Au revoir or adieu?

Sweet Juliet is still, this last day of 2014, in flower in our garden; and - below - the leaves of the Acanthus near it shine with promise for next Summer. We've sprouts yet to eat, and broccoli, Cumberland cale and rocket. There's even a picking to be made from the lettuce plants, protected only by being at the foot of the wall near the far North corner.

"I foresee the Paris Climate Conference as 2015's key event," I emailed yesterday to the Guardian, "and would like to lend a hand in making it a success. With your front page today containing only three stories, all bad news related to air travel, who will join me in a New Year resolve to give up flying?" Alas, I looked this morning, and it hasn't made it into the paper.

It's a day for resolutions, of which this year I have made several. One relates to this blog, now in its seventh year: have you noticed the posts becoming shorter? Maybe it's the proverbial itch, but I'm putting it to sleep. Perhaps forever. Thank you, if there's anyone out there, for reading it! And to those who may have Commented from time to time.

PS (2nd January 2015): I looked again in the Guardian Letters page yesterday. Still no sign of my letter. Ah well! But then today, a blistering leading article on the importance of the Paris Climate Conference, and in the bottom left corner of the next page - just when I wasn't looking for it - my letter (only slightly edited).

Family value

Half our quartet have been in the public eye this past weekend. Agnes was in Foyles, Bristol speaking at a publishing event; and Thomas was quoted in an article entitled "Who said Britons were drunk, dirty and deplorable?" in Saturday's Guardian. "People here do it slowly but surely," he was quoted as saying (a line which needs a little context).

Enough!

The excellent article by George Monbiot in yesterday's Guardian - "It's simple: we need to talk about growth" - reminded me of a sign I'd photographed recently. "We live," Monbiot concluded, "as if trapped inside a Sunday supplement: obsessed with fame, fashion and the three dreary staples of middle-class conversation: recipes, renovations and resorts. Anything but the topic that demands our attention... That's how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it."

I suppose we could at least joke about it. Like on the death of an airline passenger during a flight: cabin crew were carrying the body to the rear of the plane - a newspaper letter reports - when one of them looked up and said: "Did anyone else have the fish?"

Ravensburg, in Swabia (hardly a resort), was where I spotted this shop front, when walking through the deserted town centre on Easter Sunday morning.

Lucas (2)

"The solo singing was wonderful. As Jephtha, James Gilchrist offered... virtuoso bravado..." So today's paper describes (with 5 stars) Tuesday night at the Barbican . And yesterday's Cheltenham lieder recital by that same tenor might, I feel, be described in similar terms.

It could be three years since I attended a Music Society event at the Pittville Pump Room, I'm rather ashamed to say. (Their programmes deserve more loyal support.) And I wasn't really looking forward to last night's mixed bag with any great relish, having been critical of a programme Gilchrist gave at our July 2012 Festival.

As it turned out, I was taken aback not just by the beauty of his voice, but the confidence and variety of tone he brought to his performance - settings of Shakespeare, Byron and Heine by Wolf, Mendelssohn(s), Loewe, Liszt, Grieg and Schubert in part one, and a glorious Dichterliebe after the interval.

The link to my illustration? Tenuous: Gilchrist started adult life as a doctor, and the portrait is supposed to represent another such, St Luke. It's one of the images in a garish-looking East window dating from 1850 in the Norman church I visited on Wednesday, All Saints, Salperton. The glass, "possibly" - Pevsner - by David Evans, is much eclipsed by two splendid late Kempe windows in the South wall.

Above Sheepscombe

Being deprived by festivities of our last two Wednesday walks, we met at Foston's Ash yesterday morning, to shake away some cobwebs. The mud was our main prospective enemy, because of the terrific rainfall recently. (Our drawing-room alcove ceiling almost gave way: just in time, Edmund drilled holes to channel the water leaking in.)

To avoid the shooting at Climperwell, we walked towards Cranham and then leftwards into the beechwoods above Sheepscombe. Hard core has long been laid on the tracks there, providing a firm path for us as well as the forest machinery. This giraffe-like trunk caught my eye.

Delaying our start till a squall had passed, we then missed any more rain, and indeed the sun lit up the tree tops on our final stretch, through the woods that the late John Workman gave to the National Trust.

That is an organisation evidently not solicitous about its punctuation: "Workmans Wood" on one sign, and "Workman s Wood" on two others. Should one be surprised when one of its top brass sends us a family round robin displaying a similarly cavalier approach to the apostrophe rule?

Oh dear! Bang goes my New Year's resolution - to be less nerdish. It contrasts somewhat in scale with Ian Jack's. Writing in today's Guardian, he says:

New Year resolutions rarely see out February because they're born in a… wishy-washy sort of hope, too weak to resist the seduction of old habits. Fear, on the other hand, keeps you on the straight and narrow… Domesticated ruminants are the largest source of anthropogenic methane and account for 11.6% of greenhouse gases that can be attributed to human activity…The use of highly productive croplands to produce animal feed is [also] questionable on moral grounds because this contributes to exhausting the world's food supply. Other well-known consequences include tropical deforestation and the erosion of biodiversity, but unless governments intervene… it seems unlikely that the demand for animal flesh can be curbed. 

But which popularly elected government will ration meat or deliberately price it as a luxury?… 

Nonetheless, my resolution this year is to become a vegetarian… I doubt that I can stick to it. Where's the terror at three in the morning that will change my behaviour? A gale may be tearing over the house and a flood running down the street, but the link to a lifetime's mince consumption will be hard to fix in my imagination. When it comes to the bleak future of the world, the complicated route between cause and effect is the greatest barrier to our doing much to change it.

Grumpy old men - 2

For one reason or another, we hadn't been to the Film Society recently - till last night. "The Guard" (released in 2011) is Irish noir, laced with good visual jokes. There were jokes in the script too, but many of them passed me by: never have I found the words of an English-language film so difficult to grasp. A strong case for subtitles throughout!

Delivering Christmas cards earlier, I dropped one in at Catherine Shinn. Her father, Catherine said, was at home decorating an absurdly large Christmas tree: "we don't do minimalism," she added - unnecessarily, if you have ever been to her magnificent shop: see my photograph.

I bumped into another of my "by hand" card recipients as she walked homewards with the shopping: recently having flown back from a pilgrimage/holiday in the Holy Land, she justified her failure to send conventional cards this year by a desire to save trees. Really!!

Which brings me onto the great airport debate, raging anew this week - mostly about where extra capacity should be built. The leader in today's Guardian stands alone, reminding readers that roads (and runways) breed traffic. "The old Mr Cameron," it goes on, "warned that If we don't act now, and act quickly, we could face disaster from the climate. That danger has not gone away, and neither have Whitehall's own projections for a 50% rise of aviation emissions by 2050, projections that make a mockery of a supposedly binding commitment to cut 80% out of total greenhouse gases by the same date."

Eamonn McCabe

I would love to be a witty photographer like Eamonn McCabe, former photo editor of the Guardian. He showed some examples of his art in the Pittville Pump Room this evening, the annual "big" talk put on by the Camera Club. "Alas poor Yorick!" was the Guardian's caption for a shot of a bald-headed goalkeeper cradling the ball.

A good raconteur, McCabe spoke with enthusiasm and wasn't too techy. So he went down well with me, if not with the nerdy fraternity. Great images of course, charting his development from gigs groupie to sports photographer to portraitist. "There's something about loners," he said. "What makes them work?" Solving that question seems very much the key to McCabe's success.

Bishop Frank

Your Holiness,

Congratulations on your election as Pope, and I hope your new job won't turn out to be a poisoned chalice - either self-administered, or slipped to you by some corrupt member of your household (the fate which was surmised to have befallen your predecessor but two).

Although I am addressing this to "Your Holiness" - in traditional mode - I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't prefer a less lofty title, judging by the way you introduced yourself from the balcony last evening. "Brothers and sisters, good evening." What a delightful beginning!

Sam Jones had a long piece in last Saturday's Guardian about cardinals who made up the electoral college. "Then there are those who find fame for other reasons," he wrote. "Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Jesuit intellectual and Archbishop of Buenos Aires who travels round town by bus and told his compatriots not to waste their money on plane tickets to Rome to see him become a cardinal, but to give it instead to the poor..." My heart leapt to read this: someone who walked the talk!

And then what a great name to choose! I photographed a "St Francis" stained glass window when visiting St Alphege's Church in Solihull last month: here is a detail. You can see the saint's stigmata - reminding us of the cross Christians have to bear - and the wolf (the Curia?) alongside the rabbit (us in our pews) and the robin (Reliant? - the new Popemobile?).

I groaned when the news came of Joseph Ratzinger's election: last night, though, I was fighting back tears of joy. You are an answer to many prayers!

High definition performance

It was Kenneth Tynan who coined the phrase "high definition performance". Tonight's Film Society film, last night's Royal Opera live stream and Sunday's Something Understood all come under this useful heading.

The Iranian director Asghar Farhadi won plaudits at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival for A separation: I had meant to catch it when it first came out, but failed. It was well worth waiting, though, for its superb screenplay and mesmerising acting. Only at the end, when music plays, do you realise there has been none throughout.

Music aplenty though from the Royal Opera House throughout yesterday, during the 10-hour live stream of backstage activity, available through theguardian.co.uk/music and thespace.org. We only watched a little until the evening, when we were rivetted by the relay of the whole of Act 3 of Die Walküre.

And Mark Tully's Something Understood is always worth listening to, but this week on "Dignity" he was on specially good form, particularly with his main interviewee, an eloquent Buddhist.

Tynan wouldn't have marked our High Street accordionist with "HDP", but I have recently been enjoying one particular tune he keeps playing. I don't know what it's called - we correspond in smiles, as he's from Hungary and speaks no English.

The velodrome

I'm in London for a celebration of the life of Adrian Cave. It took place this afternoon in a large lecture room, part of the recently-opened Oil Tanks at Tate Modern. One of Adrian's last projects, he helped in designing its access with elegance, much recalled as his thing at the packed meeting. Its affectionate spirit was summed up by a grandchild's quite brilliant "performance" of Albert & the lion.

The gloomy Oil Tanks themselves were showing video instalations, the magic of which continues to elude me. No doubt I suffer from late onset ADHD.

Before leaving Bankside, I sampled Tino Sehgal's Unilever Series effort in the Turbine Hall. You hardly expect to see two-dimensional framed pictures in that giant space, but this "show" is the exact reverse of what one gets in a conventional gallery. It's a Whiteread experience.

A room full of Rothkos, for example, sees people looking at the walls in silence: Sehgal has us standing or sitting in the Turbine Hall, looking at one another: "us" includes Sehgal's animators, who are liable to come up to one and engage in random conversation. Thus I had the joy of discussing sea bathing off the English coast with an attractive young lady, who broke away as suddenly as she first approached me, only to go and stand 20 yards off. I waited where I was a little longer, wondering whether I was now entitled to walk up to someone in my turn, and what I should say; but I became distracted by the realisation that the Turbine Hall floor would never quite recover from being dug up by Doris Salcedo for her 2007 Unilever show.

En route from Paddington, I paused by the Serpentine Gallery. This year's Pavilion is another sombre affair: a subterranean chamber, with stepped seating finished in dark grey cork to match large mushroom-shaped stools which comprise the only other furniture. The "space" is covered by a flat disc, its surface covered by an inch or so of water. Eleven of the columns below the disc are supposed to characterise each of the eleven previous Serpentine Pavilions, but you could have fooled me.

Avoiding buses because I feared Olympic traffic congestion, I have been riding a Boris Bike for the first time. The sponsors' name has attracted the odd graffiti artist, as can be seen from my photograph. Renting is easier than in Paris, but the biking isn't such fun, certainly when rounding Parliament Square and crossing Westminster Bridge - a bit hairy, dicing with all those buses. Even on the bike route through Hyde Park, it was tricky, being so hugely busy: in Beijing (according to our friend Edward, who came to see us the other day - he's been living there), people are moving from bikes to cars, in London it seems to be the other way about.

The Boris Bikes are low-geared, so it's warm work on a day such as today has been. I arrived at the Albert Hall from Bankside very hot and sweaty just in time for the Prom, and - standing in the packed Arena - spent most of the first half mopping my brow. It was the great B Minor Mass: the Guardian critic gets it just right - four stars. "When counter-tenor Iestyn Davies sang his solos," he writes, "his extraordinary tonal richness and imaginative phrasing combined into something truly unforgettable."

King's place

I refer of course to the King of Melody, Franz Schubert, and his place at the heart of our affections, particularly these nine days starting today, when his music (spirit indeed) will monopolise the Radio 3 schedule. I type this listening to Imogen Cooper playing the D major sonata D 850, relayed from a venue with nearly the same name as my heading. (I can't bring myself to type it because of my apostrophe fetish: I would only say, what an appropriate location the Grauniad chose a few years ago for its new offices.)

What is it that's so special about Imogen's playing? I guess it's the vulerability. Now, at double Schubert's age when his body gave up, her touch seems more tender than it once was - very much in tune with the inner world of a composer, who lives on.

During the concert interval this evening, we heard some spoken word about Schubert: the delightful brogue of that fine lieder singer Ailish Tynan contrasted with the quavering, only slightly accented voice of the 86-year-old Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, by whom I was first introduced to the intensity of Schubert's music. And then Imogen's own voice, as always so warm, and full of love for her (and our) hero, nay King.

Rehearsal photographs rarely flatter the artist: this one taken in the Pittville Pump Room in 2003 is no exception, but it conveys something of the whole-body concentration that Imogen brings to her always memorable performances. As Alan Rushbridger wrote in 2009, "Long may her moment in the sun last."

Anniversaries

As an eight-year-old schoolboy, what I recall about the death of King George VI, 60 years ago yesterday, was just one thing: all day long boring (so it then seemed) music, and music alone, poured out of the radio. Today, we celebrate another anniversary, 200 years since the birth of Charles Dickens. His recent biographer, the indefatigable Claire Tomalin, writes a Happy Birthday letter to him in the Guardian: she wishes she could summon up for lunch "in a cheerful restaurant" some of his friends - amongst whom she mentions my 4 greats-uncle Clarkson Stanfield, to whom Dickens dedicated Little Dorrit. I bought this photograph of him in old age a year or so ago on eBay.

Disconcertment

Guardian readers are in turmoil. Nothing is where you expect to find it any longer. Alan Rushbridger's quite inadequate letter has satisfied no one. At least in this household.

What's more, we've been thrashed in the cricket.

HB2

The photographer Henrietta Butler has moved to live near Cheltenham in recent years. Yesterday, she kindly gave me some of her time (and the benefit of her considerable experience). Nothing is more enjoyable than talking to an expert in what is purported to be one's own field!

Henrietta's one-off photobook - made up of her portraits of performing and other artists over the years, taken mainly for the Guardian - puts my efforts in that line to shame. Extraordinary that she has yet to find a "proper" publisher for it! "Too old fashioned!", she calls it.

Talking with her made me think of the importance of knowing what one's aiming for. "Free range photography" is all very well: targeted photography might get me further in the long run.

Corduroy etc.

An email came in overnight from Canadian cousins, who go to great lengths, it seems, to commemorate Armistice Day. Good for them. It's easy to forget. Today's picture combines the red and black of my poppy - in verticals, to mark, in addition, the moment of the day that most resembles corduroy, as the clock moves from 11:11:11:11:00:00 to 11:11:11:11:11.11.

It was three years ago that the Guardian offered readers the chance to download an original Keith Tyson History Picture. This is "mine". Each work consists of a unique randomly-generated sequence of vertical stripes in red, black and green - the roulette colours. Every image has its own title, based on the geographical location of the user: hence "Cheltenham" at the bottom left.

Ahead of the offer, Keith wrote that his computer "will generate a sequence of the numbers one to 32 which relates to the roulette wheel. Each number has an assigned colour. If you hit the jackpot, you'll come away with an entirely green work. But the chances of that happening are 1 in 37 x 37 x 37, 49 times." Even I, who am red/green colour-blind, can see this is not a jackpot that I've won. But the consolations are that Caroline remembered it's St Martin's Day, and I've been asked out to lunch by an old friend!

Martin Clare RIP

It was some seven years ago now that our friend Steve convened a boys' book group. News has just reached me of the death of
its youngest original member, Martin Clare of Fairford.

Besides being excellent company, Martin seemed to be a jack of all trades: a fine musician and, I gather, amateur dramatist; brilliant with children and young people; a cricketer (winner of the Fairford President's Award in 2005 I note); handyman and house restorer; as an ex-publican himself, an expert on local pubs, and so far as the book group went, a bringer-to-our-attention of wonderfully oddball books such as "The Eyre Affair".

A quick google is frustrating, as he's easily overtaken by the singer Clare Martin, but it reminded me of a typically delightful contribution he made to the Guardian's Notes & Queries. To the question, "Are there any examples of books being improved in translation?", he replied, "I don't know about improvements, but I once saw a French edition of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes book His Last Bow translated as Son Dernier Coup d'Archet. Stupidly, I didn't buy it; I'd love to have known whether the translation of the stories was of a similar quality."

His funeral in Fairford next Monday promises to be a great occasion: so many people will miss him dreadfully, but especially his beloved Nicky, Nick and Gummo of course.

The alternative to growth

Writing in today's Guardian, Deborah Orr draws our attention to the HSBC report, The World in 2050. It predicts that in 39 years time we (the UK) will be the sixth largest economy in the world, barely affected by the vast Eastward-moving structural adjustment in the global economy. I share Deborah's view that this is sheer fantasy, and commend her formulation of an alternative vision:

It involves the adoption of serious, sober, studious, self-improving and circumscribed lives that are quiet and careful, disciplined and thrifty, packed with work, mostly unpaid, highly reliant on "simple pleasures" for satisfaction and self-fulfilment, and held together by a small but tremendously reliable and highly decentralised state.

She concludes: There was a brief vogue for discussion about the adoption of such Quaker-like existences just as the crash came, but people very quickly realised that they didn't actually fancy it all that much, really. Instead, the hope is still to have it all, for ever, and in this the only real difference between the mainstream left and the mainstream right is how the fantasy gets dressed up. Happy 2050.

The grandest design

Caroline's dream is to build a carbon-neutral house in the countryside. It's a dream stimulated by, amongst others, Kevin McCloud the presenter of Grand Designs.

Yesterday, Kevin was one of many celebs. who was announced as having signed up to 10:10, the pledge to try to cut our individual carbon emissions by 10% next year, in order to put pressure on politicians that we want tougher action - a very grand design, indeed - on global warming. Some of them were asked "Do you know what your carbon footprint is?" I liked playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah's candid answer to this question: "Absolutely not. It's a bit like looking at your bank account when you're overdrawn. You just don't want to think about it."

Having sounded off just the other day about air-borne pilgrimages, I also liked the answer Kevin McCloud gave to the question: "Who in the world would you like to sign up to the 10:10 pledge?" "I think," he said, "if it's not going to be Jeremy Clarkson, it's the Pope. He's responsible for the ethical position of tens of millions of people worldwide. And responsible for millions flying to see him in St Peter's Square. He should be encouraging all those nuns to quit the plane and make the pilgrimage on foot."

Three cheers for Hoggart

Simon Hoggart sometimes infuriates me, but at others he hits the nail on the head. As in today's article, which includes this, about Pope Benedict's recent speech to the Curia:

...I know he was trying to make a more subtle point: that we should worry about human frailty as much as environmental degradation, but it didn't half come out wrong. Maybe someone should point out to his holiness that the human race will survive since the great majority of people are still straight, and being gay isn't just a lifestyle choice, like where you live, or whether you pick turkey or goose for Christmas. It's a decision made for you - you may think by God.

What the Pope may need is someone to live with, of either sex, someone who treats him as an equal, and is able to tell him, "but, dearest heart, that is sheer blithering idiocy! Please don't say it. And you did promise to peel the potatoes ..."

As it is, working it out on his own this one seems to be roughly as infallible as a 30-year old Hillman Imp.

1st stop, London

As we had more than an hour in hand before our Eurostar check in, we donned our backpacks and walked round from King's Cross to the just-opened Kings Place (sic - no apostrophe!), designed by Dixon-Jones. (This is the view looking upwards from our lunch table.)

Kings Place forms the new headquarters for the Guardian and the Observer, and also of the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The basement concert hall wasn't open to view, but we saw and enjoyed the contemporary art: it's the (London) home too of Pangolin Editions as well as the Gallery providing a large exhibition space. The whole set-up looks pretty amazing to me, opening out as it does onto the canal and Battlebridge Basin.