| I know, I thought, “why don’t I take my iPad with me to make some sketches out in the real world…David Hockney does this – why shouldn’t I?”
Good question and I have a really good answer – David Hockney didn’t try to use his iPad in bright sunshine – you just can’t see a thing. Anyway I did manage this sketch of Tutbury Castle keep which given the conditions wasn’t going. Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad |
| This was one thing then I started to listen to Chloe Howl’s No Strings and then it went in a totally different direction. Not sure what this means but ….
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For the past few days I’ve been working at the Staffordshire problem. I’ve followed up numerous leads but in the end the best solution I found was to throw money at the problem. So 99 pence plus postage was wantonly dispatched to an Amazon Seller and I became the proud owner of an ex Kent Library book called The Staffordshire Landscape. It has helped me so much.
As a result of this book plus all the other leads I’ve been able to start to draw a map of Staffordshire dating back to before the Romans (This is only a very small part of the map)
The work is painstakingly slow but ultimately rewarding. However, it doesn’t help that it wasn’t until the early part of last year that I kept my records on a database, linked to the maps, before then it was vague references which no doubt meant something at the time but didn’t 2 years later! I eventually found the book I was referencing in my slowly increasing library of local history books!
So it looks like we are going to bomb Syria because, well I think it is because of mythical red lines and to show we mean business and well we’ve got all these missiles and you’ve got to do something with them. I think this is the argument that our rulers are coming up with. Now I’m not defending the use of chemical weapons but I always find the outrage at their use just a little baffling – why are they so bad when compared to say a car bomb? The people are dead, the relatives moan and scares are burnt into the hearts but Chemical weapons are worse.
Nor am I trying to defend the Assad regime which seem pretty reprehensible and everything you wouldn’t want your government to be. It’s just didn’t we do this a couple of years ago in Libya and didn’t that work out so well – we now have a whole region destabilised and some of the worse people armed to the teeth as a result of our meddling. Now multiply that 10 fold and I think this is the horror show we about to step into and for what?
Surely if we were serious about sorting out the monsters of the world we should be bombing North Korea back to the stone age – which probably most of its population wouldn’t notice. They are, after all, the one country who has weapons of mass destruction who have threatened to use them on the outside world – countless thousands of their population have staved to death without any UN food parcels getting to them or tents or any other support. But this is not on the agenda Syria is.
I’ve yet to hear one single argument to suggest how bombing the Syrians is going to help matters. This morning it was suggested that it would force the Syrian government to negotiate a settlement but this isn’t going to happen because there has been too much blood spilt and this is a medieval fight to the death on both sides – no one wants to surrender because the consequences will be almost certain death. Yet we think we can sort this out because we’ve made such a great job of it in the past – modern Syria is a product of our colonial meddling and didn’t we do such a good job then. But of course we are all post imperialists now and we only want to defend human rights is another cry from the government – by killing people.
Syria is a right royal mess which we don’t understand yet feel we can meddle from off shore with our high tech weapons of war. But when these weapons of war don’t work you know what the next cry will be for – humanitarian military support for the Free Syrian Army i.e. boots on the ground and what if the Russians feel the same about their long term friend the Syrian Government. Then What?
Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk
| If anyone is interested then please try and sign this petition for Richard III to be buried in Leicester:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/39708 Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad |
| I’ve just received the catalogue for the recent exhibition at the British Museum: Ice Age Art – arrival of the modern mind – and I have to say it is mind blowing. Oh I wish I had got around to see the artefacts in real life but it wasn’t to be. However, in many ways the catalogue is so much better because it is able to go into depth about the whole process of the manufacturer of wonderful art works. When you look at the pieces it only reinforces the idea that they were no different to us other than they had had between 12 and 40 thousand years less experience. The care that went into their works of art was every bit as good as the greatest artist of the last 500 years. Breathtaking.
So as a very simple tribute I thought I would try and make a drawing of a modern African elephant using only lines, as through it was engraved onto a piece of ivory. I know this sounds silly but trying to be as simple as possible isn’t as easy as it sounds. This probably reinforces the fact that the Ice Age artists were far more skilled than I am – no news there. Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad |
Some of you who follow this blog may be aware I am conducting a long term historical research into old roads and ways. This was supposed to concentrate on west Leicestershire and south Derbyshire and certainly go no further west than the River Trent. Definitely no further west – I was adamant! The only problem with drawing metaphorical lines in the sand is that sooner or later you just know you’re going to have to cross them. I’ve just crossed mine and God help us all if Obama crosses his over Syria – but that is another and much more frightening subject.
So back to my line in the sand. One of the subjects I was researching were salt ways that crossed west Leicestershire. I had it all sorted out – I knew where the prehistoric salt roads ran across my research area and I had started to write a paper on my findings. I had the evidence to prove my hypothesis and I was feeling really quite good. Then a nagging thought came into my head about the salt way at Quorn. This problem was addressed and it didn’t effect my arguments – I was on the case and things were fine. Oh it was such a sweet simple life just 48 hours ago.
However, I was thinking about all this in the shower just 2 days ago and then all my work started to fall apart. It concerns the Iron Age fort at Walton on Trent. Now I had known about a probable Iron Age track way to this fort for some time and it hadn’t worried me at all. Then I took my shower and everything unravelled. “..What if the northern of salt ways ran to Walton rather than Alrewas?..” I thought “…then this would destroy much of the arguments in your paper…” Suddenly I realised this was true and the only way to bottom this was to cross the Trent at Walton and explore the salt ways that might have run through this part of Staffordshire.
So with this one step I have exploded the scope of my research into an area of the country that I don’t know that much about. This morning it has become apparent that there probably was a salt way running along the Dove valley – was there another coming further south? I don’t know and I am going to have to try and find out.
Now this whole thing started with a packhorse bridge crossing the River Soar at Enderby some four years ago. It just goes to show that once you start an investigation you just don’t know where it is going to take you. Just ask Rolf Harris.
Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk
| Yesterday, the peaches were still on the tree. Today I got up and the fruit was starting to fall so this morning the peaches were picked. Now considering the size of the tree, little more than a bush this isn’t a bad crop at all…and the best thing about all this is the wonderful fresh peach smell …uumm
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| Won’t be long now before the peaches will be ready to be eaten …yum yum. This small Peach bush is a simply wonderful plant, frost hardy with little need for any protection, (in fact the last winter seemed to do the tree a world of good). So I hope the peaches taste as good as they look.
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Having just scanned through this press release the first thought I had was “…well I’ve already got most of these things already – it’s called my iPhone – Why should I buy this camera?…” I guess this is the problem for camera manufacturers – why would people buy their small compacts when they don’t have the functionality of a smartphone…somehow making something ‘Facebook Ready’ isn’t a USP. Even the zoom lens isn’t really that much of a selling point when this is another piece of hardware you have to carry around with you.
Simon Marchini
http://www.simonmarchini.co.uk
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