I had promised not to give the logicidal idiot Trump the oxygen of publicity. Yet now he has been roundly rejected by 80 million people and is retreating from the stage like a tapeworm back to the warmth of its home rectum, I dont mind sharing some of the funniest memes I have encountered throughout his reign.
The fantastically talented Mike Winklemann (aka Beeple) has an impressive body of work, with no small part of it devoted to the cognitively- dissonant fart cloud known as Trump, which is thankfulky dissipating now, even without need for a facemask. Sadly though, fart clouds are known to linger and contribute to global warming for 100 years. Lets hope not. Love the way Biden gets some pre- emptive grief too.
The River Trent also has some notable historical mentions including King Canute who stood in the River Trent in an attempt to hold back the tide. It was believed it was to demonstrate that power is vain compared to the supreme power of God. It was also here in Gainsborough that some of the Pilgrim Separatists fled from the town on a barge up the River Trent in search of religious freedom in May 1608. They met others at an isolated place along the coast near Immingham where they boarded a Dutch ship to Amsterdam. Some would later return and board the Mayflower in Plymouth in 1620.From the Visit Lincoln website.
Setting out on foot from Hafod, you are right on the coastal path. Heading south, you are immediately thrust into a wonderland of breathtaking cliffs, idyllic coves, barren headland, distant forlorn mansions, and huge arches of rock gouged out by the sea.
Initially, I made a few daily forays along the headland. I was suffering from plantar fasciitis which I did not allow to disrupt my enjoyment of the headland. Eventually I was able to take the full walk down to Traeth Borth Wen and back again. Further along the coastal path is St. Gwenfaen's Well an ancient holy well described by Dafydd Meirion as "One of the best preserved Holy Wells on the Island", and it's associated church. The highest point on the walk is on the cliffs at the Coastguard's lookout. All together, there is just about every kind of feature along the walk, of course at all times under the watchful and restless eye of The Cruel Sea.
I think you might be gathering by now that I cannot go to North Wales and not visit Bryn Celli Ddu. Whilst this may seem like an obsessional trait, I can reassure you I have moved on from my original fixation of the Druid's Circle at Penmaenmawr, which I must have attended a dozen times. Given the enormous number of neolithic sites in North Wales, I am ultimately optimistic for my mortal (and etheric) soul in the long run. On this occasion, Bryn Celli Ddu was particularly beautiful and the photography worked out better than ever probably due to lighting (ok, or familiarity).
“We always enjoyed the time we spent over at Ravenspoint, there was an endless variety of things to do and to learn. Ravenspoint, standing high up on the southerly arm of the bay, commanded a magnificent view of the whole coast-line nearly to South Stack lighthouse. On rough days the waves, surging in with the full force of the gale behind them, swept past in successive mile-long crests, piling up until they broke in a white flurry and fell thunderously onto the beach”
I love big old draughty holiday homes. I occupied the top floor and took two rooms; one for an office, and the other for sleeping. The bedroom had a dormer window, out of which the sea was reassuringly within touching distance, and for the duration of the holiday I was gifted with waxing, full, and waning moonlight cascading through the window. The full moon imparted a swollen and at times angry aspect to the sea, which was a pleasure to enjoy in all of her moods. Watching an old black & white movie (I recommend The Cruel Sea 1953, dir. Charles Frend) to the crackling fire, warmed by red wine, was a poetic delight. Below is some photography I took from the bottom of the garden at Hafod. If you skip over the stone wall, you are on the coastal footpath and right on the cliffs looking out to sea.
Oh my dear MILLIONS of fans, I am so sorry! So VERY sorry!!! So VERY VERY sorry for leaving you all for so long abandoned in a virtual swamp of noBohemian-ness. How could I do that?! I have no excuse. Oh for shame. I wish I could say I had an horrific riding accident and struggled against tide and time, like a mighty salmon swimming against the river's onslaught, to regain use of my hands so I could return to my beloved blog. Erm, but no. The muse, she is a cruel mistress, and she casts such a dark veil over her followers... so capriciously. If I could explain why this is so, I would hold the very keys of life and death. So its a good job I don't know really.
And yet, after the long dark winter, there is always a spring.
And what have YOU done in your spare time whilst I have been away, oh world?
Well there's the small matter of Trump, Brexit, Bozza, and a worldwide pandemic. Not to mention a global environmental catastrophe, with whole biomes now uncontrollably conflagrating. Oh yeah and an impending war with China. And millions actually displaced & dying in the middle east right now. And that says nothing of the coming financial meltdown and subjugation of the human race by psychotic warring AI robots. So, to be fair world, you haven't really kept up your end of things. I only missed a few blogs.
Today's music is served by the cuddly Mr. Morrissey formerly of Smiths fame. HOWEVER, this 1988 track (titled Suedehead and not I'm So Sorry) was his breakout solo single rather than being a Smiths release. In a flagrant flourish of tragi-irony, Suedehead charted higher on release than anything The Smiths had previously managed to do. Given the general agreement about the mistreatment of the other band members, that presents a moral Gordian knot that Gordius himself would have difficulty undoing. The muse is indeed capricious.
In 1899, the Berlin Academy elected Moszkowski a member. He was many times invited by piano manufacturers to appear in the United States to show off their pianos, but despite being offered massive fees, he always refused.In 1908, by the age of 54, Moszkowski had already become a recluse as he began to suffer from poor health. His popularity began to fade and his career slowly went into decline. He stopped taking composition pupils because "they wanted to write like artistic madmen such as Scriabin, Schoenberg, Debussy, Satie."His last years he spent in poverty for he had sold all his copyrights and invested the whole lot in German, Polish and Russian bonds and securities, which were rendered worthless on the outbreak of the war. On 21 December 1921, when he was ill and heavily in debt, his friends and admirers arranged a grand testimonial concert on his behalf at Carnegie Hall, involving 15 grand pianos on stage. The concert netted $13,275, with one part to provide immediate relief from his financial problems, plus an annuity of $1,250 annually for the rest of his life.However, Moszkowski's illness lingered and he died from stomach cancer on 4 March of the next year, before the supply of funds could reach him. The money raised went instead to pay his funeral expenses and to his wife and son.
Abbreviated from the Moszkowski Wikipedia article.
