The Bird Effect Diaries
31 July 2010 // The Bird Effect
The diary of the making of a film. and an on going fascination with birds and their accompanying cast of human characters. By Ceri Levy.
Wednesday 2nd December
“Whatever path your life takes, make it useful and strive to achieve progress, however modest it may seem in your chosen field. In this way you will add to the general well-being.”
Gustave Eiffel.
Wednesday 9th December
Sometimes I get confused as to whether I am making a film, writing diaries or giving talks and then it dawns on me that these are all facets of TBE. I just have to do everything and more. But I do get lax at times and have not filmed anything in anger for way too long. But I am still coming to terms with how I want things to develop and I am ok as long as ideas keep unfolding and knowledge is forthcoming. I continually learn things and that in turn, means my course keeps changing. I did think this morning that I could not remember the last idea I had which was worrying. I hope the Symposium on Friday will energise and inspire me. (more…)
Lines Made By Walking
30 July 2010 // Lines Made by Walking
by Jude Rogers
18. Site Lines
So we all hopped on a train, or started up a fiery engine, and headed down to Cornwall for the Port Eliot festival. I ventured alone, from Paddington to St Germans, a four-man tent on my back, as well as mud-weather wellies, scruffy clothes for all seasons, and a dog-eared copy of Rob Young’s Electric Eden – which would later be used as an impromptu pillow, wrapped in a jumper and yesterday’s dress. The cider, rather sweetly, made sure I didn’t feel it.
Then on Saturday morning, like a world-weary Ranulph Fiennes, the boots are squeezed on, and the muddy puddles come calling. The site yawns out its rolling hills in the harsh morning light, and then holds its hand out to me, pulling groggy limbs upwards.
Letter From Arcadia
The Pit And The Pendulum.
ja
your news of death in bivvy city put my indicators half-slack. a different face on the wanted poster now. heathcliffe holds up spawnbound coach. the old dodger gone, no 2 robbed of its pearls, and half the bivvies with it, i suspect. two years back, opening night down wimbledon common or richmond pk, the 40 came out at ten minutes into the new season. bob said 11 bivvies packed up and went home before the new dawn broke.
moral high ground gives me vertigo; the truth is i bounty hunt, all the waking minutes. take this month’s letter: a heatwave journal, a spaghetti north-western two-and-three-quarter-pound test curve newsreel; a quatermass and the gravel pit of boiling-point carp angling.
arse pit. in summer a toilet bowl, municipal bidet where buttock-brains collect for the holiday of saint dysfunction. by mid june i’d pulled off, nagged by failure, not a single run since my february 40. heatwave a-coming. sealed with a kiss, see you september. then a dog walker told me something which sent me to hell and back…
Port Eliot in Pictures
28 July 2010 // Port Eliot festival
Our friend and long-time contributor Neil Thomson was down at Port Eliot with us at the weekend and managed to get photos of pretty much everything that we were too busy drinking to capture. Here a selection of his pictures from the weekend. Hope it gives some idea of how ace it was. Book now for 2011. (more…)
This Summer, I Will Mostly Be Reading
28 July 2010 // Summer Reading 2010
Tim Dee.
I don’t really like fish but I am much looking forward to Andrew Grieg’s account of ghost casting for the great poet Norman MacCaig, At the Loch of the Green Corrie. I am not much of a mountain-man either but will certainly read Jim Perrin’s West, the climbing writer’s memoir. The good news is that, on first glance, it has more sex in it than rocks. Richard Mabey is producing at least a book a year at the moment, his next could well be right up there with his best – Weeds promises to be a passionate manifesto for the marginal, overlooked and under-loved.
On the back burner, two brilliant long poems slow cooking to perfection: David Jones’s In Parenthesis of 1937, a poem that beautifully annotates all the breakages of the First World War; and a dazzling discovery (for me), Ronald Johnson’s The Book of the Green Man. A poem published in 1967, the same year as The Peregrine by J. A. Baker and as essential and equally weird.
Jude Rogers.
My summer reading falls into two camps: unbearably sad, muggy books about melancholy women (not me, Sir), or trashy, sweaty, gobble-me-up racy paperbacks. Last month, I read Jean Rhys’ incredible Good Morning, Midnight, about a sad woman in Paris, alone and adrift. It was perfect – one of those books which burrows into the darkest bits of the mind and the marrow, and to which the lack of any strong plot is no real obstacle. Still, the way her secrets emerged through the murk of her life reminded me how subtle writing can be properly heartbreaking. Then, for reasons of work as well as escapism, I doused myself in Louise Bagshawe’s Desire, a gung-ho romp about a bride falsely accused of murdering her husband on her wedding night, which makes little sense but is all the better for it. A short, sharp shock of daftness after a long wallow in melancholy – a fizzy lager-top after a strong gin and tonic – is what summer often needs.
Port Eliot 2010 – View From The Other Side
27 July 2010 // Port Eliot festival
Waking up in your own bed… sometimes it’s a bit overrated. Maybe that’s just because for the last few days you’ve been relocated to the most beautiful festival site just over the Devon/Cornwall border putting on a series of inspirational events in a tent just next to a riverbank where people are dipping in from dawn til nightfall, tide in or out. Maybe it’s because you got the chance to get pissed with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to the sound of Seahawks DJing or listened as Chris Watson presented a new, expanded Greatest Hits of Nature to a packed tent.
Our annual three days at the Port Eliot Festival in St Germans are over, we’re back in London (Jeff wisely stayed on in Cornwall to decompress for a few days) wistfully looking at pictures and wondering how many sleeps til the next one.
We’d like to thank everyone who came, sat in on a talk or jumped around to a band or DJ. Everyone who came and said hello to us – wondered how we were so recognisable then remembered the programme had a picture of us all in. We’d like to thank Ruth and her team at the bar for keeping the wheels oiled, as it were. We’d like to thank all the people who talked, who played records, who played in bands – we really couldn’t have done it without you. And we’d like to thank Cathy, Peregrine, Louis, Mathew, Katherine, Simon, Rick and Shelly for having us back and making it so absolutely brilliant. We will update properly with pictures as soon as we upload them all.
So, back to reality. Still, at least the cat looks glad I’m back. (RT)
The Fantastic Slightly Foxed
by Andy Childs.
With the publishing industry seemingly in music biz-style turmoil over the dreaded impact of digital technology and the circulations of newspapers and magazines apparently in freefall it may come as a pleasant surprise to learn that there is at least one periodical that is not only surviving in these uncertain times but positively flourishing. (more…)
How Far To The Horizon 3
Sorry for the delay. Where was I?
Oh yes, in Barrafina, Frith Street, on a warm Soho evening, with beer flooding my senses and salt on my tongue. I’m having dinner with my 76 year old father, Felix, a native New Yorker on a rare visit to London.
Giddily, I had sent him the link to the last How Far To The Horizon, thinking it would keep him abreast of my movements and cut back on those Trans-Atlantic telephone pauses when the inevitable question of what is new crops up. We’ve subsequently spent the last few months not mentioning it. But here we are, at the bar, running low on topics of conversation. Felix manfully approaches the elephant and saddles up.
“So Teddy, what character are you trying to portray with this….”
My dad – an obituary writer, formerly a distinguished foreign correspondent – chews the word over.
“….blog?” (more…)
Fishing at Swallow Falls, 1971
My mates Grandad, Robert Stuart Rofe, at Swallow Falls, Gwynedd, in the early 1970′s
This Summer, I Will Mostly Be Reading
24 July 2010 // Summer Reading 2010
Jon Berry.
This summer I won’t be reading very much, which is unusual for me. I have a book of my own to finish, and another which is complete but requires a little redrafting before I let the publisher loose on it. And, when I am writing, I can’t read. I’m too much of a pilferer, too influenced by the words of others. I lose my voice, and start imitating.
It’s a weakness found in far better sorts than I. Remember when the Stones first heard Sergeant Pepper? They promptly reinvented themselves in satin and wizardly hats, and turned out Their Satanic Majesties Request. Third-rate derivative bollocks from start to finish. That’s what I’m afraid of. (more…)
Caught by the River