifford, hard by Bristol Parkway station, at the Christian Ecology Link annual conference. Wouldn't we have been better off "on our allotment"? Jonathon Porritt - our keynote speaker - postulated the possibility, only to reject it. After "a hundred years of suicidal growth", it is still possible to transform our (dire) situation, he said, but we need to strain each sinew to do so - and call in aid every spiritual resource: that's what justified congregating in a stuffy hall on a sunny Spring morning - and joining a peaceful protest at Hinckley Point ("No more Fukushimas!"): Jonathon was off there after his speech.

"But how can you work with a monolith like Unilever?" he's asked. "Well, I can imagine a sustainable world with no Magnum ice creams, but not one without Marmite."

Three decades or so ago, at one of the still nascent Ecology Party half-yearly conferences, a small group of Christians met to form a pool of holiness within the warring world of Green politics. And here some of us still were, seeking mutual encouragement within that same pool, Christian Ecology Link.

Today, we were marshalled, facilitated and inspired by Barbara Echlin, Ellen Teague and poet Clare Best. And - Jonathon apart - a further seven men (!) came forward to offer that encouragement.

Tim Gorringe proclaimed the whole of reality as God's, not "capital" for accrual, but gift for our nurture and for use for others' sake. Adopting an altogether lower tone, Chris Sunderland spoke of the need for inner transformation for our generation, which lived in the shallows and marketed the mind, having turned its soul into a desert - rather than a fertile land for spiritual growth.

Jeremy Williams invited us to share his quest for a simpler, more sustainable life, by detoxing from consumerism. The excellent presentation by Mark Letcher showed how we might reframe our specific concerns about climate change, so as to persuade a broader cross-section to take it seriously, while a more general political engagement was urged upon us by Jonathan Essex, a Green Party local councillor: he took me back to the early days when we were all paid up members of the Ecology Party.

The gentle, prophetic voice of Ed Echlin was heard advocating organic food production, and sparking a wide-ranging discussion amongst both young and old. Finally, CEL Chair Paul Bodenham steered us towards the darker form of hope - based not on bright, shiny technology, but upon God's sustaining power within us, drawing us into conversion: sharing that hope, we become evangelists.

"All of us find our communities where we can," Jonathon Porritt reflected: CEL brings people together from a diversity of local and national communities - a unique network, and repository of goodness.

Syde walk

On a dullish morning, we walked again, this time with friends. From Syde church, we set off Northwards before dipping into the hidden valley which stretches down through Eddington Wood from Brimpsfield. It's less than a mile from the busy dual carriageway, but you wouldn't know it. How grateful we can be that this ancient pocket was spared the scars that a modern PPG7 mansion would have inflicted on it! "Proposals for Syde Park, near Caudle Green, included a six-bedroom house with conservatory and orangery, two large cottages and a water cascade on landscaped terraces."

Listeners to The Archers (I don't count myself as one these days) will know all about it.

We arrived early for our rendezvous, so I popped into the jewel-like church of St Mary to see, I'd hoped, the "roundel of St James of Compostela in the nave SE window" - Pevsner. But no roundel was there to be seen! What might have become of it?

Orchardist Martin

Following up his offer at a GOGG meeting last year, I approached Martin Hayes to come and prune our old apple trees - they can't have been touched for years, he said. The result of today's work is a vast heap of prunings in the centre of our lawn. The fig, too, looks leaner and fitter having suffered a few drastic blows.

I learnt a lot: the difference between male and female mistletoe, for instance; and that even experienced orchard workers can cut themselves sometimes, and wobble on ladders.

Syreford Quarry

We collected horse manure from Andoversford yesterday morning, going on to stretch our legs - preparation for more Camino walking in May - above Syreford. When we went to live there in 1983, it might have been possible to buy one of the few properties for let's say £20,000. Now you could need to add a couple of noughts to that for some of the houses - and all the cottages have been souped up.

The Quarry off the old coach road up to Whittington is bigger since our day (it's nearly 18 years since we left), but the surrounding fields all look in good heart: circling seagulls testify to a promising feeding ground.

Rochester House

During our Ealing perambulation yesterday morning, it rained more and more solidly. Nevertheless, there was much of interest to appreciate, as we were led down narrow passages, passing the backs of fine old houses as well as more or less neglected cemeteries and allotments. Our goal was the former country house that once belonged to (or was rented by) Caroline's great-great-great-grandparents. A worthwhile one it proved. Rochester House, built a few decades before (the unmarried) Francis and Ann, with their ten children, took up residence, must have looked fine from across the adjoining fields. Now it stands, well cared for still, on a bend in the busy road, surrounded by later buildings of generally less distinguished appearance.

"...Only a future to hope for"

Crossing Trafalgar Square yesterday afternoon, en route for the Lucien Freuds at the National Portrait Gallery, we admired the latest 4th Plinth offering, recently put in place.

The guff says that a child has been elevated to the status of a historical hero, though there is not yet a history to commemorate – only a future to hope for. Instead of acknowledging the heroism of the powerful, “Powerless Structures, Fig. 101” (for that is its catchy title) - in the words of its creators, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset - “celebrates the heroism of growing up."

Whatever.

After the fall

We dropped in on our Wiltshire (part-time) family this morning. The youngest member - in his excitement - ran round the house and then slipped on a greasy, loose paving-stone: splat! Savlon and an electronic gismo seemed to do the trick quite speedily, to assuage both blood and tears.

Black "Comedy"

Happy memories of Clifford Williams’ RSC production of The Comedy of Errors were brought back last evening! They were awakened by the National Theatre relay of its current revival of this early Shakespeare.

First put on in September 1962, I saw it at Stratford the following year, with Alec McCowen and the late-lamented Ian Richardson, Clifford Rose and Barry MacGregor in the male leads - other parts played by Donald Sinden, Diana Rigg, Janet Suzman…

I'm inclined to confess that yesterday the best bit was my Ben & Jerry ice cream in the interval. The production by the Royal Court's Dominic Cooke is dark, dark, dark - more uniformly so even than Act 1 of Propeller's recent Winter's Tale. I really don't think that the earlier play can stand that much directorial business: it left a distinctly unpleasant taste in the mouth - not one offset by some excellent acting and - praise be! - verse speaking: in the latter department, Pamela Nomvete as an unlikely-looking Abbess was outstanding, though her part is only a minor one.

It was the second occasion this week that I've left a so-called comedy dissatisfied: on Tuesday our Film Society showed a French film (from 2008), Louise-Michel: it was the first time I've ever found myself walking out before the end: it made me feel quite sick.

Energy Champions

Wasteful though I am in so many ways, I have signed up to be one of Cheltenham's Energy Champions. Our trainers yesterday evening (this is one) assured us that we didn't have to be experts - only know where to go for help. The Energy Saving Trust hotline was a good start. The big idea is to get Cheltenham to reduce its overall domestic (and other) energy demands, in line with our much-needed Transition to a more sustainable future. 20 of us met up for this training, which surely qualifies us as having done something significantly out of the ordinary to commemorate Leap Year Day.

A bonus day

"Fair and rather mild. Good bye fair twenty-ninth for another four years." This is how my ancestor, Peter Davis opened his diary entry in 1836. I am preparing a talk on it, to be given to the church's 55+ Club tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, to mark today (when the weather was much the same as in 1836) with something unusual, I biked to Warden Hill, Badgeworth and Shurdington, to look at their three churches. This is one of Tom Denny's sensational windows in St Christopher's, Warden Hill - "The Ravens", made in 1986. It's inspired by the Western Counties of Ireland, where ravens are common, and Luke, 12:24, "Think of the ravens: they neither sow nor reap; they have no storehouse or barn; yet God feeds them. You are worth far more than the birds."

"Catholics"

Thursday nights are TV rich just at present. Dennis Potter's masterpiece, The Singing Detective is in full swing, while as hors d'oeuvre we now have Richard Alwyn’s 3-part series on Catholicism today. The first one, "Priests" was last week - still available on iPlayer till 15th March. Its fly on the wall approach may try the patience of some, but on the whole it paints a fair picture, I guess. Not one, however, which I like totally, for reasons which Philip Endean SJ sets out very fairly in his Thinking Faith review. The giveaway was one of the candidates for ordination receiving communion on the tongue, not something our gentle, wise, post-Vatican 2 priest would go out of his way to encourage, I make bold to say. (He is rarely to be seen in a stiff dog collar either.)

Ox.Ag?

We are all partial where our Alma Mater is concerned. (Should that be "Almae Matres are"?) I was accordingly delighted to get a call from Agnes today to say that she'd been offered a place on the Oxford University MSt Creative Writing course. She'd applied without much confidence of success, but I'm of course not surprised in the least that they've recognised her potential!

The meaning of marriage

I'm never anxious to be one to court controversy, but my dander is up over the proposals to change the legal definition of marriage, to allow it to apply to the union of same-sex couples.

The Civil Partnerships Act, I support: it already gives gay couples rights which are equivalent to the rights of married couples. Marriage, however, has always been a contract between a man and a woman. Unlike a same-sex relationship, it normally involves a sexual liaison that is biologically capable of producing issue. Although same-sex couples are able to adopt and otherwise acquire children, marriage is and should, in my book, remain a unique man-woman relationship, one that's vital for a stable, flourishing society. If you, dear reader, agree, please think about signing - at least - one of the declarations going the rounds, like this one, which seems sensible to me.

White Lisbon

We've been looking at Mini and Leo's photographs of Lisbon, following their return from spending last weekend there. I recalled our May 2010 visit to the same fleamarket they went to, this church forming the backdrop. Meanwhile, Spring seems to have arrived here, with temperatures in the upper teens, and lunch outside these past two days! Normally, I don't think of sowing vegetable seeds direct into the open ground till March, but yesterday I made a start with the Musselburgh (leek), Salad Bowl (lettuce), radish, Boltardy (beetroot), Early Nantes (carrot) - and of course the traditional spring onion, White Lisbon.

Martinů

We took our Japanese student lodger along to the Cheltenham Music Society's concert last night, at which the Martinů Quartet played - not Martinů, but Smetana, and also (as an encore) a scherzo from a quartet by the little known (here at least) František Škroup. This second part of their programme we generally thought preferable to the first: Mozart K.590 and Beethoven Op.135. Not that there was much wrong with, in particular, the Beethoven: it's just that - having heard the Takács last month - we are currently feeling spoilt where pieces in the mainstream repertoire are concerned.

The quartet's cellist reminded me of someone: when I woke up this morning, I realised who it was, seeing a photograph of Elizabeth Gateley, my great-grandmother as a young, rather severe-looking bride. Not a musical lady, though, at least so far as I know, and certainly not Czech.

Another bear

Having had a full picnic of bears on Saturday (in Warwick), I was confronted with another a couple of days later, this time at the British Museum. Grayson Perry's residency ends this week, so we thought we ought to make the effort to catch it, to see what all the fuss was about. No regrets, particularly with admission to Room 35 at half price on Mondays for oldies!

The only photography allowed was outside, this being a detail of the pink bike parked by the entrance to Room 35: on it, Perry rode to Germany a couple of years ago, carrying his precious bear, Alan Measles, in a shrine mounted on the back. “The Germans were the default enemy," he explained, "and so they became a metaphor for all that was bad in my experience. Alan and I needed to make peace with our old imagined adversary.” Bravo!

“Only in Britain,” said a German present when Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize in 2003.

Old and new in Brum

En route for Warwick on Saturday, I changed trains in Birmingham. It's my birthplace, which is no doubt why I like to linger there whenever possible: this time, it was to visit St Martin's in the Bullring - for the first time - and to catch the Leonardo Drawings exhibition in the Art Gallery at the other end of New Street.

The Today programme this morning noted the Daily Express's support for investment in a National Water Grid. "Lets do something that will one day make our grandchildren proud of us!" it urges. Coming into Birmingham via Selly Oak, the train runs alongside the Elan Aqueduct, which - more than 100 years ago - was constructed to bring Welsh water to Birmingham, a distance of 73 miles. My father always said his grandfather, as manager of the Birmingham Corporation Improvement Scheme, was instrumental in this, though my researches so far don't throw up his name in connection with this - as opposed to other major projects of his time. "A splendid specimen of the Anglo-Saxon race, as all will admit who know him." So goes one of the many newspaper cuttings in our family album.

Arthur Henry Davis might have recognised the steam train berthed at Moor Street Station: Selfridges in the Bull Ring (behind), however, would have made his eyes pop.

London Fashion Week

We happened upon this today, making for Somerset House on a different mission - to see the Mondrians and Nicholsons ("In parallel") at the Courtauld Gallery. Chambers' elegant 18th Century courtyard was stuffed with marquees and thronged with people less than half my age either wearing outlandish clothes or carrying expensive cameras - often both. For once, I felt entirely unselfconscious, taking photographs of people myself. Caroline enjoyed it too, as indeed our Japanese student lodger would have, had she been with us.

What a contrast between the Courtauld exhibition's cool, controlled, abstract paintings, and so many outrageously costumed models - many thin enough to slip down the cracks between the paving stones!

"A grandchild's hand"

I thought the elegant package looked like the usual chopsticks, but no: it was a more unusual present that 19-year-old Chihiro Kono brought us when she arrived to stay, one of a party from Tokyo who are currently in Cheltenham for a three-week study tour. Her home in Shizuoka is overlooked by Mount Fuji; she plays the trombone, and likes Chopin - and shopping: she also dresses extremely well!

I asked Chihiro whether she'd read any Haruki Murakami. "Yes," she replied: "We studied Norwegian Wood - IN ENGLISH!"

Warwick

Though I was brought up no more than 16 miles from Warwick, we hardly ever went there, so it remains terra somewhat incognita. I read that no less than eight different families appear to have held the Warwick peerage during the past millennium, so anyone can be forgiven for getting muddled about who did what in Warwick itself. Richard Neville (the Kingmaker) built the Guildhall, whilst it was the earlier Beauchamps who adopted the familiar bear and ragged staff as an addition to their coat of arms.

This lovable-looking bear, though, holds his ragged staff in a rather unusual manner - he is one of several in different poses slung under the eaves of the charming courtyard of the Lord Leycester Hospital. The Hospital, really a glorified almshouse, was founded by neither a Beauchamp nor a Neville, but by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favourite of Elizabeth I, and younger brother of Ambrose Earl of Warwick. Robert and Ambrose are entombed in the Beauchamp Chapel in St Mary's, Warwick, which is dominated by the golden 15th Century image of the Kingmaker's father-in-law, Richard Beauchamp - hands apart, so he can keep his eyes on the ceiling bosses portraying God the Father and Mary Queen of Heaven.

Those members of my book group who met in the Chapel this morning were lucky in finding a guide who was both unassumingly knowledgeable and generous with it. After we had marvelled at, in particular the carving and glass, she moved on with us to the Chancel, where we beheld the stunning alabaster images of Richard's grandparents: they were, it seems, my 20th great-grandparents for what it's worth - hardly a very exclusive claim, however, in this era of internet genealogy. (Added to which, we have - assuming no intermarriages - more than 8 million other ancestors of that generation.)

Bevan Boys

This week's Tablet carries an article about the late Roger Bevan, musician, and his amazing family. His granddaughters Sophie and Mary are both ENO solists, Sophie recently receiving acclaim for her part ("an eager little minx") in Der Rosenkavalier.

I came under "Mr. Bevan's" influence in the mid-50s, shortly after he had arrived to teach music at Downside. I was in my last year at the nearby prep school, All Hallows, and the school choir was co-opted to supplement the treble line for Messiah in Downside Abbey. (From the photograph, you can judge that it wasn't a minimalist performance. Incidentally, I spy Canon Thomas Atthill standing just behind Roger Bevan.)

It was the first time I had sung in a proper choir, and I still recall the buzz it gave and my huge debt owed to the unassumingly great Mr. Bevan - much the same sort of debt (albeit in a minor way) that his children and now grandchildren owe him: for a lifetime's love of music.

Wellinghill

Out of sight, below what you see in this photograph is Wellinghill Farm, so one may perhaps assume this is Wellinghill itself, though my books of reference don't go so far as to confirm this. Anyway, we passed down this way into Charlton Kings today at the end of a walk which began at Whittington.

The temperature both yesterday and today has been a good deal higher than last week, so no wonderland effects, though vestiges of snow remain on the top. In the watery sunshine, we passed the entrance to the old stone mines just West of Whittington, amidst trees tangled jungle-wise with very old man's beard. Below Colgate Farm, they are building a large stone house in traditional Cotswold style overlooking the reservoir: the next thing we shall see, no doubt, is notice of a request for a footpath diversion. Or the owners may just do what neighbours nearby have done: put horses in the field for long enough to turn the entire footpath area into a sea of mud.

Juliet's birthday

When I came to Gloucestershire, nearly 40 years ago, amongst the first people to welcome me into their circle were dear Christopher and Juliet. In exchange for a bottle of wine, they would feed a fair number of us as we struggled of an evening to learn to sing madrigals, before eventually performing (badly) in public. On a couple of occasions, Christopher's eminent father Richard, teacher of Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle and Alexander Goehr, came and rapped the kitchen table, in an effort to bring us to heel. Usually, though, it was the cherubic Adrian's more compassionate beat that we attempted to follow.

He it was, still lacking many grey hairs, who (with Christopher and others) sang and played yesterday at the Bathurst Arms, for Juliet's birthday: neither Pat nor Bridget had I seen for years. The rest of us (leaving aside those mentioned of course) all look terribly old.

"Götterdämmerung"

I waxed lyrical about an opera set last May: it was after seeing the Met. relay of Robert Lepage's production of Die Walküre. That same set is naturally used for Lepage's new Met. Götterdämmerung: it came to us in our local Cineworld by the same magical means last evening, but I found myself less inclined to enthuse. Indeed, the gyrations of what look like so many giant Kit-Kat pieces (sometimes more resembling magnified USB sticks) made me dizzy, and distracted me from the all-important transition passages played luminously by the Met. Opera Orchestra under Fabio Luisi. This techno solution to the Ring staging worked well for the Ride of the Valkyries, each of the sisters mounted on her own piece of Kit-Kat. Last night however, we were given a pseudo-realistic Grane - the first attempt at a proper-looking Valkyre horse I think I have ever witnessed. Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde even climbs aboard as Siegfried's pyre is lit - but do we see them gallop (even trot) into the flames? No.

I have no hesitation, however, about either the singing or the acting, which were uniformly excellent. The Act 1, Scene 3 duet between Voigt and the legendary Waltraud Meier will remain long in my memory. If forced to choose amongst the rest of the cast, I might - perhaps surprisingly - single out Iain Paterson as Gunther. My photograph shows a curtain call at the first night of a very different Götterdämmerung: Phyllida Lloyd's excellent Coliseum production eight years ago, conducted by Paul Daniel. And the Gunther, alongside the mighty, pocket-battleship Brünnhilde, Kathleen Broderick? Iain Paterson.

Alberich's theft is a sin against the integrity of creation; but so is Wotan's cutting into the world ash tree, to make for himself a world-dominating spear: both actions upset the balance of what was ever a sustainable world order. Rather like us, exhausting fossil fuels and destroying the rain forest?