Lord Harewood RIP

I last visited the magnificent Palladian Harewood House whilst on my bike trip through Yorkshire in May 2009. The current (7th) Earl clearly not only cherished his immense inheritance, but had enhanced its collections in so many ways. Of his renowned collection of 20th Century paintings and sculpture, the first glimpse you have upon entering the house is Epstein's still-shocking "Adam". My photograph shows Astrid Zydower's 1984 work, "Orpheus".

As an eager opera-goer in my 20s, my bible was Kobbé, in its radical revision by the same Lord Harewood, who seemed to know everything there was to know about opera. And so indeed Tom Sutcliffe confirms in his comprehensive obituary of the 7th Earl in today's Guardian.

It mentions "the competition between the Wells and Sir Georg Solti's Garden, which faintly echoed the royal operatic rows involving Lord Harewood's Hanoverian forebears in Handel's day." I wonder if he knew this: the 1st Earl's younger brother, Francis, 14 when Handel died, never married, but fathered ten children by one of the day's Covent Garden superstars, Ann Catley. A properly comprehensive biography of her is eagerly awaited, but from what we already know, she (and therefore Francis Lascelles) would certainly have been at the centre of many of the operatic controversies of the day.

Our children (no opera singers amongst them, alas) are part of Francis and Ann's immense brood - 4th grat-grandchildren.

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.

News of the world

The Disasters Emergency Committee reports that over 10 million people are just now at risk in East Africa, due largely to some areas being affected by the worst drought in 60 years. In our church this evening, an emergency retiring collection was taken up for this latest DEC appeal.

Before mass, our friendly Parish Priest enquired of me: "Did you watch the Silverstone Grand Prix? I was gripped." He was one of - it seems - about 600 million people around the world in a similar "grip". TV coverage of all the Grand Prix events is universal.

So, when are we going to grasp (grip) the correlation between burning a zillion gallons of petrol by racing round in circles at vast speed, and the global warming which contributes to our African neighbours' water shortage?

edible open gardens

John and his wife Ann have lived, these past six years, on the side of one of those steep valleys near Stroud. Their back garden rises vertiginously to way above the level of their chimney pots, with narrow tiers of productive level ground carved out as you ascend. They fight the good fight against the woodland scrub that encroaches from above, and the badgers which lumber destructively, right down as far as the bird feeders by the back door of the house. And they seem to be winning: seldom have I seen so much cultivation within such a small area, with 30 fruit trees, a greenhouse and a polytunnel all loaded and stuffed with produce. When if ever can they go on holiday I wonder? It certainly makes me feel inadequate, achieving so little, on our flat, badger-free patch.

The garden we visited is one of 37 open this weekend under a scheme devised by Transition Stroud: only by chance did I hear about it on Thursday, via the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network.

Carducci concert

At this morning's Cheltenham Festival recital by the Carducci Quartet, I sat next to a Sixth Form pupil from Dean Close: it is the quartet-in-residence there, a great boost to the school's budding string players, much as the Tewkesbury Abbey "residency" is for the school's young singers.

The programme included the European premier of a Festival commission, Arlene Sierra's Insects in Amber. I am not greatly in favour of programme music, such as this was, but I have certainly endured less pleasant quarters of an hour at previous Festval premiers. The performances of Shostakovich's 8th Quartet and Dvořák's American were excellent, and sent me off in a good humour.

Normally, we are in the cheap seats at the back of the hall - excellent acoustics there - but today I was able to sit close enough to take a photograph (at the end of the new work) because we were the guests of the Summerfield Charitable Trust: it had made the Quartet a grant in the past. The Trust was launching an initiative, seeking to add to its endowment by entertaining a cross-section of the town's lawyers and accountants, so we all went on to a jolly lunch in the Royal Box at Cheltenham Racecourse - one of the perks from Edward Gillespie having taken over as the Trust's Chairman.

Been and gone

We have had bees in the cavity beneath the floor of our shower room for several years. They only cause any bother in warm weather, but in the last week they have swarmed twice.

The first swarm was gathered by the local suitably-uniformed expert: however the second, this morning - photographed here in our back garden - made off before he could get along to us.

Tomorrow the builder arrives to seal up the entrances they have been using; and then we need to have the floorboards lifted and all traces of honey removed, so we are told. Caroline is in mourning.

Orchid time - just

On Friday evening, we went to a party in aid of the local branch of Home-Start. As was made clear to us, this is neither a substitute for the AA/RAC, nor a way of getting onto the housing ladder. Up and down the country its schemes support vulnerable children through use of volunteers.

The generous owner of the house where the reception was held invited us to explore not only her amazing Arts and Crafts home and its garden, but one of the fields in the valley below, still presently carpeted with lovely wildflowers, including orchids of differing varieties.

It has taken, she said, a dozen years since fertilers stopped being used there for the orchids to spread back.

Relayed cherry-picking

In Portugal, the informal economy was at its most visible in the stalls of cherries for sale by the roadsides. Yet we didn't see a single tree with them growing.

Within the past six days I have been to Glyndebourne and the South Bank, but travelled a mere sixty miles to get there and back. The peerless Glyndebourne Die Meistersinger came to Malvern on Sunday afternoon, and last night we had The Cherry Orchard at our local Cineworld direct from the National Theatre in its sublime production by Howard Davies.

The durability of both is that they have something timeless to tell us, and yet so much more than that: in the Wagner, we see the possibility of romantic happiness with a beautiful girl flitter across the consciousness of an eligible widower, before he concludes that a liaison would be in the long-term interests of neither. In the Chekhov, there are similar dalliances, but chiefly the conflict is between the unconstrainable romantic imagination of Mme. Ranyevskaya and her situation's grim financial reality. Andrew Upton's brilliant translation makes us very aware of the parallels with our recent banking crisis.

Floreat Boesch

I photographed the great Austrian baritone, Florian Boesch in relaxed mood at lunchtime, after his taxing recital in the Pittville Pump Room. Taxing, yet he seemed just as relaxed on stage as off, in spite of the demands of his programme of Loewe, Schubert and Mahler songs.

As three years ago, when he stunned us with his Schwanengesang, members of the audience were on the edge of their seats for much of the time: in particular, the eight Loewe songs were brilliantly characterised. (I knew none of them.)

Cheltenham's own (it seems) Roger Vignoles was the excellent accompanist. But why were there so many empty seats? What is it about even the best lieder recitals that turns our concert-goers away?

Leaving Levers

Our local comprehensive, Bournside School will be closed tomorrow, along with many others, but the strike action is not - as it might be - because the school is abandoning its visual arts specialism. As a result of that bit of educational vandalism, Jake Lever, Head of Community Arts at Bournside, is having to find another job: thankfully, he has done so, and will soon, along with his family, be on the move to Birmingham.

Over the eight years he has been in Cheltenham, Jake has built up thriving community links: there has been a myriad of amazing projects involving professional artists and enthusiastic participants. The Visual Arts Specialism has enormously enriched the experiences of Bournside students.

So, tonight's private view at the Parabola Arts Centre was also a time to say farewell to one of Cheltenham's most prominent artists, Jake's wife Gillian. Gillian's abstract paintings, inspired by music, form the stunning centrepiece to this year's main Cheltenham Music Festival exhibition. With weavers Sue Hiley Harris and Anna Glasbrook showing alongside, it's a vibrant display in excellent surroundings - probably Cheltenham's premier exhibition space of that size.

Freedom (again)

Over supper, we've been "listening again" to the first of this year's Reith Lectures, given this morning by Aung San Suu Kyi. Such a brave lady! I was struck by her statement that, notwithstanding her Theravada Buddhism, her commitment to non-violence was not for moral so much as practical political reasons. One of several Christian references however was to Jesus' plea, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me."

Earlier, in the mass of SS Peter and Paul, the first two readings also spoke of what Daw Suu called "unfreedom" - that of the respective eponymous heroes of the day (or rather of tomorrow, since it was a vigil mass). We don't know how lucky we are; and yet how often do we pass over the opportunities so many Burmese daily make, to assert our claim to freedoms under threat?

"A second barrel"

Over recent weeks, I have had back from the online publishers Blurb a couple of books comprising the posts to this blog - the first with those from May to December 2008, and the second (the cover is pictured above) January-June 2009. Indulgent? Certainly; but rather pleasing to think there is something more than just what's there on blogger.com.

Population matters

In the evening yesterday, Caroline and I biked down to a meeting in our Town Hall put on by the NGO Population Matters: its Chairman, Roger Martin was on the platform with Jonathon Porritt, whom he introduced as "Britain's leading campaigner on behalf of future generations". Jonathon (speaking of himself as a sustainability activist) boasted that he'd been described by Ann Widdicombe as "completely bonkers" for suggesting that the time would come when having more than two children might be regarded as irresponsible.

He quoted the 2009 report by Murtaugh and Schlax of Oregon State University, looking at the relative benefit of decisions which have an impact on one's carbon footprint. Based on then current figures, doing an aggregate of "good" things like driving a fuel-efficient car, introducing energy-saving measures at home etc. might save one individual a maximum of 500 tonnes of CO2 in a lifetime. Deciding not to have another child, however, would save nearly 9,500 tonnes - six times the average US citizen's lifetime CO2 use.

It was our wedding anniversary: this is one of the few images we had of us on that sunny day 36 years ago - there were no group photographs. Since then we have acquired four children and three grandchildren...

"Freedom"

In a family of cat lovers, it's hard to express anti-feline feeling; so I much enjoyed being able to read aloud a passage from Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" to the family during our holiday (on which Thomas even brought along his cat). The riff comes towards the end of this marvellous book, where our hero, Walter is seen as "a nutcase and a menace" for wanting to protect the songbirds around the lake - where his family have been coming over generations - from the domestic pets brought in by the households in the new development, Canterbridge Estates. "The older cat owners on the street did politely accept the [coloured neoprene cat] bibs and promise to try them, so that Walter would leave them alone and they could throw the bibs away."

Franzen's gift is to be able to see the funny side of any serious argument. And so the book cavorts along through its nearly 600 pages treating all manner of particularly green issues in a highly entertaining way. I enjoyed it even more than his earlier masterpiece, "The Corrections".

Roses

At lunch in Coln Rogers on Thursday, we had news about our old house (situated about half way between there and here in Cheltenham): we were there from 1983 to 1994, during which time I planted more than 50 different varieties of roses in the garden. The news was that they have now all been uprooted, as the people who bought the house from us (Londoners) seldom use the house, and have ordered the garden to be turned over to minimum maintenance.

A variety I never tried was one of my mother's favourites Iceberg; but my sister Charlotte gave Caroline a pair of the climbing version of Iceberg a few birthdays ago: we planted these up against our old apple trees, and - as you can just see from my photograph - they are doing really well.

Fresh Air 2011

Lucy and David Abel Smith's Quenington garden seems fuller than ever this year, with weird and wonderful sculptures - 170 listed in the catalogue. "Fresh Air" has been going every other year for two decades now, a remarkable achievement on the part of Lucy and the other organisers. We were invited to the Private View today - it's on till 10th July. Coming round the corner of The Old Rectory, you see the Mill Race with Giles Rayner's copper Island, and on the far bank three of Rebecca Newnham's haunting Fledge figures, giant seed pods drifting in the breeze.

"The Diary of a Shropshire farmer" - again

It's arrived! There can be nothing much more satisfying than to receive a copy of one's own book in the post. Or seeing one's name as author on Amazon.

As trailed previously, my great-great-grandfather, a farmer, wrote a diary, two volumes of which have only fairly recently come to light. They cover his mini-Grand Tour of the North of England and Scotland as a young man of 23, and his day-to-day life in Shropshire during the two years following. Together, they give a snapshot of what British life was like in the 1830s. I have included an introduction, sketching the changes that he witnessed, and that our landscape faces today. This is the bare outline, anyway: it conceals an awful lot of hard work, and not just by me. Let's hope for some reviews!

Hits and misses - 2

Still to do is the sorting of photographs taken during our fortnight away - and the deletion of many of them. Some of the "hits" include this early morning scene from just outside our lofty Castillian B&B, where we spent the night we arrived in Spain. Wind turbines were everywhere to be seen in both Spain and Portugal. How do they get them up to some of those high places!

And we admired the engineering of all the many tunnels and viaducts on what is an astonishing motorway network: especially below the Picos de Europa, the views of both coastline and mountains are breathtaking, but no photographs alas! I was sorry also to miss the chance of trying to snap the pod of dolphins that accompanied us as our ferry made its way through the rather uncomfortable swell of the Bay of Biscay on Monday evening: my mind was on other things.

Hits and misses

Plenty of time is needed in the Asturian city of Avilés if you are looking for the new Niemeyer Centre there. The shining white architectural shapes of Oscar Niemeyer's design stand out a mile off against the harbour backdrop, but as you approach closer by car, the cultural centre itself seems more and more inaccessible. The signage seems non-existant! Eventually, we gave up, so the nearest I came to a photograph was when we saw Caroline's young cousin wearing the T-shirt.

Other cities' attractions, however, proved a hit on our trip: gliding out of Portsmouth with Brittany Ferries, we admired Nelson's Victory. Burgos Cathedral was distractingly beautiful for our Ascension mass-going. Picking up Agnes from Porto airport terminal (it opened five years ago) meant we could admire its brilliant design at close quarters - an extraordinary contrast with nearby Braga's mediaeval heart.

Fecundity

We arrived home safely today after 18 days away with the garden looking very overgrown. It's not the ideal time of year to be away. Meanwhile, in Cantabria yesterday morning, before catching the ferry, we revisited Santillana del Mar, that astonishingly perfect (and surprisingly unspoilt) mediaeval town with its stone-paved streets and luxuriant window boxes. Everything is way ahead in Spain (and Portugal), with the main problem access to water, as I hinted last week. The smallholders of our village open and close the channels diverted from the mill stream by an elaborate dance movement, so giving life to their maize crop. We just turn on the hose.

Old and new in Portugal 2011

We are getting to the end of a fortnight at a rented mill house, Casa do Lagar, a few miles North of Ponte de Lima, in the Portuguese Minho: I have been on holiday from blogging as well as generally. The first week was hot, but the weather has changed rather, and as some of the family has now left, I have returned to the computer, despite snail-like connectivity.

We are only half a mile from the A-3 motorway, with a working quarry a similar distance away the other side, but the main sound reaching us is that of running water, with the occasional ox cart trundling past on the lane. Apart from our garden with its swimming pool, all the land around is intensively cultivated – sweet corn, grapes, cabbages etc. The vines mark the boundaries of small fields hardly bigger than allotments: their owners are out both early and late with hoes, diverting streams of water for irrigation.

In the huge Ponte de Lima market, these same smallholders can be seen seated with their produce about them, or perhaps a basketful of rabbits. They stare at us, as we do likewise by training our cameras upon them.

"A sustainable world: reasons to be hopeful"

Jonathon Porritt spoke to a full house at our local Friends' Meeting House last evening on this, at first sight surprising, theme. (I had organised the event on behalf of Christian Ecology Link, of which Jonathon has for long been a Patron.) It was appropriate for "hope" to be the watchword at a Christian gathering, though "optimism" was how Jonathon more often referred to it - something rather different.

He spoke powerfully, and with his customary fluency - who answers questions more generously? - about the uniqueness of human knowledge; about the benefits that he perceives will come from technology, and about the new mandate existing in civil society worldwide, to create wealth with lower impact. And he suggested that, so far from being wired for agression, we might indeed be wired for empathy, his "hopeful" conclusion being that "the sheer urgency of the crisis will bring us together!"

But we need to call upon our spiritual resources, and - crucially - at present, social justice is not there in the churches' practice, even if it is in the teaching.

Birthdays

It's that time of year again.Today, Caroline gave me an early birthday present of a new wheelbarrow, to replace our old rust bucket. Definitely not worth wrapping up and taking with us to open in Portugal next week! On Wednesday last, it was Leo's birthday, which he celebrated in Osaka. On his return, he came yesterday to report, and whilst here baked this cake for his workmates today. Orange and chocolate.

OAE at NSF

Last October, I photographed Zoe Shevlin, bassoonist, playing at Tetbury with the Academy of Ancient Music. Last night, she popped up in an enlarged Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for the final concert in this year's Newbury Spring Festival. We were invited by Sarah as a joint birthday present.

On paper, the programme looked unchallenging, symphonies by Mozart and Schubert and Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with Artur Pizarro; but in the way Paul Daniel and the OAE tackled it, fresh sounds seemed to spring out all the time. In particular, the slow movement of the concerto came across as more sublime than ever.

It is always a pleasure to be allowed to join in such a friendly festival as Newbury's, church pews notwithstanding. The cavernous St Nicholas' in Newbury was of course packed. Sun streamed in through Hardman glass ("not good" in Pevsner's judgment), and there was still light in the sky as we drove homewards later along the M4.

"livesimply"

Clifton Cathedral was the scene of the launch, last evening, of a livesimply award scheme. The idea is aimed at engaging parishes so that they take God's creation seriously.

Christian people are challenged to live simply, to live sustainably with creation, and live in solidarity with people in poverty. CAFOD launched the livesimply campaign five years ago; but now it's been repackaged for community use. A couple of parishes are leading the way, and were represented in the Cathedral yesterday: the schoolchildren of one of them performed a movement piece to St Francis's Canticle of Brother Sun: very nicely too.

All we need in Cheltenham is a handful of people to take it forward...