The GardenDespatches from The Satyrs’ Forest

Page 13

Lords of Misrule 2021: Walking and picking up trash will benefit you personally

¡ Tagged as environment, Lords of Misrule, Lords of Misrule 2021, outdoors ¡ Leave a comment

Today’s submission, a plea to pick up litter while on your morning (or evening) constitutional, comes from one Quinn Casey. Io Saturnalia!

1. Forces you to walk slower

I normally walk at an incredibly brisk pace. I have found a zen to slowing down to A) pick up the garbage and B) turn around slowly and admire the clean patch.

2. A pass to roam in “less-than-public” land

I’m not talking about hopping a fence into someone’s farmland. There are areas in the US that are legally private property, but in practice are wild, unused spaces.

For a rule-follower like myself it’s a “you know it when you see it”. Some real life examples of property I regularly trespass on and cleanup:

  • A paved sidewalk that ends onto an HOA stormdrain, with well trodden dirt paths throughout.
  • Government / Utility company land
  • Land beside train tracks, under bridges, and on maintenance roads

Picking up trash adds a layer of innocence to your case when pleading ignorance of your trespassing. Even if you are never confronted, it may help immerse you and ease your law-abiding mind.

3. Repeated hikes are prettier than the last

Paths you roam frequently will be cleaned faster than they accumulate garbage, and there comes a point where the space looks natural, untouched by human kind. In my opinion, having those wild spaces close to where we live is essential to mental health.

4. An excuse to go for longer hikes

I’m stubbornly attached to the (unhealthy) notion that a productive day is a successful day.

5. A problem local enough to solve

Where does this trash go when you bring it all back to the bin? Does this encourage more consumption/litter, since the waste isn’t immediately obvious anymore? Is litter even a substantial environmental problem, or is it just aesthetic?

I don’t pretend to know the answer to these. These are problems for a society, a larger than life culture. For too many years this was the excuse I used to not care at all. To not take any action whatsoever.

What’s the point of helping at all?

Well now I’ve found one. (5, if you’ve been keeping count) reasons to take action in a localized, meaningful way.

Small but constant effort by everyone is just as impactful as a one off million dollar idea. For true change we need to alter our behavior for the long term.

Relax, take a walk. Bring a bag.

New book smell / old book smell

¡ Tagged as books, smell ¡ Leave a comment
Paper streams through a printing press
Photo by Srdjan Ivankovic.

When i was a bairn, my mam would take me to this great big bookstore in Amsterdam, just a hop and a skip away from the city’s central plaza. It’s held a special place in my mind ever since. What burns brightest in my memory, though, isn’t a book or an item of decor or an especially kind employee, but a machine. On the top floor, around the corner from the gift shop, sat the shop’s on-demand printing service.

Twenty-four hours a day, new pages would roll through its glass walls, printing and printing and printing until a book was fully-formed. I don’t remember what was in these books, or what they looked like — i was seven, give me a break — but i’ll be damned if i don’t remember that smell. Freshly-stamped ink, that petrichor of paper, that which one can still catch a whiff of in just-delivered magazines on one’s front porch.

All things must pass eventually, of course. Ink dries, paper cools, and before you know it, your beautiful book smells like nothing at all. Yet in between the tiny strands of ground-up wood that make it up, something else, something just as fragrant, is happening — and to understand the power of that, we must head across the North Sea.

I’ve blogged about Barter Books before: the Mecca of second-hand books, housed in a comically oversized railway station in Alnwick (built that way to the Duke of Northumberland’s specification). It is, in no uncertain terms, one of the coziest places on earth, despite its immense size. Daylight streams through the windows, and when none are to be found, artificial lights decorate the air with a firey golden glow. The most important factor in its gezelligheid (to borrow a term) has long eluded me, but i think i may have finally figured it out.

As books grow musty and yellow with age (a common condition second-hand), they, as any fule kno, gain a certain odour, similar to and yet entirely different from “new book smell”. Crack open the spine, and an earthy, wooden aroma wafts into the nose, with a slight hint of vanilla and an inkling of all the people who’ve leafed through it before. When enough of these old books are in the same place, the air becomes less like that of a building, and more like that of a forest — a way of being outdoors without being outdoors.

Maybe that’s why it’s so cozy in there.

Lords of Misrule 2021: “A Saturnalia piece”

¡ Tagged as Lords of Misrule, Lords of Misrule 2021, poetry ¡ Leave a comment

Welcome back to our first annual Lords of Misrule! Today’s poem comes to us from one Noa S. Enjoy.

do you
do you
do you ever
ever ever
wonder whether
maybe maybe
something else
is hiding
hiding
in this world

sometimes
nighttime
i see things
scary
barely
anything but
something
nothing
physical
hiding
hiding
in this world

would i
could i
if there were
love these things
like i loved her
maybe
she is
touching me
hiding trying
to watch me
maybe
she is
missing me
now she
loves me
finally

~noa

Lords of Misrule 2021: “Words of Advice”

¡ Tagged as Lords of Misrule, Lords of Misrule 2021 ¡ Leave a comment

Iō Saturnalia! As you may remember, at the start of the month i announced that to celebrate the holiday season, you could submit anything you wanted to my website and i’d put it up. I’m pleased to say several people took up my offer, and i’ll be putting them up daily starting today. Our somber first submission comes from a reader by the nom de plume of Ræl H. Bishop. Enjoy.

I think I might’ve finally accepted the fact that I’m gonna die some day.

A story has no purpose if it doesn’t have an end.

We will all die some day and never again be able to feel the sun shine on our faces, shielding us with warmth.

But it’s that very fact that lets us enjoy the sun for his bountiful rays.

Be here, now.

For even the sun will burn out one day and never shine again.

The not-particularly-monthly-anymore recap, “good heavens, is it really almost 2022?” edition

¡ Tagged as monthly recaps ¡ Leave a comment

Hi, all. Sorry for the wait. Here’s some things i’ve watched and (mostly) enjoyed since August. Hope you enjoy.

Patrick Bateman, main character of “American Psycho”, listens to the album “Seventeen Going Under” in his earbuds.

Films watched

  • Michael Sarnoski’s Pig (2021): Nicolas Cage. (B-)
  • Cary Joji Fukunaga’s No Time to Die (2021): Having never seen a James Bond film before, i have to say i enjoyed it, even if the artsy-fartsy cinema i saw it at wasn’t the ideal venue for a massive blockbuster. A racist gets kicked into a vat of acid; what more do you want? (C+)
  • Lana and Lily Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999): The most 1999 movie to ever 1999 its way onto the screen. It suffers somewhat from its own success; i’d heard so much good about it that, even though by technical standards i could of course tell it was a good film, i still found myself somewhat underwhelmed by the ending. (B)
  • Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One (2021): I got the immersive experience by really needing to go to the toilet about halfway through and having no idea when the film was going to end. Amazing visuals, amazing scope, amazing score, i did not feel a single emotion. (B)
  • Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (2021): Part two of an unexpectedly TimothĂŠe Chalamet-filled day at the pictures. It’s another Wes Anderson film! If you like Wes Anderson, you’ll like this. If you don’t, you won’t! There is nothing more i can say about this except that the projector was slightly broken and cut off the top 10% of the frame. (B)
  • Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000): Me and a group of friends watched this over Discord for laughs and generally memed our way through it — and yet, even among our decidedly unserious, Scorcese-killing atmosphere, we were all genuinely fucking terrified at the chainsaw scene. A masterclass in tension and subtle comedy. (A+)
  • Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002): Watched with friends over Discord. It feels like i’m throwing an axe at someone’s altar here, but good fucking heavens, this movie was laaaame. It ticks off basically every clichĂŠ on the list, with seemingly no self-awareness… i’ll admit, though, i did have fun on a purely campy level. (C-)
  • John McTiernan’s Die Hard (1988): An absolute thrill-ride from start to finish. Every time you think it can’t get any more extreme, it does. “No shit, lady, do i sound like i’m ordering a fucking pizza‽” (A)
  • Brian Henson’s The Muppets Christmas Carol (1992): Greatest Christmas film ever made. (B-)

Music listened to

  • Sam Fender’s Seventeen Going Under: I’m naturally biased as a Geordie boygirl myself, but the second i heard this, it went straight to the top of my album-of-the-year rankings — and it’s not even a contest. (A+. Best track: “Seventeen Going Under”)
  • Lucy Dacus’s Home Video: No spoilers, but the closing track? Ye Gods, did the closing track give me a teary eye. (A. Best track: “Triple Dog Dare”)
  • Underscores’ Fishmonger: A fascinating fusion of hyperpop and pop-punk. It’s patchy in a few places, and the repeated samples got on my nerves, but i’m excited to see what this band(?) does next! (B-. Best track: “Spoiled Little Brat”)
  • Sigur RĂłs’s Takk…: I love it. I really do — but i found myself having to take breaks every so often because lead singer JĂłnsi’s falsetto came dangerously close to giving me a migraine. (B. Best track: „HoppĂ­polla”, natch)
  • Some interesting stuff from the Isle of Wight-based band Wet Leg, dripping with wit and sardonic vocals. Can’t wait for the album!
  • I went to my first concert since, you know, the thing. All glory to Elbow.

Other recent minutiĂŚ

  • I’ve been taking up sketching in my journal to ease the brain. I’m not anywhere near good enough to be posting anything on here — trust me — but it’s just nice to have a creative outlet. :)
  • I went on a brief jaunt out to the old Roman temple at Benwell, but to tell the truth, there wasn’t enough interesting about it to turn it into a full post. I did, funnily enough, pass about five different religious denominations on the bus there — a church, a mosque, a gurdwara, a Hindu temple, and a Hare Krishna society.
  • Storm Arwen absolutely fucked parts of Northumberland. My neck of the woods was largely unscathed, but the next town over didn’t fare so well — they didn’t have power for about a week.
  • There were a couple of Barbadians interviewed on Radio 4 about the country’s transition to a republic, and it rather struck me how similar their dialect is to our West Country accent.
  • You simply must listen to this poor woman’s Aspidistra getting absolutely roasted on Gardeners’ Question Time. It’s at about 10 minutes in.
  • Now that the nights are getting longer again, it’s getting to be good weather for stargazing. I really must get myself out to that observatory in Wark again at some point…

Relevant pictures (and one audio file) from jaunts out

In the middle of a typical English suburb, the ruins of an old Roman temple. There's not much left — just a stone-brick border and a few altars, the naos being filled in with gravel.
The aforementioned temple, dedicated to the obscure Romano-Celtic God Antenociticus.
A rickety wooden path is obstructed by a mossy, fallen tree.
One of the many, many trees knocked over by the storm. (And this was taken a fortnight after the fact!)
The sound of Arwen pattering against the window.

2021

¡ Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking recently that, despite how i sometimes wish i knew what it was like to live in years gone past, and how it often feels like everything is about to topple over at the hands of { authoritarian reactionary bigots | power-hungry anti-democratic dictators | neurotic puritan ‘progressives’ } (take your pick), i am, at the end of the day, so, so grateful that i live in the modern era, and in a developed country to boot.

I'm grateful to live in a time with the highest living standards in history; where even someone flipping burgers at Macca’s has access to luxuries that would make Louis XIV blush.

To live in a time with modern medicine, where people are inoculated at a young age against pestilences that used to ravage the world, and to live in a country where urgent care is free of charge.

That wars between nations are largely a thing of the past, at least to the scale of World Wars I and II.

That i live in an era and place where being bisexual or gay is, legitimately, no big deal — something that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago.

That every day the acceptance of us transgendered folk is growing, and that, if i had the money and determination, i could get a pretty good approximation of the other sex grafted on — something Heliogalabus could only dream of.

That in the age of the internet, people can find community anywhere, no matter how odd or niche their interests and identities are, and that nearly everyone has access to the sum of human knowledge at their finger tips.

Yes, 2021 has its problems, and so does the UK. But i wouldn't live anywhen or anywhere else.

....Okay, maybe Norway.

Het Penshawmonument

¡ Getagd als graafschap Durham, Penshaw (nl), reizen, verlanglijst ¡ Laat een reactie achter

Op een heuvel in graafschap Durham staat het Penshawmonument. Deze negentiende-eeuwse folly werd gebouwd om de prestaties van de graaf van Durham — ene John Lambton — te herdenken, maar je zou het niet weten: het enige teken ervan is een kleine plaquette aan de zijkant. Vorige week vond ik wat tijd om het monument te bezoeken — van hier laat ik de foto’s voor zich spreken.

Gezicht op het monument vanuit het nabijgelegen park. Er was op de dag van mijn bezoek een motorrace aan de gang.
Het monument werd naar de Atheense tempel voor HephĂŚstos ontworpen, hoewel in een eerder verkleind formaat (kijk, ma, geen dak!)
Ik mocht de naos niet binnen, want de organisatoren waren druk bezig met de opbouw voor het Lumiere festival ’s avonds.i (Ze lieten wél een paar mensen met bulldogs binnen - misschien waren ze geïntimideerd?)
Het nabijgelegen park heeft ook een mooi henge’tje, met uitkijkposten die naar bekende plaatsen in graafschap Durham wijzen — dat zwarte vierkantje dat je kunt zien is de kathedraal van Durham.

Informatie voor bezoekers

  • Adres:
    Chester Rd, Penshaw, Houghton le Spring DH4 7NJ
    .
  • Toegankelijkheid: Om bij het monument te komen moet u een steile helling op; als u niet zo mobiel bent, kunt u beter twee keer nadenken voordat u gaat.
  • Vervoer: De heuvel is bereikbaar via de A183 snelweg en de 2, 2A, en 78 autobussen. Het dichtstbijzijnde treinstation is Chester-le-Street, op acht km afstand.
  • De National Trust biedt soms rondleidingen aan op de top van het monument, maar die zijn momenteel opgeschort.

The Penshaw monument

¡ Tagged as bucket list, County Durham, Penshaw, visits ¡ Leave a comment

On a hilltop in County Durham sits the Penshawi monument, a nineteenth-century folly built to commemorate the late Earl of Durham. It’s always been on my bucket list, but it’s a bit of a pain to get to via public transport, and i’d never found the time — last week, though, i found myself with some time off and decided to make the trip. I’ll let the pictures do the talking from here…

A panoramic view of a sprawling country park, with some noticeable barriers put up for a race. In the distance, upon a hill, lies a building rather resembling an old Greek temple.
A view of the monument from the nearby country park. As you can see, there was a motorbike race on at the time, which somewhat dampened the otherwise-peaceful atmosphere. Tut tut.
On the top, the same building from before, now pictured from a rather closer distance, on a punishing set of stairs. Its façade is black with soot. On the bottom, a pristine ancient Greek temple, surrounded by a row of hedges.
The monument was based on Athens' temple to HephĂŚstos, though in a rather scaled-down format (see the lack of any kind of roof).
The sun shines through the monument's columns.
We weren’t allowed inside the naos, as they were busy setting it up for that night’s Lumiere festival.ii (They did let some of the people walking their bulldogs up — perhaps because they were too scared?)
The country park also has this neat little henge, with viewfinders pointing towards some well-known County Durham sites — that little black square you can make out is Durham Cathedral.

Information for visitors

  • Address:
    Chester Rd, Penshaw, Houghton le Spring DH4 7NJ
    .
  • Accessibility: Getting up to the monument requires a steep hike up a hill; if you have impaired mobility, you may want to think twice before going.
  • Getting there: The hill is served by the A183 road and the 2, 2A, and 78 buses. The nearest train station is Chester-le-Street, five miles away.
  • The National Trust sometimes offers tours of the top of the monument, though those are currently suspended.

De eerste vorst

¡ Getagd als leven, winter (nl) ¡ Laat een reactie achter

De eerste vorst van het jaar is aangebroken, althans in mijn achtertuin. Het is tijd voor mij om de keuze te maken waar alle Geordie’s elk jaar voor staan: trots ik de kou in niks maar een hoodie, of zul ik De Grote Jas halen en mijn innerlijke laffe zuiderling omhelsen? (Hopelijk is deze vroege vorst een goed teken voor een witte kerstfeest/joelfeest/saturnalia/wat-je-ook-viert in het verschiet.)

First frost

¡ Tagged as life, winter ¡ Leave a comment

Humph — the first frost of the year has arrived, at least in my back garden. Looks like it’s time to make the choice every Geordie faces each year: do i brave the cold in nothing but a jacket, or do i surrender to my inner southern pansy and get out The Big Coat? (Hopefully this early frost is a good sign for a white Christmas/Yule/whatever-you-celebrate ahead.)

Walking the Blyth and Tyne, part three: B L Y T H.

¡ Tagged as Blyth, transport, visits, Walking the Blyth and Tyne ¡ Leave a comment

The industry town of Blyth is bordered on four sides by sights iconic of the North­um­brian experience. To the north lies the eponymous River Blyth, carving out a respectable third to the Tyne and Tweed in how it has shaped the course of the county’s history. To the east, the awesome North Sea ebbs and flows, enticing herds of families out to the beach. Southwards, farms and fields stretch on until they meet the city streets. And, to the west, the dismal grey A189 motorway cuts its way through impoverished streets and empty grassland.

So guess which path the railway sent me down? That’s right, it was hugging the fucking tarmac for me. There’s a reason the God of travellers is a trickster.

Two empty, shuttered storefronts. One's text is too faded to read, but the other reads 'Newsham Motorcycles'.

Newsham is perhaps the prototypical post-industrial suburb. The streets are lined with drab row-houses and shuttered shops whose walls sit darkened by cigarette smoke. But even here, there are signs of history, and signs of life. Walking along a small council estate, even in this decidedly hard-to-do area, people's personalities shine through. One car, judging by the bumper stickers, belongs to a proud gay naturist. Another house has a carved relief of an Indian chief (although i doubt the inhabitants have a drop of Native American blood in them). And at the end of the road lies the holy grail: the old station master's house, whose nearby decaying platforms just about peek over the fence.

A plaque marking the site of the Station Master's house.

After this, our path splits in two: the main line continues up to Bebside, but a spur branches off and swings to the town centre. The first one is mostly a boring romp through farmland and reclaimed forests, so, for now, we'll be following the second line.

There are a lot of things about Blyth that i’m sure the town council would love for me to tell you about. It has an historic beach (though it’s all the way on the south end of town, and there’s no reason for you to make the trek when Newbiggin and Whitley Bay are closer and just as nice). There's a weekly market on Thursdays (though on the Thursday i went in, they’d all packed up already), by the plaza next to the shopping centre (whose selection of options is laughable when compared to Manor Walks in the next town over). And they’re dead proud of their local football team, the Spartans, who famously performed somewhat above average in the 1978 FA Cup (never mind that Ashington spawned two World Cup winners).

By now you may have noticed that everything in Blyth seems to be a slightly crappier version of something from elsewhere in Northumberland. This goes too for the ignoble fate of its former station. While some have been turned into houses, shops, pubs, or just returned to the land whence they arose, Blyth’s once-proud central station is now… a Morrisons car park.

Cars parked in front of a Morrisons store.
You cannot make this up.
A sticker of Top Cat smoking weed labelled 'Pot Cat' (no, really)
This was the only useable photo i got.

The branch line itself is now a straight-on footpath, cutting its way through town with a hospital and shopping centre on one side and impoverished estates on the other — until about halfway through, that is, when it suddenly becomes much more suburban in character; charming parks take the place of pools and appendectomies, while a long allotment fills the other side. (It was also — and i cannot stress this enough — absolutely pissing it down by the time i got to this end, and as such, i failed to get any usable footage. Just trust that it eventually meets back up with the main line.)

Back on the main line, the motorway leads to a depressing interchange at Bebside. Just across from the former site of the station sits the grimiest petrol station corner shop i think i’ve ever been to (no photos, alas, again); the site of the station itself has long been bulldozed and turned into a horse riding centre.

I’d love to stay and show you more, but the next phase in our adventure is a big one — because we’ll be taking a brief diversion to County Durham. It’ll all make sense when we get there. Ciao!

Het Internetassortiment, № 2

¡ Getagd als het Internetassortiment, koppelingen ¡ Laat een reactie achter

Ze zijn allemaal Engelstalig vandaag, sorry. Er zijn 1,35 miljard van hun en 23 miljoen van ons - wat kan je er over doen? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mx van Hoorn’s link roundup, Volume II

· Tagged as links, Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup · Leave a comment