An aimless wander to Royston Vasey

Last week I was up in Haltwhistle with Linda, checking out Hadrians wall and Vindolanda, the remains of a Roman settlement. There's not much left of either, just the foundations really, although the supports for the underfloor heating were visible in one of the houses' remains, they looked like weird little tombstones.


The weather was getting nasty and we were feeling over-exposed, luckily Haltwhistle has a great pub in the form of the Black Bull. After three days we were well-established with the locals. They speak with an uncannily Geordie-like accent there, although they are adamant that their accent is different. I had a shock when I walked past a newsagent to read "North East man feared dead in Christchurch earthquake", as I have two good mates from Newcastle who lives there (I stayed with them last year), fortunately they were ok. Such an idyllic place, but with a terrible reality lying in wait underneath (New Zealand that is, not Newcastle. Although...)

I was feeling a bit restless on monday morning so I decided to walk part of the Transpennine trail which runs quite close to where I live in Stockport. Probably the most interesting thing I came across was the ruins of some old mills near Broadbottom, so named I think because the nearby hills look like two giant curvaceous butt-cheeks. I walked for about 5 hours in total, to reach Hadfield, I was feeling a bit fed up by then due to a very painful blister on my right heel (actually caused by my wearing "proper shoes" to an interview over a week ago) so I didn't stop to invetigate the town and just headed for the train station. Only when I read a tourist information board while waiting for the train did I realise that Hadfield was the set for Royston Vasey in the TV programme "The League of Gentlemen". So I missed the opportunity to go into a shop and be asked "Are you local?" before being subjected to some form of surreal torture.

I'll leave you with a weird scarecrow I saw in an allotment as I was coming into Hadfield:

Album review: King of Limbs

It shows how much I am out of touch when the first thing I knew about the new Radiohead album, King of Limbs, was when I received an email from their website. It is available now as a download for £6, which is a bit steep compared to their last album (In Rainbows, which was free to download at first), but I forked out anyway. The album is little over 30 minutes, and contains 8 tracks (like the limbs of an octopus?), mostly involving complex drum loops, floaty sound fragments and dubby echo effects, modulated vocals and very little guitar.

At first I was distinctly underwhelmed and felt like it all sounded like background music, but after a third listen it is definitely growing on me. The music sounds mostly computer generated, with nods to the likes of Lamb, Massive Attack, Aphex Twin and UNKLE, and is a progression of the techno-fiddiling that began on Kid A. 'Bloom' has a laid back jazzy feel while second track 'Good Morning Mr Magpie', which first appeared on the Radiohead TV DVD as a solo acoustic performance from Thom Yorke, bounces along to an insistently funky riff. Track 3 'Little by little' has the first recognisable guitar and recalls the minor key progression of '2+2=5' from previous Radiohead album 'Hail to the Thief'. The songs in the second half of the album put more emphasis on the vocals, 'Codex' has some nice big shimmering keyboard and last track 'Separator' has an uplifting melody with some spacey chords to finish on.

It feels a bit lightweight for a Radiohead album, but its so short you can happily play it again straight away when its over. It's different enough from their previous output, while still remaining recognisably Radiohead and shows how the band are not scared to continuously change their style. Deep down I would like them to come out with a White Album-style stripped down acoustic album next, but they'll probably continue their metamorphosis into a cybertrance outfit. Which wouldn't be so unwelcome.

British heritage

On the breakfast news today there was a feature on vandalism and theft of heritage sites. They showed an old farm that had been set ablaze, some 200 year old paving stones that had been nicked ("to break up for a rockery") and a large fortification from one of the World Wars that had been graffiti'd inside. The worst was a Roman settlement that had been ruined by people driving through it in their 4x4s. Probably on the way to picking their kids up from school.

Its a heartbreaking state of affairs, but it occured to me that maybe a lot of people just don't feel a connection with the past, or value it in anyway. After all, todays society is all about now, now, now, and faster, faster, FASTER! There is so much history in this country that it is almost overwhelming, and what do you see when you look to the future? The country being a shadow of its former self, slowly sinking down into obscurity. No jobs, no joy, living in a police state, being fed by nanny robots. The country is cluttered up by relics, reminders of halcyon days.

The main headline on the local news, which is basically a series of comedic interludes, was that the oldest police horse in Manchester has retired. That's the major news for the whole of the north-west of England. No wonder Londoners think everyone else is provincial. Nothing to worry about for us northies though, apart from where the next cheese is coming from.

New Mills, home of some mills

I've travelled from Manchester to Edale quite a few times on the train, and was always intrigued by one station on the line, New Mills, as the board displaying the station name proclaimed that one could alight there for the Millenium Walkway, which sounded quite exciting. Seeing as I'm now living right next to Brinnington station which is only three stops down the line I decided to spend the afternoon finding out what New Mills had to offer.

Well I found the Millenium Walkway easily enough thanks to several helpful signs which led me down from the station to the Torr valley below, where the river Goyt flows through an impressive gorge cut out of sandstone. Immediately opposite me on the other side of the river was a fine looking and only slightly decrepit Torr Vale Mill building, which apparently stopped working only in 2000 (just in time for the Millenium Walkway to open), I could see a strip light on in one of the upper floor rooms and a man in a fluorescent jacket was doing something maintainy on the outside. I don't know what I was expecting from the Walkway, it was pleasant enough, basically taking you over the river past the above mentioned mill, but was over unfortunately too quickly. A plaque at the other end of the Walkway told me that the designer of the bridge had died during the 2005 London bombings, which made me appreicate his lifetime achievement a little more.

The majesty of the Millenium Walkway

I wandered around the river area for a bit, coming almost to the start of the Sett valley trail which apparently runs to Hayfield and which I will try another day, when I've gotten an earlier start than midday and maybe when its not so cold. By a large weir there was asmall hydro-electric power plant, featuring a reverse archimedean screw, although it was generating 0 volts when I was there. Then I backtracked and found a path leading past a farm with some Alpacas, a pleasant change from sheep or cows, and on to the Peak Forest canal. I walked for about half an hour before I turned back. There were lots of nice canal boats moored at the Furness Dale Marina, and a few in action sailing past. One unfortunate boat was tilted to the side, and on closer inspection was flooded, such a shame. There were quite a few people walking dogs, and one man with a backpack and wearing shorts, despite the ice sheets floating down the canal that you would think would indicate sub-zero, non-short wearing conditions. This evening I finished Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, I laughed at the part where he describes short-wearing in British walkers as a sign of dementia.

If I'd had a map, I would have realised that I could walk down the canal back nearly to my home, in fact it passes through all the same places that the train did, besides Brinnington. Instead I went back the station for 3, as unless I wanted to hang around New Mills until 7, I would have to get off at Bredbury and walk. I'm sure it is nice, but Bredbury looked like a large industrial estate to me from the vantage of the train, and I didn't fancy getting lost there. I never even saw the town centre of New Mills with its promised heritage centre, but I doubt that I'd come back just for that, unless I do happen to walk it next time.

There is no escape

This week I have translocated to my parents house on the wonderful Wirral peninsula, as my father is going for quite a serious operation. Still doing the same shit, just on a different computer. I met up with my brother last night to watch a Liverpool game in the local pub (we won, two games in a row now, what a roll). It was a dangerous decision and following what turned into an all-night drinking sesh I am currently swimming in my first hangover for over 3 months. Didn't even do any yoga today. And I've been feeling very hungry. On tuesday night I had a dream about eating prawns, so I cooked a prawn stir-fry last night and polished off the crustaceans today. I don't know if the dream was a direct communication from my body i.e. that I'm missing something in my veggie diet , or whether there is a deeper meaning. What could prawns mean? According to http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary, to eat prawns in your dream suggests that you are feeling overpowered and insignificant. You feel like you want to hide from the world and be left alone for awhile.

Hmm, very deep.

Well, here's a picture of my mums dog, Tinker, playing with a burst football on New Brighton beach. It was bloody freezing, and we were out for two hours, the only way I could take my mind off my painfully cold hands was to take pictures. I must have taken about twenty of just sand.

Uni dream and twisting trouble

I haven't done much external travel recently, so I thought I'd write something about the internal.

I'm still searching for a job, and I've been thinking about going back to school to retrain (don't know what yet). Last night I dreamt that I was wandering around a university building, lost, being ignored by all the chatting young students while I bumbled in and out of darkened rooms. One room had various people standing as if at stations during an exam or workshop, some were in business suits, others looked like drug addicts, in scruffy clothes, shaking. Another room had a bar, where I didn't get a drink but left after a naked old man started dancing next to me. After this the dream changed, and I'm flying around this tower thing which has a platforms seemingly representing musical notes, a geometric guitar tune was playing.

This morning I did some yoga, ashtanga primary series, I went quite fast and felt energetic on the arm-working poses, but the twists (Marichyasana C+D) were bad, I could hardly turn around on the left side. About a month ago I was grabbing my wrist behind my back, interesting how that twist comes and goes even though I'm practicing quite consistently. Maybe I've put on some weight now I have access to food all day. The phrase, "you've got to get out more" is very applicable here.

Klein vs Hayek

Firstly, I'd like to say that I don't know a darn thing about economics. I'm sharing a house with someone who owns a lot of books, and I happened to pick up one on the way to the toilet: "Road to Serfdom", by F.A. Hayek. The premise of the book, written during WWII, is that socialism and socialist policies must inevitably lead to totalitarianism. He does briefly mention that a society with a free economy must have some controls e.g. to prevent monopoly, to ensure some sort of welfare exists for periods of unemployment. It was an interesting book, I'd never really seen the link between socialism, a planned economy, and totalitarianism before. In my student days I lived with a person, lets call him Jim Carm, who wanted to be a civil servant, supported the idea of the EU having more power over the UK, and whose favourite past-time was writing the housework rota. So it all makes sense now, I knew he was a fascist... he also joked that he had the same intitials as Jesus Christ, so watch out, this guy could be the next Adolf.

After I finished Hayek, I picked up Naomi Kleins' book, "The Shock Doctrine". I haven't made much progress yet, but the central theory is that the modern capitalist model is to wait for a disaster, or even engineer a war of some sort, in order to impose free-market policies on the "stunned" civilians, such as privately-run schools in New Orleans, and forcing Latin American countries to take loans from Western countries. Or in the UK, when Thatcher used the Falklands war as a distraction to destroy the trade unions and sell off the public services. The upshot of it all is that a totally free economy requires a totalitarian government to impose it, in the same way as a pure socialist one. At the very least, it is interesting to read two books written 70 years or so apart, with related subjects and such contrasting angles.

So my question is, where are we headed in the UK? I could quite easily imagine the country now with the government simply providing the army and police, with everything else being left to private enterprise. Actually, maybe even the military and police are not safe - as in the film Robocop. I suppose its all about the balance, an oscillation in the tendencies of government between socialist and capitalist policies; a socialist government sets up a welfare system and a national health service, makes the people happy for a while until the govenment spending gets out of hand, and is then replaced by a neo-conservative government which sets out to privatise everything, looking out for the rich, and is eventually outed by the proles. And so on, each set of people mutating from pigs into humans.

On a lighter note, I saw a rather cheap-looking TV advert last night for an online money comparing company. It featured John Prescot, ex-deputy prime minister of the UK and famous for punching out a protester who threw an egg at him, in a garage practicing on a punchbag. A man in a suit enters and berates Prescot over his ownership of two cars. While this was amusing enough (can you imagine Colin Powell in the same situation?), my girlfriend asked me "What is that guy off Coronation Street doing on this advert?". It was up there with Iggy Pop selling car insurance and Johnny Rotten selling butter. I'm just waiting for a CGI Kurt Cobain advertising mens skin rehydration products.

In other news, I've had several dreams related to Buddhism over the last few nights: The Dalai Lama, Buddhist monks, people saying hello in Tibetan to me. Weirdly enough, a man with a totally bald head and wearing robes which looked rather like those of a Tibetan monk walked past me outside the Asda in Stockport town centre, not something I would usually see (or perhaps, notice) in the north of England. It feels like my mind is trying to remind me of something. Maybe there is a third way of government in there somewhere.